VR discussion: Oculus Rift, Vive, Morpheus and more! (1 Viewer)

[Aaron Silverman]

I just found out today that they're finally adding (have added?) 3D movie capability to the PS VR. Suddenly the value of the thing for me has increased substantially.

Let's see if I can convince Lucy before the end of the year!

 

[Tino]

It's coming. No date yet.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Good, because I'm going to need some time to figure out how to acquire a PS VR without Lucy beating me to death with it before I can hook it up.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

The 3D update is out. Anyone try it yet? I too am interested in this and this capability would tip me over to buy a PS VR headset.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

It's nothing worth buying a headset over. It's pretty much just a novelty. Unless you have no other way to watch 3D movies, you would probably just check it out a few times and be done with it. The resolution just isn't there compared to a TV. It's more like watching a 3D DVD than a blu-ray.

 

[Sam Posten]

Go is go. Shipping overnight. In stores at Best Buy right now.

https://www.oculus.com/blog/introdu...h-lineup-more-than-1000-titles-available-now/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17306458/oculus-go-standalone-vr-headset-review

https://www.fastcodesign.com/901702...ment?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018...wireless-vr-future-begins-today-for-only-199/

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/199-oculus-go-vr-headset-goes-on-sale-today/

https://www.polygon.com/virtual-reality/2018/5/1/17284454/oculus-go-review

 

[Sam Posten]

 

[Sam Posten]

So this happened.

For $200 it is fantastic. Good lenses and screen. Less god rays. Very accessible.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The one giant flaw with the Oculus Go that I saw is that it only offers 3 degrees of freedom (pitch, roll, yaw of view) and you can't go in/out of a scene. I understand why, you don't want people walking around and tripping on things plus it's more sensors to include, but it still seems like a limitation. The review I read yesterday (maybe on The Verge?) said that this is a fantastic all-in-one VR solution for someone who is casually interested in VR, but that the product itself is just so bland and directionless that it's hard to tell what it could actually be and do.

How powerful is this thing? What quality of graphics or video can it handle?

 

[Sam Posten]

It’s graphics are about PS3 level. 3DoF is sufficient. It is not a drawback at all for stationary seated use.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

PS3 level is actually impressive to me. I could totally live with that in this kind of a device.

An updated review commented on the social aspects. Being able to sit in a virtual space and share videos or photos with friends who are far away (like a sort of VR Skype using avatars) is pretty intriguing. And the ability to watch Netflix on this thing as a personal viewer...not bad.

 

[bigshot]

The one giant flaw with the Oculus Go that I saw is that it only offers 3 degrees of freedom (pitch, roll, yaw of view) and you can't go in/out of a scene. How powerful is this thing? What quality of graphics or video can it handle?

I have been playing with mine since Friday and it's blown my mind. I have no interest in gaming, so I can't speak to how well the shoot em up games work. But I can totally see the Go being the first step to an entirely virtual home entertainment center. There are social apps where you can create a virtual room and invite friends in to visit. I did this yesterday with a Facebook friend from the opposite coast from me and we were chatting and visiting as if we were in the same room. The avatars follow the head movement and there is one hand to gesture with, so you can point. The mouth moves when you talk and it follows head nods and turns perfectly. I can see someone giving this to a grandma to give her a way to communicate with out of state grandkids. The room has a game table and an entertainment center with a big screen TV and stereo system. You can host up to 8 people in a party.

Netflix and Hulu have apps to access their content. They put you in an incredible room with a theater sized screen. You can look all around- 360 degrees. When you start a movie, the lights dim like a real screening room. I have a screening room in my home with projection on a ten foot screen and surround sound. I have to admit that this is pretty doggone close to that experience. The image quality isn't all there- a tiny bit of screen door effect and some chromatic aberration at the periphery of vision- but it is totally watchable. It looks very good. The mask is comfortable to wear- very light and it doesn't get hot. The sound is good, but I have Oppo PM-1s and they sound great with it. I can see someone living in an apartment using this is their only way of watching TV and not feeling cheated at all. In fact, I think I would rather watch a movie on this than on a regular flatscreen TV.

The most amazing thing though is the fact that it has shown me a whole new medium... interactive 3D immersive movies. I have only seen a couple so far, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before. There is a short movie based on Stephen King's IT. You explore a house and fall through the floor into a basement and open doors and discover Pennywise the Clown. I have never seen anything like it. I almost fell on the floor because the experience was so real. Another one I got is an immersive experience based on the Apollo 11 moon mission. It puts you in the cabin during take off, you float through space over the moon and earth, you walk on the moon and you go through the firey re-entry. Immersive audio with music and radio transmissions. Jaw dropping stuff.

I posted about this yesterday over in the displays forum because I see the Go as being more like a new kind of home entertainment center, not just for games. I really think this thing is going to make VR mainstream.

By the way, 3DoF isn't really a limitation. I've never experienced 6DoF, but at no time did I feel limited by it. No nausea or dizziness. It was ideal if you want to sit on a rotating stool or swivel chair.

 

[Sam Posten]

Agree completely. I am not as sold on big screen movies as you are (the quality isn't there for me) but 3DoF is PLENTY.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

For the kind of applications that you're talking about, 3DoF is fine. But if you want something a bit more immersive, the ability to really explore virtual spaces, then you'd need more.

The thing is, I still don't know what kind of identity the Oculus Go is aiming for. As much as I hate this, I've recently started to understand the reality that products are bought and sold based on what they're marketed/designed for. They need a single, primary, amazing purpose. The PS4 sold well because Sony emphasized from the beginning that it was a gaming system; the ability (if you call it that, since it's not great) to play blurays or watch streaming apps was very secondary. Conversely, Microsoft made the multimedia features and PC connectivity stuff central to the Xbox One marketing from the announcement onward and people haven't shown quite as much interest. If a company announces a new phone that has a million new and amazing features, people get excited but eventually buy something else because it's the best phone for one specific purpose.

So I worry about what the Oculus Go is trying to be. Is it a gaming device? A VR experience device? A social networking device? I think it needs to go all-in on a specific use and be successful before it can effectively branch out to be more things. After years of Samsung and Google doing cardboard-style VR stuff, I'm not sure the Oculus Go stands out well enough.

 

[bigshot]

I think the idea of the Go is that it is a portable entertainment device. Kind of like a VR iPod. The interface looks sort of like Netflix where you select movies. The apps are organized into categories like social, games, and movies. I could see a grandma buying it just for social media and a kid buying it just for games and a traveller for watching movies. The overall category is entertainment, but the one big marketing definition is VR. That's unique enough to be able to focus the market on it... at least until someone like Apple comes out with something better and an established stock of content in an online store. I think Oculus have a sizable head start there though.

 

[CraigF]

^ Agree. I also think the "big deal" about the Go is that it's untethered/portable. That and nothing else, otherwise it's nothing new VR-wise. It's meant to be used with a "phone". Portable + phone = Apple, and you just know they've been working on a similar VR device, though they haven't said that much about it so far (but they never do). Another company released a similar device to the Go right around the same time (I forget who, but they were already in the consumer VR realm), but it's more expensive and has less initial app support.

For more serious apps, you need a lot of computing power. = not phone, not PS4/XB1/etc. From my own experience with the PSVR, I would much prefer greater computing power, a much higher rez display and a better integrated headset "audio system" long before I would prefer untethering. No matter what you can do re wireless data rates, you can do much much more tethered...I'm kind of surprised Sony didn't use fiber instead of wire since it's cheap too, but if something saves a nickel (more likely it was about "proprietariness").

Anyway, the way I see it, the Go is to phones in the same way the Rift (etc.) is to desktops. Completely different purposes, no reason they should be very similar at all, nor even fairly compared to each other.

I seem to recall people here in general do not like using a VR headset for watching movies. I don't mind it, but I can't say I prefer it. As summer approaches, I was thinking that a headset might be a decent option for me on those really hot days when I just have to watch something. My HT room can get really hot, all my gear pumps out a lot more heat than I'd like, ventilation not ideal. I was thinking I could use a headset in the basement since it's not much to move (small system there), something like that, or even just in the HT room. My biggest beef, and it's a large one for me, is the potential audio shortcomings with the PSVR, depends on the source.

 

[bigshot]

News keeps coming fast and furious lately. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-research-becomes-facebook-reality-labs-creating-faster-leaps-ar-vr/

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I could see the Go being handy during long travel (flights, road trips as a passenger) or an occasional social media device to connect with distant loved ones. But...you're limited to whatever data connection you have (making travel movie-watching tougher) and I kind of feel like a live webcam in Skype is more personal than talking avatars.

I think the iPod example is great, but mostly because it underscores my point about how the device needs an initial identity. The iPod was a pure excellent music device that was tied with a massive and well-designed music store when it first came out. It eventually became something more, but tens of millions of people bought it as a music-only product. Nintendo just sold 20 million Switches by pushing it as a hardcore gaming platform, and just now is looking at marketing it to non-traditional gamers through new means (like Labo).

So...what is that one core feature of the Oculus Go? VR is not mainstream enough, even though people know about it and may have tried it. What is the killer app that will make regular, not-super-techie folks run to buy a Go? Is the ability to chat with avatars of your friends while you watch the same Netflix movie in a virtual theater something that is so awesome that people will actually want to do it often enough to justify buying this? Will this be the hot gift of 2018 that people buy and eventually forget (like hoverboards and small drones)? Or is this just the first big step in Facebook's new platform of the future that people will get addicted to and use constantly?

I'm thinking it's going to just be one of many VR devices, even if it's the first to more or less pull off being untethered.

 

[bigshot]

Do you have a Go Morgan? It is exactly how you describe the iPod. It's a portable VR entertainment device with a big store of apps to buy. I've had mine since Friday and I haven't even scratched the surface of what it has to keep me entertained... and I'm not even interested in video games.

Last night I attended the weekly AltspaceVR brainstorming chat. One of their engineers was answering questions and demoing upcoming features on the app. The audience wasn't just kids. There were kids there, but some of the questions came from video game developers, IP attorneys, people in the film business... A lot of content creators are getting ready to make programming for this medium. It seems like they had been waiting for an easy to use inexpensive self contained VR device to be released. And now that it is in stores, they are getting to work designing for it.

The thing about a totally new medium like this is that from a distance, you don't see why you need it. I'm sure back in the early 50s people said, "Why do I need television when I can go to the movies and see them in color and widescreen?" The truth was that television was entirely different than movies. I've had my Go since Friday, and it's clear to me that this isn't just another way to watch television or surf the internet. What's going on when I put the mask on is entirely different than what I experience anywhere else.

I'm starting to see push back articles in the tech press comparing the Go unfavorably to the Lenovo Mirage. I think a lot of companies are afraid of the Go. It's amazing that the Go comes out of the box resembling an Apple product so closely, yet it's made by Facebook, which isn't even a hardware company. I bet a lot of other products like Go are in the wings and they'll be dropping soon. The guy from AltspaceVR said that their primary focus is to support every device they can. I think it's going to be a wild west of competing products soon. Whether Go ends up on top when the dust all settles is yet to be seen. But for right now, it's top dog for its simplicity and price point and it's a mature enough product to sell an awful lot of units.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I do not own one. I don't personally see the need for or interest in owning one for my specific case. I have a PSVR for gaming and I don't have the interest in any other uses of VR.

I think you're misinterpreting some of the stuff I'm talking about. I'm not saying the Go is a bad product because it's not a kid-centric or gaming-focused device. Instead, I'm saying that I don't know how well this will sell to the public because it doesn't have a specific-enough use case to attract an audience. Whenever a brand new device comes out and tries to be the "something for everyone" product, it ends up bombing. The only reason the iPod and iPhone and iPad were successful is because Apple spent several years dominating the market with the iPod as a music-only device that EVERYONE had or wanted. They leveraged that brand and product into something later. VR is not mainstream enough or popular enough to do that just yet.

The fact that you are talking about how it has so many features you haven't tried yet is, frankly, not a selling point but possibly a detraction. Most products do best when they go all-in on a single compelling feature or use. It's why cars are sold on the idea that they give you lots of freedom or TVs are sold by telling you how crisp NFL games will look. What is that one killer feature of the Go that is more than just a one-off gimmick? Frankly, the virtual avatar stuff...it's a gimmick. It's neat but I'm not sure if does anything that is a huge improvement over what I can accomplish on any existing platform that any family would already have, and it has the major drawback of not seeing people's actual faces. Skype and Facetime are already pulling this off WAY better.

So is this thing a great media consumption device, even with so-so resolution when viewing a large virtual screen? Is it a great socializing device, even though it literally cuts you off from the world around you? Is it a great gaming device, even though it's probably already underpowered and has limited interactive means?

Or does the phone in your pocket already do ALL OF THOSE THINGS but without VR? Is the simple ability to do those things "but in VR!" really all there is?