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Show HN: Swift and VR – Google Cardboard Ported to Swift and iOS
- jimrandomh 11y agoFollowing my habit for evaluating VR-infrastructure projects: Ctrl+F, "latency". No mention of what the latency is. There's a big difference between how Google and Oculus approach VR. Oculus' position is that it's bad to show people VR experiences that are likely to make them sick; they refer to it as "poisoning the well". They're very cautious in how they label things, and they've invested a lot of effort and talked a lot publicly about how to get things exactly right. Google's approach is, instead, to keep expectations down; they call it "cardboard". And, well, what's going on in the Cardboard world kind of freaks me out, because Cardboard's documentation never seems to mention the problems, Google never talks about the work that needs to be done or the problems Cardboard has, they just sort of pretend that VR is VR is VR. It's like they're really trying to poison the well (though I don't think they'd actually do that intentionally).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- falsedan 11y ago> The latency here will be the refresh rate of the display that's running the code For VR, latency is delay between head movement and viewpoint movement, which is more than just display refresh rate.
- devsquid 11y agoSort of, the viewport can't change more than the displays refresh rate. So the refresh rate is a hard cap on the latency between head movements and the view moving. This is probably why we are begining to hear talks about 120hz smart phone screen, since this would drastically improve them. I believe most high end VR helms have 75hz screens.
- wlesieutre 11y agoOculus Rift and HTC Vive are both at 90 hz.
- jimrandomh 11y agoIn the context of VR, latency refers to the amount of time between when your head rotates and when the light coming out of the display reflects that rotation ("motion-to-photon"). Too much latency means that whenever you rotate your head, the world you're looking at seems to shake. Wearing a headset with high latency conditions people to hold their head still (they get negative reinforcement from looking around, but don't realize what's happening).
- moron4hire 11y ago"Poisoning the well" presumes users can't tell the difference between a cardboard box and purpose built hardware. I know it's fun to laugh at "lusers", but people really aren't that dumb and deserve to be treated with a little bit more respect than that.
- seanwilson 11y agoI agree with this. Every product category in existence has a range of good and bad versions. I think people are smart enough to not lump all VR experiences together just like watching a bad movie or eating a bad pizza doesn't put you off them for life. Also, you can't stop people releasing whatever VR products they want so even if poisoning the well was real you can't do anything about it.
- nzff 11y agoHi there, author here. Cardboard's motion-to-photon latency is significantly worse than the GearVR. This Swift hack is worse than Cardboard. This is true for a number of both software and hardware reasons. Of course, comparing Cardboard to the Vive and Rift is hardly to apples-to-apples. Your concerns re: poisoning the well are valid. This seems to be a common divide among people working in VR: should we be making low quality (whatever that means) experiences? For example, VR devs often remark that 360 video content isn't "true VR." I don't know that I agree. Purely as a matter of opinion, I don't see a reason not to experiment in VR, even if it's far from perfect. It's-not-VR complaints strike me a little bit like the "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy. It's great that Oculus and Google have different approaches to the problem, and, as I'm sure you can guess, I don't believe there's a real risk of poisoning the well. Then again, like Dennis Miller used to say: that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. (In which case we'll all have to wait another 15+ years for another turn on the carousel.) :)
- devsquid 11y agoCardboard has very low latency. I believe its far lower than the Oculus is. Its of course not doing very much. But thats the point its simple entry level VR for the masses. Most people aren't going to spend 400$ for the headset + 2000$ for the computer to get an Occulus working. They might after they see the wonders of carboard however. I think they are doing the exact opposite of "poisoning the well", they are letting a whole demographic of people that would never experience VR get a chance to see whats its all about.
- billconan 11y agoWhat is the best VR goggle case for iphone?
- carlosdp 11y agoI recently bought the Knox v2, it works great with my iPhone 6
- nunyabuizness 11y agoJust bought a Pop-Tech 3D VR headset, only issue with it is that the lenses are just a tad bit too far from the phone, preventing 100% immersion: http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Tech%C2%AE-Virtual-Head-mounted-Headband-Smartphones/dp/B018DYHBII http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Tech%C2%AE-Virtual-Head-mounted-He...
- moron4hire 11y agoYou're never going to get 100% immersion from any current model phone and passive viewer contraption.
- devsquid 11y agoso what? its still pretty damn cool. It gives you a very good feel for what VR could be!
- moron4hire 11y agoThe point was the person I was replying to was saying it was the lenses preventing immersion. No, it's a fundamental limitation of the type of tech he is using. A better lens setup isn't going to help. I own four different passive viewers, one of which I built myself. I know what they are and are not good for. Two of them I carry with me everywhere. I just think we should be clear about their limitations, too.
- nunyabuizness 11y ago
- k_vi 11y agowhat is the limiting factor with Cardboard VR? Is it possible to improve frame rates of Cardboard to 90fps(like Occulus) with better hardware alone?
- joeld42 11y agoMotion tracking and screen refresh.