Incoming FO4 and Doom on VR

Samuel T. Cogley

Very, very excited!

Can't wait for E3 - sorry if this conversation has already started.

Anyone reckon it will remain a Vive exclusive? I can't see it myself but then...

Falthyron

With what is going on with Oculus at the moment, the safer bet for risky technology would be to go with VIVE. Fallout would work better as it is the slower game, but DOOM is based on speed and movement - it is ripe for motion sickness complaints.

Samuel T. Cogley

Falthyron wrote: »

With what is going on with Oculus at the moment, the safer bet for risky technology would be to go with VIVE. Fallout would work better as it is the slower game, but DOOM is based on speed and movement - it is ripe for motion sickness complaints.

What makes you say that?

The best approach would be to release on as wide a market as possible unless HTC pay oodles of dosh to keep it as an exclusive. As it stands the majority of stuff is cross compatible in one way or another.

Falthyron

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

What makes you say that?

The best approach would be to release on as wide a market as possible unless HTC pay oodles of dosh to keep it as an exclusive. As it stands the majority of stuff is cross compatible in one way or another.

Both games are already on as wide a market as possible - the LCD display. :P VR is a very small market right now, which means very limited return. If Oculus has ceased development and sales (pending the second ZeniMax lawsuit) then it doesn't make sense spending money on a game for a product that could be defunct in the coming months.

Those who will buy the VR versions/upgrade to the VR versions/play the VR versions have already spent their money on the original versions. Having two LCD screens stuck to the front of your eyes is not going to make Fallout 4 a better game, it will just change how a mediocre game looks. DOOM on the other hand is an excellent game, but VR would actual limit the potential enjoyment because it demands a fast response rate, movement, and reactions - things that impact negatively on the VR experience.

In short, assuming Bethesda charge for the VR component of Fallout 4 and DOOM, you are investing in a product for a very small market (those who own a VR unit). If there are additional costs to ensure it runs on multiple VR headsets then you will want to pick and choose how you spend your money because the reality is: the financial return is not going to be great. If the VR components are free upgrades, then you aren't making money, so why invest a lot of money into something that will yield zilch?

Oculus is in serious trouble. VIVE has the time and space now to achieve market growth, but very little has been achieved by any headset thus far. Tech demos and retrospective addons for games people have already judged and played is not going to create the momentum needed to MAKE people buy a VR headset and get the cyclical development with developers started.

Samuel T. Cogley

I wasn't aware of the Zenimax/Oculus issues.

Shame as both games are in the works and it looks like it'll have to be some sort of hack to get it running on the rift then. I would hate to see a market dominated by one player and hopefully that's not on the cards. Anyway not really what the thread is here to discuss - I'm more wondering if anyone else is looking forward to these two games and when they think they'll hit etc. FO4 will be at E3 - I haven't heard much about doom other than the demos at last year's E3.

Icyseanfitz

To be fair the immersion for a game like fo4 with vr if its done well would be utterly amazing, its the perfect type of game for vr if the controls can be nailed

Samuel T. Cogley

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

To be fair the immersion for a game like fo4 with vr if its done well would be utterly amazing, its the perfect type of game for vr if the controls can be nailed

I played in in Vorpx and loved it - couldn't get around the head look issue though.

Samuel T. Cogley

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15780430/doom-vfr-fallout-4-vr-trailer-bethesda-e3-2017

Doing a bit more research on FO4, the humour is it will work fine on the Oculus just that, if not I'm back to tweaking vorpx.

Doom looked a bit strange teleporting about.

ScumLord

Falthyron wrote: »

Having two LCD screens stuck to the front of your eyes is not going to make Fallout 4 a better game, it will just change how a mediocre game looks.

VR fundamentally changes a game and how enjoyable it is.

With the rift, I don't know how many units are out there taking the DKs into account, it's still a sizeable amount of people. Plus there's open VR that will work with any headset if Oculus goes belly up, which I'd find unusual given that it has a brand name that's worth a lot.

Calibos

Oculus is in serious trouble???????

If the Oculus appeals against the Zenimax verdicts don't go anywhere I think you'll be hearing news that Facebook has bought Zenimax. TBH thats probably what the Zenimax owners are hoping for anyway.

From the very beginning when Facebook bought Oculus, Zuckerberg has been at pains to remind shareholders at every earnings call (or whatever they're called) that Its going to be at least 10 years before VR or AR are anywhere near mainstream and that this is a long game. Thats why all the clickbait articles this year saying VR has failed again or hasn't met investor expectations are so so infuriating. Who's expectations?? For years like I said, every major VR/AR player has been at pains to say that they expect adoption to be slow for the next decade but that the pay off for investor patience will be unprecedented. In 10 years or so when we have Combo AR/VR HMD's in a sunglasses formfactor they will be as ubiquitous as smartphones today. Never mind all the new unique amazing use cases they'll have, they will be a massively disruptive tech that will decimate the Display industry. No more power and space hungry displays in the workplace or home. A simple cheap light weight milli-amp sipping pair of AV/VR glasses will replace every monitor, TV and projector on the planet.

EG. Family sit down in the living room to watch the Wimbledon Mens Final. Everyone switches their glasses to VR Mode. Everyone is now sitting Courtside at centre Court in the best seat in the house. Wimbledon Tennis Club in association with the broadcast networks got to sell that seat a hundred million times over. Final is over. Dad heads out to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. He 'Pins' a 60inch AR screen to the Kitchen wall to watch the doubles final while he cooks. He 'Pins' an AR Recipe book to the Kitchen Island work surface beside him while he chops the ingredients. Back in the Living room the rest of the family decide to watch a TV Show. Mum 'Pins' a 140 inch AR Home Theater screen to the Living Room wall. Everyone syncs their glasses to it. TV Show is over, dinner is over and Mum and Dad head out for a few drinks. The kids decide to watch a movie. A nostalgic Dark Knight Trilogy Night! The kids switch to VR Mode and download the Batcave Theater. 100 foot wide Cinemascope Virtual Screen and Batcave auditorium. Bats flying over head lit up by the virtual projector beam, A Tumbler Batmobile on the stage in front of the screen. All the Batsuits in glass display cases along the sides of the batcave cinema. The avatars of the Kids and NPC viewers all clad in super hero costumes.......

Facebook along with others are putting billions of Dollars into making this happen. Facebook have already invested a 1/4 of a billion dollars into content and are investing another 1/4 billion in the near future. All to break the Chicken/Egg scenario that always afflicts new ecosystems where no one will buy the hardware without content and no one will develop the content if no one buys the hardware.

Ironically its HTC and Valve that have put the least amount of investment into VR.

We VR aficionado's are blessed that VR is a necessary step on the road to ubiquitous AR which is Facebooks ultimate goal. We reap the benefits of all their money and research dollars despite their ultimate goal being AR. Facebook/Oculus are in this for the long haul.

ScumLord

Calibos wrote: »

A simple cheap light weight milli-amp sipping pair of AV/VR glasses will replace every monitor, TV and projector on the planet.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out. VR/AR has the potential to cripple tech markets like TVs, but like you say we're some way off that right now. The hardware has some serious catch up to do, there's not really any point to companies developing better headsets because not even PC users have the hardware to run them.

I haven't been following Microsoft's new console, will that be capable of running a VR headset? Playstations offering is lacking a console capable of really making the most of the headset, but it should be future proof.

The likes of Samsung or Sony might be a bit apprehensive about improving VR if it means they'll lose billions in sales of other dedicated devices like TVs.

Calibos

MS surprised everyone at this years E3.....by NOT talking about VR in relation to Scorpio/XboxX at all. Despite the fact that they are partnering with several companies Like Dell, Asus, Lenovo etc to build their 'Mixed Reality' HMD's (not to be confused with MS Hololens) They even showed tracked Hand controllers for their MR HMD's at GDC earlier this year. Seems they have decided to build their own VR HMD inhouse specifically for XboxX and will talk more about it in 2018. It seems they feel Wireless is an absolute necessity for console VR. They are also probably waiting till their SLAM inside out tracking system that is already 'best in class' and used in Hololens is 100% reliable and sub millimeter accurate and ready for VR. They obviously feel safe in letting Sony get the headstart because by 2018 they'll have a much better complete system than Sony to compete with. ie. More powerful Console and a much better tracking system and totally wireless.

WRT to the display manufacturers, I've thought about that myself too. The VR Display divisions rendering the other display divisions defunct!! One has to imagine though that they'll look at it like, "If we don't build the displays then someone else will!" and that they have about 15 years to wind down operations of the other divisions. Maybe the Sums make it a net positive anyway. Could be that selling a billion €500 VR/AR glasses with a much lower BOM (Bill of Materials) and much higher profit margins is better than selling 500 million €800 TV's or 500 million €200 Monitors with higher BOM's and lower margins.

Smartphones at €600 are an easy sell for a billion people because they are multifunctional. VR HMD's are a hard sell at €600 because they are pretty much single use (VR Games) at the moment. That won't always be the case though. A €600 pair of VR/AR glasses will be a very easy sell once people understand what they can do and all the devices they can replace.

With regard to the hardware required to run VR. Thats looking like it'll be solved for Gen 2 VR. Its likely why both Oculus and Valve/HTC pushed back their CV2's till early 2019. They are waiting for the Keystone Tech of Eyetracking and Foveated Rendering to be ready for primetime. With fast and accurate enough eyetracking one can use Foveated rendering to only render the very small area of the screen seen by the Foveal area of human vision at full resolution and render the rest at much lower res which will dramatically reduce the horsepower needed to render high res VR. It means you can dramatically increase the resolution of panels used for the HMD's, increasing the resolution means you can afford to increase the Field of View of the HMD's (optics permitting). It also means that the video bandwidth required is reduced meaning Wireless HMD's even at high resolutions.

Maximise the Video Window of this:

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM

All the cogs are spinning in reality but only the Foveal area of your vision can actually see them spinning. Outside your foveal region your brain does a best guess of what its seeing which doesn't include spinning. That small area of spinning cogs is the only area that needs to be rendered at full res for VR/AR. With several bands around it of decreasing res. The higher global display res you go the more efficient Foveated rendering becomes. Like I said, its the keystone VR tech and the major players know its worth waiting for and have likely pushed back their CV2's to wait for it. Obviously it'll be even more of a gamechanger for Console VR.

Oculus/Facebook also showed their work on SLAM inside/out tracking and skeletal tracking at Facebooks F8 event this year. They've said for years that the reason they stuck with camera based tracking despite it currently being inferior to Valves Lighthouse tracking system is that it has greater potential going forward. ie. Why waste money on R&D for a Lighthouse type system when you know that in a few short years it'll be rendered moot by SLAM based inside/out tracking. SLAM cameras and dedicated ASIC chips in the HMD and controllers and a pair of cameras on your desk to track your skeleton/body for 1:1 full body avatars in game. No cables to the HMD nor controllers and more importantly for ease of setup and WAF (wife acceptance factor), no cameras or base-stations or cables strung around your walls and ceilings of your VR rooms. Oculus already showed their prototype inside/out SLAM tracking on the Santa Cruz prototype shown at Oculus Connect last year in 2016. Combined with what was shown at F8 this year and another year or so of R&D, its a fairly good bet that a Rift CV2 in 2019 will really show where all that Facebook money went. While all that 3rd party stuff for Vive that Valve/HTC have allowed like the $250 Wireless add-on, €250 Eyetracking/ FR add-on and €100 each Vive Tracking Pucks is great for Dev's to get a head start on learning how to code full body avatars, rendering pipelines etc, any Vive end-user would be mad to blow that kind of money on these add-ones which will have little to no game support (Except Wireless. word is though that its not perfect and is a nightmare to setup) End users should wait till all these technologies are integrated into the Vive/Rift 2's

(Oculus actually just made Extra Touch controllers usable as trackable objects like the Pucks. Unlike the Vive Wands, the Touch controllers are about the same size as a Vive puck so can be used for either purpose. Much cheaper too. A Vive puck is €100 each. For €100 you can get 2 Touch Controllers and another tracking camera.)