Awhile ago I made this image <a href="http://i.imgur.com/yaIpP2r.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/yaIpP2r.jpg</a> describing an arena where virtual combat could take place with Oculus Rifts. I used some hand-wavy idea of tracking user position via wifi (dumb idea), but with Oculus positional tracking, I wonder if this arena concept becomes closer to reality?<p>Edit>> link to original thread <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fxpqb/xpost_from_rcrazyideas_airsoftlike_arenas_with/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fxpqb/xpost_from_rc...</a>
Tested have an interview/hands-on where they discuss why Oculus have used an optical approach with the external camera to track head movements. They note that it was superior to various other methods they tried. Wonder if eventually it could work with typical laptop web cams?<p><a href="http://www.tested.com/tech/459692-ces-2014-hands-oculus-vrs-crystal-cove-prototype/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tested.com/tech/459692-ces-2014-hands-oculus-vrs-...</a><p>Also worth watching that video to hear about the switch to an OLED screen and the latency advantage there. Employees at that company must have so much fun trying all the alternatives to build the best product.<p>(My dev kit in Australia is for sale if anyone is interested. Email in profile. It's amazing, but I'm curious more than I am a software developer so it might be more useful to someone else.)
I've been following the Oculus CES coverage somewhat and by far the most in-depth interview/coverage has been by the Tested folks. Here's their video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNQHNkJY1g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNQHNkJY1g</a><p>The most in-depth discussions probably happen on the Oculus Developer Forums and the Oculus Subreddit. RoadtoVR is good for general coverage on HMDs and peripherals.
Awesome. The golden age of VR may finally be upon us. It's been talked about for probably 20 years but now all the technology to support this at a reasonable cost seems to be converging. I think in 10 years we'll look back at this in a similar way to how we look at Wolfenstein 3d, when everything changed.
Did I hear him say "gaze detection" near the end of the video? <i>that's</i> also a big deal I haven't heard anything about anywhere else.
Tried it out yesterday. Really a major improvement, and they're listening to feedback. The method of producing 'low persistence' is quite interesting, and only works becuase of the move to OLED. Really smart guys there.
Does anyone know when this will be released? It says Prototype Model and then there is a developer kit. I am not a big fan of Developer Kit as they tend to be far from ready to be a consumer product. Also add the price factor. Ditto goes to Google Glass which has a developer edition for $1500 (of course only for selected/invited ones) but if it ever becomes a reality i.e. meaning a real consumer product and drops the price to $300 then I will not be happy since it cost me $1200 more and the latest model may have better h/w components.
Every time I see these guys I think they are the next game console. Basically something that doesn't connect to your TV at all except perhaps if other people want to see what you are doing.
Hrm.....I have to say that the technology is really cool, but the video makes it look like nothing more than a gimmick. Notice "makes it look".<p>They picked a tower defense game to demo this? Really? Who's gonna want to have full upper body motion (lean in, out, sideways, up, down) to play a tower defense game? A few people, for the novelty of it.<p>This type of marketing is very unfortunate. It's a technology with a lot of really cool potential and this video made it look like a gimmick.
I saw a video of some of the Verge guys trying it out at CES, and pretty much all of them were like "I don't want to take this off" at the end. It sounds like Oculus Rift will change gaming forever, and not just gaming.<p>There could also be done a lot of revolutionary new things with movies, like seeing through a character's eyes, etc (cameras mounted to the main character Google Glass style?). Even watching a normal movie on Oculus Rift is probably going to be a better experience than going to the cinema, because you could virtualize the cinema in front of you, and recreate that atmosphere.
They gained a huge asset with Carmack working full time for Oculus. I'd never have been interested in this, but now I am. It's progressing very nicely.
Now I'm thinking I ought to start thinking about a 3-D desktop environment. I know it sounds nuts to use this technology to just render a browser and a bunch of terminal windows, but that could be an awesome working environment.<p>It is neat to have bigger and higher resolution screens, but I can only read the text at one point in space anyway.
I hope that while they're putting the finishing touches on the current product, and work on deploying it soon, they will also keep in mind what the guys at Avegant are doing, and either do their own R&D with this type of technology for future products, to completely eliminate the screen and the need to use UHD or higher resolutions in the future (or at least not for sometime), while making it easier for the eyes, or they buy them out.<p>The technology does have some major disadvantages like a smaller field of view compared to Oculus, but perhaps they can fix that. After all, VR headsets like Oculus also had very small field of views before, too.<p>To me, having the image projected onto your retina seems like a technology that has greater potential for virtual reality, even if it starts with a slightly bigger handicap than Oculus did.<p><a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-glyph/4505-34900_7-35833856.html" rel="nofollow">http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-glyph/4505-349...</a>