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I bought an Oculus Rift devkit and later the full version and loved it, but I actually have doubts about it only being a content problem. VR has some inherent p

I bought an Oculus Rift devkit and later the full version and loved it, but I actually have doubts about it only being a content problem. VR has some inherent problems (lack of any outside visibility, motion sickness, space restrictions) that are hard to solve and keep many people away from it. For me it only really worked in racing games where i was not moving at all and even then it is quite exhausting.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> lack of any outside visibility, (...) space restrictions Oculus Quest has managed to solve both of them, even though they do their best not to exploit it. Because it's an untenthered headset, you have to designate a "play area" for safety - and to do that, you get to see the world through headset's cameras[0], and paint it with your controllers! Even though the view is monochrome and grainy, you can see enough to walk around and do tasks. I've frequently interrupted my play to do something, without taking the headset off - as soon as you walk out of the designated play area, you get the camera feed back. Currently, Oculus is using this view only as a safety feature, and AFAIK you can't access it as an app developer. Moreover, using the headset outside is discouraged (perhaps because direct sun focused on the optics could burn holes in the screen). But Quest is essentially a working proof of concept, showing that the possibilities are there. -- [0] - Apparently they're used for controller tracking.
- evan_ 7y ago
  The cameras are used for controller tracking as well as headset tracking. It’s a 6dof optical mouse.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Right. Forgot about the obvious. This is how the headset knows where it is in the world, and also how it remembers designated play areas. The UX around it is a bit buggy, but I've successfully worked with one "walking" area in one room, and another "sitting" area in a different room, and the headset would usually remember both, so I didn't have to redraw them every time.
- fsiefken 7y ago
  I second that. With the Oculus Rift S you can see the snowy grey world around you while using Oculus Dash with large screens, It would be nice if one could have a transparency knob, dial or slider like in Snow Crash, so you could shift your attention between worlds easily. It wouldn't surprise me if the Quest will get app alpha transparency with the real world or AR features in future iterations.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  I've used the Quest in my backyard after the sun had gotten low enough to be behind a tree. It works quite well, and the extra space was a huge boon. It should be noted that the Quest runs the Snapdragon 835 SoC, the same SoC in the Go and every other standalone headset you can actually acquire right now (specifically, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Vive Focus). It's the same SoC as the Google Pixel 2. In other words, it's old. It's why Oculus had to drop the framerate from 75Hz on the Go to 72Hz on the Quest: the added overhead of the camera tracking and higher resolution display left too little frame budget for applications. I will immediately buy the first headset with an 855 in it. Not only will the raw performance be substantially better, but it has custom silicon in it specifically for doing image-based tracking, as well as processing higher resolution video feeds. Quest is just a preview of what is to come. I'm pretty sure we're going to get the first, decent pass-through camera modes in the next gen of mobile VR headsets.
NotCamelCase 7y ago
I tried Oculus only once, the first one that was sold world-wide, I believe. It was cool, but that was basically it for me. My main concern with it has always been the fact that it requires putting a device on my head for non-significant amount of time and I'm not sure about its health effects. Anybody know any research or studies that were done to this end?
ericskiff 7y ago
I agreed with 100% of these complaints before the oculus quest. The external cameras turn on in the quest when I need them because I’ve gone out of bounds The guardian helps me stay inbounds in my small space The latency and amazing head tracking have removed all motion sickness But it’s still just a beat saber machine. There haven’t been any major titles released in months, and it’s unclear if there will be. We need Nintendo-style first party titles and some killer apps.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
VR, especially wireless as the Quest is, can work great for fitness. Exhausting is the point of that, though.
dre54673 7y ago
I had a similar experience. I bought an Odyssey+ but returned it because I felt motion sick every time I tried it. I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it, but that seems like an easy way to guarantee your product will fail. I had friends try it and they also felt the same way. AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just lacking power and content. I also think the market for AR would be much bigger than VR. I think that is why Apple, MSFT, and Google are focusing on it.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  > I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.
  - dre54673 7y ago
    There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info. Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/7kvq1k/motion_sickness_in_vr_any_tips_or_tricks/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/a64bxd/have_you_gotten_used_to_motion_sickness/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/55juor/vr_sickness_does_it_go_away/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...
    - moron4hire 7y ago
      Oh, /r/Vive and /r/oculus are dumpster fires. I don't know /r/PSVR, but considering what I know of reddit and what passes for "culture" amongst gamers, I expect it's much the same. Very, very few actual developers in those boards.
      - jawngee 7y ago
Ajedi32 7y ago
I'm not so sure. Lack of outside visibility seems more like a feature to me than a problem with the medium; the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world and place you in a virtual one. As for motion sickness; with modern headsets that's generally only a problem for games which move the "camera" in ways which don't match your movement in the real world. (Such as racing games.) There's plenty of content available these days which doesn't have that problem. Space restrictions I agree are an issue. There are a lot of games which only really need standing room to work well, but even then it can be hard to find enough space close to your PC (since the area you're standing in needs to be completely free of obstacles you could hit with your hands). I think standalone VR partially solves this problem though by increasing the number of areas you can set up in. With Quest, for example, the area you're playing in doesn't have to be near your PC; that makes it way easier to find a space that's big enough.
- rosybox 7y ago
  > the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world? Given all of VR's problems, the people who will play VR games seriously enough to spend money on AAA VR games will always be a smaller subset of the overall gaming population. It's never going to be bigger than what exists already. All these billions dumped into VR as the next big thing seem to miss that the VR market is limited by the problems the parent comment mentioned.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > It doesn't for people with spouses and children. It works perfectly well, to the extent that any single-player activity works with spouses and children. Source: I have a spouse, a child, and a VR headset.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago
rosybox 7y ago
Those are pretty large problems. As an outsider it seems that the people bullish on VR think consumers, with respect to these problems you mentioned, will just get over it because of how compelling VR is. It seems obvious to me that they will not get over it. The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you. It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. VR streamers aren't very popular on Twitch. They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think. I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable? There are just so many problems with VR as a mass-consumer product that don't have anything to do with technology. AR doesn't have many of these problems, because you can still see other people. Google's direction makes sense.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Problems from "one IO device to rule them all" standpoint? Sure. Problems for capturing a huge chunk of the market and being generally useful? Not really. > The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Come on. This way you could say most of gaming is antisocial, because a lot of interesting games (most of them, to me) are single-player experience. There are many people, people with families, for whom playing games (or watching movies for that matter) is about games (and movies), and not about an excuse to be with other people. Also, you can always stream the game to another device for other family member(s) to watch. > Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. I guess it depends on how old they are, but my wife and I divide forces: one of us watches the kid, the other plays, then we switch. > Pets can't really be near you. My pet doesn't mind. It understands that the person standing there in the middle of the room (which is weird behavior) with a box on their head is ignoring it, and making sudden moves. > It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. Experience? Not really. You just stream the game. Interacting with other people while playing, Twitch-like? That's more difficult, so the showbusiness part of the gaming market has a problem, but this doesn't affect people who want to actually play a game. > I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable? VR requires sight, and some control over hands; depending on the game, this may expand into total motor control. The requirements for most games is fundamentally the same as for "regular" games you play with mouse+keyboard / gamepad. ---- Working AR will obviously have more total utility than VR, so it's good to pursue it. But VR exists here and now, while AR is still science-fiction (HoloLens beginning to scratch the surface, and no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR). However, VR can be used to simulate, experiment with and prototype future AR applications, so it's weird to just abandon it.
jimmaswell 7y ago
I don't get why everyone jumped on this idea of VR where you're standing up and moving so much. I'd rather have games just like normal but with a VR headset and KB/M or controller controls.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  Haven't you played the Goblins and Gnomes or HTC Lab magic store demos? Just walking around in a room full of things to explore is awesome; it's the same experience you get at theme parks, just enhanced with FX. There's also the thrill of rhythm and sports games, though those aren't much different than their non-VR counterparts.
- laumars 7y ago
  The Playstation VR is essentially just that.
- Pxtl 7y ago
  Afaik that's where most folks suffer extreme motion sickness.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  And I don't get why people watch the NFL or play MOBAs, but there's no accounting for personal preference.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> lack of any outside visibility, (...) space restrictions Oculus Quest has managed to solve both of them, even though they do their best not to exploit it. Because it's an untenthered headset, you have to designate a "play area" for safety - and to do that, you get to see the world through headset's cameras[0], and paint it with your controllers! Even though the view is monochrome and grainy, you can see enough to walk around and do tasks. I've frequently interrupted my play to do something, without taking the headset off - as soon as you walk out of the designated play area, you get the camera feed back. Currently, Oculus is using this view only as a safety feature, and AFAIK you can't access it as an app developer. Moreover, using the headset outside is discouraged (perhaps because direct sun focused on the optics could burn holes in the screen). But Quest is essentially a working proof of concept, showing that the possibilities are there. -- [0] - Apparently they're used for controller tracking.

evan_ 7y ago
The cameras are used for controller tracking as well as headset tracking. It’s a 6dof optical mouse.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Right. Forgot about the obvious. This is how the headset knows where it is in the world, and also how it remembers designated play areas. The UX around it is a bit buggy, but I've successfully worked with one "walking" area in one room, and another "sitting" area in a different room, and the headset would usually remember both, so I didn't have to redraw them every time.
fsiefken 7y ago
I second that. With the Oculus Rift S you can see the snowy grey world around you while using Oculus Dash with large screens, It would be nice if one could have a transparency knob, dial or slider like in Snow Crash, so you could shift your attention between worlds easily. It wouldn't surprise me if the Quest will get app alpha transparency with the real world or AR features in future iterations.
moron4hire 7y ago
I've used the Quest in my backyard after the sun had gotten low enough to be behind a tree. It works quite well, and the extra space was a huge boon. It should be noted that the Quest runs the Snapdragon 835 SoC, the same SoC in the Go and every other standalone headset you can actually acquire right now (specifically, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Vive Focus). It's the same SoC as the Google Pixel 2. In other words, it's old. It's why Oculus had to drop the framerate from 75Hz on the Go to 72Hz on the Quest: the added overhead of the camera tracking and higher resolution display left too little frame budget for applications. I will immediately buy the first headset with an 855 in it. Not only will the raw performance be substantially better, but it has custom silicon in it specifically for doing image-based tracking, as well as processing higher resolution video feeds. Quest is just a preview of what is to come. I'm pretty sure we're going to get the first, decent pass-through camera modes in the next gen of mobile VR headsets.

NotCamelCase 7y ago

I tried Oculus only once, the first one that was sold world-wide, I believe. It was cool, but that was basically it for me. My main concern with it has always been the fact that it requires putting a device on my head for non-significant amount of time and I'm not sure about its health effects. Anybody know any research or studies that were done to this end?

ericskiff 7y ago

I agreed with 100% of these complaints before the oculus quest. The external cameras turn on in the quest when I need them because I’ve gone out of bounds The guardian helps me stay inbounds in my small space The latency and amazing head tracking have removed all motion sickness But it’s still just a beat saber machine. There haven’t been any major titles released in months, and it’s unclear if there will be. We need Nintendo-style first party titles and some killer apps.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

VR, especially wireless as the Quest is, can work great for fitness. Exhausting is the point of that, though.

dre54673 7y ago

I had a similar experience. I bought an Odyssey+ but returned it because I felt motion sick every time I tried it. I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it, but that seems like an easy way to guarantee your product will fail. I had friends try it and they also felt the same way. AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just lacking power and content. I also think the market for AR would be much bigger than VR. I think that is why Apple, MSFT, and Google are focusing on it.

moron4hire 7y ago
> I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.
- dre54673 7y ago
  There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info. Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/7kvq1k/motion_sickness_in_vr_any_tips_or_tricks/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/a64bxd/have_you_gotten_used_to_motion_sickness/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/55juor/vr_sickness_does_it_go_away/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...
  - moron4hire 7y ago
    Oh, /r/Vive and /r/oculus are dumpster fires. I don't know /r/PSVR, but considering what I know of reddit and what passes for "culture" amongst gamers, I expect it's much the same. Very, very few actual developers in those boards.
    - jawngee 7y ago

Ajedi32 7y ago

I'm not so sure. Lack of outside visibility seems more like a feature to me than a problem with the medium; the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world and place you in a virtual one. As for motion sickness; with modern headsets that's generally only a problem for games which move the "camera" in ways which don't match your movement in the real world. (Such as racing games.) There's plenty of content available these days which doesn't have that problem. Space restrictions I agree are an issue. There are a lot of games which only really need standing room to work well, but even then it can be hard to find enough space close to your PC (since the area you're standing in needs to be completely free of obstacles you could hit with your hands). I think standalone VR partially solves this problem though by increasing the number of areas you can set up in. With Quest, for example, the area you're playing in doesn't have to be near your PC; that makes it way easier to find a space that's big enough.

rosybox 7y ago
> the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world? Given all of VR's problems, the people who will play VR games seriously enough to spend money on AAA VR games will always be a smaller subset of the overall gaming population. It's never going to be bigger than what exists already. All these billions dumped into VR as the next big thing seem to miss that the VR market is limited by the problems the parent comment mentioned.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > It doesn't for people with spouses and children. It works perfectly well, to the extent that any single-player activity works with spouses and children. Source: I have a spouse, a child, and a VR headset.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 7y ago

rosybox 7y ago

Those are pretty large problems. As an outsider it seems that the people bullish on VR think consumers, with respect to these problems you mentioned, will just get over it because of how compelling VR is. It seems obvious to me that they will not get over it. The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you. It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. VR streamers aren't very popular on Twitch. They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think. I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable? There are just so many problems with VR as a mass-consumer product that don't have anything to do with technology. AR doesn't have many of these problems, because you can still see other people. Google's direction makes sense.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Problems from "one IO device to rule them all" standpoint? Sure. Problems for capturing a huge chunk of the market and being generally useful? Not really. > The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Come on. This way you could say most of gaming is antisocial, because a lot of interesting games (most of them, to me) are single-player experience. There are many people, people with families, for whom playing games (or watching movies for that matter) is about games (and movies), and not about an excuse to be with other people. Also, you can always stream the game to another device for other family member(s) to watch. > Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. I guess it depends on how old they are, but my wife and I divide forces: one of us watches the kid, the other plays, then we switch. > Pets can't really be near you. My pet doesn't mind. It understands that the person standing there in the middle of the room (which is weird behavior) with a box on their head is ignoring it, and making sudden moves. > It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. Experience? Not really. You just stream the game. Interacting with other people while playing, Twitch-like? That's more difficult, so the showbusiness part of the gaming market has a problem, but this doesn't affect people who want to actually play a game. > I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable? VR requires sight, and some control over hands; depending on the game, this may expand into total motor control. The requirements for most games is fundamentally the same as for "regular" games you play with mouse+keyboard / gamepad. ---- Working AR will obviously have more total utility than VR, so it's good to pursue it. But VR exists here and now, while AR is still science-fiction (HoloLens beginning to scratch the surface, and no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR). However, VR can be used to simulate, experiment with and prototype future AR applications, so it's weird to just abandon it.

jimmaswell 7y ago

I don't get why everyone jumped on this idea of VR where you're standing up and moving so much. I'd rather have games just like normal but with a VR headset and KB/M or controller controls.

TuringTest 7y ago
Haven't you played the Goblins and Gnomes or HTC Lab magic store demos? Just walking around in a room full of things to explore is awesome; it's the same experience you get at theme parks, just enhanced with FX. There's also the thrill of rhythm and sports games, though those aren't much different than their non-VR counterparts.
laumars 7y ago
The Playstation VR is essentially just that.
Pxtl 7y ago
Afaik that's where most folks suffer extreme motion sickness.
moron4hire 7y ago
And I don't get why people watch the NFL or play MOBAs, but there's no accounting for personal preference.