Virtual Reality

And I don't want to be that guy, Column, but getting one of the first Developer Kit 2s and then complaining that there's little content for it seems a little self-destructive.

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You're reaching Tuco, I have enough information from the demos that are currently out that the Visuals are not that much better.

Like I said take a gander at the link above, change it from 720p to 1080p, and that is what you will be looking at. Now change it from 720p to 4k, and that is where it should be at.
I thought that site was a joke ,and it couldn't possibly be that minimal. It was more accurate then I feared.

So yes after reading how glorious it was going to be I'm a tad miffed.

Everyone else I could give a shit what there impressions are, most of them this will be your first VR experience ever. I'm obviously over the shock value of VR by now, and now I want clarity.

One thing that is positive about the OLED is they do true black. That shit is dark as fuck.
When I was running around in the My Neighbor Totoro demo, the woods were insane. I couldn't see anything until the magic cat bus lit it up.

So a game like Outlast that worked with vorpx on the DK1 would be soo creepy on a DK2.

My first reaction after about 5 minutes use... Column was right on the money about everything. Unfortunately. I'll report more tomorrow after I spend more time with it.

Tuco_sl said:

The Samsung HMD and the Oculus HMD will be pretty similar. Even the DK2 is literally a note3:
Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 Teardown - iFixit

From what I can tell the big differences are that Samsung's HMD will probably be a box you can drop your existing Samsung(tm) mobile device in that has lenses and maybe some other features. The IMU, display, software and renderer will all be contained within the device itself. Meanwhile the Oculus HMD will be an independent system with a display, IMU, lenses and HDMI/DisplayPort input. It will additionally have some form of positional tracking (probably via the same IR leds in the DK2. They might do something different if they can get it to work, but I'm thinking they'll stick with the leds and possible have a bunch on the head straps).

These are two very different products: One is an addition to their smartphone feature set (made possible only by the world class display Samsung has). The other is basically a PC peripheral. There's no reason to expect that the integrated GPU + whatever IMU they use + the cases/lenses would be able to beat Oculus' system that uses a custom IMU, more strict case/lenses, positional tracking + all the power in your desktop PC.

It's possible Samsung will attempt to compete with Rift and offer a device that can take PC input, but I don't think they will. That possibly depends on how much of a market Oculus creates in the next five years and how their partnership holds up with Samsung. Right now it's possible they're sharing profit in addition to technology and Samsung is able to cheaply leverage it's fantastic displays for loads of cash. I actually think in ten years time the number of VRBoxes made to put your smartphone in could outsell the number of PC-periphial HMD's ten to one. Having an HMD to play AAA games with is pretty compelling for our kind of market, but having an HMD to live in a virtual world is compelling to many people with a smartphone.

And I don't want to be that guy, Column, but getting one of the first Developer Kit 2s and then complaining that there's little content for it seems a little self-destructive.

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I misunderstood then. I thought the Samsung version would take advantage of the screen, audio, accelerometer and other stuff already in the phone and you would still plug it into your pc while still possibly taking advantage of the phones cpu. Basically cutting the cost of all that stuff they would have to put into a stand alone unit by just pluggin your phone into the headset.

I spent an hour last night going through all of the demos that had been updated for DK2 and also had a buddy over who has tried my DK1 and he went through the demos as well.

I had about 8 demos to go through, way more than I had when I first received my DK1. The oculus service did crash on me a few times. It is new, it is buggy, there isn't much content yet - I harbor NO butthurt about these issues as I know they will all be resolved. All I care about right now is the hardware.

I ran into an issue right from the start, the DK1 has a break-out box that accepts a standard hdmi cable, the DK2 does not have this break-out box, which in itself would normally be an improvement, but in its place it has a built in HDMI cable and the instructions explicitly tell you NOT to extend this as that may introduce issues. Well, with my setup I have to extend it as my pc is stored in a server room and not in my family room. I needed to make a home depot run and buy a female to female HDMI adaptor before I could even get started.

I set up the camera. Is Column has noted, the camera itself is decent, the mounting solution for it is not so good. I also have what I consider to be a pretty normal pc setup where I have a 1440p wall mounted panel, a desk below it pushed up to the wall, and I set at the desk. I am nowhere close to 5'away from that camera and there is no good way for me to get 5' away.

I have seen a youtube video of the properly setup camera and it seems to work well, this was not in a normal gaming environment though. In my more normal user environment the camera did not work well, I ran into the same tracking issues that Column has already noted. When it works it is pretty cool though.

The contrast ratio on the new panel is much improved, the blacks look great compared to the washed out grey on the old panel.

The resolution is improved but nowhere near where it needs to be for me to be happy. Column has a link above that simulates the different resolutions, we absolutely need a 4k panel for this thing to really shine. I now believe that 4k is the minimum for a truly great experience, and that we will need even higher resolutions than that eventually.

As long as I didn't move my head the picture looked good and sharp, whenever I moved my head I immediately see blurring of the pixels. I had thought that was supposed to be resolved with this panel, and what is pretty funny is that I have seen no mention of this anywhere - except on this thread where 3 of us have noted it. Maybe we need to drink more Kool-Aid, dunno.

I am not upset I bought it, I am going to collect all of these things, but it was a let-down in that I don't see myself doing a lot of gaming on this particular iteration of the hardware, it will be more of a novelty item to show to people. At this point I actually hope they hold off LONGER on the consumer version and really nail the specs.

TLDR: Column was right about everything. If you haven't ordered this one yet I would hold off and wait for the consumer version.

Well I think they plan to do a 4k HMD but it will be mobile. So expect simple games. They keep flip flopping on it though, so who knows what will happen.

Maybe they will just come up with something entirely new.
I'm wondering if the smearing is just a Samsung thing, because my Vita ( also a OLED screen) never smears.

There best bet is going the mobile route that way people will have the 4k, then over 5-10 years we will have caught up to doing 4k pretty easily on all platforms.

For the masses it really needs to be 4k tho, releasing a consumer product early that doesn't look good will just make it a toy, and a gimmick much like 3D.

Groover_sl said:

So it shouldn't be doing that; it should appear much better than on DK1. I had a similar problem - at least with Tuscany. Load it up and hit space. What fps is it showing? Unless it's pegged at 75, vsync is fucked up. For whatever reason when using the new sdk, DK1 w/ vsync works as it should, but DK2 gives 30-40 fps and looks like a blurry mess. Without v-sync (hit v) it's suddenly 900+ fps and pretty damn good. I'd say it's perfect for slower movements, but there's still some noticeable but minor pixel lag in high contrast changes during faster movements. Hit p and you can enable/disable low persistence. I really hope there's a way to tweak the persistence duration - I think it'd be worth the additional dimming.

On another note... Having done some more testing, at least for me it would seem the horizontal fov loss is much higher than what's been suggested by Oculus. I measured 116 degrees on DK1 and just ~97 on DK2. Going to try some games tonight to see if the peripheral loss is as bad as that sounds.

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Groover I tried doing all of what you suggested in the Tuscany demo. Hitting V does shut off V-sync. Doing that causes my framerate to shoot from 75 up to 200'ish but there is tearing and it looks like shit. Turning off low persistance mode makes it brighter but also makes things look like shit.

I had it set up correctly from the start and v-sync forced on by my geforce panel. The blurriness from movement is subtle but it is there, probably a limitation of the oled panel as Tuco mentioned above.

When you say that 4k is the minimum, is that because of lack of visual clarity or because of the screen door effect?

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Visual Clarity, When you switch between that chart and go up from 720p to 4k with persistence it is pretty damn good.

Screen Door is fairly good right now, It feels like you are in that virtual world. Of course it could be better.

Column_sl said:

Visual Clarity, When you switch between that chart and go up from 720p to 4k with persistence it is pretty damn good.

Screen Door is fairly good right now, It feels like you are in that virtual world. Of course it could be better.

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The screendoor looks like dogshit to me but I've been watching front projection displays for the past 25 years and am probably more attuned to it than the average user. I'll pay whatever it takes to get the video cards necessary to render at 4k 100hz or whatever it winds up being but your average Joe might not and I realize they can't cater to the top 10% and expect to make it a business.

Maybe instead of taking one panel and splitting it down the middle per eye they can do what Valve did with their prototype VR set and use two separate smaller displays rotated into portrait mode, that way each eye gets its own panel. Then maybe you could get away with less than 4k.

My rift is arriving today and Elite Dangerous is installed and ready! There is only one problem, do i risk leaving to run out and buy a flight stick before UPS arrives.... man first world problems at their finest!





Forin

The new SDK came out today. Allot of games still have no support tho =(

Try it out later this week.

Got the rift working with Elite Dangerous......... nothing will prepare you, hands down worth the $75.00 to sign up. One of the most exciting moments in gaming I have ever had!! Now I need to figure out how to play the silly game. It seems seem complicated!




Forin