Sensible Erection | Behind the scenes with the Oculus Rift: the hardware that could change the way we play games

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Behind the scenes with the Oculus Rift: the hardware that could change the way we play games

quote [ There was a tiny bot following me around in the game. I lost track of him before I remembered that I could move my head to look around. I peered back, and looked down over my shoulder. I saw the little bot behind my left foot, and he looked up at me. For that moment, we were looking into each other’s eyes. A slight shudder of pleasure ran through my body. This is the future. ]

Good extras in extended

PUPPY CAM (they boringly sleep a lot, though)
http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/service-puppy-cam

Small plane crash caught on a GoPro camera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDu0jYiz-v8&feature=player_embedded

Guy defends the "losing to win" strategy employed by badminton players in the Olympics that got them DQed
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/8/1/playing-to-win-in-badminton.html

Ghost Tits (I guess kinda NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNHb3lZobt0&feature=player_embedded

[by bltrocker@3:18amGMT] [+8 Interesting]

Comments

Ubie said @ 3:24am GMT on 15th Aug
Mr. Feeney!

blacksun said @ 3:44am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Watch out. Every one will tell you how they tried vr in the 90s and it sucked so it's probably still just like that, and that no-one could ever overcome the limitations that they gathered from a cursory surface level glance at the technology.

Ankylosaur said @ 3:53am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:4 Informative]
Indeed. In the '90s VR could only deliver pterodactyls. Now we can virtualize petadactyls with ease and exodactyls are at most 5 years away.

Naruki said @ 4:01am GMT on 15th Aug
I know we can trust you about such things, Ankylosaur.

Mr. Langosta said @ 5:08am GMT on 15th Aug
attack its weak point for massive damage

happiest_sadist said @ 5:34am GMT on 15th Aug
Holy hack that's a lot of digits.

But how many polydactyls can you render extraordinarily?

CapnSilver said @ 6:36am GMT on 15th Aug
God that dinosaur game was shit.

-_- said @ 5:37am GMT on 15th Aug
The biggest problem with VR goggles was motion sickness, like watching a roller coaster ride on Imax but worse.
Using black and white, or monochrome, took care of this for most sufferers of the motion sickness.
Another reason they didn't take off was Jaron Lanier.
Jaron was considered the Guru of VR and he soaked up most of the investment and press thereby spreading his philosophies pertaining to the medium.
Primary to Jaron's philosophy is that passive VR is bad and that VR has the potential to be too seductive to the masses and needs to be formatted against abuse from the beginning.
This slowed things down a bit.

With modern retail tech it seems possible right now to make $3,000 rigs that will incorporate VR, AR, wifi and network connectivity, as well as look fashionable and incorporate all the functionality of sixthsense and eeg plus more.
If people wanted to wear helmets attached via cord to a battery belt we could have had this a while ago.
Honestly it looks to me that the primary thing holding back this tech is the erroneous perception that it has been "proven" to be a dead end.
At this juncture I'm eager to see what will be done with the eventual retail tech, what peripherals will be figured out (I want a flock of pocket quad copters to follow me and my commands), and what possibilities may arise for someone mildly informed on the subject ;D

buckaroo50 said @ 6:07am GMT on 15th Aug
From what I remember, frame rate, tracking speed, and crappy graphics were what made the early 90s VR suck.

backSLIDER said @ 9:06pm GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I'm sick of graphics being a meter. I don't care if the blood coming off a guy looks real. If a game is fun/smooth I will play the hell out of it. I still play mario cart for snes.

ComposerNate said @ 8:05pm GMT on 17th Aug
Kart

-_- said @ 10:28pm GMT on 15th Aug
Interactive VR has that issue but did nothing to stop us from watching stereo-optic movies or playing games like Myst.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 5:12am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
I really want to see what Doom 3 actually looks like through those goggles. I hated the early VR stuff in the 90s and I was in my early teens back then. I also think the 3D bullshit they're doing in movies right now is awful.

But man, I love playing games with 3D Vision, especially driving games. You're telling me this is the next step beyond that? Sign me up!

kichijoii said @ 7:36am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Well, the game being Doom 3, I expect lots of darkness, walking down bland identical hallways, and monsters spawning behind you every 5 sec.

ckfahrenheit said @ 6:32am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]

germanjulian said @ 7:01am GMT on 15th Aug
the problem is that your eyes are focusing at something a few inches away... eye strain will be the new daddy

Vernes said @ 8:46am GMT on 15th Aug
You fail at lenses

bltrocker said @ 7:12am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Like one of the comments mentions: Horror games. Could you even imagine being that immersed in Penumbra or Amnesia? I'm not sure I could handle it because I can barely take horror games as they are now.

GordonGuano said @ 7:27am GMT on 15th Aug
Word. Call me a wuss, but I don't play Dead Space or Silent Hill without a light on.

bruceski said @ 9:36am GMT on 15th Aug
Back in college my roommate and I would finish long days of study with System Shock 2. We'd wait until it was dark and we were both feeling a little tired, and that managed to make it incredibly creepy. To this day I can IM him the word "invisi-spiders" and get a string of profanity back.

"Man, I hate these spiders, they're practically invisible. Wait... did you hear that?"
"No."
"No as in you didn't hear anything or no as in you're fucking with me?"
"I don't hear anything."
"Ok." *spider jumps out from around a corner* "AAAAAA!"
"Bwahahaha! I was totally fucking with you!"

Omegaphobic said @ 12:20pm GMT on 15th Aug
Oh man... I played Dead Space with all the lights OFF and the sound cranked up. If I knew that I wasn't going to be called on for daddy duties I would even put on my 5.1 headphones just to get totally immersed in it, but leave my subwoofer on to get the bass rumbles. You couldn't have inserted an acupuncture needle into my arsehole going around some of those corners.

pleaides said @ 12:27pm GMT on 15th Aug
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A CHALLENGE!

quaint said @ 7:59pm GMT on 15th Aug
5.1 headphones???!

How do you manage that? Do you have 5.1 ears?

arrowhen said @ 11:57pm GMT on 15th Aug
http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/08/02/surround-sound-headphones-explained

kichijoii said @ 7:37am GMT on 15th Aug
I don't even like most games today, but now you've got me excited. VR Amnesia would be heart attack city.

Mad March Harris said @ 11:34am GMT on 15th Aug
I have absolutely no enthusiasm for anything the game industry is currently doing and I've been gaming basically since I could read. I'm not pining for the bygone days of the SNES (not because I'm too young to pine for the bygone days of the Commodore 64) but I'm sick of this "me too!" and "You want to be controller!" bullshit that's going around. I like buttons. I don't want to be the controller. I don't want to be integrated into my games. I don't play games for escapism and the more I'm supposed to be pulled into the experience the less interested I am.

Crysallis said @ 12:10pm GMT on 15th Aug
Let me change your mind:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns

azazel said @ 1:05pm GMT on 15th Aug
As an avid* Shadowrun fan, this does nothing for me. The other SR project on Kickstarter also does nothing. I guess I've given up when it comes to that. This one might be good though, but experience tells me that it probably won't be.

*I have most sourcebooks (that were made by FASA -- 4th edition sucks, so I don't allow it in my universe), missing a few early ones, and also have most novels. I also own the 3 video games that were released.

Misanthrope said @ 6:31pm GMT on 15th Aug
Saw that as porno and was quite disappointed after.

bltrocker said @ 3:04pm GMT on 15th Aug
Are you completely ignoring the booming indie games market? There are a ton of unique but "conventional" games coming out there. Even the mainstream industry has a ton of great stuff, even if it's using already existing IP. The new Assassin's Creed game looks amazing, for instance. I'm pretty sure it doesn't rely on the Move or Kinect.

If you don't play games for escapism or to be pulled in, what games do you enjoy? Games where I'm acutely aware that I'm playing a game or movies of the same nature are the ones I consider the worst, excepting maybe puzzle games.

In any case, I don't think this VR device should be grouped in with anything the "industry" is trying to cram down anyone's throat. This is a crowdfunded project that will probably be pleasing a niche market. I really hope all the dev kits get the industry fired up to add Rift support to some of their games. And no, I will not get off your lawn.

quaint said @ 8:03pm GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I'll tell you what would make the new Ass Creed 20x better than the old Ass Creeds - doing away with those ball-ache unskippable cutscenes.

Any game with unskippable cutscenes has obviously been developed by a stupid fucktard wankwhore arsewipe who deserves to be kicked repeatedly in the cunt.

lalanda said @ 8:28pm GMT on 15th Aug
Game directors who want to be movie directors.

eIfish said @ 1:38am GMT on 16th Aug
The moment I turned the first one off, and never touched the series again, was when, just after the tutorial, there was a protracted, unskippable, unsubtitled cutscene, where your guy listens to a grate.

If you can't make out the dialogue, it's three minutes of looking at a grate. The scene wouldn't have been out of place in Eraserhead.

If what the grate was (presumably) saying was so important to the plot that it couldn't be skipped, surely it deserves the two man-days it would have taken to subtitle it?

thepublicone said @ 11:54am GMT on 15th Aug [Score:2]
I've always wondered something about VR gear:

Why doesn't anyone ever build a VR helmet? Why is it ALWAYS goofy, cumbersome goggles? People will wear a motorcycle helmet or a snowmobile helmet for hours on end, but for some reason won't wear a helmet for gaming?

If you take out the anti-shock cushioning in most helmets, you'd think you could safely run wiring and whatnot around the head without drastically increasing the size of the headpiece. With the introduction of OLCD bendable screens, you'd think this would be the next logical step.

pleaides said @ 12:29pm GMT on 15th Aug
Man, I would Gran Tourismo the FUCK out of that shit.

thepublicone said @ 2:46pm GMT on 15th Aug
No shit. As well, when you consider that most of the best first-person shooters are played as characters with a helmet on........

How many HALO geeks do you know that would willingly drop $500+ on a Master Chief VR helmet? The line is LONG. For the Gran Turismo crowd, a custom Chevy Racing/TRD/Ferrari Motorsport/STi/NISMO/etc etc etc helmet would be a premium piece, and a popular one.

Its basically a marketer's dream, and that's only OEM- think of all the custom work artists could do on a well-designed blank helmet.

valen85 said @ 3:42pm GMT on 15th Aug
I get motion sickness playing FPSes as it is. I'm not putting on a helmet that'll help me puke with greater efficiency, thank you.

quaint said @ 8:06pm GMT on 15th Aug
But what could enhance a game more than puking inside your own helmet?

backSLIDER said @ 8:56pm GMT on 15th Aug
Smells like war!

eIfish said @ 1:41am GMT on 16th Aug
For car games, the only thing you touch is a seat and a steering column anyway, so with very little hardware a VR system could simulate the whole experience.

Current car games already model the interior of the car and let you head-tracking-look round it while you're driving.

mrklipp said @ 6:34pm GMT on 15th Aug
Let's just say that there are some unfortunate associations with wearing a helmet outside of a sports event or riding a motorcycle.

lilmookieesquire said @ 7:13pm GMT on 15th Aug
Because then you'd have to get the right size. You couldn't use your friend's gear etc. Of you'd have to buy a different one for you or your kid. And eventually it would smell horrible. :)

backSLIDER said @ 9:02pm GMT on 15th Aug
Motorcycle helmets have a liner that comes out rather easy. Then toss it in the wash and air dry. There is also the adjustable strap net that hard hats use. You don't need the 1.5 inches of closed cell foam. There is plenty of room for wireless, batteries, and adjustable net. Would take a little development so I really only see sony or nintendo having the balls to do it. Game company's don't have the traction to dev a controller/game changer with out huge risk.

Misanthrope said @ 9:32pm GMT on 15th Aug [Score:3 Informative]

zenviper said @ 1:41pm GMT on 15th Aug
isn't this a repost?

bltrocker said @ 3:14pm GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Nope, because Ben actually got to try the prototype on and see how it works. He also gives an outside perspective to the Rift. It's not completely a PR read from the Rift team's Kickstarter page. It got me really excited when Kuchera's critical eye was pleased by what he experienced.

lilmookieesquire said @ 7:12pm GMT on 15th Aug
It would still be nice to link the old post for context though.

eIfish said @ 1:42am GMT on 16th Aug
The outside perspective of someone who's been hired to write a puff-piece?

bltrocker said @ 2:46am GMT on 16th Aug
Please. The dude has some real cred in the game industry and deserves to be taken seriously. He's not afraid to shit on the stuff he tries, and the story he provides on this subject I found very informative.

SicJake said @ 3:22pm GMT on 15th Aug
I want one, had to restrain myself away from the kickstarter cause it's not for consumers. The VR stuff from the 90's was neat when it was new, but it quickly became dated as we moved from Quake 2d to Quake III 3d models very quickly.

I've been wanting to buy a headseat for awhile, but this being game focused is a must buy for me when it gets out.

arrowhen said @ 10:03pm GMT on 15th Aug [Score:1 Interesting]
I think this is interesting technology, but the idea of using it in an FPS doesn't really excite me much. Right now I can look all around by twitching my mouse half an inch in any direction; why would I want to have to move my whole head to get the same result? And don't give me "immersion"; I've been getting immersed in video games since 1977. Immersion in games isn't about fancy graphics or technological gadgetry (although those things are certainly a lot of fun), it's about compelling gameplay.

On the other hand, this thing would be ridiculously fucking awesome in a flight sim. I used to be an avid flight-simmer until a few years ago my girlfriend bought me one of those introductory flight lessons for my birthday, where you get to go up for an hour and do a few simple climbs and dives and turns. It was amazing, but had the unfortunate side effect of pretty much killing my enthusiasm for simulated flight. After seeing how easy it is to look all around while still keeping an eye on the instrument panel in a real plane, flying in a sim feels incredibly claustrophobic and clumsy. I don't have the money or the room to build myself a huge sim cockpit, but being able to use one of these things to look around a virtual cockpit would be the next best thing.

Similarly, being able to put together a huge virtual multi-monitor setup would be swell. I'd love to be able to play a big crunchy RPG or strategy game where I could surround the main game screen with supplemental displays for my map, inventory, character sheet, etc., and be able to just glance over at them whenever I needed to.

Or, my ultimate vision of geek heaven, playing D&D on a virtual tabletop where I could look and see the other players at the table, still have infinite space to keep my books and notes, and not have to worry about cats jumping up and knocking all the miniatures over.

quaint said @ 7:02am GMT on 16th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Cats will find a way, man. They always do.

arrowhen said @ 9:15am GMT on 16th Aug
No, really, they do. My girlfriend and I foster animals for the local shelter. Mostly cats, because we're cat people -- in the two years we've been fostering we've had half a dozen dogs living in our house and close to a hundred cats, most of whom were kittens, because we live in a state full of ignorant inbred halfwit fucktards who don't seem to understand that if you get one cat and don't get it fixed, you end up with 4-8 cats by then end of the year.

We've had everything from adult cats, to mostly grown kittens, to freshly weaned kittens, to tiny little bottle-babies that you wake up every couple of hours in a cold sweat to run into their room an check on and make sure they haven't fucking died in the last couple hours, and every. Single. Last. Motherfucking. One of those cats has learned, provided they lived long enough, how to jump up on the keyboard and stomp on the F11 key to maximize the browser window. So much so that we've started to wonder if a kitten doesn't do that, there might be something wrong with them.