Oculs Rift for PA?

It is out, it is what the Oculus Rift is all about. It is affordable. At $300 you can't go wrong. Need to save up? Stop buying a coffee every day for 10 months, and instead buy a can of coffee each month and brew it at home, BAM, $300 saved.

Well the most impact i see is a combination of multi window support with the unlimited desktop and OR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzIcwN9nhBg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P50fvL_EWYY

PA with the rift would be like watching your toys actually fight. If your inner 7 year old didn't jump up and down in excitement at the thought, I guess you didn't have any army men when you were little.

Obv I’d love to see something like this as it would make the battles even more amazing (esp regarding air units) I have a question regarding the tech (as i am totally new to seeing it).
It seems that it plots the position of various objects relative to a back wall so that it knows how those objects would move over the surface depending how you move, this means that the relative distances are important. So would a galaxy wide scale not mean that compared to the back wall (the celestial sky/distant stars) the travelling objects and the planets surface are practically at the same depth and therefore essentially moving in total unison(very 2D looking)? If so this would remove almost all the 3d detail when zoomed out, and just cause the planet to appear to rotate with the objects when zoomed in. Unless of course there was a noticeable shift in camera once a certain level of zoo was reach which means it jumps from 1 reference point to another.
Please be kind if/when pointing out my errors/stupidity here. I only put the question out there coz I would like an explanation as to how it works if other than above.

Stephen

You get 3d from 2 different images for each eye, your brain makes it.

i rly dont think OR would work for RTS games

http://youtu.be/Oh_lsM-OXYM

I meant I didn't really see the draw to it for a strategy game versus FPS or RPG games. But after watching that video I think it would be pretty cool to watch the battlefield develop in 3D regardless of immersion or UI.

Mouse pointer breaks it a little bit imo, black and white style one would be better for that(again imo)

3D is not the same as VR. In fact it is a totaly different thing.

Yes but one wouldn't make much sense without the other.

So sweet
http://kotaku.com/the-sweetest-thing-youll-see-today-is-a-90-year-old-gr-472924742?autoplay=1

:mrgreen:

I've just ordered one of these. I program but not 3D/gaming stuff, but it really sounds like something special.

The guy in this blog has implemented it (mostly before actually getting the rift, which was impressive), for the Ogre engine and to display desktops as well.

http://hwahba.com/ibex/

Even if PA didn't have any 'specific' optimisations, it'd be great if things like the menu overlay didn't make it impossible to mod the game to support it.

Do the uber team have a Rift ordered? I'd be happy to chip in to get one for your office, just to prime the mind on what it might be like going forward!

I bet they will have some.

I believe I've mentioned elsewhere that while Uber itself does not have one, someone working here has one coming. I'm certain we'll be spending some time playing with it.

I'm also going to say that I personally think VR desktops are useless. Efficient work spaces are about compressing and organizing the space you deal with. VR is about expanding and dispersing the space you deal with. Craming a desktop environment in to a VR environment is essentially trying push two paradigms with completely opposite goals together.

There's also the current practical problems of resolution. The Oculus Rift dev kit 1 has a readable resolution of about 400x400 pixels. Try using your current desktop monitor through a ~4 1/2 square hole in a sheet of paper covering your screen with really bad myopia.

Hi Ben,

Thoughtful comment. I agree in the form of something like the rift, VR desktop will be impractical. Resolution is the killer, though screen densities on phones are continuing to grow beyond what they'd require for normal use (the new HTC is 468ppi vs the Iphone 5's 326).

So practicality is definitely against this first gen for desktop type things, but for gaming, we'll see. I remember seeing the first 3Dfx powered game - it was only 640x480 or something, and you had to 'switch' onto the 3d card from the 2d desktop card. But once you were in there, the resolution didn't diminish the experience at all because the other functional benefits (amazing fluidity, shadows, lighting etc) made it irrelevant. It was just better than software rendering. And once that was demonstrated, and people warmed to it, the next gen was several multiples better.

We'll see if people warm to this attempt at VR. Input devices will have to catch up, that's a definite hurdle. Conceptually, if I could see an environment in good resolution and spawn up as many new desktops as I wanted to do coding in etc, that would be great. But I ( and everyone on the forum) has spent their whole computing lives looking at a rectangular 2d screen. It'll take a while to leap to another paradigm and really unlock what new things it offers. Like the conceptual jump between procedural and OO programming.

It will be exciting, that's for sure. But I agree the immediate practical application to PA might not be huge. Please just try to make the moddability is flexible enough that someone can hack it in, and we can find out!

Certainly the resolution issue can and will be solved, that's why I singled out the current model. The next version of the Oculus Rift should approximately double the usable resolution which will go a long way. However to match even average desktop pixel densities they'll need to at least double the resolution again or more. I'm not talking dpi / ppi, but rather ppd or Pixels Per Degree. It will happen eventually.

But as a viable work environment in it's current form I have my doubts. No one sits in a movie theater to work, unless they're working on a movie. I suspect the similar will be true of VR.

The 3d VR desktop isn't a solution to a problem that exists, it's a problem created for the enjoyment of the creator to solve.


edit: I want to note that most personal creative endeavors can be classified similarly. Entertainment of most kinds are problems created for the enjoyment of those who created it; a solution to a problem the solution created. Sometimes others enjoy solving those created problems as well; we usually call that a game.

Yep, good points Ben. We shall see!

I think the current HMD's from sony etc are along the lines of the 'movie theatre' experience - where they are the equivalent experience to a 100" screen at x feet. Once resolution is a 'solved problem' though, where you could effectively simulate a retina screen at normal working distance, the opportunity to add a third dimension to working surfaces will open up interesting possibilities. Spreadsheets might be nifty in 3d, but visualisations would be amazing. Our minds have evolved to interact with physical objects, perhaps that's why I have more luck playing chess on a physical board vs a 2d screen.

It will be interesting to see if 'minority report' style interfaces can open up enough new opportunities to create a 'virtuous circle' of continued development. Even if it's beneficial in a couple of cashed up niche areas (medicine, mining and military, say) then the continued development financed by those guys may drive it into the mainstream.

I'll be looking forward to all those eventualities! And your description of games as problems created to solve was a nice way to put it. I'm looking forward to 'solving' that one