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I'm looking forward to the next generation of VR headsets immensly. A lot of people have been quick to jump on the "VR is already dead" train, but having picked

I'm looking forward to the next generation of VR headsets immensly. A lot of people have been quick to jump on the "VR is already dead" train, but having picked one up during Christmas this year, it's obvious how much potential is there. There are a few things that need to be accomplished before widespread adoption: - Removal of wires. It restricts movement too much and removes immersion. The new HTC headset is a step toward this. - Higher resolution screens. VR AMOLEDs like this are a step in the right direction. - Prices for GPUs need to go down, and/or a few more years are needed for average computers to be able to render high frame-rates without breaking the bank. - Headsets need to be lighter and smaller. - Removal of sensor placement the room. This will be harder to do, but cameras/sensors built on the headsets themselves could potentially accomplish this. The way I see it, we're in the iPhone 1 stage of VR right now. Imagine the iPhone X version: lighter, smaller, higher resolution, more colors, higher frame-rate, less hassle. These are all inevitabilities, and at that point it will become much easier to adopt the technology. We're also missing a true "killer app" that will get people to purchase a headset JUST for that. I think it will take some sort of truly massive MMO the likes of WoW to accomplish that. The future is definitely exciting in this field. I hope hardware vendors don't give up and can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

non_sequitur 9y ago
I dont think we're even in iPhone 1 stage - more like Motorola Razr (the old one, back in 2004/05). The real cool stuff is barely even being thought of now, let alone built and sold. Also, in a perfect world this will all just be a transition step before we get full on holodecks.
- robeastham 9y ago
  The other thing that needs to happen is that the skill, time and money required to create quality VR & AR content needs to be significantly reduced. This will come with time too. We're doing our own small part to try and make that happen with our automated 3D scanning platform (http://realityzero.one http://realityzero.one)
  - vanattab 9y ago
    I don't think the skill,time,money required for VR is the man problem. It's not all that much harder to make a VR title vs non-VR title the coat is roughly the same. The problem is there is not a large enough VR market to justify the normal AAA size budgets.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    From my experiences, I think there are several completely different axies of quality. If it’s a cartoonish game, the imaging doesn’t need to be photo-realistic. If it’s ‘toon style or lit and textured by photography of real environments, the polygon count doesn’t need to be high. What it does need, beyond the hardware, is immersive physics, and a gameplay-justified reason for why you can’t run through the furniture/wall/cable that you can no longer see. The game “I Expect You to Die” does that perfectly because you’re sitting down the whole time.
  - laythea 9y ago
    That's a very good point. No content = no point.
shaded-enmity 9y ago
Apart from the issues you list, the biggest problem for me is game quality / support. The VR native titles, aside from few exceptions, feel and play like a tablet games, the non-native titles are usually riddled with rendering artifacts, despicable camera work or really unstable framerates (showstopper for me in VR).
roymurdock 9y ago
> we're in the iPhone 1 stage of VR You could immediately do a number of useful (read:productivity enhancing) things with the iPhone 1 - play your music, make calls, browse the web, take pictures, send emails. It deprecated a lot of what needed to be done on traditional phones, desktops, and laptop computers. It would last a day without charging, you wouldn't have to hook it up to a GPU or strap it to your body to use it, and it wouldn't give you motion sickness. Cellular technologies developed quickly to support the bandwidth needed for even better user experiences. Shipments jumped from 1M in 2007 to 20M in 2009. There are very few polished games or apps available for VR 2 years after the "new" generation of VR headsets was released in 2016 by Oculus and HTC, and total headset unit shipments for the entire market (excluding phone-mounting headsets such as Gear) are probably in the low single digit millions for 2017. It hasn't yet deprecated any traditional dedicated communications technology or functions. I wish I could get excited about the future in this field, but I really just don't see what the killer app will be for VR. Facebook thinks it will be virtual meetings for the enterprise and hanging out virtually with friends/family for the consumer market...I am very skeptical but want to be proven wrong as VR is one of the last platforms pushing hardware and software innovation forward at the moment.
- randyrand 9y ago
  Id say VR is still in the windows mobile and palm pilot days.
  - bni 9y ago
    Or in the MS-DOS 2.5D days of gaming (Think DOOM). Despite the technical limitations, it is this awesome feeling of experiencing something revolutionary and new. Previous VR endeavours, like 90s, early 2000s would then be the Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in this analogy :-)
    - Jaruzel 9y ago
      > Or in the MS-DOS 2.5D days of gaming (Think DOOM). We're most definitely there. Here's the Original DOOM, modded for VR: http://rotatingpenguin.com/gz3doom/ http://rotatingpenguin.com/gz3doom/
CyberDildonics 9y ago
> average computers to be able to render high frame-rates without breaking the bank High res stereo at 120Hz is never going to have to same graphics as the latest high budget big game release. Current GPUs are already very powerful, but if people have the expectations of getting the same graphics when they use VR they are going to be very frustrated.
- kibwen 9y ago
  I'm all for it if it means that AAA games will finally step off the photorealism treadmill and admit that pushing polygon counts is not a substitute for art direction. I'll take a Fortnite look over a PUBG look any day.
  - princeb 9y ago
    you can say this, but if you look at the most popular mods on skyrim they tend to make the game look more photorealistic, not less. the general trend for video game consumers is towards realism.
- zamalek 9y ago
  There are rumors about foveated rendering being demoed around the same time.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Never is a long time. Screens can only get so good before they're pointlessly higher resolution, and at that point GPUs will keep increasing in performance. At some point your GPU runs out of things to do.
  - zaroth 9y ago
    Sounds suspiciously like not ever needing more than 64KB of RAM. The reality is that greater horsepower allows for greater abstraction, and easier to program APIs. Increasing developer productivity 2x reduces performance 10-100x, or something like that. So there’s never “enough” performance for the same reason there’s never “enough” powerful/usable APIs.
psyc 9y ago
I agree that VR is here to stay, and most of the things people complain about will be solved within a couple of years. I get the impression that most people here are chronically underwhelmed by things. My mind is still blown by the PSVR, the least advanced of the big 3. But I'm older, and I've been waiting for this since 1990. To me the killer app is VR. Myself and everyone I know (including non-techies) got VR to experience VR. I realize a true killer app would have greater reach. I don't think those are knowable except in hindsight. I thought Google Earth was killer, but I guess not everyone agrees. I would love to see game companies invest in decent ports of existing AAA games, including WoW. Again I don't think it needs any big whiz-bang extra, besides being in VR.
- atomi 9y ago
  Just making a branded VR game (ie. Zelda, Super Mario et al) would move VR hardware like hot cakes.
  - laythea 9y ago
    Its chicken and egg though. No company will make VR games unless the market is large enough. Its up to the little guys who can take risk, to prove the market before the big guys come in and take over.
    - hexane360 9y ago
      And long term, this technology will definitely shake up who the little guys and big guys are, as big companies fail to adapt and small companies make hits.
- joering2 9y ago
  I dont think vr is iphone1. Its more like first non-smart phones lets say nokia 6110. Its quite possible that with progress made in brains wavelengths readings, the true vr in form of iphone1 will be a head cap you put on and your view/smell/touch perceptions are overwritten by cap’s sensor. That would trully be regular vr/phone versus true vr/smartphone/iphone1
ksec 9y ago
I have similar opinion. And I dont think it is even iPhone 1 stage yet. It is more like early Smartphone. iPhone manage to get to a very decent and wide usage Smartphone within a 5 years time. I dont see this happening yet with VR, as it is extremely limited by hardware and software. As we finally realize, how not very real time our OS and software / hardware. After all these years of abstraction and slight delay added to everywhere in stack. We finally have a motive to unwind / improve those. May be some day we could have Sword Art Online Style Game to move VR forward. Link Start.
Impossible 9y ago
- Removal of sensor placement the room. This will be harder to do, but cameras/sensors built on the headsets themselves could potentially accomplish this. Inside out tracking is a reality in consumer devices now. All Windows MR devices that shipped late last year have 6DOF inside out tracking via cameras on the front of the headset with no external sensors. Moving forward there will be more devices from other vendors that use inside out tracking. Qualcomm has shown prototypes, Google + HTC were working on a tango device that got cancelled, HTC is working on an inside out standalone for the Chinese market, Oculus has shown standalone inside out tracked prototypes, etc.
- berberous 9y ago
  How reliable are they? The Vive's tracking is pretty rock solid. I'd be very disappointed with anything less (e.g., even 97% solid is not good enough) given that any glitches are REALLY jarring and nauseating in VR.
  - aphextron 9y ago
    >How reliable are they? They are very, very good. I've owned every major HMD since the DK2 came out in 2014, and I would say the Samsung Odyssey is the best one to date. The inside-out tracking is fantastic and just as good as Lighthouse (in practical usage, not theoretically). When you consider that there is no setup involved, it makes it a no brainer that this is the way forward.
    - zamalek 9y ago
      The problem I find with inside-out tracking is the range of motion. One of the most powerful concepts in VR is being able to do things with your hands when you are not looking at them. Maybe they could do inside-out tracking on the controllers?
      - aphextron 9y ago
        >The problem I find with inside-out tracking is the range of motion. One of the most powerful concepts in VR is being able to do things with your hands when you are not looking at them. Agreed, there is a bit of an occlusion issue when your arms are behind/above the HMD. I feel like they could probably solve this though, with inductive tracking like Sixsense [0] integrated into the controllers and used in conjunction with IMU/camera data. https://www.sixense.com/platform/hardware/ https://www.sixense.com/platform/hardware/ [0]
nsxwolf 9y ago
Unfortunately there seems to be no end in sight to this crypto currency nonsense, and it has made GPUs double in price. VR was already too expensive. Now it’s completely out of the question for most people. Adding an absurdly high res and high refresh HMD to the mix right now doesn’t seem like a good idea.
krapp 9y ago
One problem rarely mentioned regarding VR is input. Jim Sterling mentioned this in a recent Jimquisition[0] video, and I think it's a valid criticism - the complexity required of modern games can't often be replicated with VR as well as it can with a controller and/or keyboard, certainly not improved upon. Motion controls are often not precise enough - players can do more with buttons sitting down than they can waving their limbs around. [0]https://youtu.be/7_h6GYI8ddA?t=6m56s https://youtu.be/7_h6GYI8ddA?t=6m56s
- ddingus 9y ago
  A similar thing was said about keyboard and mouse compared to dual analog. And those things were true. Games and people adapted. Personally, I feel something work that can pick up nerve impulses as well as deliver modest feedback, tactile and or electrical will close much of this gap. New input paradigms will advance too, just as they currently are for touch. Touch today is getting good. The finger in the way problem is being chipped away.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Even if touch and motion controls improve, what evidence is there that they present a better paradigm for interaction than a keyboard or controller?
    - ddingus 9y ago
      None. The question really is when does input get transparent enough to not be a bother. Whether it beats other forms and technologies is a different question. One that doesn't necessarily require an answer.
mdrejhon 9y ago
Holy server hug, batman! (Chief Blur Buster here, I noticed the traffic spike). BTW, GPU is a problem, but we're expecting Frame Rate Amplification Technologies to solve the problem. Basically improved versions of Oculus Spacewarp that can do large framerate multiplication factors with zero parallax artifacts (unlike today). I covered this topic near the bottom of a different article about the journey to 1000 Hz displays at https://www.blurbusters.com/1000hz-journey https://www.blurbusters.com/1000hz-journey The gist is that within five to ten years, we'll have many tricks to increase framerates with the same number of transistors, without needing to reduce detail levels or make textures/edges blurry, without input lag, and without interpolation artifacts.
- manmal 9y ago
  I‘m intrigued how a lag-less frame interpolation would work - the algorithm can’t look into the future, or can it?
  - glitch003 9y ago
    I think lag is defined as the time between when you make a movement and the movement is displayed, right? So if that delay is 200ms, we know it makes people sick, for example. A delay of 0ms would be "zero lag" IMO.
  - TipVFL 9y ago
    Current headsets, at least the Rift, already do "look into the future" to lower the motion-to-photon latency (the amount of time between you moving your head and the screen updating based on that). When you're dealing with a head moving, and very brief slices of time, inertia plays a large role and allows for fairly accurate prediction. After rendering the frame they check head position again, update their prediction for head position at time of display, and move/warp the frame slightly to match. This does require rendering a slightly larger view. I remember when Oculus cracked the 20 ms mark and got down into imperceptible lag, it was very exciting. They bragged at the time that their predictive models would let them get down to 0 ms eventually, but I'm not sure if they've hit that yet.
  - 9y ago
empath75 9y ago
I'm not convinced that removing sensor placement or wires is a huge problem. It's not any more involved or awkward than a big home theater setup is. As someone who has had an oculus since the consumer version was released, my main problems are: 1) Eye strain. Even though you have a 3d effect you're still looking at something a few inches from your eye and that disconnect causes eye pain and headaches after playing for more than an hour or so. 2) Locomotion. I've yet to find any way of moving around in VR space that doesn't either make you nauseous or pull you right out of the realism of the experience.
- Impossible 9y ago
  Eye strain will be mitigated with eye tracking and varifocal displays (https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-research-demonstrate-groundbreaking-focal-surface-display/ https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-research-demonstrate-groundb...), as well as higher resolution. It might still be a problem because you're still staring a screen on your face. Locomotion is less of a problem than people who think its a problem is, and I think that stems from a lot of people in VR being hardcore gamers, and exploration of large spaces being a core mechanic and selling point for 3D video games for the last 25 years. I don't think omni-directional treadmills or vestibular stimulation or anything inconvenient like that will catch on for locomotion, and I think we'll either use various forms of teleport, or sliding (traditional 3D) locomotion for the foreseeable future, and people will mostly be ok with it. It's possible that with wireless and/or standalone headsets that redirected walking, will be a popular option. You could imagine a headset where Chaperone\Guardian builds on SLAM used for inside out tracking, and can give apps information about the layout of your house, allowing for large procedurally created virtual spaces. This still doesn't solve the problem for people that don't have medium sized private spaces to play in, and also makes it harder to do multiplayer games where players are playing in very different spaces.
tootie 9y ago
VR is not dead because the resolution isn't high enough. It's dead because it's been around for 30 years and no one has found a useful application for it.
- thinline 9y ago
  Are you a troll or just brain-dead?
reaperducer 9y ago
>Imagine the iPhone X version There's going to be a black bar across the top middle of my field of vision?
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  Actually there might be. Just like the iPhone, we need somewhere to put the face and eye trackers.
sigi45 9y ago
When i think about VR, i think first about alot of other stuff before i think of gaming. Alone for remodeling my flat (kitchen, bathroom) or building a house. I would also like to train on a virtual lathe before using a real one. I might buy the new htc vive and i will see it as an early adopter beta hype thing because there is still work to do, but in general it feels already really good. That Valve Portal Demo, wow that frightned me a little bit :)
nomy99 9y ago
Google plans to stream vr content including games. So the GPU cost is not such a hurdle for the average consumer
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  It's physically impossible to stream VR games from a remote server without unacceptable lag.
  - e12e 9y ago
    I think it depends on the definition of "stream". You could maybe trade pre-rendering for file size; say prerender a million versions of a 360 degree image along with some kind of 3d shadow map - something that took a lot of the work from the unit. We already have 3d video - I'd be surprised if the concept couldn't be expanded, leaving the unit to merge streams of background environment and 3d animated sprites.

non_sequitur 9y ago

I dont think we're even in iPhone 1 stage - more like Motorola Razr (the old one, back in 2004/05). The real cool stuff is barely even being thought of now, let alone built and sold. Also, in a perfect world this will all just be a transition step before we get full on holodecks.

robeastham 9y ago
The other thing that needs to happen is that the skill, time and money required to create quality VR & AR content needs to be significantly reduced. This will come with time too. We're doing our own small part to try and make that happen with our automated 3D scanning platform (http://realityzero.one http://realityzero.one)
- vanattab 9y ago
  I don't think the skill,time,money required for VR is the man problem. It's not all that much harder to make a VR title vs non-VR title the coat is roughly the same. The problem is there is not a large enough VR market to justify the normal AAA size budgets.
- ben_w 9y ago
  From my experiences, I think there are several completely different axies of quality. If it’s a cartoonish game, the imaging doesn’t need to be photo-realistic. If it’s ‘toon style or lit and textured by photography of real environments, the polygon count doesn’t need to be high. What it does need, beyond the hardware, is immersive physics, and a gameplay-justified reason for why you can’t run through the furniture/wall/cable that you can no longer see. The game “I Expect You to Die” does that perfectly because you’re sitting down the whole time.
- laythea 9y ago
  That's a very good point. No content = no point.

shaded-enmity 9y ago

Apart from the issues you list, the biggest problem for me is game quality / support. The VR native titles, aside from few exceptions, feel and play like a tablet games, the non-native titles are usually riddled with rendering artifacts, despicable camera work or really unstable framerates (showstopper for me in VR).

roymurdock 9y ago

> we're in the iPhone 1 stage of VR You could immediately do a number of useful (read:productivity enhancing) things with the iPhone 1 - play your music, make calls, browse the web, take pictures, send emails. It deprecated a lot of what needed to be done on traditional phones, desktops, and laptop computers. It would last a day without charging, you wouldn't have to hook it up to a GPU or strap it to your body to use it, and it wouldn't give you motion sickness. Cellular technologies developed quickly to support the bandwidth needed for even better user experiences. Shipments jumped from 1M in 2007 to 20M in 2009. There are very few polished games or apps available for VR 2 years after the "new" generation of VR headsets was released in 2016 by Oculus and HTC, and total headset unit shipments for the entire market (excluding phone-mounting headsets such as Gear) are probably in the low single digit millions for 2017. It hasn't yet deprecated any traditional dedicated communications technology or functions. I wish I could get excited about the future in this field, but I really just don't see what the killer app will be for VR. Facebook thinks it will be virtual meetings for the enterprise and hanging out virtually with friends/family for the consumer market...I am very skeptical but want to be proven wrong as VR is one of the last platforms pushing hardware and software innovation forward at the moment.

randyrand 9y ago
Id say VR is still in the windows mobile and palm pilot days.
- bni 9y ago
  Or in the MS-DOS 2.5D days of gaming (Think DOOM). Despite the technical limitations, it is this awesome feeling of experiencing something revolutionary and new. Previous VR endeavours, like 90s, early 2000s would then be the Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in this analogy :-)
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    > Or in the MS-DOS 2.5D days of gaming (Think DOOM). We're most definitely there. Here's the Original DOOM, modded for VR: http://rotatingpenguin.com/gz3doom/ http://rotatingpenguin.com/gz3doom/

CyberDildonics 9y ago

> average computers to be able to render high frame-rates without breaking the bank High res stereo at 120Hz is never going to have to same graphics as the latest high budget big game release. Current GPUs are already very powerful, but if people have the expectations of getting the same graphics when they use VR they are going to be very frustrated.

kibwen 9y ago
I'm all for it if it means that AAA games will finally step off the photorealism treadmill and admit that pushing polygon counts is not a substitute for art direction. I'll take a Fortnite look over a PUBG look any day.
- princeb 9y ago
  you can say this, but if you look at the most popular mods on skyrim they tend to make the game look more photorealistic, not less. the general trend for video game consumers is towards realism.
zamalek 9y ago
There are rumors about foveated rendering being demoed around the same time.
astrodust 9y ago
Never is a long time. Screens can only get so good before they're pointlessly higher resolution, and at that point GPUs will keep increasing in performance. At some point your GPU runs out of things to do.
- zaroth 9y ago
  Sounds suspiciously like not ever needing more than 64KB of RAM. The reality is that greater horsepower allows for greater abstraction, and easier to program APIs. Increasing developer productivity 2x reduces performance 10-100x, or something like that. So there’s never “enough” performance for the same reason there’s never “enough” powerful/usable APIs.

psyc 9y ago

I agree that VR is here to stay, and most of the things people complain about will be solved within a couple of years. I get the impression that most people here are chronically underwhelmed by things. My mind is still blown by the PSVR, the least advanced of the big 3. But I'm older, and I've been waiting for this since 1990. To me the killer app is VR. Myself and everyone I know (including non-techies) got VR to experience VR. I realize a true killer app would have greater reach. I don't think those are knowable except in hindsight. I thought Google Earth was killer, but I guess not everyone agrees. I would love to see game companies invest in decent ports of existing AAA games, including WoW. Again I don't think it needs any big whiz-bang extra, besides being in VR.

atomi 9y ago
Just making a branded VR game (ie. Zelda, Super Mario et al) would move VR hardware like hot cakes.
- laythea 9y ago
  Its chicken and egg though. No company will make VR games unless the market is large enough. Its up to the little guys who can take risk, to prove the market before the big guys come in and take over.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    And long term, this technology will definitely shake up who the little guys and big guys are, as big companies fail to adapt and small companies make hits.
joering2 9y ago
I dont think vr is iphone1. Its more like first non-smart phones lets say nokia 6110. Its quite possible that with progress made in brains wavelengths readings, the true vr in form of iphone1 will be a head cap you put on and your view/smell/touch perceptions are overwritten by cap’s sensor. That would trully be regular vr/phone versus true vr/smartphone/iphone1

ksec 9y ago

I have similar opinion. And I dont think it is even iPhone 1 stage yet. It is more like early Smartphone. iPhone manage to get to a very decent and wide usage Smartphone within a 5 years time. I dont see this happening yet with VR, as it is extremely limited by hardware and software. As we finally realize, how not very real time our OS and software / hardware. After all these years of abstraction and slight delay added to everywhere in stack. We finally have a motive to unwind / improve those. May be some day we could have Sword Art Online Style Game to move VR forward. Link Start.

Impossible 9y ago

- Removal of sensor placement the room. This will be harder to do, but cameras/sensors built on the headsets themselves could potentially accomplish this. Inside out tracking is a reality in consumer devices now. All Windows MR devices that shipped late last year have 6DOF inside out tracking via cameras on the front of the headset with no external sensors. Moving forward there will be more devices from other vendors that use inside out tracking. Qualcomm has shown prototypes, Google + HTC were working on a tango device that got cancelled, HTC is working on an inside out standalone for the Chinese market, Oculus has shown standalone inside out tracked prototypes, etc.

berberous 9y ago
How reliable are they? The Vive's tracking is pretty rock solid. I'd be very disappointed with anything less (e.g., even 97% solid is not good enough) given that any glitches are REALLY jarring and nauseating in VR.
- aphextron 9y ago
  >How reliable are they? They are very, very good. I've owned every major HMD since the DK2 came out in 2014, and I would say the Samsung Odyssey is the best one to date. The inside-out tracking is fantastic and just as good as Lighthouse (in practical usage, not theoretically). When you consider that there is no setup involved, it makes it a no brainer that this is the way forward.
  - zamalek 9y ago
    The problem I find with inside-out tracking is the range of motion. One of the most powerful concepts in VR is being able to do things with your hands when you are not looking at them. Maybe they could do inside-out tracking on the controllers?
    - aphextron 9y ago
      >The problem I find with inside-out tracking is the range of motion. One of the most powerful concepts in VR is being able to do things with your hands when you are not looking at them. Agreed, there is a bit of an occlusion issue when your arms are behind/above the HMD. I feel like they could probably solve this though, with inductive tracking like Sixsense [0] integrated into the controllers and used in conjunction with IMU/camera data. https://www.sixense.com/platform/hardware/ https://www.sixense.com/platform/hardware/ [0]

nsxwolf 9y ago

Unfortunately there seems to be no end in sight to this crypto currency nonsense, and it has made GPUs double in price. VR was already too expensive. Now it’s completely out of the question for most people. Adding an absurdly high res and high refresh HMD to the mix right now doesn’t seem like a good idea.

krapp 9y ago

One problem rarely mentioned regarding VR is input. Jim Sterling mentioned this in a recent Jimquisition[0] video, and I think it's a valid criticism - the complexity required of modern games can't often be replicated with VR as well as it can with a controller and/or keyboard, certainly not improved upon. Motion controls are often not precise enough - players can do more with buttons sitting down than they can waving their limbs around. [0]https://youtu.be/7_h6GYI8ddA?t=6m56s https://youtu.be/7_h6GYI8ddA?t=6m56s

ddingus 9y ago
A similar thing was said about keyboard and mouse compared to dual analog. And those things were true. Games and people adapted. Personally, I feel something work that can pick up nerve impulses as well as deliver modest feedback, tactile and or electrical will close much of this gap. New input paradigms will advance too, just as they currently are for touch. Touch today is getting good. The finger in the way problem is being chipped away.
- krapp 9y ago
  Even if touch and motion controls improve, what evidence is there that they present a better paradigm for interaction than a keyboard or controller?
  - ddingus 9y ago
    None. The question really is when does input get transparent enough to not be a bother. Whether it beats other forms and technologies is a different question. One that doesn't necessarily require an answer.

mdrejhon 9y ago

Holy server hug, batman! (Chief Blur Buster here, I noticed the traffic spike). BTW, GPU is a problem, but we're expecting Frame Rate Amplification Technologies to solve the problem. Basically improved versions of Oculus Spacewarp that can do large framerate multiplication factors with zero parallax artifacts (unlike today). I covered this topic near the bottom of a different article about the journey to 1000 Hz displays at https://www.blurbusters.com/1000hz-journey https://www.blurbusters.com/1000hz-journey The gist is that within five to ten years, we'll have many tricks to increase framerates with the same number of transistors, without needing to reduce detail levels or make textures/edges blurry, without input lag, and without interpolation artifacts.

manmal 9y ago
I‘m intrigued how a lag-less frame interpolation would work - the algorithm can’t look into the future, or can it?
- glitch003 9y ago
  I think lag is defined as the time between when you make a movement and the movement is displayed, right? So if that delay is 200ms, we know it makes people sick, for example. A delay of 0ms would be "zero lag" IMO.
- TipVFL 9y ago
  Current headsets, at least the Rift, already do "look into the future" to lower the motion-to-photon latency (the amount of time between you moving your head and the screen updating based on that). When you're dealing with a head moving, and very brief slices of time, inertia plays a large role and allows for fairly accurate prediction. After rendering the frame they check head position again, update their prediction for head position at time of display, and move/warp the frame slightly to match. This does require rendering a slightly larger view. I remember when Oculus cracked the 20 ms mark and got down into imperceptible lag, it was very exciting. They bragged at the time that their predictive models would let them get down to 0 ms eventually, but I'm not sure if they've hit that yet.
- 9y ago

empath75 9y ago

I'm not convinced that removing sensor placement or wires is a huge problem. It's not any more involved or awkward than a big home theater setup is. As someone who has had an oculus since the consumer version was released, my main problems are: 1) Eye strain. Even though you have a 3d effect you're still looking at something a few inches from your eye and that disconnect causes eye pain and headaches after playing for more than an hour or so. 2) Locomotion. I've yet to find any way of moving around in VR space that doesn't either make you nauseous or pull you right out of the realism of the experience.

Impossible 9y ago
Eye strain will be mitigated with eye tracking and varifocal displays (https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-research-demonstrate-groundbreaking-focal-surface-display/ https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-research-demonstrate-groundb...), as well as higher resolution. It might still be a problem because you're still staring a screen on your face. Locomotion is less of a problem than people who think its a problem is, and I think that stems from a lot of people in VR being hardcore gamers, and exploration of large spaces being a core mechanic and selling point for 3D video games for the last 25 years. I don't think omni-directional treadmills or vestibular stimulation or anything inconvenient like that will catch on for locomotion, and I think we'll either use various forms of teleport, or sliding (traditional 3D) locomotion for the foreseeable future, and people will mostly be ok with it. It's possible that with wireless and/or standalone headsets that redirected walking, will be a popular option. You could imagine a headset where Chaperone\Guardian builds on SLAM used for inside out tracking, and can give apps information about the layout of your house, allowing for large procedurally created virtual spaces. This still doesn't solve the problem for people that don't have medium sized private spaces to play in, and also makes it harder to do multiplayer games where players are playing in very different spaces.

tootie 9y ago

VR is not dead because the resolution isn't high enough. It's dead because it's been around for 30 years and no one has found a useful application for it.

thinline 9y ago
Are you a troll or just brain-dead?

reaperducer 9y ago

>Imagine the iPhone X version There's going to be a black bar across the top middle of my field of vision?

ClassyJacket 9y ago
Actually there might be. Just like the iPhone, we need somewhere to put the face and eye trackers.

sigi45 9y ago

When i think about VR, i think first about alot of other stuff before i think of gaming. Alone for remodeling my flat (kitchen, bathroom) or building a house. I would also like to train on a virtual lathe before using a real one. I might buy the new htc vive and i will see it as an early adopter beta hype thing because there is still work to do, but in general it feels already really good. That Valve Portal Demo, wow that frightned me a little bit :)

nomy99 9y ago

Google plans to stream vr content including games. So the GPU cost is not such a hurdle for the average consumer

ClassyJacket 9y ago
It's physically impossible to stream VR games from a remote server without unacceptable lag.
- e12e 9y ago
  I think it depends on the definition of "stream". You could maybe trade pre-rendering for file size; say prerender a million versions of a 360 degree image along with some kind of 3d shadow map - something that took a lot of the work from the unit. We already have 3d video - I'd be surprised if the concept couldn't be expanded, leaving the unit to merge streams of background environment and 3d animated sprites.