Oculus Rift
 

This has to have the potential to be the biggest thing in gaming tech since id released Quake. I'm surprised there's not a thread!

If you don't know what it is, it appears to be genuine, bona fide head mounted VR. Like, proper edgeless display, track your head properly, feels like you're there VR.

Here's the developer's website, they got almost 10x the funding they were looking for with Kickstarter:
http://oculusvr.com/

I first got excited about it watching Carmack's keynote speech at QuakeCon. This is an epic watch if you have the time and are into game and particularly display tech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk

Reviews seems almost universally positive, although Carmack reckon's there are still limitations with head tracking that for some particular movements may cause nausea. He also stressing it's still a few years away from a consumer device.

Doom 3 BFG edition has already been roughly converted for it and other games are already announcing they will support it (I'm really hoping one of the upcoming Mech games will support it.) So yippee!

yep, been following this for months, its awesome.

im going to wait for the 1080p gen2 version.

Pretty much word for word what I was going to write. Gen2, be it by them or someone else will have a better screen, lower latency and better all around tech. At this point its the Voodoo card, waiting for the Geforce 256 to come out.

Almost ponied up for a dev kit during the kick start.

I figure you mean the release version (i.e. not the kickstarter dev kit they're releasing soon)?

Cause res is pretty low on the agenda for me. What will make it is decent body awareness so tilt and elevation can be tracked. Without that it'll still be awesome, but far from its potential. Of course, bad-ass res is gonna be important too. I wonder what kind of pixel density you'd need to get a "retina" display at two inches...

Still would love one the dev kit ones, it's not that much cash...

1080p makes good sense when the screen is 46" across the diagonal and 10 feet away; does it really make that much difference when it's attached to your head and an inch or two from your eyeball?

As for me, I'm also waiting, but that's more to see if it's actually going to take off / be more than a toy with two game support. I'm made keen on the idea (remember when you could collect cadbury wrappers to play some shit Amiga-driven VR game in a mall 20 years ago? That's pretty much why I'm so fat) but I need this thing to be good before I part with serious coin for it.

put an iphone 3gs and an iphone 4 in front of your face, see the difference?

but srsly, the more important issue is the refresh rate.

In some ways I think it's potentially amazing. In other ways, I think it faces some pretty big challenges. For instance, if I'm moving my head to see in different directions in the game world, how will I continue to use the mouse/keyboard when I want to turn 180 degrees and look behind me? It will require a whole other kind of controller. If it gets to the point where people are standing and walking around then games will need to be integrated into the real world, or else people will walk into shit and injure themselves. Not to mention tripping over the cables that the VR headset is plugged in with. So to be any good, it will probably need to be wireless. I could go on about issues it's going to face, but I think you probably all get the idea.

If you've ever used a Track IR you'd understand why that's not a problem.

I to will be waiting for the retail version, can't wait for Minecraft, Flight Sim and any racing game.

What's a Track IR? *google google*. Ah. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure that I like that solution.

Well overdue ... last one of note/feasible pricing was what VFX? 800x600? 1990?

Mint.

I am consumed with meh.

The iPhone 3GS screen resolution is… 320×480. The iPhone 4 screen resolution is… 640×960. The Oculus Rift (at current dev specs) is 1280x720 (600% higher than the 3GS, 50% higher than the iPhone 4).

Your comparison is invalid.

how good for your eyes is it to have backlit lcd screens up close to your eyes? I thought active light close up could cause eye-strain......or is that a wives-tale?

personally, i dont like the idea of the doom3 bfg implementation of this tech, ie. moving your viewpoint _including_ gun with your head movement. feels cheap, when you could easily implement proper arma/flight sim/race sim style head tracking, which is what really excites me.

if youre referring to the story your parents told you about sitting close to the tv, its completely false.

If you don't understand this simple concept, then just stop posting about it.

Yeah, Carmack talks about some Intel tech that would serve the wireless function. And of course there are plenty of issues, which is why Palmer really stressed that he didn't want regular punters buying into the dev kit. The intention of the dev kit for developers to identify and address issues.

I mean really, there is no straight conversion from the type of FPS or RTS game we play today to what VR gaming could be. The games we play are largely defined by the interface and this is very new kind of interface for gaming.

Seems like this could open a market for more gaming peripherals... chuck some kind of positional sensor on a vibrator and you've got a lightsaber. Or a gun shaped controller with various kinds of force feedback and recoil. You wouldn't need to see what you're holding because you would see a representation of it in the VR.

Yeah thats where the Track IR mentioned earlier comparision comes in ... that works fine .. eg controlling player view .. not "player aim", even some racing games etc support it and its nice to use .. except the screen not moving bit >.<

I remember playing that with my flatmate the day of teh 1992? ('93?) Metallica concert - it was some fun shit! Crap grfx, but still LOADS of fun.

really cant wait to see some proper implementations of this tech in games. everyone please post what they find.

The lens's in the Rift distort the image quite severely, you don't get an even distribution of pixels.

I'm happy to use the mouse for aiming and Rift for head look, for now.

Was it the dinosaur shooting game? That was at Stages in Auckland for a while.

one is viewed at arms length, one is viewed at eyelash length...

Awesome contribution, team-player guy. Thanks for being part of the community.

Fair point. I still think 720 will be plenty, but obviously more is better when it comes to pixels. Thanks for replying like a non-douche :D

I love it when people write matter-of-fact statements like "Your comparison is invalid." like they are an authority on the subject, then get owned in the next reply ;D

Makes me feel warm n fuzzy <3 Thx cEv.

You must be gutted that didn't happen here then eh :/

Ah well, better luck next time!

Yeh you might be right, it's kinda hard to speculate. I'm not personally familiar with any up-close screen tech outside of the nintendo virtual boy :D

For me the number #1 issue is refresh rate (actually that's a lie, the number #1 issue is latency). If the hardware is good and the price is good then the games will come, so that's less concerning.

I'd survive with 720p, but I don't see why there wouldn't be a retina version by the 2nd or 3rd release. Frankly it's hard not to speculate. :p

The gaming potential aside, I'm sure there's got to be a lot of applications of the technology. But if the media are enjoying jabbing at hardcore gamers now, shit's gonna get real if this succeeds and goes mainstream.

I mean... supercomputer processing + ultraspeed internet + VR tech... is there anything that's really missing? It's not hard to envisage people creating VRs that they don't want to leave. Can you imagine the VR version of WoW?

I can't imagine myself caring less! :)

I guess you kind of tip over from not caring back into caring when you're prompted to post about the state of your caring...

It'll take off when/if the porn industry gets behind it. See VHS/Beta and Bluray/HD-DVD.

lol @ anyone in this thread using the term retina to describe a display with a high level of pixel density.

steve lolling from beyond the grave.

I don't care about what you think.

But it's important to you that I know that. I get it.

Awesome, thanks!