After mentioning it for weeks, my company's CTO brought in a dev version of the rift for me to try during some downtime today. Now, I'm no VR expert, but not a stranger either. I played VR Wolfenstein in Vegas back in 95 and VR Pacman in 99, but haven't played any VR since. Needless to say, after 14 years I was excited. Upon putting on the headset, I was greeted by a split up, jumbled Finder screen(was on a Mac). My first impression was that it does not handle non 3D content well at all. Soon enough, a demo was loaded up. In this one, you are a chicken running around a field. The immersive effect was excellent compared to how I remember previous VR tech. Unfortunately, it was marred by low pixel density that caused a very screen door like effect, and a blurry depth of field. Neither the CTO nor I could find a way to effectively adjust the focus. Pulling or pushing the front of the mask did a little bit but that was it. It was never very sharp except certain things drawn closer to me. (Note: 20/20 vision when last tested) Next was a sort of 3D Pong meets Arkanoid that used head tracking to move the paddle. It was pretty cool but the bluriness made it kinda odd, and sometimes it would lag and stutter when turning which would really fuck with the senses. I started feeling kinda strange during that one. I spent the next few minutes playing a demo where you walked around some spooky wooded area at night with head tracking controlling the view, aim/turn controlled by where you point the flashlight with the mouse, and your standard WASD controls to move around. After a short time, I had to stop. 15-20 minutes of wearing this thing and I felt completely seasick. The screen door effect, poor focus, and visual lag during head movements just sent way too many mixed messages from the senses to the brain. The sickness lasted a good hour and a half after stopping my use of the rift. This made my job coding quite uncomfortable during that time. The rift is definitley an amazing device. It provided an immersive experience like no other. As it stands, it is not yet ready for primetime. The poor focus, low pixel density, and laggy headtracking induced nausea make this so. I actually don't remember having any of these issues on the 90s VR systems despite the lower quality graphics. According to recent announcements from Oculus, this has all been fixed for the upcoming retail version. Overall, the rift in its current form is an important step in the right direction, even though it is better suited as a torture device than a gaming rig. I can't wait to revisit it after its official release.
Do you think that these issues are hardware or software based? If the screens are low resolution, maybe the next model will have better tech.
I think it's a little bit of both. On the hardware side, the headset has two binocular style lenses in it without the binocular style eyepiece or focus adjustment. Also, everyones pupils are a different distance apart, so lacking the ability to adjust the spread in order to center your pupils is problematic and can help cause motion sickness. On the software side, lag is way worse due to it being nausea inducing rather than just annoying like on a monitor. Regarding the resoultion, a recent announcement from Oculus said that they were planning on going 4k with it. If that's the case, it should help out with the pixel density problem if it stays the same size.
4K is a bit of a long shot- it's not quite a consumer standard product and there's not a heck of a lot of content at 4K either. It does only rely on one large panel on the inside, so if it was 4K, that'd be 1080p per eye. I can certainly see 1080p total, or maybe 1440p total. I can't see myself gaming with that thing. Gaming to me is a traditional, sit down with a controller/KB+M. Nothing more, nothing less. I'd probably just get terrible headaches anyway.
DefectX: http://allthingsd.com/20131017/ocul...sickness-experience-with-4k-display-ceo-says/ Garret: 3 games actually. The 3rd paragraph mentions 2 games, 3D pong meets Arkanoid, and the woods adventure. The first game was the chicken one. I did play another little demo between the chicken game and 3D pong where you just kinda had to move your head to make a cursor hit a target, but it wasnt very noteworthy and my write up was long enough. I would have tried more games, but in that short amount of time the device made me physically sick for the next 1.5 hours. Any longer and it woulda been pukin time; And we couldn't have that. After all, I was at work. Also, I just remembered another VR experience I had back in '99. It was at Disney Quest and you used a lightsaber of sorts. I remember thinking it was kinda cool at the time, but I'm really fuzzy on the details of this one.
i really want to try one of these, but kind of anticipated the issues you mention, i think it'll be a few generations / revisions before the device is really going to be worthwhile for the general gamer / consumer, but if anyone else is like me i've been waiting for this tech since the 90s lol so it's a huge step in the right direction
I have been saying since the first Occulus Rift press release that this thing would make many people sick. The question now is what percentage of the target customer base will not be able to use it because they get sick using it. Everyone poopoo's me when I say this, but its a very, very relevant question. Just like 3D cineplexes, I truly wonder if the companies during R&D went out and tried to get any hard data on what percentage of their customer base would get sick from using the product.
As a indie developer, I once conceptualized a F-zero like race game with oculus. That would have given almost all players motion sickness (duhh), but there are ways to decrease that effect. In a third person view you could for instance "rubber band" the camera so the movement is more gradual. Avoiding camera shaking at all cost. etc.Something similar can be done with first person view but than the with player movement. But yea, with speeds like F-zero you'd likely still have motion sickness. To avoid motion sickness at all cost with the Oculus you can only really make games, like giant chess, yu-gi-oh or DnD, that all play when the player it self is motionless. Basically a step up from AR card games.
Having a good manual focus, manual lens spread so that one can center the lenses to the width of their pupils, higher pixel density, and 0 headtracking stutter and lag would clear up a very very large amount of cases. Especially the focus and the lag. When it lagged really bad when turning your head, you could feel something come over your body due to the bad mismatch of messages to the brain from your senses.
Wouldn't the motion sickness be due to the conflict between the motion perceived by your eyes and the lack of motion perceived by the rest of your senses? Not to mention these games have motion blur, which humans don't process- the brain just copies frames and such to fill the time between eye movements. (see: clock takes longer when you glance at it) It's a nice concept that maybe the future generations will adapt to and incorporate into gaming, but I'll ultimately never see the point of having; a gimmick in my eyes (small pun intended). Like 3D games and movies. I feel like an old geezer. Get off my lawn you damn kids! Stop laughing at my laptop- I don't like tablets! Back in my day, we only had buttons on our controllers, cartridges for games and small, heavy televisions to look at. And by god we enjoyed it!
If you still have access to it there is a Macross/Robotech demo out there also. http://kotaku.com/theres-a-macross-game-on-the-oculus-rift-958606454
Did you try the original model, or the HD model? I tried the original (a developer's model) and the resolution was pretty crappy. The screens were too close to my eyes, too - they squashed my eyelashes! They said that both issues are sorted with the HD version, which was at the same show but I didn't have a go. It was still not bad, though. Yes, I did feel a bit sick after a while riding a roller coaster, though! Motion sickness is always going to be an issue with VR and headsets, but in fact it happens in gaming in general if you're not careful. I can't play Quake 3 for too long without feeling ill. Incidentally, they're still accepting orders for the dev kit, if anyone wants one: https://www.oculusvr.com/order/
I tried a Demo unit with Half-Life 2, I was very impressed despite the low resolution. The feeling of vertigo I got when looking down off a building was incredible.
Had a chance to test a unit at our company. I didn't have any problems with focus or blurriness, and the speed with which it reacted was impressive. Granted, we had it hooked up to a good pc, so maybe the mac is a problem there. The rollercoaster demo had me clinging to my seat, other demos were just as great. I think that this will be the number one accessory for the sim fan besides a good HOTAS, since you can move your head independently of the vehicle you control, and having your hands on throttle and stick eliminates the need to look at the keyboard. The best thing would be if future games would incorporate a technique where you could actually lock a target by looking at it and pressing a button, that should become the norm! Looking forward to play Star Citizen on the retail version. Bonus: since the retail version will probably run at 1920x1080 (for the first iteration, more if screens keep getting cheaper) it won't need a killer graphics card for most games
I dunno about flight sims. A HOTAS is great, but you can't control everything with it. And besides, can you really just feel your way to all the buttons? Likewise, you can't see where you've set the throttle. I don't see it working in that context.... in fact, it's a good illustration of an example where 3D goggles aren't going to be the best solution.
TrackIR is a much more suitable way to track head movements in that context, and it's already used in racing and flight sims.
Yep... I got a developer unit back in may... I've since sold it. I thought it was awesome, I could play some demos etc. But anything with advanced movements like HL2 created horrible motion sickness for me. I could handle about 5 mins of play time before I needed to stop. If I pushed myself to like 10-15 min. I would feel like shit for the rest of the night/evening. I'm not surprised though I can't even read a book while sitting in the passenger seat of a car.
True... but TrackIR is a bit sucky, really. It's too fiddly and awkward, you really need a monitor(s) appropriate to the size of the cockpit and, if you've got a springy floor, it freaks out if anyone walks around the room. My friend stopped using his - it's much easier without. I agree - I was constantly moving in really awkward ways trying to see controls in order to take off.
