Oculus Rift 600$$ Ridiculous.

This is the bit I don't get. Maybe it's just a difference in how were wording things, but I don't see why there has to be any dependency between the orientations of the body and head, or the orientation of the body and the direction of motion.

If you pay attention to how people move in everyday circumstances you'll realise that for a lot of short distance stuff we don't re-orient our body prior to motion. We do it during motion or sometimes not at all.

For longer distance motion we generally do orient our body with where we're going, as it's more efficient (improved stride length and such), but our head can and does still rotate freely and we look elsewhere quite a bit. Next time you walk for more than a few meters pay attention what your head is doing and where your eyes are naturally looking. A great example (where I live/grew up) is crossing the road, as we're taught from a young age to make sure we look to the sides as well as in front to do that, which we just couldn't do if our body or motion was constrained to where we were looking.

I think that if you did consciously lock your head's orientation to your body's orientation and constrain yourself to moving "forwards" you'd find it was very unnatural and inefficient.

 

We are talking about two different things then. That is the way that many FPS games in VR work now, and it is horribly disorienting. My method of "strafing" would involve turning your head to the side. Your body moves forward relative to its position. So your head is moving sideways relative to its position. Because your head is sideways, the brain expects movement to be lateral. Since we don't run sideways very often, the brain does not expect to see sustained lateral movement while the head is facing forward. This is why facing your body in any direction other than forward in a moving car will increase motion sickness. Under such a system, you could easily straighten your head out to see in front of you without changing the direction you are moving. The two controls become decoupled. Strafing in a conventional FPS was created specifically because making the natural motion, the one I described, was not possible. We need a system that decouples the head from the body in a way that is as natural as it is when we do it in real life. Once such a system exists, I personally see no need for strafing. Maybe the Wii board thing comes out and it feel natural. I dunno. I haven't done it. I'm only speaking from what feels natural to me, and what I suspect is the ideal scenario given my experiences.

 

Yeah, what I'm saying is that to me it makes sense that there's yet another level of decoupling. Regardless of where my head is pointed, I can move my feet such that my body moves forwards, or to its left or right, or backwards, regardless of where my head is pointing. And many natural movements on a day to day basis work that way. The idea of "forward" isn't really relevant.

As for whether that would actually work, or how such a control scheme could be devised that is practical... well, they're different questions yet to be answered.

 

This is what I set out to achieve with my Wii board hack, strafing came along as a natural extension of the work. In my setup the head and hips/torso can be rotated independently, up to a point, just like our real bodies. How much independent rotation you can get away with depends on the individual.
You can see the head and body are independent in my Tuscanwii video.

 

Yeah, that's because those are "designed" (if we can call it that) by performing a few incremental changes to something that was designed for very different and highly abstract use cases.

I wonder if the Wii U game Splatoon isn't a neat step in the right direction. They have standard third-person shooter controls, but added to that - as a whole extra "modifier" layer to the controls - is aiming. So you move around and control your character's heading with standard twin stick controls, but aiming is done on top of that.

I don't see that helping with nausea, and using any form of controller means we've still got at least one abstract layer in there (probably a practical necessity until we get holodecks), but the idea could help with decoupling "where I'm looking" from "where my body is" from "how I am moving".

 

Absolutely. Having not tried any of them, the most promising to me seems to be the omnidirectional treadmills or the full body motion capture suits. In those, if I am getting shot at by someone in front of me, It seems like I could easily keep my head facing towards them, and turn my body to the side to start running in that direction. This is exactly what strafing is trying to replicate. Whether it works that way or not, I can't say. Many things that I thought would work in VR just plain don't work.

Due to bandwidth limits, I can't watch your videos until midnight when the cap is lifted. If it's possible, I'm curious why you don't consider the more natural motion of looking in a different direction than you are moving preferable over the traditional strafe? Is it just because that is what you are used to in the old style?

 

That's exactly how strafing works in my setup. Since you haven't seen my videos, I am realizing we are probably in 100% agreement, just not on the same page
The idea behind my Wii Board movement interface was to get at least the same level of free movement you have in traditional FPS, but in a way that works for VR.

 

I had a chance to watch the video, but it's still not clear to me what you are doing. So I found a video with a partial example of what I am talking about. Look at this instructor talk about lateral movement:

He starts talking about it around the 7 minute mark or so. Notice how his feet are moving forward the way you do when you walk. He specifically mentions that walking sideways isn't natural or practical. He's also talking about short distances. I tried to find a video of someone covering the length of say, a long outer wall or something, but couldn't. I'm sure you've seen such a thing in videos before though. In former, short distance case, the instructor in the video keeps his body square to the target. When longer distances are covered, the body doesn't face the same direction as the feet, but is angled in a more natural fashion that allows a bit of comfort while still letting the gun properly rest on the shoulder.

In VR, for me at least, having my head angled in a way that makes the motion going past me make sense is important. This means the head and feet are in different positions. Or sometimes the head, feet, and body are all in different positions. For short distances, you may make side step shuffles, like a basketball player, or a shooter looking for just a small amount of movement. People don't actually walk sideways for any extended period of time, however. Take away the target, or the opposing basketball player, and people don't walk sideways at all. Hopefully that clears up what I am talking about.

 

You know, once upon a time, we were talking to a guy volunteering to unpaid animation position.

This guy (for some weird reason) tried to bedazzle us with his awesome skills (it is unpaid. WHYYY?), claimed to have awesome unity experience but sank and couldn't say much when I asked him if he ever assembled animation controller or worked with statemachine or know what is "root motion".

So, he asked a question. "But how would character move or perform special attacks in 3rd person camera? How would character move..." or something along the lines. At which point I made a terrible mistake. I said "Like in any other game. Like it was done Darksiders, for example". So, he got on youtube, grabbed a video, and discussion went to hell since that point. For some reason "Darksiders" got stuck in his head, so in every subsequent attempt to alter whatever vision of Darksiders camera control he imagined ... it was futile. "But in your demo character doesn't always turn around! In Darksiders...", "But in Darksiders video it looked differently!", "But in Darksiders video he doesn't do this or that!". Darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders, darksiders....

That thing went on for 45 minutes at which point the most patient person in the sky conversation blew up, shot up a screencast, fired unity engine and gave quick overview of unity animation facilities while trying to explain that dude what we'd want him to do, which took another half an hour.

Anyway.

Talking with you about strafing in VR reminds me of that Darksiders discussion.
I think you got hung up/caught up in unimportant detail that will be either of no consequences, or can be changed during testing phase easily.

Just remember any game with somewhat realistic character movement and try to remember ONE where it looked weird when people moved around while holding a gun. Most recent example is metal gear solid: phantom pain. The game is entirely root motion driven.

Rapid quake-style movement is pretty much dead in standard shooters. Sideways motions are done at walking speed, and you can dash only forward. And with that there's no issue.

 

Or maybe, since you've admittedly only had a very short experience with VR, you simply don't understand what I am talking about? There have been misconceptions, yes. But everyone else has managed to ask for clarification instead of whacking at straw men. I think by this point, I have explained quite well why the I don't think the traditional strafe, as it is done in a conventional FPS control setup works well.

 

Same experiences really. I do get carsick, and while this feels the same it's kind of the opposite. In a car it'll be because I'm reading while the car's moving (typically not on a straight motorway). In VR it's because I see movement (again, not straight-on), but don't feel it. It's the lateral movement i.e. strafing or moving forward and slightly at an angle that gets me.

Tracking movement is another problem, but that's a different kind of queeziness, more unbalancing I think is the best way I can describe it. Cardboard devices i.e. FreeFly are dependent on the smartphone's hardware for precision tracking, and on an iPhone 6 it's pretty sluggish (although impressively accurate).

And have you ever had the tracking stop working suddenly? Man that's enough to make me fall over. It's like your brain just broke...

 

Dig up your old post about shortcomings of unity light baking system, reread it and write like that in the future. Because that was a solid argument with good points.

And in your recent posts you for some reason prefer to be bitterly defensive in petty ways instead.

Not sure what the heck happened since that time, but that's not a good kind of development. It is disappointing to see cheap accusations of strawmanship from someone who actually has a brain and should be better than this.

Good luck.

 

Can't y'all just agree to disagree? I've noticed with you @neginfinity - you don't like to let things go, I'm sure most if any of us are not professionally train neurologists. The only thing we have to say is our on experience and opinion. @HemiMG has said his opinion/experience, and @neginfinity - you don't seem to want to let it go.

I mean there's nothing wrong with a debate, but the debate isn't going to get anywhere if nobody can seem to either understand each-other or agree to disagree after the first few posts.
It seems more like this is turning into an argument - that's the only reason I'm even saying anything.

 

I'll do that.

The thing is that dude wrote one of the best/well thought out posts about Unity lightmapping woes, and now it is all "strawman this, strawman that".

Disappointing.

 

Quoted for no particular reason

My LG is pretty responsive, but it does tend to drift a lot. I have no idea how abnormally it does it though, since it's the only thing I've used.

I haven't had it quit in the middle. But one time I put the headset on and the phone's sensors were going haywire. It was like I was having a seizure. Another time my friend's son handed me the headset to help him find the exit in a game he was playing. Since I didn't put it on in the same position that he took it off in, my character was facing a completely different way than me. I was stumbling all over the place.

Since other people were confused about what I meant by strafing, I have no problem admitting that I should have explained myself better. But I'm pretty sure, in a discussion about movement, that not many people thought I was talking about space shooters when I mentioned realism. You also completely failed to recognize the point I was making about changing input paradigms and took the post literally. I'm also pretty sure that I've posted at least three fairly detailed explanations of what I meant. And yet, in all of them, you've attacked my communication style rather than explain what it is you are still confused about. But you know what? Fine. I'll admit that it was all my fault. So now the ball is in your court. What is it that I have said that you don't understand? Make an attempt at communicating and I will communicate with you. Several people here have managed to do that, I'm sure you can too.

 

I completely lost interest to the subject at this point, the discussion turned out to be disappointing, so I'll just take my leave instead.

Have a nice day and have fun.

 

There are a few of us with a tendency to do that. What's worse is when we get into disagreements with each other.

 

Good writeup on Toybox, which is the sort of thing I can get behind.

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/oculus-rift-toybox/

 

Vive starts shipping April. Cost: $799 USD. That sounds relatively competitive with the Rift considering that you get motion controllers with it.

 

Good point although what's the betting Oculus $600 + controllers aim to undercut or match the Vive.

I think the twin trackers is a big factor for Vive, Oculus would have to add a tracker and the controllers to match it for practicality.

 

@Arowx: If I recall correctly Oculus has stated the price will eventually go down. We'll have to see if it goes down by the time their controllers are released.

 

I bet that the Oculus Touch will be at least $150 and will come with one extra camera. I don't think that the field of view on the cameras will allow as good of tracking as the lighthouse lasers.

In the end, I bet that the price will be similar between the two but the Vive will give a better whole room experience and the Rift will have a better headset. I think that the Rift will get better sales because I think that people that play car sims and flight sims will be important early adopters and they won't care about motion tracking.

I'm starting to see other companies have similar ideas to me so I can't afford to get caught flat footed picking the wrong tech so I'm getting both as well as the STEM system. It will be interesting how it all shakes out. I'm getting pretty excited. Rift, Vive and STEM coming between March and May. I created a branch of my project and ripped out the old Sixense plugin and added the new STEM plugin. I guess I have to learn how to develop for the Vive now.

 

With prices like that, cheapest cintiq drawing tablet ($1000) looks like a better way to spend the money than VR headset that doesn't even include a data glove.

 

I'm buying one... When retail prices are $50.

 

You're all boring - this is the FUTURE!

 

Or a Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

 

Prices are a total joke, it'll never go massmarket at these prices. But I suspect mass market isn't the goal here... there is a premium market for every market.

The premium market decides if there will be consumer level versions later as it funds that.

 

A Cintiq or a surface pro would be a luxury item for me but for my project to be successful I absolutely need good motion tracking. I have Wii motes, PS Move, Kinect 1 and 2, Razer hydra, Rift DK 1 and RiFt DK 2. None of them have been good enough except for the DK2 which only does head tracking. At one point, I came close to buying a Optitrack system but that is a little pricey. I've tried the STEM system for a couple minutes so I am optimistic that it will work but I won't know for sure until I get my own and get a chance to test it thoroughly.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if the plan is similar to that of GPU manufacturers. Start off with the current model as the highest tier available and sell it exclusively for a while. Once a more capable model is developed the current model will become a lower tier and the new one will be sold at the premium price.

 

Wait until Apple does VR

 

And people think $600 is a premium price. Apple will sell you something with 1/4 the spec and 4x the cost
source: long time apple customer who just purchased a windows desktop

As for motion controllers, sixense seems to still be on schedule for april.

 

Until I have 50 grand in my bank account, I will not see the use of Oculus Rift, ever.
Because it has to be worth my investment to develop with, protect my self from risk of failure with money put to the side.
I don't think there would be enough of a market to sell E.G. - 100K of any game I make.
Granted a regular Computer game I may not even get that either, however - the chances of reaching 60 Million PC games is higher than 300K Rift users.

Just my opinion though.
I'd love to have one, but not at that cost.

 

Oh don't get me wrong, I plan on investing in VR, and will pay the cost. I'm just not totally sure everyone else will yet

 

@hippocoder - I'm perfectly fine with my FreeFLY VR Headset, 93 (with shipping). 120 degree FOV. Any Phone from like 4.5 to 5.5 inches will fit it. With my 6 Dollar Phone app, (And contacted the developer of this app) which has it directly streamlined into Unity (which I have the plugin). The latency is like 0.2 to 0.5 MS between Head Tracking, etc, which isn't bad (and that's through WIFI) USB Tethering will be faster than that.

So it will work with PC, Mobiles,Consoles, etc.
So I think that's more worth the investment than 600 + 1500 for a PC capable of it.

 

OK but I'm talking from a dev standpoint, most people with money to burn on VR will also have money to burn on games. It's why Apple's store is so successful.

 

People likely to spend $600 on a VR HMD are likely already on a system with enough power. You basically just need an approximately $300 graphics card and a processor capable of driving it. They may need to buy a card for additional USB 3.0 ports but that's about it.

 

Don't you still need a PC capable of driving it? Having a different headset won't magically lower the rendering requirements.

Also, if that turns out not to be true then large-scale content development won't take off. That stuff costs boatloads of money, which means it needs to be backed by a business, and that only works if there's a market of people willing to buy things.

 

Only if you're streaming to the phone.

 

That's so rad...

 

@angrypenguin - granted I do have quite a powerful PC (8 core 4.6Ghz) and Radeon R9 290.
But I don't think that's required to have a powerful PC.

You can look into the App I am using, (the Unity Streamline plugin isn't out on Market yet) so the App to Computer Server may not be as good, the App to Server definitely has a longer latency time between rotation tracking.
But the App is called TrinusVR http://trinusvr.com/

But keep in mind as mentioned above - the Unity plugin it's self is WAY faster than the App to Server that people currently get.
It will be on Asset Store soon once he knocks out some of the Bugs in it from what he's told me, I guess I'm his lab rat lol.

But it's a wonderful App though.

 

I finally broke down and ordered it after swearing I wouldn't. It's the only way to scratch the new gadget itch that I have.

Ships in July so I have to make do with the DK2 for now, which I really look at like an archenemy at this point for the nausea it causes.

 

@tiggus - all I know is, my phone setup doesn't get me sick one single bit, I've even intentionally tried, swung my head around for like 30 minutes repeatedly and felt just fine lol. (And I know I can get Motion Sickness), I was on a boat once for like 3 minutes and I was out lol. (Was trying to learn Off Shore Crabbing). the men driving the boat had to go right back to the dock and drop me off lol.

 

Oculus or Vive?

 

Oculus

 

I was referring to having a similar experience to the Oculus. Saying that it's cheaper is only relevant if the experience is equivalent. I'm not knocking the linked headset, I'm just saying that the beefy PC can't be taken out of the equation if you want to do the same things.

 

@angrypenguin - No what I meant was, I don't think it needs a powerful PC.
All it's doing is projecting the Game WIndow onto your Phone and uses the Gyroscope or whatever to control the mouse for head tracking. Nothing more. The quality of the headmount gives the expecting results of Immersion.
Mine is so immersive I can't always even see the entire phone lol.

It does have the option for actual position tracking if you have said sensors though.

EDIT -

From what I can tell, at least with the Unity Plugin.
Your phone needs to be a decent phone, nothing less.
It's not your PC giving the smooth results, but your Phone.
I got the LG G3 and it works flawlessly.

 

I must be missing something... that's exactly what I mean. That's not the same as a full VR experience with Oculus or similar.

 

The only thing it's not offering right out of the box is if you leaning to the side, that isn't required.
Full head/body rotation is enough to get a really fun enjoyable experience.
You can get the sensors (as the App does support them). I haven't even looked up pricing for them honestly.
But the options are there to do it.

I'm sure the sensors aren't too much nevertheless.
Even if they are 150 dollars. 243 dollars is still way cheaper than the rift + setup for average folks.
So with the sensors, you'd still have just as much immersion as the rift.
(Granted - it doesn't make me sick) but that's me.

But I mean you get what you pay for, I can still notice pixels once in awhile depending what I'm looking at, but it's not enough to ruin the gameplay (for me). Granted it might be because I think I got a 4K phone screen, it's either 4K or 2K I don't remember. I know I got a 4K Camera at least.
But that may explain why I don't really notice pixelating much.


EDIT - the price of 243 includes the cost of my FreeFLY VR headmount as well.

 

About the motion sickness, for the people who guess, Gear VR refresh rate is 60 frames per second (and no positional tracking), versus 75 for the oculus dk2, still it is (at the moment) a way more comfortable experience in my opinion. A badly coded demo can get me sick on dk2, but in the Gear VR you'll get a constant framerate that makes all the difference, because thankfully Oculus don't allow poorly designed apps on the Gear VR store. Most of the time, regarding vr, the hardware is not to blame, developpers are.

 

@tiggus any plans to use it wirelessly? Have you cleared a space in your house to move around in with vr?