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Oculus Rift available for preorder for $599.99, shipping in March
- Thread starter War Eagle
- Start date
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Same here
For me it was a combo of playing Minecrift and just wandering around creative servers for hours gawking at endless builds slack jawed like the n64 xmas kid, and Sonic Generations on tridef. That sense of speed gave me such an incredible high mixed with the visuals, I was jabbering like a kid hopped up on sugar how cool it was afterwards. Looking at all the little details of the world felt like looking at a diorama, just seeing these tiny little treadmills behind a window pane on the metropolis level gave me such a strong feeling of wonderment.
It's a shame that level of wow factor fades pretty quickly, but taking a break for a spell sort of restores it. Nothing has come close since though for those first few months with a dk1. The helicopter demo with the battleship and island, one of the first in-car demos that let you drive up loops and mess with some physics, and the bevy of AAA titles I threw at tridef, unforgettable early days right there. I can only hope things like Oculus Touch and room scale with Vive will jolt me right back to that same level of awe I had with dk1.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
I'm assuming a form of blink teleportation, but that would kinda neuter survival. I can see them having multiple control styles for it to adjust comfort accordingly. There's been no official talk on it yet however.
Sleeping Lesson
Member
I thought by now we'd see more solutions for locomotion, or at least some indication of how announced games are going to handle it. The teleportation/blink solution seems like an easy short-term stopgap and not actually a great way of doing it.
You forgot about the distortion pass that causes image quality to go down. It needs to be at 135% or better to make up the distortion.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Agreed. It certainly helps with motion sickness and I used it some of the time in Dead Secret, but it def takes you a bit out of feeling more grounded and immersed in the world.
Hah! The "Erin" mentioned in this article is my roommate. Hi, Erin!
(She's rad)
Fabthegnome
Member
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Mechanical Snowman
Member
Don't make the mistake of comparing Oculus' recommendation with "minimum / recommended" spec on traditional games.
artsi
Member
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
At this point new customers would prob stand a better chance trying to find one at retail. That's a helluva wait. Really thought they'd throw more fb money at the production line for cv1.
Did it go straight from March to June after the initial allotment sold out?
artsi
Member
I wouldn't be so sure, maybe in US but in EU and elsewhere it could be a loooong time until retailers get any units. I'd imagine that pre-orders will have priority and who knows how long it will be until they are filled.
I'd pre-order it now anyway and see if they pop somewhere else before it's shipped. The worst that could happen is that you have to wait until July instead of August or September.
No, it went gradually March -> April -> May -> June -> July.
I got May myself, hoping it will be pushed to April.
Nope it went through April, May, then June.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
They did mention a limited retail rollout but not sure if they specified when. As you said though its likely to be US only for the foreseeable future. Pre-order def doesn't hurt with no money down.
Ah okay. I thought after the initial allotments were sold that they were done taking preorders. So due to my own stupidity I have to wait until June..
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
CPU Intel: i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Video Output Compatible: HDMI 1.3 video output
USB Ports: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
CarbonFire
Member
It may just end up being a somewhat unsolvable problem. We're fighting against our own physiology, and very specific triggers in our brain that alert us to problems our body may be having. While seated cockpit experiences do seem to "work" for most people, it may still make some people sick. "Normal" FPS movement might just end up being something that only a smaller percentage of the population can enjoy.
We probably won't know for sure how solvable it is until the real high-quality VR headsets are out in the wild and being tested by tens of thousands of players.
Amory
Member
Well, shit
You expected different? It's directly marketed as enthusiast only for now.
chrominance
Member
In a stunning turn of events, the rapidly sinking Canadian dollar has convinced me to at least put a pre-order in and lock the $914 CAD price in case Oculus decides to update the price in the future to something even less palatable. My order doesn't have an estimated ship date, though, so I don't know what month I got slotted into. Did they stop giving out month estimates due to uncertainty in production levels (as they seem to be ramping up due to demand)?
Just upgrade your rig slowly over time and let this VR stuff slowly sort it self out. You won't be able to get a Rift anytime soon anyway.
I'm new be nice
Member
What ever happened to possible solutions like creating a virtual nose to have a focal point? I had even heard of overlaying a basic grid every other frame over the entire picture.
It seems like you just mainly need a consistent point of reference. Idk. I bet there is a solution.
Sleeping Lesson
Member
I agree, it could very well be that over time developers will just shift the entire ethos of VR games to not require traditional locomotion because they can't "solve" the problem.
BTW, are you the same CarbonFire that used to post on the Penny Arcade forums, particularly in the Battlefield threads?
I really hope these ideas get explored soon. Another solution I've heard is to strobe a "stationary" semi-translucent 3D grid once ever 25hz or so.
shiftplusone
Member
I am in the March shipment for the Rift and I think about cancelling it before it ships, but then I see opinions like this and I can't imagine why I'd want to wait on that
VR on paper is the coolest thing about video games I can think of and is what I want
I'll take your pre-order off your hands
plagiarize
Banned
Pay serious attention to the bit at the start, where he talks about how your mileage may vary. Some people walk away unimpressed. Others are instantly hooked.
Try to find someone nearby who can at least let you take a spin in a GearVR or DK2. If either of those impresses you, or shows you the potential of VR, you probably won't be disappointed by the Rift.
The stuff I've played so far all kind of hint at VR's potential, either because they're smaller scale indie projects or retrofitted support. Playing Drift, or Esper, or Half Life 2 in VR... you get these moments (I'm not talking about presence) where it feels like you're glimpsing the future of interactive entertainment. I don't know how much more evolved and developed the Rift's launch software will be.
I know I can recommend Esper, but it's very short. If HL2 still works, that's a fantastic time... but it's got some seriously rough edges (don't zoom). If you like racing games or space combat, buy a wheel and/or a flight stick and you'll probably be very happy.
Eve Valkyrie I haven't got into the beta yet. Lucky's Tale I haven't touched yet. Edge of Nowhere looks potentially like a AAA experience (and it's from a AAA studio) but we really don't know how much meat there is there.
Long form VR experiences are where you really get lost... and there isn't much that's been custom designed that way yet. It will come... but the longer you're in there for in a single session the more you start believing, not just in the world around you, but in the massive potential for VR.
That won't be realized when people start getting Rifts end of March / early April... but hopefully the software that is available paves the way.
Compsiox
Banned
"Creator of Doom John Carmack shows his reality at E3 2012"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDXXfbz3QE&t=11m12s
We've come soooo damn farr. I can't believe I'm around for the true rise in VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVDXXfbz3QE&t=11m12s
We've come soooo damn farr. I can't believe I'm around for the true rise in VR.
CarbonFire
Member
Things like the virtual nose and other tricks may help, and there may also be some magic breakthrough we've yet to discover that properly tricks most people's brains beyond "you're in a cockpit!". But ultimately you're still replacing someones entire vision, and the difference between seeing movement and feeling it will be a lot stronger than when you're looking through a TV "window" in a fixed room.
But its going take a lot of people trying on the retail version before we know for sure.
Hawk269
Member
I agree with everything you said. I think we need to prepare ourselves for those that "think" they have a good enough rig complaining on how bad of an experience they are having. I almost think that we need to require people to post system specs prior to giving impressions, because you know that this will happen.
Herr Starr
Member
There was a limited supply of them, apparently. When I bought mine, there were only two left in stock.
I wonder if cockpit games work better not just because you think you're inside a machine, but also generally your are moving forwards and turning left/right. There aren't instant accelerations and decelerations like there would be with walking, nor translations. A good test would be a mech game to see how that works (I think with RIGS you don't strafe, you turn as you're moving forward?)
For minecrift has anyone tried using the third person cam?
plagiarize
Banned
For the brief moment Star Citizen worked with VR *and* had gameplay, you were able to strafe left and right with Q and E, and I had zero problems. Just FYI.
Herr Starr
Member
The problems mainly come from your inner ear and your sense of balance. If your eyes tell you that you are accelerating fast in any one direction, yet your inner ear says that you're sitting completely still, then you will start to feel nausea. Most of the time a cockpit game will feel right because the acceleration is pretty slow in any direction, and the brain can more readily accept that it might not notice it in the first place because hey, you're sitting down anyway. Apparently nausea comes creeping back in games like Elite Dangerous once you get into a ground vehicle and start driving around. This is most likely because you're making sudden impacts against the ground and other obstacles, yet your inner ear notices none of those things.
This is also why traditional first person shooters will never work in VR as long as we don't get to the point where we're directly manipulating the brain through electrodes or something. Acceleration is just too fast, and the contrast between what happens on screen and what happens in your brain is too sharp. You can have slow, deliberate movement, but not forced turning of your head or quick changes in acceleration.
This is also why traditional first person shooters will never work in VR as long as we don't get to the point where we're directly manipulating the brain through electrodes or something. Acceleration is just too fast, and the contrast between what happens on screen and what happens in your brain is too sharp. You can have slow, deliberate movement, but not forced turning of your head or quick changes in acceleration.
Herr Starr
Member
It would be incredibly impractical, expensive, and probably not very effective. I don't think your legs have much to do with it either. It's your inner ear that is the problem.
There are those huge setups that allow you to physically walk in VR by making your feet slide towards its middle while it holds you in place, but I can't see that ever becoming a popular attachment for VR.
plagiarize
Banned
I don't have any numbers, but I can say that personally I played all the way through Doom 3, HL2, HL2:E1, and most of HL2:E2 (because there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to work after various updates) in VR only experiencing motion sickness once in the whole process. This was playing the section of HL2 on the DK1 where you have to pick up and place down objects to make paths across the sand, and I think what got me there was the lack of positional tracking.
We really don't know what percentage of people will get motion sick from artificial locomotion in VR, and we certainly don't know what percentage of people will be able to adjust to it enough that it's not a problem.
Never is a very strong word.
And I think slowing down character movement to more realistic speeds will be a great help, without preventing interesting and exciting gameplay mechanics. I keep thinking about what a first person remake of Resident Evil would be like, with the same slow pace, and the same style of combat. I'm sure something like that would be comfortable for most people.
Ocean Rift doesn't seem to bother people. Dead Secret doesn't seem to bother people.
Minecraft is going to be probably the first big game with artificial locomotion where we'll get a sense of how many people can comfortably adjust to it.
VR will get big enough where those of us that can easily handle artificial locomotion are a large enough market to target with high end experiences. I don't want to have to deal with warping and portals and teleportation in every game, when I can already play an FPS like Doom 3 for hours at a time with no ill effect.
The dream of VR is freely exploring other places.
How long it'll take to get to the point where those of us who have no problems with FPS titles are a big enough market... that's the mystery. But never? Absolutely not.
Herr Starr
Member
Perhaps, but everything we've seen points towards people like you being in a very, very small minority. Few people are going to want to invest in a product that will cause physical illness to all but a small percentage of potential customers. Unless you've got some convincing numbers to show, I'm basing myself on what I've seen in comments from other Oculus Rift users beyond myself, and that has indicated that only a rare few people can handle first person shooters in VR.
Fried Food
Banned
thats not true at all. I have a gtx 760 and the DK2 and I can play games well enough for me to bother with any of it at all.
Teknopathetic
Member
"thats not true at all. I have a gtx 760 and the DK2 and I can play games well enough for me to bother with any of it at all."
The resolution and refresh rate of the DK2 are both lower.
That said, the requirements will vary from game to game.
The resolution and refresh rate of the DK2 are both lower.
That said, the requirements will vary from game to game.
plagiarize
Banned
I'm not the one speaking in absolutes.
There are already first person titles on GearVR. Are they the best selling titles? I'm not sure... but Dead Secret is one of the most recommended games. That features slow artificial locomotion. As I said I believe *most* people will be able to handle games with slower movements speeds like Dead Secret or Ocean Rift.
Beyond that I said that I believe that VR will get big enough to the point where those of us that can cope with games like Doom 3 will be a large enough market for AAA budgets.
Neither of us have figures of the percentage of people who can comfortably play HL2. I'm just saying VR will get large enough that eventually that will be a large enough market of gamers to target.
You're saying it'll *never* happen... and then asking *me* to provide you with figures saying otherwise.
Right now the market is small, so it makes sense to target experiences that will be comfortably for the most people... but that isn't stopping people from making first person games with artificial locomotion. Adr1ft looks to have very high production values for example.
Caesar III
Member
What are the games you are playing and at what settings with what framerate? I can tell the 970 IS the minimum from my ongoing experience with the DK2. FPS dipping below 60 is a nogo. 75FPS are better though. And the CV is higher RES and higher framerate.
Gangxxter
Member
Interesting that he was already talking about a $500-600 price tag back then.
Herr Starr
Member
Sorry if I've been unclear. I'm talking about the more traditional first person shooters, not first person games designed specifically around the limitations of VR. You were talking about games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2, and that's what I responded to.
plagiarize
Banned
Those are titles I think will come, in time. As the VR userbase gets bigger and bigger, and as the subsection of people that can comfortably play those titles because a more and more feasible market. How long that will take... I'm not sure... but I think VR gaming will become big enough that that market of people will be able to support AAA titles in those genres.
Those of us that can handle it, are going to want it. Eventually someone will step in to meet that demand once those of us that can handle it are numerous enough to support such titles.
Games don't just all target what the majority of people want, because once that market is over saturated, targeting the smaller markets that aren't being targeted makes sense. There are loads of healthy genres that don't appeal to the majority of people, after all.
At first, VR is going to be too small a market to support that certainly. But it's not going to stay that way.
TheRealJakoozie
Member
The consumer version seems quite expensive to make. I'm guessing they're trying to meet the demands with their production, and not try to build up huge stock of a product that they expect will be drastically cheaper to produce in a quite short time. And at that time they will probably have made a revised version.
I'm really on the fence about my preorder. The price is definitely high (my currency would convert to roughly 1000 dollars USD) but I would easily pay that for the experience that I think VR can bring me. The question is just if this revision of the technology will do that, or even if Occulus is the company that makes this happen. I would hate to buy the HD-DVD equivalent of VR for a 1000 dollars. The Vive seems like a strong contender, and if I have to be forced to use a "platform" to launch my VR games I prefer using Steam.
And if they bring out a version of the Occulus that makes the one I have obsolete or underwhelming in comparison.
As I write this I realise that I should cancel my preorder. That's the rational thing to do. But I also really want to be a part of this, and I'm really anxious to start playing games in VR.
EDIT:
The funny thing is that I think that half the reason I'm so anxious to get an Occulus Rift is because I haven't tried it yet. I'm from a small country (Norway), so it's not easy for me to try one. If I could, I'm guessing that my antsyness might die down. (I refuse to believe that the experience will live up to my imagination). I'll probably still want one, but not so badly.
wanderingprostheyltite
Member
Good points, to address your hesitation to keep your pre-order due in part to thinking Oculus will be the hd dvd of vr, I personally don't see them as comparable. The former is an iterative improvement on something people had been watching in some form since the 70s. VR is so new to consumers, and oh so niche that the companies behind these platforms are all mostly in it for the long haul, meaning this first gen isn't super essential towards crowning any potential victor. Getting the experience comfortable for the masses, meaning as little motion sickness as possible, plus providing a great software lineup are the important factors for adoption in this gen imo. I think that's something all the big players are working towards too. I don't think anybody maybe outside of Sony or Samsung (Gear) expect to do big numbers, and even that's optimistic.
tl;dr: Don't sweat the vr arms race, too early days to tell, you'll likely be more than happy with the Rift as your first VR experience
tl;dr: Don't sweat the vr arms race, too early days to tell, you'll likely be more than happy with the Rift as your first VR experience
I feel like there was more value in preordering once it got pushed out a couple months. You avoid getting locked out for a long time if there is a Wii-like situation, but if things go sour there is still plenty of time to change your mind before it ships. If the consumer version of Vive looks better, I'll cancel. If it gets poor reviews at launch, I'll cancel. If I want one and they are available at retail, I'll cancel.
My assumptions going in are:
1. There will be no "must-have" game before the 2nd generation of headsets launch, just a lot of novelty experiences. Think the early Wii library if you removed the games made by Nintendo.
2. The 2nd generation will be much better than the 1st and will be cheaper.
3. It will be great for demoing to friends, but will be used for less than 10% of my game playing time in the year after it comes out.
If you would be satisfied with that, then you are going to be in good stead. If not, you should probably cancel and wait a year or two for the technology to be polished and for developers to come to grips with how to create substantial VR games.