VR

[pcslookout]

Virtual Reality headsets is it taking off or dying ?

 

[Midwayman]

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
http://steamcharts.com/app/250820

Growing for sure. We're not really at critical mass yet though.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Simracers will keep vr alive forever.

I don't see it becoming mainstream soon though, I'm quite pleased with the way my 4670k and r9 290 cope with most games in VR on the rift, but I would recommend something much faster, which is currently very expensive.

 

[Mopetar]

Slow growth and I don’t think it will take off until the third generation products arrive. By then the headsets will have the kinks worked out and the GPU power necessary to drive them will be affordable for the mass market.

 

[ZGR]

We need more pixels, higher refresh rate, and significantly better design.

Didn't AMD say we need 16k to fully remove aliasing? Jeez.

 

[jtvang125]

Depends on who you ask. People who are already in tend to have a more positive outlook on the industry. People who are still on the fence tend to have a more grim outlook. My only experience is with the GearVR and I know that doesn't even come close to the experience of a true PC GPU powered headset. I'd like to jump in with the Rift but $400 I feel is still too much for something on it's way out. $300 would be the sweet spot and get a bunch more people like me to make the jump. But you still have the issue of the current price gouging of the GPU market. Unless you already have a capable GPU VR on the PC is not going to be easy and cheap.

 

[LTC8K6]

I still can't believe people are going to walk around with those things on their heads.

They already walk into poles while texting...

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Depends on who you ask. People who are already in tend to have a more positive outlook on the industry. People who are still on the fence tend to have a more grim outlook. My only experience is with the GearVR and I know that doesn't even come close to the experience of a true PC GPU powered headset. I'd like to jump in with the Rift but $400 I feel is still too much for something on it's way out. $300 would be the sweet spot and get a bunch more people like me to make the jump. But you still have the issue of the current price gouging of the GPU market. Unless you already have a capable GPU VR on the PC is not going to be easy and cheap.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sto...ero_1-WMR_Headsets_challenger1-04232018-en_US
Two of the windows MR headsets are on sale, $224 and $300.

Rift and vive are a bit better imo, but I tried the acer headset and it worked quite well imo. Also quite convenient not having to worry about sensors/lighthouses.

 

[jtvang125]

I still can't believe people are going to walk around with those things on their heads.

They already walk into poles while texting...

I have yet to see anyone use one in public. That might change as more standalone units become available but I think most people don't want to look like an idiot with one on. My wife cracks up everytime I use my GearVR and says I really do look like an idiot when using it.

 

[jtvang125]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sto...ero_1-WMR_Headsets_challenger1-04232018-en_US
Two of the windows MR headsets are on sale, $224 and $300.

Rift and vive are a bit better imo, but I tried the acer headset and it worked quite well imo. Also quite convenient not having to worry about sensors/lighthouses.

Isn't that the going street prices of them now? That kind of gives me the impression that no one is really buying and they have to slash prices just to get people to bite.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Isn't that the going street prices of them now? That kind of gives me the impression that no one is really buying and they have to slash prices just to get people to bite.

Who cares, it's a good deal.

 

[ImpulsE69]

We need more pixels, higher refresh rate, and significantly better design.

Didn't AMD say we need 16k to fully remove aliasing? Jeez.

People get a bit crazy with expectations. Aliasing is the least of my worries, as is screen door. Not having to spend $1k just to play something cartoony like Rec Room should be the short term goal. The kind of immersion people THINK they want is holodeck type visuals, and while we probably aren't that far off from it, cost is a huge issue. People need to lower their expectations and try it for more than 5 minutes. I'd prefer wireless before all else. I can deal with lo-fi graphics if the content is good. Many people lose sight of that and are immediately 'omg i saw a jaggy i was so removed from immmurrsion.' It's friggin annoying because frankly..anyone nerdy and techy should be jumping all over this even as it is. They are the same people who spend more time complaining about the graphics of a game instead of playing it so they can post a youtube video of it.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Further,

I paid full price for both the Vive and the Rift - and differences aside, I don't feel ripped off. Sure there is room for much improvement in the VR field, but I tell you what, as a child of the 80's it is pretty impressive - no, amazing - as it is right now.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, it looks like Apple is getting into the VR business. They are working on an AR+VR concept which is using 8K per eye. Currently looks like it will be a 2020 (or later) release (assuming it doesn't get cancelled for some reason). The only problem I see is that we won't have graphics cards that can push that resolution at the 120+ fps needed to combat motion sickness until 2028 (at the rate of current development, where cards are approx 50% faster every 2 years, where we are just hitting 4k resolutions right now with this years generation of cards in the 100fps range, we need 8x more performance than 4k video demands for the 2x8K displays, which puts us 10 years from now).

 

[Charlie22911]

I’ve had a Vive since release. In my experience the poor optics are far more distracting than resolution, which can be somewhat compensated for with super sampling and antialiasing.

“God rays” and other undesirable optical phenomena caused by the plastic fresnel lenses are a real drag. We need good optics!

 

[IntelUser2000]

Well, it looks like Apple is getting into the VR business. They are working on an AR+VR concept which is using 8K per eye.

I can't see Apple being the mainstream driver for VR. You need to have it on a PC with a discrete graphics card, because Smartphones will take that much longer. Even if they get a PC compatible one it'll be on their Mac workstations that cost $3000.

Whether you are talking about good optics, a screen capable of outputting 8K, or hardware capable of driving it, it'll be a decade away anyway.

In the meantime, it'll remain successful as a niche product.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Virtual Reality headsets is it taking off or dying ?

Current gen isn't really quite there yet, but testing them you get the feeling that they are close, and the next gen or the one after that might be huge.

Didn't AMD say we need 16k to fully remove aliasing? Jeez.

Computationally that gets feasible when foveated rendering is solved.

(Fovea is the small part of your vision that actually has high precision, foveated rendering means using eye tracking to figure out where you are looking at, and then rendering only that at very high precision, and using lower precision elsewhere.)

Based on MS testing, you only need about 500x500 pixels resolution for the fovea and then 1000x1000 for the rest of you vision, per eye, to make it completely indistinguishable from just rendering at the full precision. We just don't have good enough small eye tracking yet (in the MS system, the eye tracking hardware is massive), and we need better panels.

 

[guskline]

Having fun with the Oculus Rift

 

[cmdrdredd]

It's niche and will probably always remain so. Personally I'd be giving up some things to use VR such as real surround sound from my speaker system(the center, left, right etc would change as you tuen your head) and HDR for example(unless/until they have HDR VR sets). I can see it being really neat for things outside of gaming, though I still think it would remain a niche product. VR can't really be shown in a trailer either, but you can show pretty graphics from other games in a trailer. This is a problem for gaming specifically. VR takes a lot of horsepower and you often give up some of the graphic fidelity in order to use it. Showing off VR games without someone putting on the headset doesn't work well. Hard to sell the public on something like this without being able to actually use it. Not all that different to 3D in some ways.

 

[Dribble]

VR is basically for games - it is off little use outside of that, and it only really works well for some games (stuff where you are driving something). The thing that's actually much more important is AR because you can use that for all sorts of things. That's what industry, google, apple, microsoft and so on are working hard at.

 

[Zstream]

VR is basically for games - it is off little use outside of that, and it only really works well for some games (stuff where you are driving something). The thing that's actually much more important is AR because you can use that for all sorts of things. That's what industry, google, apple, microsoft and so on are working hard at.

Yes. It is this that’s annoying. It could be used for doctors, construction, marketing, landscaping etc.. people focus too much on games

 

[Midwayman]

Yes. It is this that’s annoying. It could be used for doctors, construction, marketing, landscaping etc.. people focus too much on games

Well VR is the easier task. Gotta walk before you can run. Gamers are the people right now with the hardware to make it work. FWIW VR has been used in industry for long time.

 

[Headfoot]

Foveated rendering seems more an more necessary. I've used the Oculus and I played a duck-n-shoot game on it, it was very immersive but anything that was a good distance away was so fuzzy and occluded by screen door that it was impossible to aim. Nearby objects were no issue. It was really pretty cool.

But to satisfy the high end there needs to be more resolution, a lot more. To satisfy the mass market and make it viable it needs to be cheap and run on low end hardware. The only way currently out there to hit all the high points are variable resolutions and foveated rendering to keep requirements manageable. Of course a lot of R&D is focused here too so new techniques could also be invented