The by far most interesting comment from the thread is this one (It's by Alan Yates who works on Vive/SteamVR) <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4osav8/lighthouse_tracked_osvr/d4geko7" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4osav8/lighthouse_tra...</a>.<p>>Of course. We want AR/VR/MR to be ubiquitous.
Over the past four years or so I've seen many companies big and small bring their demos to show and tell. They all have bits and pieces of the larger puzzle. Good eye tracking, interesting haptic techniques, next generation display technologies. But most of them are narrowly focused on their thing, and struggle alone to make a successful product. Partially this was just because the market didn't exist but also many of them were/are just trying to boil the ocean. The minimum viable product is now a pretty high bar and that can stifle innovation. We can offer a running start, the traditionally "hard" parts of HMD technology, the things other than GPUs that kept VR niche for so long.
In return we ask that your device leveraging our technology works with our platform. And mostly that is it. We won't ask that it only works on our platform, we won't stop you from targeting other industries. This gives both you and your users freedom of choice and security that isn't dependant on either party's future decisions. It is a pretty good deal really. Our platform has a rapidly growing collection of great content for your end-users so your product won't be an orphan and you don't need to convince anyone to author for it. Day one people can fire up Tilt Brush and have their minds blown by your awesome new hardware.<p>If Valve games are "locked" to SteamVR and won't play on Oculus, then nobody is going to buy an Oculus. Does Facebook really think that people are going to choose Lucky's Tale over Portal 3 or Half-Life 3? Facebook is going to have to capitulate and focus on their hardware advantage.
In all of my experiencing of the new VR products, I am firmly in the position that it's not ready for public consumption yet and won't be for quite some time. The only real reason it's being pushed hard is because people have a fear of missing out. Meanwhile, if I were a company I'd be focusing on AR, because at least there you can push for enterprise customers which won't need the full immersion yet that a general consumer will clamor for. (I also think AR has a much brighter future)<p>I expect a lot of VR units are shown off to friends and thrown into the closet or put on a shelf to collect dust. It's something you show off, but not something you'll (at least 98% of people) use.
The Valve publications page has a few slides and documents relating to Valve presentations regarding VR:<p><a href="http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/publications.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/publications.html</a><p>One of my favorite tidbits comes in the presentation, "Lessons learned porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality", on preventing VR motion sickness: <a href="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2013/Team_Fortress_in_VR_GDC.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2013/Team_Fortress_...</a><p>> <i>Don’t change the user’s horizon line, ever. You can see here how the camera follows the motion and rotation of the character’s head and so it rolls. Your actual head isn’t going to roll when you get killed by an Eyelander, so the mismatch will make you sick.</i><p>Here's the presentation's video, bookmarked at the aforementioned insight:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/Gpr0FE2ATaY?t=19m36s" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Gpr0FE2ATaY?t=19m36s</a><p>For those of you non-TF2 players, the "Eyelander" is the name of a player-wieldable sword, and when it connects, the victim's head flies off and rolls around the ground. Apparently simulating that effect (changing the user's "horizon line") will make people very sick.
Of all the gaming companies, Valve makes the most sense to be this heavily invested in VR--given their stake in the PC-industry.<p>Or maybe too many devs thought VR was the coolist project to work on and moved to it. (Valve is known for their flat structure <a href="http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...</a>)
Half-Life 3 on VR would be the killer app. It would be this generations Lotus 1 2 3.<p>Though I personally feel VR for video games are a lot like Wii its awesome for a while then its collecting dust throughout the world. I really think the future is Augmented Reality and VR will be for mostly media consumption.
Jeri Ellsworth of CastAR (ex-Valve AR/VR hardware guru) did an interview recently* where she mentioned that Valve was kind of "painting themselves in a corner" by gearing their system's performance to play AAA-title games.<p>Now owners of those consoles will expect <i>every</i> game to be an AAA title.<p>* <a href="http://embedded.fm/episodes/156" rel="nofollow">http://embedded.fm/episodes/156</a> @ 53:20
I wish they would get back to what they used to do - make actual computer games. I still can't shake the nagging suspicion that the recent VR hype is just the product of the every-decade-or-so fad cycle (similar to what happened in the 80's with it).
Side observation.<p>So Valve now has an better VR Set then Oculus. And all of a sudden every news on VR seems to flowing in Valve direction.<p>This reminds me a lot of the early days when we move from iD 's Doom to Valve's Half Life.<p>Note: ( John Carmack = CTO of Oculus and Founder of iD )
I have been using an Oculus Rift for a few weeks and the experience is breathtaking. For example, there is an Apollo 11 educational game where you get to experience the mission from the point of view of Neil Armstrong or Michael Collins. I think it is hard to argue that "experiencing" history isn't far superior than reading about it. And the pure games like EVE Valkrie give you a cold sweat they are so immersive. Just my The cost right now are high, but no more than an iPhone. I think mainstream isn't too far away. My $0.02 at least.
Why wouldn't they? The computer industry is stagnating because people can use phones and tablets for most of their computing needs. VR has the potential to drive sales of high-end hardware again. And Valve has skin in that game.
I've just spent a week here in Shenzhen, China. What was the most impressive thing? There are literally entire floors in the electronics markets here filled with VR headsets. Even if it's early stage hardware, someone has to be buying them.<p>As for killer apps, like every other technology it's a fair bet that commercial success #1 will be porn.<p>From a more cognitive standpoint, I've long felt that what segregates spatial awareness from other senses is the sheer volume of data that can be presented, reasoned with and remembered. As old school hunter-gatherer-wanderer primates, it's our highest bandwidth input. This reality will eventually be utilized for problem solving (eg. VR excel spreadsheet visualizations and black box / static code analysis may become a non-gimmick norm).
VR is amazing and the opportunity is incredible. However, I am worried worried that the technology to produce high enough resolution displays will take some time to get here. Without smartphones driving the demand, will we get to 5-10k dpi displays for VR tech? We have 800 or so dpi displays rolling out, with current generation devices filling their FOV with about 500 dpi screens. We're driving 1.3-1.8m pixels per eye, but that is not enough if you want to pretend to gaze at something 20 meters away. The pixel density, especially in the center area of the display, should be much higher. Otherwise only abstract low polygon count content will work.
So one third of Valve is working on VR... absolutely definitely not working on Half Life 3 or Portal 3. Which pushes their possible/probable/hypothetical release dates even further into the future. :-(
After reading this thread, I have to comments:<p>1. Exclusivity on a headset? Replace "headset" with "monitor" and you get how childish, stupid, and impractical that will be.<p>2. I don't think monitor based games will transition well to headsets.