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I said this in another thread, but if you haven't tried the Vive (or maybe Oculus with the Touch controllers, which are not generally available yet), then you h

I said this in another thread, but if you haven't tried the Vive (or maybe Oculus with the Touch controllers, which are not generally available yet), then you haven't really tried VR. Wearing a stereoscopic headset is one thing, but the presence that room-scale brings is just another thing altogether. I had tried Oculus demos at conferences and such, and I kinda started to think maybe VR was over-hyped. Then I got my Vive on pre-order, put it on and went into the tutorial. There was a part where you can inflate balloons coming out of your perfectly-tracked controllers. I instinctively bonked one with a controller, and I FELT it (thanks to haptic feedback from the controller and diagetic sound). I basically forgot I was wearing a headset for the rest of the tutorial, I was present. That's when it really clicked for me that this is happening this time. This is something new. I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward.

wuliwong 10y ago
I actually was completely convinced when I tried my friend's Rift. That being said, I bought a Vive for my house and I do agree that it is another step beyond the Rift.
- nomel 10y ago
  > it is another step beyond the Rift. Literally. I can't imagine how they're still justifying the Rift at this point. Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair?
  - wolrah 10y ago
    > Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair? Nope. The Rift is definitely more comfortable for most people and looks more like a finished product, but that's about all the good I can say about it. I used a Rift demo station about a week before my Vive arrived and it immediately made me happy about my choices. Roomscale is huge and while Oculus technically can be used that way the official support is still largely based around forward facing.
    - ehsanu1 10y ago
      Things will change when Oculus Touch comes out. I don't understand why people are already dismissing the Rift as if it's the final revision, especially in such an immature market such as VR. Oculus is still more focused on non-roomscale experiences for now, but they're already starting to change how they talk about it, no doubt in preparation for Touch. The tech is there, the games are there (from Vive-land), the only thing really missing right now are the controllers.
      - moron4hire 10y ago
        Oculus' tech is excellent. That is not disputed. But their management is hot garbage. And if anything can kill an excellent product, it's poor management. HTC and Valve have been much better stewards of the Vive than Facebook and Oculus have been of the Rift. Oculus has burnt a lot of good will in the developer and consumer communities, with the delays, the shady exclusivity deals, the walled garden app store, the broken promises on open source and Linux and OS X support, etc.
        efnx 10y ago
        Yup, I got my dk2 and then they dropped Mac and Linux support in the next version - what a waste.
        kolinko 10y ago
        Well, as a Mac fan, it unfortunately made sense. Aside from the top of the line Macs PRO, Apple doesn't sell machines good enough to support VR. I have money, and I love mac, but I won't be buying Mac Pro for $3k just to play with the tech.
        lbradstreet 10y ago
        Even the top of the line Mac Pro is not good enough. I've used it with the DK2 in Windows, and judder was still a huge problem.
  - empath75 10y ago
    It does room scale just fine with the touch, by all accounts. I've used the vive and own a rift. I'm pretty happy with it. The display in the rift is better and it's more comfortable.
    - droopyEyelids 10y ago
      Thats a pretty good way to put it. It's like the difference between a slightly better display and being in another world
    - mattdotc 10y ago
      I own DK1, DK2, Vive and tried Rift CV1 at a Best Buy. Was not impressed by the tracking on the Rift CV1. Perhaps it was the demo or demo environment, but it didn't feel as smooth. It definitely 'cut out' a few times, albeit very briefly. Have you experienced that at home?
    - wuliwong 10y ago
      As someone who wears glasses, I actually have the opposite experience. The Vive accommodates the glasses pretty easily. I've wondered about the display difference though. I've had a lot more time in a Vive and am going to get to compare to a Rift again soon but my recollection is that the Oculus had a better display. I also might not have "dialed in" my Vive well. The Oculus was setup for me by a friend who is an Oculus engineer, so I suspect he set it up correctly. I'm going to read up on tuning the Vive display right now. :)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
elliotec 10y ago
What do you mean by the new medium going forward? What are you expecting it to replace, or do you not expect it to replace anything?
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  It's the first time humans will move from speaking in binary with one another to interfacing with one another in binary. Good luck to regimes like China keeping up with their censorship like they can today when we can all talk and exchange ideas in a VR world while speaking what seems to be the same language in realtime.
  - nine_k 10y ago
    If other forms of internet communications are any indication, China will have its own virtual universe, shut off from any outside influence, "harmonized" with the party line, requiring real names and such, and likely larger than any Western one.
    - paavokoya 10y ago
      >requiring real names and such If facebook and google have any say, then America will too.
      - nine_k 10y ago
        Google, fortunately, retracted the real names policy a year or so ago. Sometimes common sense still wins.
- carlosdp 10y ago
  I personally don't think it'll so much "replace" as much as open up new doors. As in Cinema/TV didn't "replace" theatrical performances, theatre is still around and strong, but the audience has mostly shifted to movies/TV because it is more scalable and flexible. There's a bunch of apps that are trying to make virtual desktops in VR or 360 movies and the like. I don't personally buy into those that much, I think 360 movies are difficult to make interesting and virtual desktops are more for Augmented Reality. Besides the obvious (VR games), I think there is a potential for a new form of entertainment (maybe a hybrid of theatre/cinema), for more advanced design tools that make faster work of 3D-based design, for educational experiences. Some things might be "replacements", but there are a lot of possibilities that a VR environment opens up for things that would not be compelling or practical on a 2D screen with common input controls.
megablast 10y ago
So you kinda thought VR was hyped, but it didn't stop you from ordering a Vive? I think VR is incredibly hyped, just as it was 15 years ago. What do you imagine this new medium replacing? Games? Movies? Monitors?
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  Have you actually tried it? I don't mean gear VR or cardboard, I mean a vive. If you have and you still think it's hyped, enjoy shovelling horse shit while I drive my model T. Tastes differ.
- cmelbye 10y ago
  It replaces the default reality.
- carlosdp 10y ago
  What can I say, I'm a compulsive early adopter =P I also have an Apple Watch and a Myo armband, but haven't found a ton of compelling uses for them yet. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to develop for it early if I was wrong and I had the cash to buy it. The difference from 15 years ago is that the hardware is actually here and practical. We have the tracking and displays and they are actually really good. It really creates presence, there is 0 comparison between Oculus/Vive and VR experiences of yesterday, such as the Aladdin ride in Downtown Disney. Hell, HTC is literally pivoting the entire company to the Vive. HTC/Valve + Facebook + Sony + Samsung is a ton of top-notch engineering effort being put into just the first generation of devices/software. See my comment above, but basically I imagine it'll create new media/experiences rather than replace. I don't think "floating monitors in space" will ever be compelling (maybe in AR), and I don't think "movies" as we think of them now will be practical (though I do think there is room for a more "theatre-like" approach).
  - tfinniga 10y ago
    If the displays get a lot higher res, I could see myself using stacks of floating displays for apps instead of my current multimonitor display. Imagine being completely surrounded by digital paper that defies the laws of physics.
RodericDay 10y ago
I tried the Vive, with the TiltBrush game/app, and one shooting one. No haptics. It was really quite incredible, and I was skeptical coming in. However, it was incredible in a "super high tech sparklers" kind of way, that I'd like everyone to check out once for fun. I don't really see any future in them.
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  The vive has haptics in both controllers.
criddell 10y ago
It's neat, but do you find yourself looking forward to playing it still? The novelty is fantastic, but until the software shows up (I'm not a gamer), it feels like a demo.
manyxcxi 10y ago
I worked on a demo experience for the Vive unveiling and for the first time in my career I felt like VR was more than a gimmick. We were working with beta (maybe more like RC) hardware, had no controllers, and only one tracking cube. I had two a-ha moments with it that sold me... There was a small demo room called something like Shopkeeper (think an old goblin's hut filled with wares) and I actually reached out to grab a faerie/wisp that was buzzing nearby. The second was a Valve demo app where a Portal like robot came stomping into the room and I actually jumped the F out of the way, only to have the floor start falling out from under me and scrambling back to safety. For a few fleeting moments at a time there was no virtual, it was reality and it was freaking amazing. And all this without the added immersion the controllers provide. The Vive is by far the best VR setup I've tried. It's made the rifts we had around seem like toys.
- mungoman2 10y ago
  A vive headset without controllers is by itself objectively worse than a rift on all accounts. Maybe your experience shows how important software is.
  - Alphasite_ 10y ago
    There are definite points of contention on this. The Vive headset doesn't face nearly as significant a glare issue as the rift, it is far better for glasses wearers than the rift and for some people the improved brightness is a significant advantage. Integrated audio is definitely nice, but not a deal breaker and the improved ease in reaching a comfortable setup is definitely and advantage, but it makes trade offs in other areas. You could split hairs about where the trade offs were made (fov vs SDE) but the displays and optics are so similar that those dont matter.
- david-given 10y ago
  Those demos are both part of The Lab, a set of VR demos distributed by Steam. To everyone else with a Vive: get it. It's free, and it's frickin' awesome, even though the Steam description spoils one of the games. http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/ I tried a Vive the other day. It's the closest experience to magic I've ever had which didn't involve sacrificing chickens.
hatsunearu 10y ago
That balloon was the first experience I had, and made me realize the first bug on the vive: the chaperone (thing that hints your room boundaries) doesn't tell you where your ceiling is. I chased the balloon and jumped up and smacked it in the ceiling. Didn't break it though (as far as I can notice)
- NKCSS 10y ago
  It should be trivial to add imho; they are tracking in 3d; so chaperone could also watch in 3d; it's just that they don't...
  - rullelito 10y ago
    Some people would always see the ceiling grid, which might lower immersion.
    - NKCSS 10y ago
      It should track the controllers; not your head; only if you're always with your hands at shoulder/higher level...
    - eddieroger 10y ago
      That's a good point, and something my Vive setup has been struggling with. My play area is just a little bit too small, so I see the boundaries a lot. It's not as bad as not having them and periodically punching a wall or walking in to the couch, but it's kind of a bummer to see it and go, "oh, right, I'm in my living room," especially in some of the much more immersive experiences.
    - hatsunearu 10y ago
      You should be able to turn it off then, much like how you can change the wall pattern on the chaperone and turn it off completely if you desired right now.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
otabdeveloper1 10y ago
> I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward. Maybe we should stop chasing that elusive high of extensive growth and just come to terms with the fact that computing is now a mature industry. There will be no more double-digit growth rates.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

wuliwong 10y ago

I actually was completely convinced when I tried my friend's Rift. That being said, I bought a Vive for my house and I do agree that it is another step beyond the Rift.

nomel 10y ago
> it is another step beyond the Rift. Literally. I can't imagine how they're still justifying the Rift at this point. Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair?
- wolrah 10y ago
  > Is the room scale tracking somehow inferior when you sit in a chair? Nope. The Rift is definitely more comfortable for most people and looks more like a finished product, but that's about all the good I can say about it. I used a Rift demo station about a week before my Vive arrived and it immediately made me happy about my choices. Roomscale is huge and while Oculus technically can be used that way the official support is still largely based around forward facing.
  - ehsanu1 10y ago
    Things will change when Oculus Touch comes out. I don't understand why people are already dismissing the Rift as if it's the final revision, especially in such an immature market such as VR. Oculus is still more focused on non-roomscale experiences for now, but they're already starting to change how they talk about it, no doubt in preparation for Touch. The tech is there, the games are there (from Vive-land), the only thing really missing right now are the controllers.
    - moron4hire 10y ago
      Oculus' tech is excellent. That is not disputed. But their management is hot garbage. And if anything can kill an excellent product, it's poor management. HTC and Valve have been much better stewards of the Vive than Facebook and Oculus have been of the Rift. Oculus has burnt a lot of good will in the developer and consumer communities, with the delays, the shady exclusivity deals, the walled garden app store, the broken promises on open source and Linux and OS X support, etc.
      - efnx 10y ago
        Yup, I got my dk2 and then they dropped Mac and Linux support in the next version - what a waste.
        kolinko 10y ago
        Well, as a Mac fan, it unfortunately made sense. Aside from the top of the line Macs PRO, Apple doesn't sell machines good enough to support VR. I have money, and I love mac, but I won't be buying Mac Pro for $3k just to play with the tech.
        lbradstreet 10y ago
        Even the top of the line Mac Pro is not good enough. I've used it with the DK2 in Windows, and judder was still a huge problem.
- empath75 10y ago
  It does room scale just fine with the touch, by all accounts. I've used the vive and own a rift. I'm pretty happy with it. The display in the rift is better and it's more comfortable.
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    Thats a pretty good way to put it. It's like the difference between a slightly better display and being in another world
  - mattdotc 10y ago
    I own DK1, DK2, Vive and tried Rift CV1 at a Best Buy. Was not impressed by the tracking on the Rift CV1. Perhaps it was the demo or demo environment, but it didn't feel as smooth. It definitely 'cut out' a few times, albeit very briefly. Have you experienced that at home?
  - wuliwong 10y ago
    As someone who wears glasses, I actually have the opposite experience. The Vive accommodates the glasses pretty easily. I've wondered about the display difference though. I've had a lot more time in a Vive and am going to get to compare to a Rift again soon but my recollection is that the Oculus had a better display. I also might not have "dialed in" my Vive well. The Oculus was setup for me by a friend who is an Oculus engineer, so I suspect he set it up correctly. I'm going to read up on tuning the Vive display right now. :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

elliotec 10y ago

What do you mean by the new medium going forward? What are you expecting it to replace, or do you not expect it to replace anything?

godzillabrennus 10y ago
It's the first time humans will move from speaking in binary with one another to interfacing with one another in binary. Good luck to regimes like China keeping up with their censorship like they can today when we can all talk and exchange ideas in a VR world while speaking what seems to be the same language in realtime.
- nine_k 10y ago
  If other forms of internet communications are any indication, China will have its own virtual universe, shut off from any outside influence, "harmonized" with the party line, requiring real names and such, and likely larger than any Western one.
  - paavokoya 10y ago
    >requiring real names and such If facebook and google have any say, then America will too.
    - nine_k 10y ago
      Google, fortunately, retracted the real names policy a year or so ago. Sometimes common sense still wins.
carlosdp 10y ago
I personally don't think it'll so much "replace" as much as open up new doors. As in Cinema/TV didn't "replace" theatrical performances, theatre is still around and strong, but the audience has mostly shifted to movies/TV because it is more scalable and flexible. There's a bunch of apps that are trying to make virtual desktops in VR or 360 movies and the like. I don't personally buy into those that much, I think 360 movies are difficult to make interesting and virtual desktops are more for Augmented Reality. Besides the obvious (VR games), I think there is a potential for a new form of entertainment (maybe a hybrid of theatre/cinema), for more advanced design tools that make faster work of 3D-based design, for educational experiences. Some things might be "replacements", but there are a lot of possibilities that a VR environment opens up for things that would not be compelling or practical on a 2D screen with common input controls.

megablast 10y ago

So you kinda thought VR was hyped, but it didn't stop you from ordering a Vive? I think VR is incredibly hyped, just as it was 15 years ago. What do you imagine this new medium replacing? Games? Movies? Monitors?

madaxe_again 10y ago
Have you actually tried it? I don't mean gear VR or cardboard, I mean a vive. If you have and you still think it's hyped, enjoy shovelling horse shit while I drive my model T. Tastes differ.
cmelbye 10y ago
It replaces the default reality.
carlosdp 10y ago
What can I say, I'm a compulsive early adopter =P I also have an Apple Watch and a Myo armband, but haven't found a ton of compelling uses for them yet. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to develop for it early if I was wrong and I had the cash to buy it. The difference from 15 years ago is that the hardware is actually here and practical. We have the tracking and displays and they are actually really good. It really creates presence, there is 0 comparison between Oculus/Vive and VR experiences of yesterday, such as the Aladdin ride in Downtown Disney. Hell, HTC is literally pivoting the entire company to the Vive. HTC/Valve + Facebook + Sony + Samsung is a ton of top-notch engineering effort being put into just the first generation of devices/software. See my comment above, but basically I imagine it'll create new media/experiences rather than replace. I don't think "floating monitors in space" will ever be compelling (maybe in AR), and I don't think "movies" as we think of them now will be practical (though I do think there is room for a more "theatre-like" approach).
- tfinniga 10y ago
  If the displays get a lot higher res, I could see myself using stacks of floating displays for apps instead of my current multimonitor display. Imagine being completely surrounded by digital paper that defies the laws of physics.

RodericDay 10y ago

I tried the Vive, with the TiltBrush game/app, and one shooting one. No haptics. It was really quite incredible, and I was skeptical coming in. However, it was incredible in a "super high tech sparklers" kind of way, that I'd like everyone to check out once for fun. I don't really see any future in them.

chipperyman573 10y ago
The vive has haptics in both controllers.

criddell 10y ago

It's neat, but do you find yourself looking forward to playing it still? The novelty is fantastic, but until the software shows up (I'm not a gamer), it feels like a demo.

manyxcxi 10y ago

I worked on a demo experience for the Vive unveiling and for the first time in my career I felt like VR was more than a gimmick. We were working with beta (maybe more like RC) hardware, had no controllers, and only one tracking cube. I had two a-ha moments with it that sold me... There was a small demo room called something like Shopkeeper (think an old goblin's hut filled with wares) and I actually reached out to grab a faerie/wisp that was buzzing nearby. The second was a Valve demo app where a Portal like robot came stomping into the room and I actually jumped the F out of the way, only to have the floor start falling out from under me and scrambling back to safety. For a few fleeting moments at a time there was no virtual, it was reality and it was freaking amazing. And all this without the added immersion the controllers provide. The Vive is by far the best VR setup I've tried. It's made the rifts we had around seem like toys.

mungoman2 10y ago
A vive headset without controllers is by itself objectively worse than a rift on all accounts. Maybe your experience shows how important software is.
- Alphasite_ 10y ago
  There are definite points of contention on this. The Vive headset doesn't face nearly as significant a glare issue as the rift, it is far better for glasses wearers than the rift and for some people the improved brightness is a significant advantage. Integrated audio is definitely nice, but not a deal breaker and the improved ease in reaching a comfortable setup is definitely and advantage, but it makes trade offs in other areas. You could split hairs about where the trade offs were made (fov vs SDE) but the displays and optics are so similar that those dont matter.
david-given 10y ago
Those demos are both part of The Lab, a set of VR demos distributed by Steam. To everyone else with a Vive: get it. It's free, and it's frickin' awesome, even though the Steam description spoils one of the games. http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/ I tried a Vive the other day. It's the closest experience to magic I've ever had which didn't involve sacrificing chickens.

hatsunearu 10y ago

That balloon was the first experience I had, and made me realize the first bug on the vive: the chaperone (thing that hints your room boundaries) doesn't tell you where your ceiling is. I chased the balloon and jumped up and smacked it in the ceiling. Didn't break it though (as far as I can notice)

NKCSS 10y ago
It should be trivial to add imho; they are tracking in 3d; so chaperone could also watch in 3d; it's just that they don't...
- rullelito 10y ago
  Some people would always see the ceiling grid, which might lower immersion.
  - NKCSS 10y ago
    It should track the controllers; not your head; only if you're always with your hands at shoulder/higher level...
  - eddieroger 10y ago
    That's a good point, and something my Vive setup has been struggling with. My play area is just a little bit too small, so I see the boundaries a lot. It's not as bad as not having them and periodically punching a wall or walking in to the couch, but it's kind of a bummer to see it and go, "oh, right, I'm in my living room," especially in some of the much more immersive experiences.
  - hatsunearu 10y ago
    You should be able to turn it off then, much like how you can change the wall pattern on the chaperone and turn it off completely if you desired right now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

otabdeveloper1 10y ago

> I'm 100% convinced VR is the new medium going forward. Maybe we should stop chasing that elusive high of extensive growth and just come to terms with the fact that computing is now a mature industry. There will be no more double-digit growth rates.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]