Oculus Rift and future VR support in Planetside2

[Phisionary]

tweets from @mhigby:

Were getting a demo of the prototype Oculus Rift. Absolutely believe the hype. Amazing. http://yfrog.com/esbcpujj

&

Oculus Rift will be the most revolutionary thing that gamers have plugged into their computers since the Ethernet cable.

For those who have not heard of it, the Oculus Rift is a prototype wearable 3D stereoscopic VR headset, which also features head motion tracking (similar to the tracking you get from TrackIR, which is discussed here).

Here's the official website:
http://oculusvr.com/
And the kickstarter page for the beta 'dev. kit' they're producing now (they're wayyy past their goal already):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-into-the-game

From what I've read about it, this thing sounds really awesome, and the technology is quite close to being 'there' for producing consumer models.

Thoughts?

[fb III IX ca IV]

Hell yes! Higby, make PS2 the second game with rift support!

[OnexBigxHebrew]

Thread title is misleading.

But yeah, I think it sounds awesome. Wether it pans out, who knows. Definately a step in the right direction though. What I'm really worried about is exactly how much of the "input" (head movement lag) is absent. Been a real problem in the past.

[adddemon]

forget input lag, what does the game look like in the screen, whats the resolution? is it even HD?

[khord]

its 1280 by 800.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by khord

its 1280 by 800.

2 inches from your eye......

split over 2 screens, providing each eye with what it would see, and using the brains natural 3d rendering of 2 ocular images handle all the work of making it actually 3d.

Head tracking is bonus if it works good.

[Toppopia]

Now to make a portable version of VR so you can get 20 people in a random farm, and turn it into a shooter game. All through the power of virtual reality. So to onlookers, its just 20 people wearing weird equipment running around pretending to hold guns, to the gamers, they see the field has lots of buildings, cover, bullets flying around, holding guns, reloading by actually pulling the mag out and grabbing a new one, throwing grenades etc.

So i wonder how far away my dream is.

[SexyTRex]

Oh my flying my mosq in 3d with head tracking? Yes please. It may be a far ways out but I can dream.

[jellyzRL]

Originally Posted by Toppopia

Now to make a portable version of VR so you can get 20 people in a random farm, and turn it into a shooter game. All through the power of virtual reality. So to onlookers, its just 20 people wearing weird equipment running around pretending to hold guns, to the gamers, they see the field has lots of buildings, cover, bullets flying around, holding guns, reloading by actually pulling the mag out and grabbing a new one, throwing grenades etc.

So i wonder how far away my dream is.

thats AR not VR.

[Diehard]

How convenient is it to wear for whose with glasses?

[Ziggypop]

Originally Posted by Diehard

How convenient is it to wear for whose with glasses?

As said in the Kickstarter FAQ:
"This really depends on the shape and size of the glasses. The developer kit is designed to sit as close to your eyes as possible which makes it a bit unfriendly for glasses. That said, we'll do everything we can to make it as comfortable as possible for the developer kit and we have a lot of great ideas for supporting glasses in the consumer version (especially since huge portion of the Oculus team wears glasses everyday!)."

[Renegadeknight]

Sounds cool, but not sure I would be comfortable wearing something that obscures my vision. I'm clumsy enough as it is. Probably stick with normal screens for the most part.

[Crator]

This is awesome! I am near sighted (can't see far at all) so I could probably take my glasses off to use it...

[Phisionary]

Of course this's a lot of hearsay, mixed among layman's opinions...

The resolution of the Oculus Rift is admittedly one of the limiting factors. No, the screen pixel count is clearly not high enough. However, I have read that the display is subjectively quite impressive despite it's limited resolution. Optical distortion of the lens means that the center area of the image has a somewhat higher pixel density than the peripheral areas.

Furthermore, this is a prototype, v0.1 The pixels-per-inch of the prototype OR is supposed to be about 250. The newest apple 'retina' lcd's are supposed to be about 325 ppi. By my estimate, a 325 ppi screen, same size, would be approximately WSXGA+ (1680×1050). Visually, that would be like playing a game on a monitor at resolution about half that of my desktop monitor, so effectively about 960x600. Better than I ever ran QUAKE at. Except this would be 90 FOV immersion, with modern engines driving it. Another few years, and a 500 ppi display at 2k pixels, and it's roughly comparable to what you'd see while desktop computing.

John Carmack arrived at supporting this project after he tried making his own hacked version, to overcome the latency issues of older VR products. For comparison, the frame-render interval at a 60Hz display rate, is 16 milliseconds. An ideal head movement latency, for being basically unable to distinguish the delay at all, is roughly 20 ms. The OR supposedly has feedback latency around 50-60 ms, which is better than previous VR, most at >100 ms. Still not ideal, but getting closer. More powerful graphics, and 120 Hz displays may improve this matter to a degree.

Lastly, the OR sounds generally incompatible with glasses, and is supposed to have an natural optical focus at infinity. The technique is compatible with adding a dioptre adjustment (as with a camera eyepiece) but AFAIK the prototype does not have this feature. I don't know what that means for nearsighted users. My distance vision is about 20:60ish, I don't think I'd miss much with the limited resolution of this model.

[Nordan]

That's some ordinary ski glasses with duct tape on them and a few cables for the lulz.

to be blunt y'all got trolled hard