How Virtual Reality Became Reality

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has an in-depth report on the development of the Oculus Rift, telling the story of the tech and its creators from conception to present. Quoting: 'That's because Oculus has found a way to make a headset that does more than just hang a big screen in front of your face. By combining stereoscopic 3-D, 360-degree visuals, and a wide field of view—along with a supersize dose of engineering and software magic—it hacks your visual cortex. As far as your brain is concerned, there's no difference between experiencing something on the Rift and experiencing it in the real world. "This is the first time that we've succeeded in stimulating parts of the human visual system directly," says Abrash, the Valve engineer. "I don't get vertigo when I watch a video of the Grand Canyon on TV, but I do when I stand on a ledge in VR." ... The hardware problems have been solved, the production lines are almost open, and the Rift will be here soon. After that it's anybody's guess. "I've written 2 million lines of code over the past 20 years, and now I'm starting from a blank page," Carmack says. "But the sense that I'm helping build the future right now is palpable."'"

Comments

Except It Isn't

[sexconker]

Here's how it happened:

2 decades passed since the last time they tried this shit and failed. Now they're trying this shit again, and they'll fail again. People don't want to wear headgear for their media consumption. "VR" (stereoscopic 3D on a head-mounted display) will be a massive flop in the mass consumer market, as always.

VR will continue to be marginally useful for specific uses such as 3D imaging for medical, military, or industrial applications, as it always has been. It will continue to get marginally better, extremely expensive upgrades that take it from HUDs to glasses to headgear to actual VR. It will do this outside of the 20 year abortion cycle that the mass consumer market sees.

The Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus are abortions in progress.

Re:Except It Isn't

[sexconker]

I wonder why you make the huge mistake of assuming that this is a mass-market product, but understand why you leap to erroneous conclusions because of your flawed premise. This is for a particular niche, the enthusiast gamer. There are plenty of us out there.

You're the one making the huge mistake of assuming Facebook is going to shove this thing into a niche that history has shown doesn't exist in any profitable form. Look at all those enthusiast gamers playing games in 3D, wearing headgear. The most successful 3D gaming platform is the 3DS, and Nintendo has dropped nearly all focus on the 3D aspect of it because people weren't bothering to play in 3D. They released a 2DS because, even without glasses, people don't fucking care about 3D. Facebook is going to patent this shit to death and pigeonhole it into a shitty marketing vehicle.

Sony's shit is nothing but a tease at this point. Maybe we'll see something substantial at E3, but the simple fact of the matter is that the PS4 is NOT powerful enough for this shit. Add on the fact that most PS4 owners will NOT have this device and you'll have little developer support for it. MS had to drop the Kinect from the XBONE (starting June 9th) because it wasn't getting used and the added price was a big part of what made them uncompetitive with the PS4. Now that it's not bundled with every system, it's a fucking paper weight. So why would Sony bundle this with every PS5 in 4-6 years and run the risk of repeating the PS3 / XBONE failures due to the added price?

These things cost way too fucking much and have way too little use for the mass market to buy in. The amount of people that do buy in is way too fucking small for developers to support, and thus those use cases are never created. You can't half-ass this type of thing, and history has shown us that. Anything that's a console accessory won't succeed. The closest to success we've ever seen with that kind of scheme is the Wii Balance Board - a device that's super simple, super cheap to make, and doesn't add any extra horsepower requirements. Yet there are exactly 2 worthwhile games for that thing - Wii Fit and Wii Fit U. And only one of those games sold well.

Maybe I'm old, but I've seen this shit time and time again. You can keep fooling yourself into thinking that "this time VR will be different", though.

Re:Except It Isn't

[vertinox]

Hrm... I take it you haven't tried the product yet or watched the reaction of people who have used it.

I'm a child of the 90's so I used to play those VR games for a dollar for 5 minutes in the arcades and have to agree those were pretty shitty.

However, the Oculus Rift is something else to behold.

I own a dev kit and I actually get "Oh shit" moments in the Rift playing the roller coaster demos. Regular games don't do that for me. I get vertigo playing Minecraft in the Rift when I am high up building something. Regular Minecraft doesn't do that.

When I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Rift I find myself looking left and right and checking my mirrors just like I drive a car in real life. I even look out the window to look at the scenery. Without the Rift I don't do that.

And this is a low rez version without positional tracking.

Its not a gimmick and its not going away. 2 billion dollars says its not going away. Even if you hate Facebook you can invest in one of the other kickstarters like AntVR and use their product.

I've been participating in the RiftMax shows and it reminds me of the scene in Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex where they are in a virtual chat room on the net.

This is going to be big.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Gordo_1]

Have you worn an Oculus? No, you haven't. Which is why you think it is an 'abortion'. I have spent the better part of a year with an early development kit and I can tell you it's already a highly entertaining experience that will only get better over time.

> People don't want to wear headgear for their media consumption.

People don't want to watch a wall-mounted rectangle for their media consumption. Both are asinine statements. Anyway, VR isn't so much about consuming media. It's about being part of an interactive experience that can't be replicated any other way.

> 2 decades passed since the last time they tried this shit and failed.

Yes, it was super expensive back then, there was next to no content and the overall experience was absolutely horrible by anyone's standards.

So what's different this time? Technology has improved immensely. Field of view is much larger, latency is way down, resolution is way up, and weight is a small fraction of the early headsets. Oh, also most households already have the computers necessary to drive a decent VR experience. And content? It's coming. There are thousands of 3d games that can benefit from VR with only a few months of additional development effort and hundreds of new titles already being built. Furthermore, VR headsets will be in the same price range as a typical game console or high end video card. It is now right in the cross-hairs of the mainstream digital consumer.