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Oculus Founder Explains Why the Rift VR Headset Will Cost "More Than $350"
An anonymous reader writes: When Oculus took to Kickstarter in 2012, the company sought to create the 'DK1', a development kit of the Rift which the company wanted to eventually become an affordable VR headset that they would eventually take to market as a consumer product. At the time, the company was aiming for a target price around $350, but since then the company, and the scope of the Rift headset, has grown considerably. That's one reason why Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey says that the consumer Rift headset, launching in Q1 2016, will cost more than $350. '...the reason for that is that we've added a lot of technology to this thing beyond what existed in the DK1 and DK2 days,' says Luckey.
The parts of cheap. Make 100 Million headsets and you could sell them profitably for $150. They've got a mountain of engineering debt to pay off, though, and they're sure as hell not going to sell 100 million.
People (and research) are expensive. That's why it's going to cost so much.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Like with most technology, VR will become a success thanks to how it can help improve self-pleasure.
The digital tablet, the smart phone, the World Wide Web, the PC, the VCR, cable/satellite television, the telephone, ham radio, and even the printing press became popular, despite being expensive technologies in their early days, because they could deliver erotica in one form or another to people, who then used it to arouse and stimulate themselves while they were self-pleasuring (aka masturbating).
VR has real potential here. Take your fantasy, for example. Although you're white, you've always wished that you had a large, black member to play with. When you're wearing VR goggles, they could give you the perception that the cock you're fondling is darker, thicker, and about three times as big as it actually is.
Expand these possibilities to all genital fondlers and all of their fantasies, and suddenly this technology starts looking better and better, even if it is expensive in the near term. The early, passionate adopters will help advance the state of the art, and soon enough this technology will come down in cost, while increasing significantly in terms of its feature set.
You'll feel like a real dork, I hope, in three or four years when VR headsets retail for less than $100, and have an FPS rate over 1000.
As a person who actually tried it (albeit preview version): you can get sick no matter the FPS depending on what is being shown to you AND your genetics.
You don't need 4k $ PC to get high enough FPS, another way is to have slightly simpler scene, no problem. And if you think consoles (Sony has something between AMD 7850-7870 in it) check out this demo (real time rendering):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I wouldn't bet on OR, though. (offtopic: a real shame how kickstarter backers won't get anything from FB deal)
If anyone, Sony, which YEARS AGO released wearable TV (HMZ series) is working on project Morpheus and has helluva experience in gaming/controllers area, will do that.
On pricing side of things, Sony's rep once said it would cost "as console", so 350$-ish area.
I've been a huge supporter of Oculus since the Kickstarter. When people complained about the Facebook buyout, I tried to point out that a major player in the tech industry (like them or not, they are a major player) just dropped a massive investment in VR. When people complained about how long it was taking, I argued that doing something like this, and doing it well, has to take time - an inferior product could be a major issue for VR adoption. When they balked at releasing specs, I reminded myself that it's probably best, they wanted to make sure they had it right before they committed to something.
My first doubts started when they finally released the specs. I was really hoping for a 4K screen. After all the time and money, it seemed logical - come out of the gate with something really great or stay home. Sure, 4K isn't necessary, but there are applications for VR that would really benefit from it. Game will be the vehicle that carries the initial adoption of VR, but there are a ton of real-world applications waiting to be discovered. Personally, I want to throw out my monitors and use a VR headset to create a virtual workspace. But, anything less than 4K isn't going to give me the detail I need to write code on a virtual monitor "floating" a few feet in front of me.
My next doubts came when I started looking at the amount of "executives" and "directors" and people who stand up and do a lot of talking. I've noticed a trend (it's not new, it's always been there, I just finally noticed) - the more talking heads you have in a company, the longer, more expensive, more feature bloated (and never the features we actually want), more disappointing a product becomes. All these people swooped in and promptly buried something really cool in all the typical corporate ("we're not corporate, man! we're a startup that just happens to look like a bloated corporate monstrosity) BS.
Then this. After all the talk keeping it affordable, then they pull this crap.
I get that things add up, but I'll put this in perspective - I work for a company that is supplying them, and I know what we're charging (very low piece prices, and we're expensive compared to our competitors that do larger volumes). I also have access to price sheets from the kinds of suppliers that they're working with. Let's put it this way - there's no legitimate reason that they can't make a 4K rift with all the sensors they have, sell it for $200-$250, and still make a profit. So, either they've gotten a little top-heavy in the salary department, or they're getting greedy. Or both.
Either way, I'm done offering my (measly, not-reall-worth-much) support. My money is on Valve now (we're supplying them too, I've gotten to see some pretty cool stuff)
Yeah man, if I listen to music played though cables that aren't oxygen-free and connectors that aren't gold-plated, it gives me a splitting headache too.
For once, you are 100% on topic.
Oh no... it's the future.
First off, games that are optimized for pure eye candy strain current cards, yes. But you don't have to have teh bezt pozzible grafix for everything. Take Alien: Isolation - looked really good, but ran at excellent framerates even on older cards. And even has some vr support. Tradeoffs can be made to crank framerate, and not horrible tradeoffs. I can handle 2010 graphics on VR, it's not like those games looked bad.
And no, a $4000 PC isn't necessary. The official specs are more like $1K these days. In fact, definitely $1K.
And no, 120fps/eye isn't necessary. You need low latency, definitely, but not that low. The DK2 peaks at 76fps, and yet few people report sickness at that rate.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Input lag. If you move your head but the screen doesn't update the view until 1/60th of a second later then apparently that causes some (all?) people to feel motion sickness. But reducing the lag to 1/120th of a second alleviates the symptoms.
I would definitely trust Occulus's engineers on this one. They've actually tested these things and they'd have no reason to make things more difficult on themselves (by requiring higher refresh rates) unless it was a genuine issue affecting potential customers.
Oculus Rift was dead to me the instant Facebook bought it.
blatant lies!
Only the PC Master Race will get workable VR.
VR is not for unwashed console peasants.
All they deserve are 47fps bulimia simulators.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why is it any thread about 3d or VR brings the party poopers out in force? We get it already. Really. You don't like 3d or VR. You got a tummy ache when you tried it or maybe your widdle noggin hurt. The idea is completely without merit and just a way to scam people out of their money, therefore no one should make or use these technologies. You point to the numerous failures to deliver, but decade after decade, someone tries to do it. It's just a matter of time before the killer app and the technology finally converge.
If the product is not for you, move along. I swear, sometimes this place is just filled with people that seem to WANT things to fail.
But for other kinds of game I really don't see the benefit. Yeah it could be used for first person shooters (for example) but then the game has to somehow reconcile a person running, spinning, jumping, aiming, shooting, standing, crouching and throwing stuff to someone in real life sat on a couch. It's likely that it will be extremely disorientating and puke inducing.
And aside from FPSs what can we expect? Probably some lame jump scare horror games. Probably some table top style games. But nothing that particularly justifies the experience. I bet most games will work as well if not better in 2D.
The strange part is there are at least 3 major efforts to do VR plus a number of smaller ones and they'll end up cannibalizing the market for what it is. It's going to be a bloodbath.
VR is dead, sorry. Early adopters might pay 350$ for the headset, if only they have the necessary 4000$ PC to run it. This thing is not going to be usable on a a 300$ PC/Console anytime soon. It requires 120fps per eye to not make people sick. Current mid-range video cards don't even do 60fps on a single card. So either people are going to get a poor experience because they have poor hardware, or they're going to get a visit to the hospital because the headset physically makes them sick if they make it run at anything less than 120fps.
Nope. You only need to update the headset at 120fps, not the rendered image. You can re-use/distort the same rendered image multiple times to keep the headset happy while you render the next one. It would only take a fraction of the graphics card's power to do that.
With this technique even a 30Hz scene update rate would be fine.
No sig today...
Motion blur in VR makes you sick to your stomach and makes it really hard to see what's going on. The DK1 suffered from lots of motion blur, and it was very unpleasant. The DK2 added a low-persistence display (the OLEDs turn off while the pixels are changing, and only stay on a shorter amount of time, tricking your brain into reduced perceived motion blur) and it was a huge improvement.
At work they had an Oculus VR demo this past week and I got the chance to test one (I don't know the full specs of that particular unit). My experience and comments from the 5 min demo:
- Very first thing I noticed when I wore the headset was that the resolution seemed low, and the screen wasn't that bright.
- I had no control over the motion of the demo; as a result during panning, I could feel a twinge of motion sickness. Don't know what the framerate/latency was.
- It is a bit disconcerting to look at your virtual self, and while you move your real legs/arms, you don't see your virtual legs/arm move.
- The overall experience is very interesting and I think VR could be quite an enjoyable entertainment medium, but it definitely needs some work.