The future of Virtual Reality?

[Finkeren]

One of the most well produced and thought provoking short films of the last decade. Please watch it all the way through before commenting.

 

https://vimeo.com/147365861

 

(And no, I don't think this will be the litteral future, we're headed for, but it certainly raises some valid questions)

Edited December 2, 2015 by Finkeren

[C-Bag]

While I agree that the short was well produced, personally I've been reading sci-fi that's been delving into this going back decades. So for me there were no surprises or twists that have not been touched upon. Phillip K Dick, William Gibson and others have pretty well mapped this out.

 

We are already there. I can't remember the details but I remember reading several years ago about a Korean couple who were prosecuted for letting their child starve while they played some online game.

 

The main theme has been as this reality gets worse the search to escape gets more intense. It would seem man is a creature driven by obsession and addiction. Adrenalin no matter how you get it is powerful. That's what immersion is all about. While I love video games I also have a life that I love more and more here so the pull to game has greatly diminished. I just don't have time so the pull gets weaker and weaker. But that's just me I guess.

[steppenwolf]

My neighbor is in her 40's and doesn't leave her apartment, smokes and plays Destiny all morning day and night. She kinda helps me stay 'real', but she doesn't know that. 

[C-Bag]

i think it nails it in the future people will leave in holes that will look as palaces thanks to or

Here in the states they already do through the garbage on tv. My X was a itenerant special Ed teacher who went in people's homes to help work with babies and their families. No matter how poor they were(one family lived in a chicken coop) they had a big tv.

 

VR is just a dim version of what I experienced reading books. It's just taken half a century for CG to start to approximate what a good book and a vivid imagination can do. Problem is it would seem a growing majority don't have imagination, much less a vivid imagination, or read for that matter. The characters in the OP's vid exemplify that. Until you can "jack in" with a direct neural connection interfaces and the tech like the VR headsets are going to rely on the users imagination to fill the huge gap.

 

Like so many things there could be positive uses for VR just like all games. It lights up the neural net and is interactive where tv is passive. To experience flying a vintage Russian WWII like I do in BOS is wonderful. I don't often feel the need to enter into combat. Just trying to master the different aircraft and fly the vast maps does it for me.

[71st_AH_Hooves]

So I'm just now returning home from ITSEC, a military simulation convention showcasing the latest and greatest in simulation hardware, software, and training solutions.

 

HMDs were a huge part of the show but only for very close up infantry world sized applications. The OSVR, Oculus and a variety of other vendors were available for demonstration. Curiously the Vive was absent from this convention.

 

 

I was very excited to get a demo of the CV1 with hand controllers. So I'll list some of the highlights that stood out for me.

 

First off, I started with the "Office Simulator" demo. It basically consisted of looking around a cubicle populated with an abundance of (and slightly oversized) office supplies in which to interact with.

 

The individual hand controllers showed incredible accuracy far beyond that of what the sixense Hydra Controllers provided. The virtual hands quickly filled the role in my mind as my real hands. Holding the two triggers on each controller, I was able to manipulate the objects with incredible ease. Holding 1 trigger on its own would produce a thumbs up or a point I g index finger. The finger was only slightly off centered from where I would have expected my real finger to be if pointing. And I mean within a few millimeters.

 

I picked up a phone, put it to my ear and through the onboard audio, could here an automated person on the other end reciting touchstone menu paths. Incredibly realistic.

 

At one point I was asked to press on the power button for a desktop computer underneath the desk. I looked down, saw the pc. Knelt down to push the over size power button and for about 3-5 seconds felt as if this was a real experience. I felt the "presence" that had been so coveted by Palmer and crew.

 

I grabbed the stapler and shot some staples into the wall and threw around some coffee cups. It was all very good looking and easily manipulated and very intuitive.

 

Next I had an opportunity to play a FPS. The idea was I was fighting enemies starting off on board a subway. There was no moving forward or back (bar the 3-4 ft of movement I had standing in the demo space) locomotion was satisfied by a teleport button I could hold while pointing at a predetermined location to advance through the train car and further through the level.

 

In this demo though, the hand controllers truly shined. I was guided to a pistol (very desert eagle in look) I picked it up with the middle trigger, and fired the weapon with my index trigger. The craziest thing then occured. In a.very very convincing way I was able to aim my pistol how I do at the real gun range and fire. As enemies ran by I would take them down with very real feeling hand eye coordination. Then I got to due wield! Now we were talking! But I got even better. Using both hand controllers I was able to operate a pump action shot gun. It felt very natural even without manipulating a connected object in the real world.

 

I could hit another button to slow down time, grab in coming bullets mid air, then throw them back at the enemies. It finished with a Boss fight, having to throw back rockets to shot my way.

 

All in it was an incredible experience that in my opinion is going to change the immediate future of fps gaming.

 

Now, the stuff you all are waiting for. "WHAT ABOUT THE SCREEN DOOR!?!?"

 

Well folks...........it's still there. Though reduced by a factor of 10 from the dk2. It. Ow.just looks just a bit blurry, and you must look very close to see why it's blurry.

 

 

It looks to me that reading the gauges in a fighter cockpit would now be easily dooable. But the sigating of targets at distance is still just too hard. Unless.there is an LOD solution to cater to OR users, the desktop monitor would still own it's virtual counterpart for this first CV1 release.

 

So the specs

 

Advertised as 1k for each eye. Provided by two.seperate displays. Their exact resolution was not given. The FPS type gameplay will benefit the most from the CV1's resolution.

 

Frame rate was a very smooth 90 fps for all of the demos and sounds to be the target fps for a non nausea enduring experience.

 

Latency was again advertised as sub 20 milliseconds.

 

Weight was incredibly light, several times throughout both demos I forgot I had it on..

 

The IR camera FOV was greatly increased, allowing a standing experience with no problems.

 

My verdict.

 

This was a HUGEMONGOUS improvement on the DK2. The feeling of "presense" is easily achievable, the visual experience is amazing up close out to about 300 meters. After that it's blurry.

 

This is going to change everything when it comes to games in the FPS market.

 

It still has a few years to go to verify ready for full flight sim fidelity, but it will provide an extremely fun experience if using a mod for LODs.

 

That's it for now. Pardon any grammatical errors. I'm typing this from my galaxy s6 staring at the tarmac waiting for my flight home to dallas.

 

Cheers,

Hooves

Edited December 3, 2015 by Hooves

[Mastermariner]

Hookers! Painted hookers! Seriusly, the internet is mostly porn and that is what VR will be all about.

 

Master

Edited December 4, 2015 by Mastermariner

[Bando]

Thanks for the wright up Hooves.

Interesting stuff.

 

I'll wait a bit on the new GPU's coming within a few months and I think I will proceed to a bigass UHD monitor for a year or two.

Perhaps by that time, the VR thing will have matured enough for the sim world.

We'll see.

Exiting times ahead!!