4 ms·

Random brain dump of questions since I haven't had a chance to actually try a VR headset yet: - Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the m

by skizm 10y ago

Random brain dump of questions since I haven't had a chance to actually try a VR headset yet: - Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? - Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? -Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? - Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.

errantspark 10y ago
1). Yes, Space Pirate Trainer is currently my #1 VR title by a wide margin. Out of Ammo is also pretty fun, but something like an order of magnitude less fun than SPT. 2). Few in the consumer space, most of them are tech demos with little real utility. Tilt Brush and Google Earth are among the most compelling non-game offerings. 3). I've made some half hearted attempts at REPL/console type stuff in VR. It's barely useable, the angular resolution is still prohibitively small. I use 4 physical monitors normally, and while I like the idea of replacing them with a VR headset that future is still quite far away. 4). I've also made some half hearted attempts at this, and others have tried as well, but this was in the era of the DK1 and I didn't achieve anything meaningful. I'm definitely going to give it another go with the Vive at some point. The LEAP motion however integrates very well with VR (either headset) and I'd recommend experimenting with it. I've made some pretty compelling minority-report style tech demos that feel pretty natural to use. Granted I'm aware of the LEAP's tracking limitations and stay within the space of gestures/hand poses it recognizes without problems. When I demo the tech to other people they often have MUCH more trouble than I do. Mostly because of occlusion problems. The LEAP is basically just 2 cameras without much stereo separation so one hand occluding the other, or the back of the hand occluding the fingers etc is something you've got to be cognizant of when using it.
theschwa 10y ago
I'm a bit of a VR enthusiast, and I'm not a gamer, so I think I can answer some of these. >- Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? Very well. The thing I hate most, as a non-gamer, is having to learn all of the confusing controls. I really like that VR games take away most of the complication and allow you to do what feels natural. Probably for the same reasons a lot of people like the Wii. I've been having a lot of fun in games like Vanishing Realms:a first person dungeon crawling RPG http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ , The Unspoken: where you have magic battles in a New York like setting http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ , and a bunch of the puzzle type games. >- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Not enough in my opinion, but I've spent the last week using Oculus Medium to make 3D models, and using Quill to make VR paintings. This is actually the area I'm most interested in, and I know that some companies are working behind closed doors at the moment to make more creative tools as well as business and social type tools. -Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? I do this frequently for consuming movies, but the resolution isn't at a point where I'd recommend it for long periods of time if you're doing text editing. I still occasionally browse and listen to music with the screen set to a gigantic size, but it hasn't replaced my monitors. - Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Several companies and individuals are. This guy has been involved in the VR scene for many years and has some interesting experiments using several kinects to do mixed reality work http://doc-ok.org/?p=965 http://doc-ok.org/?p=965
- Animats 10y ago
  Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a Kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Microsoft's HoloLens has a Kinect in it. They use it for gesture recognition and mapping the room. The amount of stuff Microsoft crammed into that headgear is insane. Four cameras, a Kinect, a GPU, a specialized GPU for the AR, an IMU, a Windows 10 PC, a projection display, speakers, and a battery. It works pretty well, too, although the projection area is too small.
marricks 10y ago
Oculus Medium is pretty sweet, it's a 3D sculpting tool for free with a Rift. Some professionals have tried it out and like it. Obviously no Zbrush, but it's their first release of it. Honestly it's really fun. I don't sculpt or anything, but drawing a tree about the size of my arm and then zooming in, "expanding it" to be the size of a normal tree and standing in it's shade was one of the trippy-ist experiences I've had. So. Cool.
discordianfish 10y ago
Got a Vive, happy to answer: > Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? Yes, you need a cockpit or something if you want to move while sitting down, otherwise most? (including me) people get sick. This has the downside of limiting the visibility though, which is a problem given the relatively low resolution. In a cockpit with limited view things further away look pretty bad. But the Vive got 'room scale' which is where VR really shines. Basically any game you can play within your 'play area' works very good, unfortunately there are not that many. Point-and-Click teleporting can be used for moving beyond your 'play area'. It works well but breaks immersion a bit and gets awkward if you want to avoid enemies etc. I can highly recommend the Minecraft mod 'vivecraft' in that regard. My most played game with Vive so far, even though I never played Minecraft until then. In general things work best that happen right in front and the controllers are very precise, so any interaction with them improves the immersion a lot. I'm still waiting for a RTS game where the world is scaled to the size of your play area. Skyworld looks interesting and heard good things about Out of Ammo (haven't tried either). > Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Google Earth VR was truly amazing. It's the first thing I would show anyone, it's so most closer to actually being there than anything else. Tilt Brush is a great application as well and Kodon looks cool (haven't tried it). Both are a complete new way to create 3D objects and I believe we'll see more of these. Unreal Engine has now support for editing in VR which looks super cool, but since I don't do game development I can't say if it's a real improvement or more a gimmick. > Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? Resolution is too bad for 'virtual screens', but I think it could be used to visualize complex data much better than any multi screen setup.
caconym_ 10y ago
(responding because I have a Vive) > Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? It works pretty well. There are some pretty compelling standing/room scale games out there. Either because of market immaturity or game design limitations, "larger" games (i.e. Mass Effect is large compared to Minesweeper) seem to be a bit in short supply. Oculus may have more as of the Touch launch, but I'm staying away from their ecosystem for the time being as I think what they're doing with exclusivity is hostile to consumers. The illusion is convincing enough that a friend of mine who tried my Vive fell over because she tried to lean on a virtual table. Neither I nor anyone I've had try my Vive has suffered from any nausea. > Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Not totally sure. A lot of the obvious things have, I think, at least been tried (e.g. CAD walk-through for architects). There is also a lot of content that's hard to define as "game" or not, e.g. Tilt Brush (a "painting" program). > Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? So far, so far as I know, all the programs that attempt to render your regular desktop environment (or parts of it) to virtual displays suffer from low quality and massive latency that makes them borderline unusable. So I don't think it would be a good experience. > Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Probably, and there are some other products out there that try to do similar things. But the held motion controllers are surprisingly natural, especially since often it makes sense to have a physical stand-in for a held object in-game.

by skizm 10y ago

errantspark 10y ago

1). Yes, Space Pirate Trainer is currently my #1 VR title by a wide margin. Out of Ammo is also pretty fun, but something like an order of magnitude less fun than SPT. 2). Few in the consumer space, most of them are tech demos with little real utility. Tilt Brush and Google Earth are among the most compelling non-game offerings. 3). I've made some half hearted attempts at REPL/console type stuff in VR. It's barely useable, the angular resolution is still prohibitively small. I use 4 physical monitors normally, and while I like the idea of replacing them with a VR headset that future is still quite far away. 4). I've also made some half hearted attempts at this, and others have tried as well, but this was in the era of the DK1 and I didn't achieve anything meaningful. I'm definitely going to give it another go with the Vive at some point. The LEAP motion however integrates very well with VR (either headset) and I'd recommend experimenting with it. I've made some pretty compelling minority-report style tech demos that feel pretty natural to use. Granted I'm aware of the LEAP's tracking limitations and stay within the space of gestures/hand poses it recognizes without problems. When I demo the tech to other people they often have MUCH more trouble than I do. Mostly because of occlusion problems. The LEAP is basically just 2 cameras without much stereo separation so one hand occluding the other, or the back of the hand occluding the fingers etc is something you've got to be cognizant of when using it.

theschwa 10y ago

I'm a bit of a VR enthusiast, and I'm not a gamer, so I think I can answer some of these. >- Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? Very well. The thing I hate most, as a non-gamer, is having to learn all of the confusing controls. I really like that VR games take away most of the complication and allow you to do what feels natural. Probably for the same reasons a lot of people like the Wii. I've been having a lot of fun in games like Vanishing Realms:a first person dungeon crawling RPG http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ , The Unspoken: where you have magic battles in a New York like setting http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ , and a bunch of the puzzle type games. >- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Not enough in my opinion, but I've spent the last week using Oculus Medium to make 3D models, and using Quill to make VR paintings. This is actually the area I'm most interested in, and I know that some companies are working behind closed doors at the moment to make more creative tools as well as business and social type tools. -Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? I do this frequently for consuming movies, but the resolution isn't at a point where I'd recommend it for long periods of time if you're doing text editing. I still occasionally browse and listen to music with the screen set to a gigantic size, but it hasn't replaced my monitors. - Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Several companies and individuals are. This guy has been involved in the VR scene for many years and has some interesting experiments using several kinects to do mixed reality work http://doc-ok.org/?p=965 http://doc-ok.org/?p=965

Animats 10y ago
Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a Kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Microsoft's HoloLens has a Kinect in it. They use it for gesture recognition and mapping the room. The amount of stuff Microsoft crammed into that headgear is insane. Four cameras, a Kinect, a GPU, a specialized GPU for the AR, an IMU, a Windows 10 PC, a projection display, speakers, and a battery. It works pretty well, too, although the projection area is too small.

marricks 10y ago

Oculus Medium is pretty sweet, it's a 3D sculpting tool for free with a Rift. Some professionals have tried it out and like it. Obviously no Zbrush, but it's their first release of it. Honestly it's really fun. I don't sculpt or anything, but drawing a tree about the size of my arm and then zooming in, "expanding it" to be the size of a normal tree and standing in it's shade was one of the trippy-ist experiences I've had. So. Cool.

discordianfish 10y ago

Got a Vive, happy to answer: > Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? Yes, you need a cockpit or something if you want to move while sitting down, otherwise most? (including me) people get sick. This has the downside of limiting the visibility though, which is a problem given the relatively low resolution. In a cockpit with limited view things further away look pretty bad. But the Vive got 'room scale' which is where VR really shines. Basically any game you can play within your 'play area' works very good, unfortunately there are not that many. Point-and-Click teleporting can be used for moving beyond your 'play area'. It works well but breaks immersion a bit and gets awkward if you want to avoid enemies etc. I can highly recommend the Minecraft mod 'vivecraft' in that regard. My most played game with Vive so far, even though I never played Minecraft until then. In general things work best that happen right in front and the controllers are very precise, so any interaction with them improves the immersion a lot. I'm still waiting for a RTS game where the world is scaled to the size of your play area. Skyworld looks interesting and heard good things about Out of Ammo (haven't tried either). > Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Google Earth VR was truly amazing. It's the first thing I would show anyone, it's so most closer to actually being there than anything else. Tilt Brush is a great application as well and Kodon looks cool (haven't tried it). Both are a complete new way to create 3D objects and I believe we'll see more of these. Unreal Engine has now support for editing in VR which looks super cool, but since I don't do game development I can't say if it's a real improvement or more a gimmick. > Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? Resolution is too bad for 'virtual screens', but I think it could be used to visualize complex data much better than any multi screen setup.

caconym_ 10y ago

(responding because I have a Vive) > Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well? It works pretty well. There are some pretty compelling standing/room scale games out there. Either because of market immaturity or game design limitations, "larger" games (i.e. Mass Effect is large compared to Minesweeper) seem to be a bit in short supply. Oculus may have more as of the Touch launch, but I'm staying away from their ecosystem for the time being as I think what they're doing with exclusivity is hostile to consumers. The illusion is convincing enough that a friend of mine who tried my Vive fell over because she tried to lean on a virtual table. Neither I nor anyone I've had try my Vive has suffered from any nausea. > Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment? Not totally sure. A lot of the obvious things have, I think, at least been tried (e.g. CAD walk-through for architects). There is also a lot of content that's hard to define as "game" or not, e.g. Tilt Brush (a "painting" program). > Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go? So far, so far as I know, all the programs that attempt to render your regular desktop environment (or parts of it) to virtual displays suffer from low quality and massive latency that makes them borderline unusable. So I don't think it would be a good experience. > Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination. Probably, and there are some other products out there that try to do similar things. But the held motion controllers are surprisingly natural, especially since often it makes sense to have a physical stand-in for a held object in-game.