The Vive discussion Thread

[Dr Zachary Smith]

I don't care, I'll probably buy both

You must have a big desk !!!! but yeh that might solve the problem Although if one is better than the other I.E if Vive is better spec than Rift I am not sure I could justify buying one just to play ED coz they don't support my Vive ya get me ? There is going to be a lot of juicy VR software coming through steam this festive period no doubt Although I have been reading the Vive may be a little pricey compared to the Rift, so that may work in it's favour.

 

[Mazhurg]

It's not a case of what Oculus releases for me, it's if they release anything, or at least when. HTC have said Christmas this year, just basic common sense would suggest the first people to nail VR and get it to market will set back everyone else quite a bit, possibly into extinction :/

I would just like people's opinion or FD's about how many VR products they intend to try to support, Oculus seem to have been the initial choice because dev kits are cheaper than a hamster cage, and there's not much else. It would seem sensible for FD to support the best consumer hardware though, and not a maybe, wannabe, perhaps sometime product just because it was one of the first to have the idea and release something.

Fragmentation of a nascent market - by anybody - is bad news for the entire market. Having said that; in their basics HDM's are motion sensing display devices. Nothing more, nothing less. As far as devs are concerned, they program to the video the same as they would to any other monitors with common calls and inputs (for motion). Everything else is the job of the device makers. When viewed in those terms, for FD it really should not matter what make of HDM is worn by the user. If the developer (in this case FD) does their job properly then Oculus, Vive, Gear, Google, 3D head... - all of them and any of them should work as long as the device makers use a common api facing the programmers which is what DX12 and Vulcan aim to do.

 

[Dr Zachary Smith]

Fragmentation of a nascent market - by anybody - is bad news for the entire market. Having said that; in their basics HDM's are motion sensing display devices. Nothing more, nothing less. As far as devs are concerned, they program to the video the same as they would to any other monitors with common calls and inputs (for motion). Everything else is the job of the device makers. When viewed in those terms, for FD it really should not matter what make of HDM is worn by the user. If the developer (in this case FD) does their job properly then Oculus, Vive, Gear, Google, 3D head... - all of them and any of them should work as long as the device makers use a common api facing the programmers which is what DX12 and Vulcan aim to do.

I agree basic head movement yeh, I was playing this with a Sony HMZ and a wireless gyro mouse stuck to my head instant VR LOL it was great, but with Vive we are literally going to be able to get up out of the chair and walk around the cockpit or bridge or wherever you may be, maybe 5 people all wearing Vives working the subsytems of one ship lol like the bridge of the enterprise etc, but I mean if for e.g you need to press a button that's on the other side of the cockpit maybe you have to get up and walk over to it and do it, I think that would be awesome. I just think the goalposts have been moved somewhat by being given the ability to actually move around instead of it being a seated experience and that would require special in game support I would imagine.

They said the Vive lighthouse can support a few HMD's in the same room but one problem I see is people bumping into each other if you try to use more than one lol perhaps there is a solution to this ?

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

You can already get up and walk around with the DK2. Btw, your Sony HMZ experience wasn't actually VR. And, yeah, whichever system is the best, I will get.

 

[Caspar]

Does Vive miraculously provide judder free VR experiences on today's averege tier of graphics card?
If not, then having it now will not give it significant foothold in the marketplace. Uptake will be limited if you have to buy potentially expensive visor + mega expensive graphics card, surely? Or am I missing something?

I think this is the reason Oculus are not rushing. They need graphics card manufacturers to deliver more for less and for VR optimised development software to come out and be used by the software developers.

 

[adoredtv]

We need to see how Vive reacts in the public domain before making judgement. Valve are sure making the right noises while Oculus seem to be really taken aback at their news. If the Vive really has 0% motion sickness then that's all it'll take to launch it. Oculus seems unable to master that part of the equation and that's what is holding them back.

Here's the thing - From what I can tell the Vive was being run on a GTX 980 - which Oculus know is not capable of providing the required latency (on their hardware) in order to completely remove motion sickness. For me that means that there is likely a fix in the actual Vive HMD itself, which if true will have given them a huge lead. A lot depends on what was running too - it's a lot easier to make good demos that don't make people sick, games are another thing altogether.

 

[Mark D]

Sigh...

You don't (and they ain't saying yet) even know what Oculus plans on releasing yet. Once they show their stuff, then one can make educated guesses as to who or what will be. One thing is for sure, as of now there is only one available HDM.

Anything else is from your (and everyone else) seventh planet.

This +1

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

The other thing to remember is that Dr Z made some wild statements regarding Oculus CV1. He's pretty much staked his forum reputation on no CV1 ever being released. People who make such bold statements tend to want to influence the outcome in their favour with propaganda.

 

[Mark D]

The other thing to remember is that Dr Z made some wild statements regarding Oculus CV1. He's pretty much staked his forum reputation on no CV1 ever being released. People who make such bold statements tend to want to influence the outcome in their favour with propaganda.

Interesting choice of thread title too "HTC Vive alive, Oculus dead ?"

 

[Ref Minor]

The other thing to remember is that Dr Z made some wild statements regarding Oculus CV1. He's pretty much staked his forum reputation on no CV1 ever being released. People who make such bold statements tend to want to influence the outcome in their favour with propaganda.

And not to forget he did most of his anti oculus bile without actually having tried one. Yep, he nailed his own reputation to the mast

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

And not to forget he did most of his anti oculus bile without actually having tried one. Yep, he nailed his own reputation to the mast

Yep, and he also claimed that his Sony home cinema HMD (which looks like a 70' screen 25yds away) was VR?

 

[Ben Ryder]

' call me cynical... '

Doctor you're always cynical

Hows The Robot doing?

 

[Caspar]

No need to get personal folks. He's entitled to his opinion.

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

No need to get personal folks. He's entitled to his opinion.

And that's what we're talking about here, his opinion, not him personally.

 

[Dr Zachary Smith]

From what I can tell the Vive was being run on a GTX 980 - which Oculus know is not capable of providing the required latency (on their hardware) in order to completely remove motion sickness. For me that means that there is likely a fix in the actual Vive HMD itself, which if true will have given them a huge lead. A lot depends on what was running too - it's a lot easier to make good demos that don't make people sick, games are another thing altogether.

I think the GFX card is slightly less important than the screen quality and refresh rate when it comes to VR, basically seeing pixels and not being able to read text is a bad thing, haven't heard anyone moan about that yet on the Vive, so the Oleds must be decent, I mean people can mess with their own quality settings and turn them down for more fps. The way I see it it's like running 3d games on a 3d monitor thats 90hz+ that almost halves the fps as it's rendered 2x basically, so yeh we need a card that does that but a single 780 or 980 shouldn't really have a problem.

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' call me cynical... '

Doctor you're always cynical

Hows The Robot doing?

I could not care less about that Calamitous Clump.

 

[adoredtv]

I think the GFX card is slightly less important than the screen quality and refresh rate when it comes to VR, basically seeing pixels and not being able to read text is a bad thing, haven't heard anyone moan about that yet on the Vive, so the Oleds must be decent, I mean people can mess with their own quality settings and turn them down for more fps. The way I see it it's like running 3d games on a 3d monitor thats 90hz+ that almost halves the fps as it's rendered 2x basically, so yeh we need a card that does that but a single 780 or 980 shouldn't really have a problem.

There is a difference between fps and latency though. Even with 200 fps you can still have high latency and it's the latency that is the main cause of motion sickness in VR.

The latency issue is mostly solved using AMD hardware and software on the Rift, but Nvidia doesn't have the required tools yet. However if what Valve is saying is true and there is no motion sickness with the Vive, then they've discovered a way to get around Nvidia's latency issues anyway (assuming that the reports of the Vive using a GTX 980 are accurate). Either that or they've solved it another way.

There's something interesting going on somewhere, that's for sure.

 

[Dr Zachary Smith]

There is a difference between fps and latency though. Even with 200 fps you can still have high latency and it's the latency that is the main cause of motion sickness in VR.

The latency issue is mostly solved using AMD hardware and software on the Rift, but Nvidia doesn't have the required tools yet. However if what Valve is saying is true and there is no motion sickness with the Vive, then they've discovered a way to get around Nvidia's latency issues anyway (assuming that the reports of the Vive using a GTX 980 are accurate). Either that or they've solved it another way.

There's something interesting going on somewhere, that's for sure.

Perhaps their latency beater is the laser beam lighthouse tracking they are using Frikin LASER beams !!!! Hell yeh !! Gimme !!

I have never experienced this motion sickness people speak of to be honest, either with the rift or a sony hmz using track ir, maybe it's an individual kinda thing.

 

[adoredtv]

Perhaps their latency beater is the laser beam lighthouse tracking they are using Frikin LASER beams !!!! Hell yeh !! Gimme !!

It probably is this.

I have never experienced this motion sickness people speak of to be honest, either with the rift or a sony hmz using track ir, maybe it's an individual kinda thing.

Some older US Army studies found that 50% of people got simulator sickness but not sure what the numbers are on VR now. I even get it with Eyefinity in some games - playing Tomb Raider is especially bad, makes me want to throw up every time after a few minutes.

 

[Mazhurg]

It probably is this.



Some older US Army studies found that 50% of people got simulator sickness but not sure what the numbers are on VR now. I even get it with Eyefinity in some games - playing Tomb Raider is especially bad, makes me want to throw up every time after a few minutes.

I can play Elite all day and not have any issues with motion sickness, and can play most "demos" without much issues. However start Half life 2 and I can stand only about 20 minutes of it before I have to remove the HMD. Go figure.

 

[Magnusvermagnussen]

It's not a case of what Oculus releases for me, it's if they release anything, or at least when. HTC have said Christmas this year, just basic common sense would suggest the first people to nail VR and get it to market will set back everyone else quite a bit, possibly into extinction :/

The only reason I don't believe this will be the case is because of the pricepoints of each item. This may sound a little flip, but US$250-350 for a PC gamer to spend on a new toy is not all that big of a hit in the grand scheme of things. The top-of-the-line Nvidia Titan X is US$1,000. A GTX 980 is around US$650. Even a 970 is hovering in the $350-400 price range. And (albeit the video card is by far the most important piece of gaming kit) that is only one component of the PC. Selling yours on the aftermarket and buying another from another maker really won't be all that onerous a burden.

Vive is relasing what they are calling a 'premium' product for high-end PC gamers. If they beat OR to market, I will be picking one of these up (if only knowing that reselling it shouldn't be a problem if I wanted to give the OR a try), because it's marketed to me: the true PC gaming enthusiast.

As for what I think will be coming out from OR: I do not believe that OR's goal is to make a 'premium' PC-gamer centric HDM. It was prior to the facebook acquisition I believe, but now, they are going to design something that, by necessity, people who are not packing dual 980's or Titan X's under the hood, can run. Basic tenet of product design when targeting the largest possible audience is to make it powerful, but not so powerful as to be out of the reach of the laptoppers, or the casual gamers or even the (gasp!) console gamers (I DREAD that thought).

I have a DK2. I believe it will be a piece of gaming history, so I'm inclined to keep it, even after release of any consumer HDMs. However, I believe I will be buying the Vive when it comes out.