Be Excellent To Each Other

HTC are charging $140 for additional lighthouses and $120 for additional wands (each I think, not as a pair) which is fucking ludicrous.

Just had a quick go on a DK2 at work. Seated.

No limits rollercoaster demo. Nearly spewed my ring up on the first loop. Not pleasant

Like a real rollercoaster then

Weirdly, no. I've never felt ill on a real 'coaster. It just felt like my stomach was going to flip over in my body.

I've had the same feeling even with the Google Cardboard rollercoaster type things. I never get sick at all on rollercaosters in real life but swings make me feel awful and it did that.

I think it is because although your eyes see the movement and your brain interprets it as such, the balance sensors in your ear aren't reporting movement so your brain gets confused as to which one is wrong and something somethi ng

Much like being on a ship I guess.

I guess it's all to do with being in control too. I've put probably about 100 hours into iRacing on the Rift and not once have I felt a twinge of sickness.

That's exactly what is happening. The brain knows there's a disconnect and it's trying to compensate for physical movement which isn't happening.

Davpaz, can you try the roller coaster demo while sat on an office chair, and have someone spin the chair around please. I'm interested to see how the brain interprets a vision-movement conflict as opposed to a vision-nonmovement conflict.

I'm betting (hoping) it will make you feel even worse.

Oh, the VR unit has wires doesn't it? Don't wrap them round your neck.

...your primitive lizard brain assumes you've eaten something poisonous/hallucinogenic that is confusing your slightly less primitive monkey brain, so triggers a nausea reflex to try and get rid of it.

It's not just motion, either. There are theee types of depth cues your brain uses and VR helmets only spoof one of them, so even static scenes can cause sickness from that inconsistency.

I only took neuroscience because of a pretty girl with amazing norks.

The sight and sound of which triggers a nausea reflex in other people around you, because your stupid monkey brain thinks that because you're a pack you must have all eaten the same thing.

The sight and sound of you triggers a nausea reflex in my highly intelligent monkey brain.

Let the Wolfbagging commence!

Did you ever see the rotation drum kit that Tommy Lee from Motley Crue used? It could only spin forwards 3 times and then had to spin backwards 3 times to untangle the wires.

Seeing people being sick does't make me feel sick.

Maybe my lizard brain has eaten my monkey brain.

A major driver of most scientific advances, I think.

Of most advances in general, I should think. Edmund Hillary only climbed Everest because there was a secretary at the Royal Geographical Society with massive bazongas he wanted to impress.

New, sweet looking official Google VR headset announced! Yes!

Only compatible with the new Pixel phone.

That's going to be a *huge* success then.

/s

It is right now, but it's going to work with others "soon".

The £80 might put you off, though.

As a viable alternative to a Vive... I can stretch to £80

What are the odds that the Nexus 5x will be covered?

That's £80 for a controller and a cap to put your phone in.

Everything is really expensive this time around

Asynchronous Spacewarp announced.



http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/o ... warp-tech/

Touch pre-orders open on the 10th for those who pre-ordered Rift. End of October for normals. Release in early December.

Are you on honeymoon?

Honeymoon!

My take on VR, and certainly this 'current round' of the tech which involves big headset nonsense and loads of wires going everywhere, is that it'll fail to hit the mainstream in any significant way whatsoever, and will ultimately go the way of 3D telly as a tech curiosity.

Even the new 'low price' PC that's supposed to deliver VR spec for £500, and the console iteration of the tech for PS4, won't change that IMO.

Thinking around my 'games circle' we should be pretty much the target market for VR. We love games, we love techy shit, we've all already got VR capable PCs or very close to it, and we've got the disposable income to buy a VR headset (and buy a VR capable PC if we need to).

I know of one single person who's bought themselves an Oculus Rift, a few of us have gone round to the guy's house to have a play with it, no one else has felt the need to buy one. Unscientific? Yes. But if we're not buying into VR I'm not sure who will.

Then you've got the inherent ridiculousness of the tech itself, in a 'wireless world' the headsets are a thoroughly unpleasant proposition in terms of size and cables, they're massively anti-social, and there's no real way for anyone else to share the experience - to other people the VR voyage just looks like a berk doing a bad Stevie Wonder impression with a computer sellotaped to their head.

On top of that they're not going to hit critical mass in terms of game support, which I appreciate is a bit chicken and egg when it comes to new tech but VR is going to be on the wrong side of it.

Finally you've got various other issues such as some people not getting on with the tech from a nausea/comfort/practicality (wearing glasses for example) point of view, needing a physical amount of space to use the thing, competing techs in a small marketplace etc etc.

I was saying this over two and a half years ago and my feelings on it haven't changed at all - viewtopic.php?p=806368#p806368

Mr Dave. Being wrong.

There were many people being wrong this weekend it seems.

Yes but how many of those people have bought one, or intend to buy one?

People cooing over a shiny toy for a couple of hours does not put money in the coffers of the people who make VR kit.

If anything MaliA's pic may as well be subtitled 'This is why VR won't go mainstream'.

I prefer the subtitle: Myp's Buttcrack

Are you saying Dave should not have brought it to share his fun?

Kov being hipster with a niche device

If I'm honest, it's probably 2 hardware generations away from the mainstream. Wireless headsets, glove control maybe, kinect style body mapping perhaps?

The biggest barrier will always be the sheer cost of the thing

Not at all, they're great gadgets and most folks love to have a play with one, my point is - (and always has been, going back over two and a half years now) - entirely about how many people are actually going to shell out the cash for one - specifically, nowhere near enough for VR to be a commercial success in its current guise.

If the ps4 one was punted out at 200 notes I would snap it up.

Dave's vive was superb.

Prob the same muppets that spend £800 on a graphics card.

Except it's going to cost £349 and you need to buy a camera on top of that, which is another £40, so basically twice the price you say you'd be keen at.

Plus even Sony are saying that the more expensive Oculus and Vive provide 'better VR' but they're promoting their implementation more on price, and considering the performance deficit between a PS4 and a minimum spec VR-capable PC I can well imagine the PS4's take on it won't be a premium VR experience.

Oculus' new asynchronous space warp lowers the barrier to entry significantly, hardware wise. A computer now only needs be capable of shoving out ~45 fps instead of 90.

Have you tried one??

Do you think he'd be able to admit being wrong?

I was a total sceptic before playing with the Vive, which made me more excited about video games than I have been in ages.

I appreciate that it is expensive and may not be a mainstream commercial concern right now (though Tesla show you can make money with high end tech), but it's definitely something that's going to get better, bigger and cheaper.

FTFY

I agree with Curio. The Vive was absolutely ace and thanks again Dave for bringing it to the cottage. I'm hoping that there's some innovative games that will take advantage of the tech as the games that I saw over the weekend, whilst great, didn't seem that in depth.

But still, it was amazing and I could see me playing Space Pirate for ages! I also enjoyed Project Cars and saw some massive potential there. I'd like to see a futuristic racer like Wipeout on there.

If Sony announced Sky Odyssey 2 or something similar for the PSVR thing then I'd be all over it. As it is I'll probably just wait and see how it pans out for a while. I do think the Sony one has more chance of making an impact, though. Far more titles and you don't need to be a total IT geek to make it work properly.

I've been pondering VR over that few days since having a go on the Dave's Vive (and after a conversation with DocG about the Google Daydream) and I reckon I can see where it's going. Here's my prediction of were we'll be in ooohh, 3 years.

- Self contained, wireless headset. All processing done on the unit itself. We all know that graphics chips are chewing along at an amazing rate, so how long before there's a mobile GPU that can do 90fps at 4k? Not long I reckon. The headset will need to more like a pair of specs. Think of those big old Asian-Grandma sunglasses that fit over other specs. Or Imax 3D glasses. Probably with built in headphones
- Courtesy screen tethering. Think Chromecast. Sync the technohat up to an HDMI dongle so others can watch.
- Full body tracking. Think Kinect. There was a moment when Curio was dodging his legs out of the way of lasers. Imagine if you *had* to. This might require more active cameras, but if they're similar to the the little satellites that the vive uses... it could work.
- Local mutiplayer. Self contained units and full body tracking means local multiplayer. Even if it's in another room.
- Some sort of glove controller. Even if it's only one hand. It would open up a world of puzzles.

There's my prediction. Remind me in 3 years to see if I was right, would you?

edit: I forgot haptics. Even a subtle feedback is awesome. The lightsabers humming in your hand was awesome

And the burnt hair smell when you got sizzled

Had you left before we gave Budget Cuts (Demo) a try?

Because that showed probably a whole lot more depth, particularly given its not-yet-being-complete ness. If/when that gets released, it should do well.

What difference does that make?