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Having both an Oculus Rift (pre-touch controls) and a Vive to play around with I have a couple thoughts on this. The first impression/experience is powerful an

Having both an Oculus Rift (pre-touch controls) and a Vive to play around with I have a couple thoughts on this. The first impression/experience is powerful and most people are impressed by it. The Rift prior to touch controls was unusable in comparison to the room scale, touch control Vive (to the point that I sold it). Maybe it's better now with the new touch controls, but I think they still lack room scale and the ability to walk around is a big deal. The Vive headset also fully blocks external light which is nicer (but these are relatively minor things that can be fixed). VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience - more so than playing a one player game on the couch, you're completely isolated. While this makes for strong immersion - I think it increases the barrier to entry for most people. I suspect FB is right about the importance of social interaction getting people to actually use VR for longer than just showing it off to people. I suspect finding the "Doom for VR" - the application that really takes advantage of the medium hasn't happened yet, maybe when it does it'll be obvious in hindsight. As for the comparisons to AR - I think Michael Abrash's points still stand: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-ar-anytime-soon/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...

Zikes 10y ago
> VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience Some solutions to this have been asymmetric games/experiences where there are people in VR and on normal PC interfaces interacting with each other. The most popular example by far is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[1], whereby the VR player is a bomb defuser and the other player is the one with the bomb defusing instruction manual. Another example is Mass Exodus[2], where a VR player must try to "catch" a PC player trying to blend in to a crowd of lookalike robots. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/ [2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/566530/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/566530/
bsenftner 10y ago
I spent years developing and then offering a system that remotely enabled creating realistic 3D avatars of people from a single photo. It works, I scaled it to viral capacity levels, the quality is high (https://twitter.com/3davatarstore https://twitter.com/3davatarstore), and my prices were nearly free. Yet, game, VR and VFX studios only wanted it free. After being jerked around for years by circuses of clowns, I shut it down. I'm happier doing FR now for government agencies. VR will continue to be a lonely place until the corporate exploitation is regulated to the degree that an individual will have legal and portable ownership over their appearance in VR technologies, with all the legal ramifications that exposes.
- maffydub 10y ago
  Interesting! Are you able to share anything about how your algorithm works? I've been playing around with feature detection (using HoG descriptors) plus constrained local models to identify locations in an image and then manipulating the mesh to better match these locations and extracting a corresponding texture.
- taneq 10y ago
  I dunno if it's fair to blame corporate exploitation for your experience - I feel like the current perception that everything must be "free - maybe with ads, and maybe pay later" is more to blame. :/ Portable personal avatars is going to be a huge undertaking. I'm really looking forward to the results, though!
cheeko1234 10y ago
You are correct that the touch controllers are essential for immersion. After getting the controllers, I've stayed in VR longer than I've ever had in the past, and the comfort level has increased significantly. Google earth VR is so much more addictive now. Also demo'ing it to people requires no feedback since the learning curve is so low. The room scale works really well but is limited because of only two cameras. But adding a third camera would make it full room scale (which Oculus has announced)[1]. Combine that with new wireless hdmi/usb adapters for VR [2], full room scale VR is almost here. [1] http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-support-room-scale-360-tracking-extra-cameras-sensor/ http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-support-room-scale-360-... [2] http://uploadvr.com/tpcast-wireless-vive-kit-works/ http://uploadvr.com/tpcast-wireless-vive-kit-works/
- arielweisberg 10y ago
  I run a 3 camera setup and it works fine for my 10 foot by 10 foot play space. I have a fourth, but I have been too lazy to set it up. I do run two Inateck PCI-E USB cards so I don't run into capacity issues. There are many reports of issues running > 2 sensors and difficulty getting the Inateck cards working correctly due to driver version issues, USB power management etc.
arielweisberg 10y ago
If it's lonely I think you are just missing out on the right software. Oculus has a built in mic that works great and is enabled by default. The Unspoken, Rec room, Dead and Buried, Arizona Sunshine are all very fun experiences that have a strong sense of presence for the other players. The inverse kinematics combined with various bits hand detection functionality are a hoot.

Zikes 10y ago

> VR in its current early adopter state is a lonely experience Some solutions to this have been asymmetric games/experiences where there are people in VR and on normal PC interfaces interacting with each other. The most popular example by far is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes[1], whereby the VR player is a bomb defuser and the other player is the one with the bomb defusing instruction manual. Another example is Mass Exodus[2], where a VR player must try to "catch" a PC player trying to blend in to a crowd of lookalike robots. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/ [2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/566530/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/566530/

bsenftner 10y ago

I spent years developing and then offering a system that remotely enabled creating realistic 3D avatars of people from a single photo. It works, I scaled it to viral capacity levels, the quality is high (https://twitter.com/3davatarstore https://twitter.com/3davatarstore), and my prices were nearly free. Yet, game, VR and VFX studios only wanted it free. After being jerked around for years by circuses of clowns, I shut it down. I'm happier doing FR now for government agencies. VR will continue to be a lonely place until the corporate exploitation is regulated to the degree that an individual will have legal and portable ownership over their appearance in VR technologies, with all the legal ramifications that exposes.

maffydub 10y ago
Interesting! Are you able to share anything about how your algorithm works? I've been playing around with feature detection (using HoG descriptors) plus constrained local models to identify locations in an image and then manipulating the mesh to better match these locations and extracting a corresponding texture.
taneq 10y ago
I dunno if it's fair to blame corporate exploitation for your experience - I feel like the current perception that everything must be "free - maybe with ads, and maybe pay later" is more to blame. :/ Portable personal avatars is going to be a huge undertaking. I'm really looking forward to the results, though!

cheeko1234 10y ago

You are correct that the touch controllers are essential for immersion. After getting the controllers, I've stayed in VR longer than I've ever had in the past, and the comfort level has increased significantly. Google earth VR is so much more addictive now. Also demo'ing it to people requires no feedback since the learning curve is so low. The room scale works really well but is limited because of only two cameras. But adding a third camera would make it full room scale (which Oculus has announced)[1]. Combine that with new wireless hdmi/usb adapters for VR [2], full room scale VR is almost here. [1] http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-support-room-scale-360-tracking-extra-cameras-sensor/ http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-support-room-scale-360-... [2] http://uploadvr.com/tpcast-wireless-vive-kit-works/ http://uploadvr.com/tpcast-wireless-vive-kit-works/

arielweisberg 10y ago
I run a 3 camera setup and it works fine for my 10 foot by 10 foot play space. I have a fourth, but I have been too lazy to set it up. I do run two Inateck PCI-E USB cards so I don't run into capacity issues. There are many reports of issues running > 2 sensors and difficulty getting the Inateck cards working correctly due to driver version issues, USB power management etc.

arielweisberg 10y ago

If it's lonely I think you are just missing out on the right software. Oculus has a built in mic that works great and is enabled by default. The Unspoken, Rec room, Dead and Buried, Arizona Sunshine are all very fun experiences that have a strong sense of presence for the other players. The inverse kinematics combined with various bits hand detection functionality are a hoot.