Late Monday night.
My old college roommate and I had finished watching the final round of the Omegathon, gotten some dinner, and driven twenty-five minutes back to Kirkland. I had a flight the next morning at 7 AM; I wanted some sleep.
Then, oddly, I got a phone call from my buddy asking me where I was. Far away and tired, I replied. He told me unequivocally to come back, despite having just ten minutes before arrived home. I refused. He insisted.
"Come the fuck back," he said, "and pick me up, and we're gonna go see this guy. Trust me."
Back in the car we went.
We went to see Jamie Kelly, the CEO of VRCade. I had briefly heard of them in a GameSpot article awhile back. I'm a big fan of the Rift, having received one back in April, and I've become fairly sensitive to input lag and latency issues, so I didn't think I'd be terribly impressed.
I was terribly impressed.
The VRCade slightly-hacked-together set (you can see the Oakley symbol on the headstrap, having originally come from a higher-end pair of ski goggles) has a better screen than the Rift Dev Kit. It's actually the same resolution, but the screen door effect is greatly lessened and the pixel response time is notably better. I'm sure the Oculus Rift HD prototype might equal or exceed this advance, but I've never tried it.
The real key, though, is the positioning system. VRCade isn't actually built to compete with the Oculus Rift, because the Rift is meant to be an at-home device, affordable for most middle-class families. There are a lot of inherent limitations with that device, notably lack of positional tracking and one that isn't mentioned much, the tethering wire. There's really no getting away from that strict leash, which not only limits freedom of movement, but even prevents you from spinning in place more than three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Even the folks making the Omni Virtuix treadmill said they were experimenting with an overhead boom to hold the wire, but that it was a fair challenge.
VRCade uses somewhere around $16,000 dollars worth of equipment for even a small setup, but it effectively turns an empty space into a live motion capture arena. Twelve cameras are mounted overhead, around the space in question. The headset, gun, and whatever else you care to stick little pebbles on are then tracked in real time, both in orientation *and* position. As a result, you can move, bob, weave, duck, jump, whatever, so long as you stay within the capture volume, and the results are incredible. The source of motion sickness with the Rift, the sensation of the inner ear not quite matching up to the eyes, disappears entirely, because there is no longer any effective incongruity between the two. You feel free to move, to spin, whatever, because the wire from the headset simply attaches to a worn backpack (they plan to eventually ditch the backpack as well). And it honestly blows the current incarnation of the Rift out of the water.
I still love my Rift, and this isn't really a solution anyone could ever really obtain at home. But its name is accurate...this thing could completely revive arcades as a cultural force. They want to set up large arenas from which you could rent areas that correspond to in-game space limitations, or perhaps try a hybrid approach where certain longer distance travel is done using alternate means. It's just...extremely cool.
HERE IS A VIDEO OF ME DOING STUFF. My old college roommate is a horrible person and recorded it vertically. I am very very sorry. Feel free to ask questions!
Also, I was like, "Why weren't you at PAX?" They apparently just never got back to him.
Their loss.
My old college roommate and I had finished watching the final round of the Omegathon, gotten some dinner, and driven twenty-five minutes back to Kirkland. I had a flight the next morning at 7 AM; I wanted some sleep.
Then, oddly, I got a phone call from my buddy asking me where I was. Far away and tired, I replied. He told me unequivocally to come back, despite having just ten minutes before arrived home. I refused. He insisted.
"Come the fuck back," he said, "and pick me up, and we're gonna go see this guy. Trust me."
Back in the car we went.
We went to see Jamie Kelly, the CEO of VRCade. I had briefly heard of them in a GameSpot article awhile back. I'm a big fan of the Rift, having received one back in April, and I've become fairly sensitive to input lag and latency issues, so I didn't think I'd be terribly impressed.
I was terribly impressed.
The VRCade slightly-hacked-together set (you can see the Oakley symbol on the headstrap, having originally come from a higher-end pair of ski goggles) has a better screen than the Rift Dev Kit. It's actually the same resolution, but the screen door effect is greatly lessened and the pixel response time is notably better. I'm sure the Oculus Rift HD prototype might equal or exceed this advance, but I've never tried it.
The real key, though, is the positioning system. VRCade isn't actually built to compete with the Oculus Rift, because the Rift is meant to be an at-home device, affordable for most middle-class families. There are a lot of inherent limitations with that device, notably lack of positional tracking and one that isn't mentioned much, the tethering wire. There's really no getting away from that strict leash, which not only limits freedom of movement, but even prevents you from spinning in place more than three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Even the folks making the Omni Virtuix treadmill said they were experimenting with an overhead boom to hold the wire, but that it was a fair challenge.
VRCade uses somewhere around $16,000 dollars worth of equipment for even a small setup, but it effectively turns an empty space into a live motion capture arena. Twelve cameras are mounted overhead, around the space in question. The headset, gun, and whatever else you care to stick little pebbles on are then tracked in real time, both in orientation *and* position. As a result, you can move, bob, weave, duck, jump, whatever, so long as you stay within the capture volume, and the results are incredible. The source of motion sickness with the Rift, the sensation of the inner ear not quite matching up to the eyes, disappears entirely, because there is no longer any effective incongruity between the two. You feel free to move, to spin, whatever, because the wire from the headset simply attaches to a worn backpack (they plan to eventually ditch the backpack as well). And it honestly blows the current incarnation of the Rift out of the water.
I still love my Rift, and this isn't really a solution anyone could ever really obtain at home. But its name is accurate...this thing could completely revive arcades as a cultural force. They want to set up large arenas from which you could rent areas that correspond to in-game space limitations, or perhaps try a hybrid approach where certain longer distance travel is done using alternate means. It's just...extremely cool.
HERE IS A VIDEO OF ME DOING STUFF. My old college roommate is a horrible person and recorded it vertically. I am very very sorry. Feel free to ask questions!
Also, I was like, "Why weren't you at PAX?" They apparently just never got back to him.
Their loss.