5 ms·

The Inside Story of Oculus Rift

80 points by relampago 12y ago

grogenaut 12y ago
I didn't know it had shipped to retail already
- teraflop 12y ago
  It hasn't. That's why the article says: "Now Oculus is hard at work on its long-awaited headset for consumers, which the company predicts will be released later this year, or more likely early next year, or perhaps even not so early next year."
  - grogenaut 12y ago
    Yes I get that but the article says how it became a reality. It's been a non-consumer reality for quite a while in arcades. It's still not a reality unless you have a dev kit.
aniijbod 12y ago
Rubin helpfully fills in a lot of blank spaces in what we already knew about this. The one nagging doubt that still lingers sits somewhere between what is doable, versus what is done. The Kinect, for all it's technological triumphs and impressive market performance, still leaves us waiting for whatever it was that made it seem like it was going to change everything. While few who have ever had the Oculus experience have any doubt that it could change everything, we mustn't forget that we are also all still waiting for the first concrete confirmation that this expectation will be met.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  Kinect rode on Microsoft >$1 billion marketing campaign of lies. Every PR clip showed people interacting with fast paced action packed games in very responsive way. Reality of hardware was totally different. M$ wasnt ready, Project Natal was couple of years away. They scrambled in panic and bought Primesense. Kinect was basically repackaged Primesense dev kit. Kinect was supposed to be answer to Wii. Problem is there is a huge difference in speed between tracking 4 points of light versus complex DSP on a point cloud. Kinect had a 100-500ms delay between something happening and skeletal tracking on the screen. Kinect One only manages to cut that in ~half. You simply CANT do responsive input with latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds. This is why Kinect has failed to deliver what $1 billion of M$ PR promised four years ago. Kinect is great for puzzle games, art projects, slow complex input.
  - ryanburk 12y ago
    do you have sources for the latency numbers for kinect on xbox one? I've searched and can't find anything concrete and the XDK isn't publicly available. and this might downvote me into oblivion, but is using "M$" still a thing? I don't see how that helps a discussion.
    - rasz_pl 12y ago
      Unofficial Kinect one docs say 20ms depth sensor latency, this is same as 50fps vision camera so no lag there. They also say 60ms for tracking versus 90ms of original Kinect. Problem is original kinect did >100ms at minimum, and topped at 500ms http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.imda/files/pdfs/2012_VRposter_kinectSkelPerf.pdf http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.... We experienced maximum latencies of nearly 500 ms M$ will cease to be a thing when Microsoft stops dropping Billion dollars on every problem (kinect pr, original xbox pr, surface writeof)
      - prawn 12y ago
        M$ is juvenile. Big companies will tend to spend up on building and then promoting their products. What's the shame in that?
        protonfish 12y ago
        The shame is with enough money pigs can fly. If the product you were making was something of quality that people wanted, you wouldn't need billions to ram it down the public's throat. (You'd probably only need hundreds of thousands.)
        prawn 12y ago
        How are you going to quantify what constitutes normal advertising and what is "ramming it down throats"?
        12y ago
polskibus 12y ago
Did Valve really contribute the most important part to Oculus that is the no-nausea experience? If so, on what terms did they share the technology with Oculus? I'm wondering if Valve is the winner in the shadows or the biggest loser.
- gatehouse 12y ago
  IIRC, Valve wants to make games for VR, they don't want to make VR.
  - soperj 12y ago
    This is why they let Jeri Ellsworth go with all the IP to CastAR.
  - polskibus 12y ago
    That's the current state, but surely if they patented the no-nausea bit of tech, they wouldve earn millions just licensing it. It makes me wonder whether the Valve claim in the story is accurate or perhaps there is another story behind the official one.
    - angersock 12y ago
      So, that's likely absurd, right? The "no-nausea" bit is more likely a combination of factors: low-latency, head tracking with thus-and-such a precision, field-of-view tweaks, etc. It'd be like patenting the ideal air-to-gasoline burning ratio: it's just a fact of life.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        > It'd be like patenting the ideal air-to-gasoline burning ratio: it's just a fact of life. That never stopped people from trying to patent such facts of life, often succeeding and making tons of money with it or forcing competitors out of the field. Patents are like swords, use or abuse, to some only winning matters and they count their wins by their pocket-books.
bbrks 12y ago
Sidenote: wired.com articles have a truly annoying UX error. The slider/gallery goes full screen when the user presses 'F', which hides the article. Not very helpful when you want to find something written in the article by Ctrl+F!
- vvvv 12y ago
  For me, almost every single time: Ctrl+Shift+K, push to Kindle, close the browser.
jesuslop 12y ago
Wired, your pages are slooow.
clickok 12y ago
It doesn't really mention that Palmer Luckey was working with Mark Bolas' VR group at USC [1] at the time of the Kickstarter. The Rift isn't the product of a lone 18-year-old VR autodidact. I'm not 100% certain regarding the timeline, but it's starting to seem odd how every article about Oculus seems to marginalize everyone but Palmer and Carmack. [1] http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-alum-get-play-at-e3/ http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-al...
- _random_ 12y ago
  It seems that geeks are less excited about Oculus in general since the acquisition thing.
- the_watcher 12y ago
  Most of these articles marginalize key players in relation to the public face

80 points by relampago 12y ago

grogenaut 12y ago

I didn't know it had shipped to retail already

teraflop 12y ago
It hasn't. That's why the article says: "Now Oculus is hard at work on its long-awaited headset for consumers, which the company predicts will be released later this year, or more likely early next year, or perhaps even not so early next year."
- grogenaut 12y ago
  Yes I get that but the article says how it became a reality. It's been a non-consumer reality for quite a while in arcades. It's still not a reality unless you have a dev kit.

aniijbod 12y ago

Rubin helpfully fills in a lot of blank spaces in what we already knew about this. The one nagging doubt that still lingers sits somewhere between what is doable, versus what is done. The Kinect, for all it's technological triumphs and impressive market performance, still leaves us waiting for whatever it was that made it seem like it was going to change everything. While few who have ever had the Oculus experience have any doubt that it could change everything, we mustn't forget that we are also all still waiting for the first concrete confirmation that this expectation will be met.

rasz_pl 12y ago
Kinect rode on Microsoft >$1 billion marketing campaign of lies. Every PR clip showed people interacting with fast paced action packed games in very responsive way. Reality of hardware was totally different. M$ wasnt ready, Project Natal was couple of years away. They scrambled in panic and bought Primesense. Kinect was basically repackaged Primesense dev kit. Kinect was supposed to be answer to Wii. Problem is there is a huge difference in speed between tracking 4 points of light versus complex DSP on a point cloud. Kinect had a 100-500ms delay between something happening and skeletal tracking on the screen. Kinect One only manages to cut that in ~half. You simply CANT do responsive input with latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds. This is why Kinect has failed to deliver what $1 billion of M$ PR promised four years ago. Kinect is great for puzzle games, art projects, slow complex input.
- ryanburk 12y ago
  do you have sources for the latency numbers for kinect on xbox one? I've searched and can't find anything concrete and the XDK isn't publicly available. and this might downvote me into oblivion, but is using "M$" still a thing? I don't see how that helps a discussion.
  - rasz_pl 12y ago
    Unofficial Kinect one docs say 20ms depth sensor latency, this is same as 50fps vision camera so no lag there. They also say 60ms for tracking versus 90ms of original Kinect. Problem is original kinect did >100ms at minimum, and topped at 500ms http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.imda/files/pdfs/2012_VRposter_kinectSkelPerf.pdf http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/imda/sites/www.nrl.navy.mil.itd.... We experienced maximum latencies of nearly 500 ms M$ will cease to be a thing when Microsoft stops dropping Billion dollars on every problem (kinect pr, original xbox pr, surface writeof)
    - prawn 12y ago
      M$ is juvenile. Big companies will tend to spend up on building and then promoting their products. What's the shame in that?
      - protonfish 12y ago
        The shame is with enough money pigs can fly. If the product you were making was something of quality that people wanted, you wouldn't need billions to ram it down the public's throat. (You'd probably only need hundreds of thousands.)
        prawn 12y ago
        How are you going to quantify what constitutes normal advertising and what is "ramming it down throats"?
        12y ago

polskibus 12y ago

Did Valve really contribute the most important part to Oculus that is the no-nausea experience? If so, on what terms did they share the technology with Oculus? I'm wondering if Valve is the winner in the shadows or the biggest loser.

gatehouse 12y ago
IIRC, Valve wants to make games for VR, they don't want to make VR.
- soperj 12y ago
  This is why they let Jeri Ellsworth go with all the IP to CastAR.
- polskibus 12y ago
  That's the current state, but surely if they patented the no-nausea bit of tech, they wouldve earn millions just licensing it. It makes me wonder whether the Valve claim in the story is accurate or perhaps there is another story behind the official one.
  - angersock 12y ago
    So, that's likely absurd, right? The "no-nausea" bit is more likely a combination of factors: low-latency, head tracking with thus-and-such a precision, field-of-view tweaks, etc. It'd be like patenting the ideal air-to-gasoline burning ratio: it's just a fact of life.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      > It'd be like patenting the ideal air-to-gasoline burning ratio: it's just a fact of life. That never stopped people from trying to patent such facts of life, often succeeding and making tons of money with it or forcing competitors out of the field. Patents are like swords, use or abuse, to some only winning matters and they count their wins by their pocket-books.

bbrks 12y ago

Sidenote: wired.com articles have a truly annoying UX error. The slider/gallery goes full screen when the user presses 'F', which hides the article. Not very helpful when you want to find something written in the article by Ctrl+F!

vvvv 12y ago
For me, almost every single time: Ctrl+Shift+K, push to Kindle, close the browser.

jesuslop 12y ago

Wired, your pages are slooow.

clickok 12y ago

It doesn't really mention that Palmer Luckey was working with Mark Bolas' VR group at USC [1] at the time of the Kickstarter. The Rift isn't the product of a lone 18-year-old VR autodidact. I'm not 100% certain regarding the timeline, but it's starting to seem odd how every article about Oculus seems to marginalize everyone but Palmer and Carmack. [1] http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-alum-get-play-at-e3/ http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-al...

_random_ 12y ago
It seems that geeks are less excited about Oculus in general since the acquisition thing.
the_watcher 12y ago
Most of these articles marginalize key players in relation to the public face