4 ms·

When I built my VR MMO in 2014 I experimented with very wide camera separation, it's very particular; makes things look very small and distant but they pop out

by bullen 3y ago

When I built my VR MMO in 2014 I experimented with very wide camera separation, it's very particular; makes things look very small and distant but they pop out much more. Like 3D on steroids + tilt shift. I also experimented with twice the rendering speed to get as recent as possible sensor reading before the Valve/Oculus warping became standard and it was VERY good for nausea. So 120/150 FPS respectively on DK1/2. I'm looking forward to pancake lenses, if they remove godrays so I can play my game again: http://aeonalpha.com http://aeonalpha.com But I read there are a lot of tradeoffs with them too. So far DK1/2 lenses with cups that you could change and adapt to your diopter where the best optics VR has had (but I got lucky with IPD and one cup on DK1 being my exact diopter!) I wish one actor made super tiny glass lenses just so we could see how that would work!? Here is some more experiments: http://aeonalpha.com/fov.html http://aeonalpha.com/fov.html

nrp 3y ago
We had a somewhat undocumented 120Hz mode on DK2 where both eyes would get the same image (meaning everything was at infinity distance), but I’m not sure if any developers used it.
- bullen 3y ago
  But then you get no depth perception?!
  - nrp 3y ago
    Yes, that’s why nobody used it. The plausible use case was something like watching 24hz, 30hz, or 60hz video content without juddering that 75Hz would have, and where depth didn’t matter.
- syrrim 3y ago
  Could you render very close objects twice, far objects once, then composite the image for each eye?
  - moron4hire 3y ago
    Theoretically, yes, but there will be a lot of overhead for Z-sorting objects as well as performing a multi-stage render like that. I am only guessing, I certainly have never tried, but I bet it comes out to a wash, at best. It'd be better to keep the rendering pipeline simple, if that were the case. Large-scale worlds will have LOD for models and terrain at distance, which will help with the rendering complexity of far objects. You can also pre-process it and apply super-far details as a skybox image. A 2- or 3-block radius of real, 3D city buildings with a cityscape skybox looks pretty good. A forest scene can use object instancing to really clutter up the medium field and leave even a generic landscape skybox for great results.
- moron4hire 3y ago
  It's funny. In my experience, stereo rendering is not a make-or-break issue in VR. I mean, it depends on the app design, of course, but a lot of apps can get away with monoscopic without most people noticing. I had a regression in an app I was building where it was rendering in a monoscopic mode and it actually took me a long time to figure out what was "wrong" with the app, but apparently, I was the only one who thought it was wrong. It went for at least a month before I noticed a problem and another month before I eventually had the time to diagnose it. All during that time, nobody made any comment about it, people were enjoying the app. I eventually figured out that you really only notice stereo rendering in modern VR headsets if you have a lot of near-field objects with which to interact and you interact with them with direct hand gestures (either hand tracking or controller bumping). So, you need stuff to be within a meter of the user for them to really notice "this isn't right". There is a gap past a meter and before 10 meters where it's hit or miss if anyone is going to notice the lack of stereo rendering. The more the user is moving around, the less likely they are to notice. And then, anything past 15 meters, I don't think there are any VR headsets on the market (other than maybe the Varjo VR-1, but I've never seen one myself) with fine enough pixel pitch that anybody is going to notice the lack of stereo rendering. Now, that's just "where does stereo rendering take effect"? Part of what I think makes VR good is the ability to get up close and personal with the environment, to manipulate things in your hands, so typically I think "good" VR apps are going to need stereo rendering, but it was still surprising to see that it's not a universal issue.
  - wccrawford 3y ago
    I think 10 meters is also the point in real life where 3d stops being noticeable, too, so I'm not surprised your ended up with that number. (I just searched and found numbers between 18 ft and 20 meters.) I don't think the pixel pitch is the limiting factor anyhow, because movement of the head means that sub-pixel accuracy is achieved by the brain anyhow. It's amazing what the human brain lies about in regards to vision.
    - moron4hire 3y ago
      Yeah, I haven't done the math, so I don't know what the exact boundary would be. Supposedly Quest 2's tracking is precise down to ~7mm, SteamVR to 75mm, so depending on the system, micro head movements may not be larger than IOD. Assuming we discount micro head movements, then the ICD is the only stereo cue. I think I remember seeing someone do the math once and said devices like the Oculus DK2 couldn't show anything beyond 10m for 0.07m displacement. Or something like that. Notionally, for some pixel size S, you will not be able to see a discernable difference at Z distance for X view displacement; the left and right eyes will resolve objects to the same pixels.

by bullen 3y ago

nrp 3y ago

We had a somewhat undocumented 120Hz mode on DK2 where both eyes would get the same image (meaning everything was at infinity distance), but I’m not sure if any developers used it.

bullen 3y ago
But then you get no depth perception?!
- nrp 3y ago
  Yes, that’s why nobody used it. The plausible use case was something like watching 24hz, 30hz, or 60hz video content without juddering that 75Hz would have, and where depth didn’t matter.
syrrim 3y ago
Could you render very close objects twice, far objects once, then composite the image for each eye?
- moron4hire 3y ago
  Theoretically, yes, but there will be a lot of overhead for Z-sorting objects as well as performing a multi-stage render like that. I am only guessing, I certainly have never tried, but I bet it comes out to a wash, at best. It'd be better to keep the rendering pipeline simple, if that were the case. Large-scale worlds will have LOD for models and terrain at distance, which will help with the rendering complexity of far objects. You can also pre-process it and apply super-far details as a skybox image. A 2- or 3-block radius of real, 3D city buildings with a cityscape skybox looks pretty good. A forest scene can use object instancing to really clutter up the medium field and leave even a generic landscape skybox for great results.
moron4hire 3y ago
It's funny. In my experience, stereo rendering is not a make-or-break issue in VR. I mean, it depends on the app design, of course, but a lot of apps can get away with monoscopic without most people noticing. I had a regression in an app I was building where it was rendering in a monoscopic mode and it actually took me a long time to figure out what was "wrong" with the app, but apparently, I was the only one who thought it was wrong. It went for at least a month before I noticed a problem and another month before I eventually had the time to diagnose it. All during that time, nobody made any comment about it, people were enjoying the app. I eventually figured out that you really only notice stereo rendering in modern VR headsets if you have a lot of near-field objects with which to interact and you interact with them with direct hand gestures (either hand tracking or controller bumping). So, you need stuff to be within a meter of the user for them to really notice "this isn't right". There is a gap past a meter and before 10 meters where it's hit or miss if anyone is going to notice the lack of stereo rendering. The more the user is moving around, the less likely they are to notice. And then, anything past 15 meters, I don't think there are any VR headsets on the market (other than maybe the Varjo VR-1, but I've never seen one myself) with fine enough pixel pitch that anybody is going to notice the lack of stereo rendering. Now, that's just "where does stereo rendering take effect"? Part of what I think makes VR good is the ability to get up close and personal with the environment, to manipulate things in your hands, so typically I think "good" VR apps are going to need stereo rendering, but it was still surprising to see that it's not a universal issue.
- wccrawford 3y ago
  I think 10 meters is also the point in real life where 3d stops being noticeable, too, so I'm not surprised your ended up with that number. (I just searched and found numbers between 18 ft and 20 meters.) I don't think the pixel pitch is the limiting factor anyhow, because movement of the head means that sub-pixel accuracy is achieved by the brain anyhow. It's amazing what the human brain lies about in regards to vision.
  - moron4hire 3y ago
    Yeah, I haven't done the math, so I don't know what the exact boundary would be. Supposedly Quest 2's tracking is precise down to ~7mm, SteamVR to 75mm, so depending on the system, micro head movements may not be larger than IOD. Assuming we discount micro head movements, then the ICD is the only stereo cue. I think I remember seeing someone do the math once and said devices like the Oculus DK2 couldn't show anything beyond 10m for 0.07m displacement. Or something like that. Notionally, for some pixel size S, you will not be able to see a discernable difference at Z distance for X view displacement; the left and right eyes will resolve objects to the same pixels.