My question is, why do the stand alone sets need to be mutually exclusive to PC use? You have the screens and motion tracking built in, so why not put USB/AV plugs on the side and cater to both markets.
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Itâs a fair question and it got asked about the Oculus Quest at the recent dev conference. The answer was that the decoding hardware would add weight.
Personally I think it is more a business reason of pushing people to join your ecosystem, as buying the software from the device âapp storeâ is where the lost money on hardware is made up.
It doesnât make sense to us simmers, but it is probably where they are coming from. The standalone VRâs can be thought of as âconsoleâ, of their own platform, and putting an AV on the side is about as likely as Nintendo allowing your phone or PC to screencast to their Switch - it ainât happening.
That wordâŚ
YeahâŚwasnât it Steam that was giving away those Steam links for $4.99 the last couple years during their sales? Take a hit on the hardware, make it up on the software. So maybe Steam WILL eventually be the hardware driver with VR. Maybe Iâm not visionary thinking enough that it seems like VR social doesnât seem like it will last all that long moreso than VR gaming. Like I canât envision people putting on a headset regularly to VR chat via some Facebook meeting room. Then againâŚif your avatar actually becomes you (like indistinguishable from the real you)âŚmaybe there is something thereâŚ
Valve are really just a big games shop and not particularly interested in anything else. One frustrating thing about them is they only do âdefensiveâ things at a strategic level. They heard Microsoft wanted to ship Windows 10 with a âWindows Games Storeâ built-in, so they did a big effort to improving Linux gaming and âSteam PCsâ that used it - it wasnât because they all of a sudden loved Linux, it was so they always had a âway outâ to survive if Microsoft âStoreâ started gaining traction.
Similarly with VR, they want it to exist so they can sell games and because it is âneatâ, and the HTC partnership was again all about a defensive position in-case Oculus started getting traction with Facebook money and a games store of their own. Valve is more profitable per employee than Google and Facebook. If they wanted to be visionary they would have done it a while before, but thatâs not how they roll.
Facebook and Google are advertising companies, so social VR is all about that. It doesnât sound like a fun future, but itâs fairly foolproof to just follow the money to find the motivation. Apple and Samsung etc are one of the few high-end electronic device makers, so hopefully theyâll offer VR peripherals (i.e. not a console) to keep others honest.
Anyone remember Lemmings? Two players with two mice on the Amiga. So much fighting. Excellent.
So now it looks like it has been (sort of) remade in VR:
First mention of the âRift Sâ refresh in the press:
âIn the wake of the overhaulâs cancellation, the company will be pursuing a more modest product update â possibly called the âRift Sâ â to be released as early as next year, which makes minor upgrades to the deviceâs display resolution while more notably getting rid of the external sensor-tracking system, sources tell us. Instead, the headset will utilize the integrated âinside-outâ Insight tracking system, which is core to Facebookâs recently announced Oculus Queststandalone headset.â
Sort of sounds like putting an input lead on the Oculus Quest SKU and calling it a day until the new advances arrive (eye tracking for foveated rendering, auto-varifocus etc).
Techcrunch is not a fantastically reliable news source, but interesting rumors regardless.
Maybe, although some of the report doesnât make sense. Can you imagine Rift+Touch users with 3 sensor cameras then being told that âinside outâ tracking is how they upgrade?
Due to Samsung owning the panels manufacturing, I would guess it would be more like the original Odyssey rather than the Plus in specs rather than the anti-SDI and AMOLED screens.
The Oculus founder that left last week was complaining about a ârace to the bottomâ so it might be the âRift Sâ is a price entry thing rather than specs, i.e. get it to $299 all-in with no sensors and different (cheaper Quest ones) hand controllers.
All those holes in their ceilings and wallsâŚall that cable managementâŚout the windowâŚ
They will burn Oculus HQ down if they go with inside outâŚhahaâŚ
PS - Sell stock in HDMI extension cablesâŚ
I donât know, I kind of agree with the Biz side of Facebook on this one; now is not the time for a 2.0 headset, as many folks are still off put by the cost of the current gen ones, and the cost of a rig beefy enough to run them. I think the watered down âgimmickyâ wireless sets with built in electronics are a good stop gap measure for VR. Right now itâs a software game; the market needs to attract more developers, and those developers are more likely to jump in to the shallow end of the pool, where the investment (and by extension, risk) is smaller.
I hate to say all that, but I think the hateful truth of the matter is that VR needs a bit more âFruit ninja VRâ that costs as much as a game console, and a bit less âPI Max 8Kâ that requires the down payment on a car to get up and running. Otherwise I itâll snuff out, and weâll just all be flying around sadly staring at 8k screens knowing that this could all be better.
I think you are right @aggressorblue. Iâm just hoping the future of sim VR is something that will still have a place regardless of the âVR consolesâ taking off or not. If they can do a $199 and have a Beat Sabre hit or something then it might really gain traction.
Itâs like new CPU families, in that AMD and Intel arenât making them for sims, but we can piggy back just fine off of a new i9 9900k coming out, even if it wasnât built for our market.
YeahâŚI can see those portable VR headsets being very popular at parties and stuff where people are playing Beat Saber and stuff like that. Whatever will expand the technology and user base is probably good. Us at the extreme end will just have to be a little patient and hope it trickles down to usâŚ
It could get interesting with five or six people in a room with some seated VR playing some sort of murder mystery interactive thing. I could see how that would be very entertainingâŚ
I anticipate there to be business applications also that will hopefully drive further high end development - there are already applications in real estate / architectural design where the client / buyer can walk around the proposed building and see the views, light and shadow etc.
Thereâs a lot of money in training and education as well for sure.
Also, Iâve also suspected it might take someone like Apple to âInvent VRâ in a couple of years and to drive the market like that. They make high-end devices fashionable for no logical reason, but they tend to nail the marketing and ergonomics better than most. When they come out with their AR / VR hybrid and a seamless (and expensive) experience then lots of people will take notice. It feels inevitable, in that weâre in the âCasio MP3â player period before the iPod âinventedâ portable music players and they sold tons of them.
Itâs really not hard to imagine how the technology might explode. Something like Google glass with augmented reality capability. You are grocery shopping, pick up an item, look at the barcode on it, say something and the specs open a virtual window that gives you information about it (product reviews, calories, average priceâŚetcâŚ). Same with directions, or just about anything you look at a phone to do. Look at a building (Google - what is that?) and your VR glasses darken and you sort of still see the building in some synthetic way with some details about it.
Enabled with GPS of some sortâŚit would be kinda weirdâŚimagine being out hiking, looking at a peak in the distance (Google - what mountain is that and how far away is it?) and again, the glasses display all that info. It is scary in a way, but I think some insane leaps forward are possible.
Watching a sporting event and seeing jersey names or statistics, the first down line drawn, the score. Information overload Iâm sure.
Honestly, for someone like me, Iâd rather see it act as a on-the-fly captioning device for the deaf. Thatâs a pretty obvious example of a good use of the tech, but I donât see it mentioned much. Probably because auto translate still ainât quite up to snuff.
If I am reading the âmood of the roomâ correctly, the Oculus founder departure + Quest announcement pushed quite a few Oculus users to other platforms. FaceBook will not get those people back anytime soon. Therefore there is no hurry. The market has bought them some breathing room. They cannot ignore the highend headset market without the risk that another device maker will parlay a highend success into a competitive consumer device. FPS and Battle Royale titles will eventually drive the high end market. Unlike flight/driving sims, theirs is a market too big to dismiss. And that will be good for us. KB/mouse will be dead in five years. I simply cannot imagine anyone being entertained by something so archaic when this beautiful other world exists that makes 2D feel like calling grandma on a crank telephone.
I seriously doubt that.
Reasoning behind that: I donât see how prices for VR (and PCs that can run them) will be low enough in five years so more than 1-5% of gamers will use anything else except KB/mouse.
Sorry double post, my phone browser occasionally has a problem with the forums software.
To further expand on the above:
Price right now for a decent PC that can run VR smoothly is 2000 bucks (Euros or Dollar, small difference) and the VR device itself is another 500-1000 on top of that.
Even if you assume that those prices will half in the next few years (I doubt it, graphics cards for example get more expensive, not less), then you are at 1250+ bucks for a gaming PC.
One reason for popular games (Fortnite and PUBG, the stuff kids play these days) being pretty popular right now is that you can run them on fairly low level hardware. A 500 bucks PC will do.
And thatâs ignoring the fact that there are people who cannot use VR properly because they get sick or the devices donât fit on their heads, or⌠other stuff.
I also equate it to playing the Wii back in the day. Sometimes you just want to sit and play a game and not work up a sweat to do it.