6 ms·

It was a hot topic a couple of years ago, when Oculus just started, but now when VR devices are everywhere (starting with simple cardboard and on to something m

by krick 11y ago

It was a hot topic a couple of years ago, when Oculus just started, but now when VR devices are everywhere (starting with simple cardboard and on to something more sophisticated) it's not really the time to be "selling a dream", is it? The real question is how exactly is it different from the competing products, and I'm not sure I've heard the answer. To be more exact, what exactly justifies a huge gap in prices between Oculus and something more, uh, Chinese.

eterm 11y ago
In some ways the oculus store could be that differentiator, but then that would lead to vendor lock / device wars which would be a shame more generally.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Except the Vive with steam has much better infrastructure/depth and existing userbase.
nugga 11y ago
Oculus are committed to high fps/low latency (the displays are 90 Hz with low persistence) experience and won't settle with anything less. You get stuff like timewarp [1] and other technical solutions that reduce latency and provide an accurate and smooth experience. Not to mention having some industry heavy hitters such as John Carmack and Michael Abrash on their payroll. [1] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-on-oculus-rift/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-on-o...
jimrandomh 11y ago
Cheaper competition will surely come, but it hasn't yet. This is for early adopters.
nilkn 11y ago
I don't think Cardboard even really counts as a competitor. Its head tracking is extremely primitive and basically non-functional with severe drift, frame rates are bad, games are overwhelmingly simplistic, etc.
- pen2l 11y ago
  Just curious, how does a Gear VR setup (with galaxy 7) compare with Cardboard? Does /that/ count as a competitor?
  - nilkn 11y ago
    I suspect the Gear VR is a lot more comparable to the current Rift without Touch controls. After all, I believe many of the Rift launch titles are actually Gear VR ports (but of course not the high profile ones like Lucky's Tale, Eve: Valkyrie, Chronos, etc.). That said, there are still major differences. The Rift for instance has much better tracking thanks to its external camera. The camera allows drift to be corrected constantly and also allows positional tracking of the headset throughout a room. There's little reason to take advantage of that latter ability right now without the Touch controllers, though. Thanks to modern smartphone displays, the Rift will not actually be higher resolution. However, I expect it'd have less pronounced screen-door-effect (SDE). And of course, being powered by a high-end PC, it will be able to play games like those I mentioned above that a smartphone just can't power. The bottom line is that I think right now the most compelling VR experiences by far involve motion controllers, and those are only available on the Vive. I think the Rift will become a much more interesting device later this year when it gets its own set of controllers.
  - squeaky-clean 11y ago
    Gear VR has special sensors built into it, which interface with the phone, so you aren't using the phone's built-in accelerometer or gyroscope. Samsung has also put special effort into the rendering pipeline when in VR mode, so it has much higher priority than other processing. That's why it only works with the high-end Samsung phones, and not their lower offerings or other manufacturers. I haven't gotten to try any myself, but I've read that the Gear VR has gotten the latency down below any noticeable level. So the main differences are more minor, like positional tracking and the FoV. And of course, that with an Oculus/Vive you're only limited by the power of your PC, which can be much better than a smartphone.
some-guy 11y ago
The only real competition they have is from the HTC Vive and Playstation VR. HTC Vive is their direct competition, but I do believe Playstation VR will probably sell better due to its price and huge install base (every PS4 owner). While yes, the PS4 is slower than high-end PCs, developers will have an easier time tailoring the performance of their games to one piece of hardware. PSVR owners should expect PS3/XBOX360 level graphics on a PS4 in VR.
lhl 11y ago
Almost all the Chinese headsets are Google Cardboard-style devices (technically, while most of them are compatible with Google Cardboard, they are technically off-spec since to be certified, the devices shouldn't have headstraps... [1]) There are one or two AIO units like the ANTVR, but they are just as terrible. Soon people will be able to easily access/compare the high-end sets vs the Cardboard-class stuff and this sort of confusion will seem silly (in the way that comparing like a $0 Tracphone to a Samsung S7 or Apple iPhone 6S) So here's a list of some of the differences: * Tracking: None of the off-brand devices have positional tracking (the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sony PSVR do). This is pretty key to having a good VR user experience (both for immersion and comfort), the GearVR actually does ok for rotational-only w/ high res IMUs and good head & neck model, but positional is much better. Almost all the Chinese knockoff devices use the phone's IMU which not only suffers from drift, but typically sample at 100/125Hz vs 1000Hz - in practice (and you can compare it running a GearVR in native mode vs in Cardboard Mode w/ a disabler), the tracking is pretty terrible and makes me sick in minutes. There's of course no sensor fusion since there are no sensors to fuse and there's lots of additional path-latency that's optimized out of the better systems * Display/Rendering: Currently, high quality VR requires low persistence OLED displays. GearVR (new Samsung flagships have modified tcon firmware to support this), PSVR, Vive, and Rift are the only guys with this built in. The higher the refresh, the better - GearVR is at 60Hz (ugh city, especially on the periphery and w/ bright colors), Vive and Rift are at 90Hz, PSVR is 90Hz or 120Hz. Motion-to-Photon (M2P) latency should be <20ms. Cardboard devices might be lucky to get to around 50ms to 100ms (Android also has poorly synced audio on top of video). The optimization for latency is non-trivial and you can find out lots and lots on this topic watching various technical talks on YouTube if you'd like. The other big thing that none of the knockoffs have is any sort of timewarp/reprojection. * Lenses: at best you'll get off-the-shelf biconvex, but more commonly terrible planoconvex lenses. The high end headsets are actually using custom multi-element aspheric fresnel (Rift) or dual-fresnel (Vive) lenses (not sure what the PSVR is using, but it looked quite good, better than the Vive). None of these are particularly cheap and the lenses themselves cost more than the entire BOM of any of the Chinese knockoffs. These are better in just about every way you want to measure a lens - abberation, sweet spot, contrast, sharpness, fov. The Rift and Vive also have two physically separate panels that allow for physical IPD adjustment. * Ergonomics - weigh distribution, straps, facial interfaces are all generally what you would expect from a $5-20 piece of cardboard/low-cost plastic. The Rift gets bonus points for designing for comfort * Software - Another huge difference is in the SDKs/APIs available - the high-end sets have proprietary APIs that provide HRTF 3D audio, tuned rendering pipelines (working directly w/ GPU vendors, etc), better engine plugins, and dev relations/first-party content. They also have stores that allow third party developers to get paid. You'll just never see the majority of the experiences created for any of the high-end headsets on the Chinese knockoffs. tldr: right now, you get what you pay for. [1] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//get/cardboard/downloads/wwgc_asset_guidelines.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...

by krick 11y ago

eterm 11y ago

In some ways the oculus store could be that differentiator, but then that would lead to vendor lock / device wars which would be a shame more generally.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago
Except the Vive with steam has much better infrastructure/depth and existing userbase.

nugga 11y ago

Oculus are committed to high fps/low latency (the displays are 90 Hz with low persistence) experience and won't settle with anything less. You get stuff like timewarp [1] and other technical solutions that reduce latency and provide an accurate and smooth experience. Not to mention having some industry heavy hitters such as John Carmack and Michael Abrash on their payroll. [1] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-on-oculus-rift/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-timewarp-on-o...

jimrandomh 11y ago

Cheaper competition will surely come, but it hasn't yet. This is for early adopters.

nilkn 11y ago

I don't think Cardboard even really counts as a competitor. Its head tracking is extremely primitive and basically non-functional with severe drift, frame rates are bad, games are overwhelmingly simplistic, etc.

pen2l 11y ago
Just curious, how does a Gear VR setup (with galaxy 7) compare with Cardboard? Does /that/ count as a competitor?
- nilkn 11y ago
  I suspect the Gear VR is a lot more comparable to the current Rift without Touch controls. After all, I believe many of the Rift launch titles are actually Gear VR ports (but of course not the high profile ones like Lucky's Tale, Eve: Valkyrie, Chronos, etc.). That said, there are still major differences. The Rift for instance has much better tracking thanks to its external camera. The camera allows drift to be corrected constantly and also allows positional tracking of the headset throughout a room. There's little reason to take advantage of that latter ability right now without the Touch controllers, though. Thanks to modern smartphone displays, the Rift will not actually be higher resolution. However, I expect it'd have less pronounced screen-door-effect (SDE). And of course, being powered by a high-end PC, it will be able to play games like those I mentioned above that a smartphone just can't power. The bottom line is that I think right now the most compelling VR experiences by far involve motion controllers, and those are only available on the Vive. I think the Rift will become a much more interesting device later this year when it gets its own set of controllers.
- squeaky-clean 11y ago
  Gear VR has special sensors built into it, which interface with the phone, so you aren't using the phone's built-in accelerometer or gyroscope. Samsung has also put special effort into the rendering pipeline when in VR mode, so it has much higher priority than other processing. That's why it only works with the high-end Samsung phones, and not their lower offerings or other manufacturers. I haven't gotten to try any myself, but I've read that the Gear VR has gotten the latency down below any noticeable level. So the main differences are more minor, like positional tracking and the FoV. And of course, that with an Oculus/Vive you're only limited by the power of your PC, which can be much better than a smartphone.

some-guy 11y ago

The only real competition they have is from the HTC Vive and Playstation VR. HTC Vive is their direct competition, but I do believe Playstation VR will probably sell better due to its price and huge install base (every PS4 owner). While yes, the PS4 is slower than high-end PCs, developers will have an easier time tailoring the performance of their games to one piece of hardware. PSVR owners should expect PS3/XBOX360 level graphics on a PS4 in VR.

lhl 11y ago

Almost all the Chinese headsets are Google Cardboard-style devices (technically, while most of them are compatible with Google Cardboard, they are technically off-spec since to be certified, the devices shouldn't have headstraps... [1]) There are one or two AIO units like the ANTVR, but they are just as terrible. Soon people will be able to easily access/compare the high-end sets vs the Cardboard-class stuff and this sort of confusion will seem silly (in the way that comparing like a $0 Tracphone to a Samsung S7 or Apple iPhone 6S) So here's a list of some of the differences: * Tracking: None of the off-brand devices have positional tracking (the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sony PSVR do). This is pretty key to having a good VR user experience (both for immersion and comfort), the GearVR actually does ok for rotational-only w/ high res IMUs and good head & neck model, but positional is much better. Almost all the Chinese knockoff devices use the phone's IMU which not only suffers from drift, but typically sample at 100/125Hz vs 1000Hz - in practice (and you can compare it running a GearVR in native mode vs in Cardboard Mode w/ a disabler), the tracking is pretty terrible and makes me sick in minutes. There's of course no sensor fusion since there are no sensors to fuse and there's lots of additional path-latency that's optimized out of the better systems * Display/Rendering: Currently, high quality VR requires low persistence OLED displays. GearVR (new Samsung flagships have modified tcon firmware to support this), PSVR, Vive, and Rift are the only guys with this built in. The higher the refresh, the better - GearVR is at 60Hz (ugh city, especially on the periphery and w/ bright colors), Vive and Rift are at 90Hz, PSVR is 90Hz or 120Hz. Motion-to-Photon (M2P) latency should be <20ms. Cardboard devices might be lucky to get to around 50ms to 100ms (Android also has poorly synced audio on top of video). The optimization for latency is non-trivial and you can find out lots and lots on this topic watching various technical talks on YouTube if you'd like. The other big thing that none of the knockoffs have is any sort of timewarp/reprojection. * Lenses: at best you'll get off-the-shelf biconvex, but more commonly terrible planoconvex lenses. The high end headsets are actually using custom multi-element aspheric fresnel (Rift) or dual-fresnel (Vive) lenses (not sure what the PSVR is using, but it looked quite good, better than the Vive). None of these are particularly cheap and the lenses themselves cost more than the entire BOM of any of the Chinese knockoffs. These are better in just about every way you want to measure a lens - abberation, sweet spot, contrast, sharpness, fov. The Rift and Vive also have two physically separate panels that allow for physical IPD adjustment. * Ergonomics - weigh distribution, straps, facial interfaces are all generally what you would expect from a $5-20 piece of cardboard/low-cost plastic. The Rift gets bonus points for designing for comfort * Software - Another huge difference is in the SDKs/APIs available - the high-end sets have proprietary APIs that provide HRTF 3D audio, tuned rendering pipelines (working directly w/ GPU vendors, etc), better engine plugins, and dev relations/first-party content. They also have stores that allow third party developers to get paid. You'll just never see the majority of the experiences created for any of the high-end headsets on the Chinese knockoffs. tldr: right now, you get what you pay for. [1] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//get/cardboard/downloads/wwgc_asset_guidelines.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...