Hardware & Technical Facebook buys OculusVR

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Boomotang

Banned
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Shigawire said:
Of course, some people prefer not to get too much adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones. But I'm sure there will also be incredibly relaxing game experiences for VR. Experiences which would be too "boring" on a regular screen, but totally engrossing in VR. I expect "The Gallery: The Six Elements" will be a very relaxing and awe-inspiring VR game. I can also imagine playing "Dear Esther" in VR.. a game which I thought was horribly boring when I played it! These are the kind of experiences which can be excellent for VR. I sincerely doubt that first person shooters will be very good with VR. Completely new experiences, which are almost like relaxing mystery games such as Myst, The Gallery, and of course cockpit based experiences!
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They need to make a new Myst game for VR!
 

GMcA

GMcA
noodle said:
Strap the sick bag to your face for true immersion ;)
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Quite possibly! :eek:

But I was doing a bit of reading and found this regarding VR and simulator sickness:

Back in the US, I started running visual psychology experiments. I created artificial situations where different basic depth cues—the kinds of information we pick up that tell us how far away an object is—could be put into conflict. As the work proceeded, I narrowed in on two key depth cues – “motion parallax” and “shape-from-shading.”

Motion parallax has to do with the apparent size of an object. If you put a soda can in front of you and then move it closer, it will get bigger in your visual field. Your brain assumes that the can didn’t suddenly grow and concludes that it’s just got closer to you.

Shape-from-shading is a bit trickier. If you stare at a point on an object in front of you and then move your head around, you’ll notice that the shading of that point changes ever so slightly depending on the lighting around you. The funny thing is that your eyes actually flicker constantly, recalculating the tiny differences in shading, and your brain uses that information to judge how far away the object is.

In the real world, both these cues work together to give you a sense of depth. But in virtual reality systems, they’re not treated equally.
...
In my experiment, I tried to trick people’s brains. I created scenarios in which motion parallax suggested an object was at one distance, and shape-from-shading suggested it was further away or closer. The idea was to see which of these conflicting depth cues the brain would prioritize. (The brain prioritizes between conflicting cues all the time; for example, if you hold out your finger and stare at it through one eye and then the other, it will appear to be in different positions, but if you look at it through both eyes, it will be on the side of your “dominant” eye.)

What I found was startling (pdf). Although there was variability across the board, biological men were significantly more likely to prioritize motion parallax. Biological women relied more heavily on shape-from-shading. In other words, men are more likely to use the cues that 3D virtual reality systems relied on.
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http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rift-sexist.html
 
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Shigawire

Shigawire
Hah! That's interesting GMcA. Had no idea there was a gender bias involved in how our brains perceive depth.

Regarding the parallax depth, Michael Abrash who worked at Steam before, talks about it quite a bit, with examples, in this talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2dQoeqVVo

Though I recommend the entire video, the best part starts at 07:25
 
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Variform

Variform
I have been interested in VR ever since the tv Series 'VR5'. As most young people, who are naturally accepting of new technologies and have less fear, unfortunately, also less wisdom about how technology affects society, I could not wait for it. For many years nothing happened. When I first heard about a new effort to push VR onto the market and the Occulus Rift I was excited again.

Unfortunately, despite the pro's and con's of VR technology, facebook bought the whole lot. For that reason I can never buy an Occulus Rift as a privacy fighter. I do not have a fb account and never will have one. But if I use the OR, the Terms Of Service that comes with it, undermines my privacy, in a way giving me a hidden user account with fb, a profile without a front, where I cannot have any influence over privacy settings. I would have less options or right to protect my privacy because it would basically be a sort of hidden profile.

If what for decades was a great novel and innovative concept is now to become Yet Another Platform for Big Data, for profiling, data mining and targeted advertising, I will have no part in it. The concept of VR has now been hijacked as another means to make of the user, the product. After all, facebook has recently shown some ideas on how to use the OR to meet other people virtually at famous places e.g. The very motion of your head can be tracked as well as any spot where in the VR experience you are looking at so that any object of interest can be identified and added to your profile.

The reason for that profile, of course, is to make profit (for shareholders) by selling it to the marketing and advertising industry. The hardware of the OR becomes not so much the novel gadget for VR, but a platform to get even deeper into our minds, to provide an extra environment where we can expose ourselves. Our vulnerabilities, our interests, our likes and dislikes and I am sure there will be plenty of ´like´ buttons made available and ´share´ options that reveal our social networks in even greater detail.

As some game publishers have shown interest in analyzing what gamers look at, so that they may economize on graphics detail in those areas, surely facebook will want to analyze what people look at in VR. It is not hard to see how this will work. When you meet a friend at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you might get targeted ads for trips to Paris, deals on cheap flights and what not, even as google might fill in your agenda with suggestions on the best or cheapest café near that location.

Not to mention ads being injected on billboards right there in VR. For Big Data, VR is basically another world parallel to reality, a whole new market to exploit at the cost of the human UN and EU recognized right of privacy.

So for me, unfortunately, a long dream, supported by science fiction books and films for many decades, has become unavailable for all intents and purposes. And it saddens me that too many people, even those who are aware of privacy issues and the importance of privacy for themselves and society as a whole, will nonetheless accept the TOS of OR and the direction VR is being taken and compromise, even downplaying the risks, out of either a lust for gadgets in general or the long desire for VR and who will not deny themselves the VR experience.
 

Insomnia

Insomnia
Variform said:
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You think you're anonymous when you're typing this? You don't think our smartphones knows who we are and what apps we use?
Google for example uses our search history to be sure that we are getting advertisements that matches search history.

If Facebook never bought Oculus, then DK2 might have never happened, and who knows Vive might not even be what it is today.
You can hate Facebook and Mark Suckerberg all you want, it's just a company among millions that tries to make make money on you, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, Samsung, Sony etc etc....


First world problems... Get over it.
 
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