3 ms·

oculus is digital stereoscopy this demo is cool but i'd argue impractical be careful getting excited over demos of technology that add a layer of abstraction

oculus is digital stereoscopy this demo is cool but i'd argue impractical be careful getting excited over demos of technology that add a layer of abstraction from the tech direct ever seen a photo of a painting? ever read a book you loved and your friends hated? i'd suggest you try the oculus as you would use it: in your home on your box; before spending any money on the device also, you are blind to the keyboard with the headset on i feel oculus caries a mythos around it that is very difficult to obviate if you have yet to have worn one.. i'll link to an old comment i posted to carmacks keynote at the first ocucon : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8347450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8347450 essentially i have stopped referring to oculus as vr, oculus is digital stereoscopy, and being stereoscopy the oculus is exploiting an optical illusion and as such, i believe, a flawed direction for the touted outcome: virtual reality this demo: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcyMTI http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcyMTI ; is what encouraged me to shell out for the dk2 the experience failed to deliver on my expectations, though at the time i thought my expectations were practical and rooted in evidence, of course now i realise those expectations were irrational and that evidence was secondary being derived from this video demo

simias 12y ago
You have commented elsewhere in this thread with this same rant but I simply don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course stereoscopy is part of what the oculus does (although there's also head tracking, so talking only about the stereoscopy is misleading). You say it's a flawed direction, so what's the right direction then?
- justifier 12y ago
  it is my belief that oculus will sell a lot of devices largely by manipulating the ad copy, resulting in frustrated people out a lot of money, i suppose i am attempting to include another perspective on the device, one that i failed to see before i bought one, and have yet to see since, but feel confident in my understanding of it i suppose it depends on your definition of virtual reality.. but i think the verbiage of vr is very misleading my position is that if oculus was called: oculus digital stereoscopy; the tech would lose a lot of its hype as for the tracking it is certainly the best feature of the headset, again with the goal of calling the thing what it does i refer to the 'head tracking' as 'inferred spherical screen encapsulation' what the head tracking is doing is windowing your vision to the size of a fisheyed cell phone screen and then inferring your position in a 3d space and displaying the contents of that field of view on the screen, refreshing the content of the image in regard to the movement of your neck, giving you the impression that you are in a sphere of flat displays looking through fisheye glasses with blinders with a forced forward stare when i put it on the restricted periphery and the inability for me to use my eyes to look around was the most dramatic realisation but that is just dismantling the vr hype, actual stereoscopy is flawed in its own ways.. peoples eyes differ in distance apart, the oculus is solid plastic, certainly the error is measured in mm to fractions of mm but that is still error that your brain now is required to correct, also the goggles press against your face tightly to seal out distracting ambient light, this hurts after some time, and in the case of my watching a film, completely depleted my eyes of blood leaving white bags under my eyes that is the hardware as for the software if you read the comment i linked in the comments you are referring to i talk about an experiment i performed when i first received the oculus that shows that the brain error corrects the inconsistencies between the eye inputs at a pretty substantial distance, talking here of the blue and pink box experiment, in the experiment only the pink box moves, but when i showed it to a friend thae asked why when the two boxes began overlapping did the blue one start moving as well? i watching this all cloned on the screen in front of me explained that it still was the case that only the pink one moved and the blue one is being moved around by thaer brain, so if a simple experiment has my brain working overtime shifting still objects it would seem reasonable that a lot of the 'jitter' that is so often talked about when displaying entire worlds is your brain organising its inputs as for what i believe is the right direction? if we are talking about visual input manipulation.. i'd think projection, perhaps onto a dome or disc encapsulating the entire eye range including periphery of the eyes even with the pupil extended to the outer most regions of the eye or one fantasy device i dreamed up used this recent research: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/magnetic-hair-directs-water-flow-0806 http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/magnetic-hair-directs-water-f... ; if you watch the video, at the end, 57s in, you can see these hairs bending optics, what you'd do is have two rows of these hairs, one for each eye and each row bends to follow the movement of a pupil and each hair acts as a pixel this way simulates two photons bouncing off a single object and reaching the eye, that would be wild but mind that i referred to the effort as visual input manipulation, if you want to talk vr i think the only possible direction is bypassing our sensors and interacting directly with the processors, a la the suit in Zero Theorem : http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/zero_theorem.jpg http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles...
  - cLeEOGPw 12y ago
    I don't understand your argumentation against stereoscopy. It is how you see the world. Even your suggested "dream device" would be stereoscopic device. You can't run away from it. Besides even if the device something like you suggested will ever be developed, there will be those few guys who will complain how it is not real VR and how you need to send signals directly to the optical nerve as well as spinal chord and all other senses in order to achieve "real VR". These kind of talks are unproductive. Better try to develop your version of VR instead of complaining about current best.

simias 12y ago

You have commented elsewhere in this thread with this same rant but I simply don't understand the point you're trying to make. Of course stereoscopy is part of what the oculus does (although there's also head tracking, so talking only about the stereoscopy is misleading). You say it's a flawed direction, so what's the right direction then?

justifier 12y ago
it is my belief that oculus will sell a lot of devices largely by manipulating the ad copy, resulting in frustrated people out a lot of money, i suppose i am attempting to include another perspective on the device, one that i failed to see before i bought one, and have yet to see since, but feel confident in my understanding of it i suppose it depends on your definition of virtual reality.. but i think the verbiage of vr is very misleading my position is that if oculus was called: oculus digital stereoscopy; the tech would lose a lot of its hype as for the tracking it is certainly the best feature of the headset, again with the goal of calling the thing what it does i refer to the 'head tracking' as 'inferred spherical screen encapsulation' what the head tracking is doing is windowing your vision to the size of a fisheyed cell phone screen and then inferring your position in a 3d space and displaying the contents of that field of view on the screen, refreshing the content of the image in regard to the movement of your neck, giving you the impression that you are in a sphere of flat displays looking through fisheye glasses with blinders with a forced forward stare when i put it on the restricted periphery and the inability for me to use my eyes to look around was the most dramatic realisation but that is just dismantling the vr hype, actual stereoscopy is flawed in its own ways.. peoples eyes differ in distance apart, the oculus is solid plastic, certainly the error is measured in mm to fractions of mm but that is still error that your brain now is required to correct, also the goggles press against your face tightly to seal out distracting ambient light, this hurts after some time, and in the case of my watching a film, completely depleted my eyes of blood leaving white bags under my eyes that is the hardware as for the software if you read the comment i linked in the comments you are referring to i talk about an experiment i performed when i first received the oculus that shows that the brain error corrects the inconsistencies between the eye inputs at a pretty substantial distance, talking here of the blue and pink box experiment, in the experiment only the pink box moves, but when i showed it to a friend thae asked why when the two boxes began overlapping did the blue one start moving as well? i watching this all cloned on the screen in front of me explained that it still was the case that only the pink one moved and the blue one is being moved around by thaer brain, so if a simple experiment has my brain working overtime shifting still objects it would seem reasonable that a lot of the 'jitter' that is so often talked about when displaying entire worlds is your brain organising its inputs as for what i believe is the right direction? if we are talking about visual input manipulation.. i'd think projection, perhaps onto a dome or disc encapsulating the entire eye range including periphery of the eyes even with the pupil extended to the outer most regions of the eye or one fantasy device i dreamed up used this recent research: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/magnetic-hair-directs-water-flow-0806 http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/magnetic-hair-directs-water-f... ; if you watch the video, at the end, 57s in, you can see these hairs bending optics, what you'd do is have two rows of these hairs, one for each eye and each row bends to follow the movement of a pupil and each hair acts as a pixel this way simulates two photons bouncing off a single object and reaching the eye, that would be wild but mind that i referred to the effort as visual input manipulation, if you want to talk vr i think the only possible direction is bypassing our sensors and interacting directly with the processors, a la the suit in Zero Theorem : http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/zero_theorem.jpg http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles...
- cLeEOGPw 12y ago
  I don't understand your argumentation against stereoscopy. It is how you see the world. Even your suggested "dream device" would be stereoscopic device. You can't run away from it. Besides even if the device something like you suggested will ever be developed, there will be those few guys who will complain how it is not real VR and how you need to send signals directly to the optical nerve as well as spinal chord and all other senses in order to achieve "real VR". These kind of talks are unproductive. Better try to develop your version of VR instead of complaining about current best.