Oculus Rift 600$$ Ridiculous.

My refrigerator is a Reality.Object.Device.Refrigerator, which implements IRefrigerator, ICuboidShape, IElectricalAppliance<T>, and IMassive<T>.

 

Oh yeah my fridge is

Reality.Object.Device.Refrigerator;
if(Rift){
foreach(item in items){
items -= 1;
}
}

void Update(){
if(items <= 0){
Debug.Log("YOU IS BROKE FROM THE RIFT FOO");
Rift = false;
}
}

hahaah

 

Code (csharp):

1. if (Fridge.isOpen) {
2.    Fridge.Speak("Are you eating again?! There goes your diet.");
3. }

 

I don't know...I can't help but think of another AI that does a "good" job of talking about weight...

 

radar + infrared + shape recognizing software + lasers?

 

Hahahaha really @Ryiah hahahaha

 

I just hope more people do what oculus is doing for how the hardware works. The competitors are either selling you a holder for your phone or a unit with a built in operating system. I want VR gear that's running on a machine of my choice!

 

Yeah I agree man!
Like why can't we have a Google Cardboard for PC? Have two cheap phone screens in it or whatever,
that way I can plow away things until I can afford to get a better one. Whether or not it gets me sick is besides that fact,
as I'm sure even the new rift will even slightly do this.

Just doesn't seem like it would cost much to get a basic DIY Kit like GCardboard just to get started getting things done for a better product later. I mean obviously if Google Cardboard can make it work with a Phone Screen, then surely somebody can have a pre-made cheap one made with a Phone Screen that displays your Computer screen.

 

I would, except I'm getting one for free.

 

I dislike it because it's a phone. Myo is a great technology, even in its beta state you can use it continuously for more than a day! A phone won't last streaming content nonstop and sending quaternion data over your wifi or whatever.

 

Not cool, so not cool, not cool at all, so not cool. lmao hahaah.

 

No I meant just in general there's gonna be something cheap that can just display something, doesn't have to be a phone screen, just something in general.

 

Now, go ahead, and list currently available fridge recognition software.

There's bunch of big problems you're gonna hit there, and frankly it'll be easier to just slap LCD screen onto the fridge instead.

The point is, you need device that understands what it is looking at. That kind of tech is in its infancy - meaning some guys in some labs are experimenting with it.

..and ruin your eyesight?


I checked the cardboard page before, it is a bad idea.

 

Didn't you hear - I have bionic eyes, so I'm good lol.

 

Step 1) Make your room very dark.
Step 2) Buy two monitors
Step 3) Get some non-glossy black material to place between the two
Step 4) Position your head so that your nose is lined up with the black material
Step 5) ???
Step 6) Profit!

 

I am not invested in this VR thing at all. Perhaps I'm jaded from the early 90's push for VR being a complete fizzle, but I never expected this to go anywhere (admittedly the tech does look interesting though). All the arguments for the price being justifiable are probably correct, this is a high-end piece of kit made for enthusiasts no doubt about it. I just wonder if this was the best way to build the initial VR market... ultimately the Rift is an expensive piece of plastic if there is no software that people want to use it for.

The big miss here seems to me that the price is locking out early adoption, or even just those who may be slightly interested, that would have fueled an expansion in VR demand for new and interesting software. It seemed from the beginning that Oculus was on board with giving developers as much as they could in order to ensure that the software would be ready once the hardware was.

The final pricing kind of feels like they dumped developers under the bus.

 

Might be a stupid question, but would that theory actually work? lol.

 

I think we'll have to wait a few years. So long as big money is behind the push for VR it'll all be good. What I don't think makes any sense is charging developers for hardware. If they gave this stuff out, you can be sure we would support it.

 

Have you guys forgotten what made Bluray popular over HDDVD? The one who does 3D Porn the best will win the market share

 

Nope, unless you're a dolphin or monitors are credit-card sized.

For humans, visible areas from both eyes overlap, so, you'll see that black area with both eyes and it will block roughly half of your field of view.

 

Yes, but the software will still need to be made for stereoscopic display and it won't be perfect. It would involve a lot of trial and error with different distances and monitors. Others have actually tried it by the way.

http://klub.stereofotograf.eu/dual_monitor.php

Console manufacturers are the most likely ones to give it to developers. If we're lucky Sony will do it.

 

Have any of you ever skated or swam or, lol, washed dishes at a restaurant, for many hours and when you got home and laid down or when went to lay down and fall asleep it felt like flying, superhero style, or still skating, or still swimming, or still washing dishes but in a way that felt good and it was a feeling in your muscle nerves only not visually or aurally?

That's what VR should try to simulate but you have to be laying down to experience it. Also, I am not sure how you get those flying feelings as I could never summon such feelings on whims.

 

All you need is a simple device capable of connecting to to wifi and storing its own position.

To perform a raycast you need

• The start position of you ray, obtainable from the VR device
• The direction of you ray, obtainable from the orientation of the VR device
• The position of the fridge, available from the fridges device

You could also go simpler as @angrypenguin suggested and skip the fridge device altogether and just build an internal model that contains the fridge on the VR device.

 

You reminded me of that university experiment.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/finally-virtual-reality-let-me-fly-like-a-bird

 

I disagree.
Not with your points, which are pretty much spot-on (except for 5 where I think you're generalizing a bit too much), but with you thinking any of this is bad.

To put it as short as possible: VR not becoming casual is a win in my book.
I'd rather have it end up as a niche product for a niche audience that's actually enthusiastic about it, than seeing corners being cut everywhere so it becomes accessible to Average Joe.

I have a DK2 and I know the potential of VR. The Rift is, and has been from the start, a very expensive toy for hardcore gamers and there's nothing wrong with that. Consumer-grade VR is bleeding edge technology. If they started putting in cheaper components so the price becomes more attractive for casuals, if they start to make sacrifices so the HMDs get smaller and stop "looking ridiculous" (you'd be surprised how often I heard that being brought up as an "argument"), the end-products would suffer from it greatly.


Keep in mind that this is me talking as a gamer, the consumer.
From the standpoint of a developer I don't really care. Sure, I get why some would be disappointed with it not blowing up and becoming a huge market, but I didn't want to make games specifically for VR in the first place.


Regarding 5:
The end-user knows. The end-user being gaming enthusiasts who actually care about such technology. You know, the people who funded the initial kickstarter campaign.

 

If you think about it games becoming very widespread haven't stopped NVIDIA from making a killing off high end graphics cards despite the fact that many games can be made to run on far less hardware. An ideal situation would be to have offerings both for those who are enthusiasts and those who are not.

 

You have a point.

There's not much point in buying bleeding edge GPU currently, but those things are still being developed and sold at high prices to people who apparently wants their hardware to be top notch ... for whatever reason.

I think that's sorta similar to the situation with "whales" in f2p gaming. And it could work for VR too.

 

While I respect your opinion, I disagree - to become relevant in the first place, a technology needs a basic amount of momentum surrounding it, such that an ecosystem forms. You need people willing to write software for the platform; you need software for the platform, so that end-users have a reason to buy and use the platform, which in turn feeds improvement of the platform and supports developers who create software for it.

Average Joe is exactly what's needed for VR to settle into a niche and mature as a technology - the only reason VR has gotten as good as it has over the last two decades are due to improvements in technology, and more recently improvements in the ability to have a project being funded (specifically Kickstarter, in this case.) VR hasn't improved due to being a self-sustaining technology - it's only improving at present due to money being shoved into it. VR is not improving of its own merits, whatever the potential is.

A small corps of die-hard fans is as good as anything, but it's not going to help this technology mature more quickly, or have a notable impact on the rest of gaming. In fact, if this tech continues to be a 'nerd toy', it will only continue to poison the context of the technology - right now, most people that think of VR think of the complexity to use and develop, and the VR sickness problem. If anything the smartphone revolution proved that you can take high technology, simplify it enough that any ol' idiot can use it, and you're sitting on a gold mine provided you get in early enough.

The reason I think this is bad, though, isn't because "VR is bad", or "The Oculus is bad." Quite the contrary - if given a chance, it will be a game-changing piece of technology. The reason the situation is bad - and, the reason I foresee ruin for the OR - is because VR is already on a bad foot due to previous VR failures. The consumer has a deceptively good memory. People do remember the Virtual Boy. People who suffered VR sickness in particular remember how pleasant that was. People who bought a PS3 remember their Buyer's Remorse. The OR in its current shape rubs all three wounds raw.

TL;DR - the Oculus is a great bit of tech that I do not foresee succeeding due in part to price, but also due to bad market context. The Oculus is the flagship VR product of this generation; while VR can't be dismissed out of hand, I do not foresee it reaching prominence in this generation of hardware. That being said, we are reaching the point where it does - I think it safe to say that, if the OR doesn't take off, we can see the light at the end of the VR tunnel. While that may be comforting, I think the price of VR being realized is going to include the people behind the OR and everyone who bought into it.

Super Duper TL;DR - I respect but disagree with you not due to the overall importance of VR, but due to the fact that I am looking at the overall importance of VR, while you're looking at the short term by your own words: that keeping VR as a 'nerd toy' keeps it somehow cool and hip, and to hell with the industry progressing or having something good and useful for the end user. It's not how many people you let in; it's how many people you keep out!* That very statement is why I say point #5 is a bad thing, and is hindering this technology and our field.

*: Name that movie.

 

Yeah... if it stays a toy for enthusiast tech nerds only then who's going to make content for it?

 

All I care about is that it's wired If I can't do something continuously for 6 hours what's the point?!

Me!

I've always thought of programming as a way to give a slice of your consciousness a physical form. Mix that with VR and you've got... real imaginary friends! And other people can interact with them too!

 

Enthusiast Tech Nerds? Who else did you expect to produce content for it? This is the crowd that was going to produce content for it anyway.

I personally don't have any problem with VR starting off a little smaller. Smaller experiences are going to be better for this format to begin with anyway.

 

Eventually video game companies, I would hope. And while they may be partially made up for Enthusiast Tech Nerds, they're also partially made up of sales people and marketing people and finance people and investors, and if the market is too small they're not going to back their Enthusiast Tech Nerds do anything too special for VR, because the ROI just won't be there.

If it goes mainstream, on the other hand, then all of those people are more likely to back the Enthusiast Tech Nerds to build Even Cooler Stuff, to the benefit of everyone.

Or, y'know, we could carry on with support from two well known major game titles and a scattering of demos?

The thing is, everyone who's purchased a Rift or similar so far has done so out of excitement about what will come in the future. If people stop believing that cool stuff is coming then even the Enthusiast Tech Nerds will eventually move on to the next thing.

 

its easy to build for about $60 lol
actually more like $25 but yeah

eehh,, and a good phones display but whatever

..its janks but fine for what i want it for (10mins check if stuff works lol)
to do it decent itd be about $200

i did all the research and sourced the parts, was waiting for this
$600 pfft.. okay iam set on my own lol

but yeah i never tried the rift or anything like it .. and iam skeptical, so im looking at going the DIY $50 route, just to see what its like

 

HoloLens will never cost less than the Rift - it's intended more for the visualization/industrial/research market.

What confuses me is that the Rift costs this much after being purchased by Facebook... you'd think that acquisition would have been intended for using the hardware to make more money off software sales, and therefore result in selling the hardware at a significant loss.

 

As much as Facebook is a large, dominant company, they are still playing in a new space with hardware. They made their fortunes on selling advertising and friend requests. Not physical manufactured goods. So it's possible they got the price point wrong.

As a general rule consumers will accept a price drop, they won't accept a price rise. Starting high and dropping lower if the initial point is wrong is likely a better strategy then starting low and trying to move up.

 

Despite how much I hate the price, I believe that is a correct way to look at it.

 

What about continuing to manufacture the lesser quality product and selling it for the original lower price? I don't care about graphics that much so I'd probably go for a dk1 or dk2.

 

I feel this is generalizing quite a bit. I'm going to buy VR just to have fun with it on my own and fiddle with it and Unity and I suspect a lot of other people are in that same situation. I feel like you would have to be oblivious to buy it now in anticipation of things to come. Wait until things come and then buy it if that's your agenda.

I hope you see the possibility of making a competing product if you mean it's possible to make one for 1/10 of the price they're making it for, and they are mass producing it for that price nonetheless, when you go into mass production think about your profits! But somehow I feel you're full of S***.

Palmer already said this, but I feel it's worth repeating. They decided that they had to increase the price for the quality of the product to be good enough. In my opinion that's a given. We've had VR before that wasn't good enough. My dev kit wasn't good enough, it was unusable because of how not good enough it was. And from my understanding the second dev kit wasn't good enough either. But the reviews and reports I've seen of the consumer version suggests to me that it is good enough. People say that the motion sickness issue is practically gone and that it's very comfortable to use for extended periods of time. If they had to increase the price to $599 to make that happen then so be it, there was no other way, in my opinion.

And the Oculus Rift (or any other VR device I reckon) is already intended for the enthusiast. The recommended specs for using it includes one of the latest model GPU's. Only enthusiasts have those so why try to target a wider market if only the enthusiasts have the hardware needed to power the device?

There's plenty of other gaming accessories that only target enthusiasts and have done so for decades. Things like steering wheels for racing games or joysticks for flight/space simulators. No ordinary person have ever bought those, but we still can if we want to. And some of those are insanely expensive compared to the Rift.

I feel like when the Rift launches and people see how awesome it actually is in a car racing game or a flight/space simulator or any other immersive game then it will get some hype surrounding it. Playing Half-life 2 and barely being able to walk across the planks bridging the two roofs in the first level because I was afraid I would fall down was unlike anything I've experienced in a video game in recent memory. Just let people have experiences like that with the Rift and I'm sure they'll want more of it. It was like dreaming, in my opinion. If I sat back and thought about it I would notice that the resolution was S***, or that it was laggy, or that I was indeed sitting in my chair at home, but when I let those things go I was Gordon Freeman running across the rooftops. And without the motion sickness I'm sure I would play any game I could that way.

Like I said (which may just be my personal opinion) it's not about graphics, it's about being able to use the device at all. I can't speak for the second dev kit, but if you had used my dev kit you would know. There's no way you'd feel like that was an acceptable compromise between price and quality. It's like a car driving on it's rims. Sure it's a bit cheaper than the full car, but it's pretty unusable.

 

Look at most technology, they all tend to start at a high price, VHS/BetaMax, Walkman, PC, Consoles, Mobile Phones.

Actually I'm hoping VR/AR follows the mobile phone development path, big chunky bricks to start with that are geeky gadgets to show off your wealth. That metamorphose into smart empowering interactive devices that no one can live without and most people can afford.

But if it's $600 just to get your head (about 8% of your body) into VR how much to get the rest of your body in?

 

I wish tech existed like in Video Game High School (loved that show). The way they play the games is sick. That would be awesome!

 

I would think that to get a proper sci-fi version of virtual reality we would need a way to put our actual body to sleep and instead send the nerve signals to a body double in the virtual space. I'm already capable of the first feat through sleep paralysis, but it's not pleasant.

A much more realistic, albeit limited approach would probably require a dedicated VR room. The simplest form of full body VR, in my opinion, would be to wear a Rift (ideally wireless) in a room where you were motion tracked in real time. I'm sure this is already possible and that people have already done it, or at least people will do it when the Rift is launched. Any games or simulations done in the room would have to take the room into account of course. Otherwise it could lead to a very unpleasant experience.

So to answer you question it depends on the real estate prices where you live, I guess.

 

you guys are lucky with the 600$. Here in Europe the occulus costs 699 Euro + 42 Euro shipping that's 806$ !!! Definitely too much! I'll stick with my DK1 here

 

Should Oculus's Logo Be!



Roll up! Roll up! only $600/£500/€700* to get your head in the game!

Excludes postage, packing, regional taxes and the high end hardware needed to run it at 90 fps.

But I think VR is amazing and hopefully it will be the beginning of a new age.

The age of the Metaverse/Virtual/Holodeck/Matrix.

 

This. Or at least give developer discounts.

 

This could become a big problem , pushing people to isolation themselves a lot more in virtual worlds and they will get addict to it.
This is not get real ,but get virtual

 

Look around you every day, how may people don't have their head in a mobile phone or computer screen of some kind.

A lot of them are using those devices to communicate with other people.

If VR is going to isolate people in virtual worlds why did the CEO of Facebook buy it for a few billion dollars???

I'll admit without eye and face/expression tracking VR will be limited in how well it can represent the users at first, but it's just the beginning.

 

Because they see potential profits there. I do not expect facebook to care about its user base, as long as people bring more money to the facebook, it wouldn't need to care if those people are isolated or not.

 

I don't think it's people who bring money to Facebook, I think it's their presence*, their time and their data they generate on Facebook that brings in money (ads, data, services etc).

So if VR takes off and people move away from Facebook to the 'Metaverse' they will take their time, attention and data with them. So if VR takes off facebook would wither and die without it's users time and data. IMHO.

The same goes for any online user driven service, twitter, tumbler, imgr, google. If VR takes off and their services are not represented in VR then they too will wither and die.

Just look at the history of AOL, it ruled the bulletin board system that was the precursor to the WWW.

*Did you notice the use of the word presence, that's what VR is all about being present within a Virtual World, spending time there and by interacting at a much more human level generating lots more valuable data.

 

It is the same thing. People and their data are product that is sold to advertisers.

More likely scenario that facebook will go along with vr, and will build another vr-based network then link it to facebook. Plus it'll spam ads right into your vr headset. I sorta would expect them to build 3d chat on oculus rift tech.

I think it is reasonable to expect any established business (survived few years, at least one non-idiot in the management) to aggressively pursue new frontier instead of ignoring it. I'll be incredibly surprised if all of those companies decide to ignore VR.

IIRC several years ago (2007?) Second Life used to be "the next big thing". Right now nobody mentions that, however the service is still around and generates money for its owners. Something similar might happen to VR.

 

@neginfinity have you tried VR, CV1 or Vive? It's just a lot of people seem to be amazed by the experience.