Sooo Will Leadwerks Work with Occulus Rift?

[Pancakes]

Can't tell you how exciting it would be to hear that I can jump inside of my own game and look around =)

[Josh]

If there's enough demand, we can do this.

[AggrorJorn]

It is a great device but using for Leadwerks? Especially at this stage would be very unlogical. There are way to many other features the engine could use before going to something like the Occulus Rift. Terrain, Defered rendering, gui. Perhaps also linux.

[gordonramp]

Oculus Rift will be Huge I predict.Better jump on the wave.

[Josh]

There are at least a dozen technology trends we could chase after this year and try to attach our name to them. People told me WindowsRT would be huge. I'm focusing on the core product and only moving laterally when it is justifiable.

[Pancakes]

I remember being a little kid and dreaming about this sort of technology. Let's hope it takes off now as opposed to 10 years later. What if we hooked up about 5 Xbox Kinects for super accurate motion tracking and then put on an occulus rift. It would be the Imaginarium or the Holodeck!

 

Just have to hire a bunch of midgets to hit me with nerf bats in order to simulate physical feedback. Who am I kidding. I couldn't afford that.

[gordonramp]

Did anyone try it at the GDC?

 

There are at least a dozen technology trends we could chase after this year and try to attach our name to them. People told me WindowsRT would be huge. I'm focusing on the core product and only moving laterally when it is justifiable.

 

Josh, I can understand this, you have plenty to do to establish Leadwerks 3.

 

But I have to say that there is a lot of indecision currently about the future of Gaming and when a technology offers full immersion in a Game World to the point where it is barely indistinguishable from the Physical world (providing the Art Work is up to scratch) then this is surely the next level. What a let down it must be when you go back to a flat screen. I haven't tried it but I've seen people doing so and they are blown away. Also look at the price.. $300 and the plan is to get it down to $100.

 

Sorry to mention the opposition but Unity have jumped on board with Oculus and several games are now being made especially for the headset. Here is one http://www.kickstart...ry-six-elements

[Guest Red Ocktober]

when a technology offers full immersion in a Game World to the point where it is barely indistinguishable from the Physical world (providing the Art Work is up to scratch) then this is surely the next level. What a let down it must be when you go back to a flat screen.

 

very well put Gordon... i agree 200%...

 

--Mike

[Josh]

I have tried it, and while it's pretty good I don't see a huge demand from my customers yet. Basically, I am not convinced it would be profitable, and I have to be very careful right now how we spend our time right now.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

video (jump to 19:30 for Occulus)

 

 

 

the future is immersive vr... don't wait until it is too late to grab a piece of the future... other 3d game developers aren't...

 

--Mike

[Pancakes]

guys it's easy to say that when it's not you doing the work and it's not your company, the future is 99.99% to be vr but who knows the oculus rift may have some serious problems that delay the proliferation of vr by 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, who knows?

 

 

But you know what, if it does take off it's another win for deferred lighting, with people's POV being enhanced so much, he olden days of lightmapping could be coming to an end. It just won't cut it anymore since you can't force the player into one specific camera angle or stop someone from tilting their heads in such a way that it reveals all your lighting illusions

[Rick]

I hope they make the glasses slicker and make an attachment to mobile! That would be sweet

 

The feeling for this seem amazing, but I feel like the input controls now have to change with this. I often need to look at the buttons on console controllers or keyboards when playing. I like the idea of the gun and hands but that's for a small subset of games. This seems like it really needs the future of input controls to evolve to something more friendly to this.

[gordonramp]

Yes, the Oculus kickstarter campaign was seeking $250,000 and they received almost two and a half million so there is definitely a market there.

[Josh]

In any case, I believe all you have to do is render to two cameras side by side, with a really high field of view. Leadwerks 2 and 3 can do that right now.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

so jump in there and lets get this done!! what's da hold-up!!! you don't have anything else to do right now

 

seriously... see the vid below for some insight on implementing this brave new world...

 

 

 

this would really put Leadwerks on the map...

 

 

 

--Mike

[Rick]

So I wonder if they can/will be replacing the hands and feet with 3D models so they go with the world better and look cooler? I can see some cool gestures being used for more non FPS games. Like zooming in and out of an RTS by moving your hands together and apart.

 

I feel like I'm more interested in the interaction side than the graphics side and all the different ways the player can interact with the game using this. Cool stuff to think about.

[Pancakes]

say hello to the new world of porn, I wonder if it will even be possible to keep marriages together with this sort of technology or maybe, it might become easier if we were all VR-swingers

 

but yeah, imagine deferred rendering with this thing on... would be pretty insane. my gosh, you could build like an awesome beach and then put this thing on and whenever you go to sleep you'd be on the beach. Why even buy good furuniture if you could just VR your crappy folding chairs into a work of art. This is a brave new world. And it clearly marks the end of television and movies. Everyone will become social gamers.

 

(I did notice that vid was posted on April 1 but it does seem legit)

[zumwalt]

Seriously guys, this is ancient technology and not the first time it has been boasted as the future, I have some vr glasses up north at my mothers house With the SDK, it is not impressive and the average gamer won't go for it, ever, only the elite few who live at their parents in the basement will own and play games with these, I figured that out two decades ago.

 

It's a dying fad.

 

[Guest Red Ocktober]

i wouldn't be fooled into thinking this is in any way related grandfathers old vr glasses in any but the most superficial of comparisons...

 

--Mike

[zumwalt]

Sorry but I whole heartedly disagree, my VR glasses were thinner, lighter, 3d projection and utilized a similar trick to show arms in front when I held out my arms, these current ones they show aren't even 3d they are just like having regular VR glasses and this sample is bulkier and obviously heavier.

 

I could also plug mine into a regular computer monitor as a pass through so I could play multiplayer games locally, one person doing the game on the computer screen while I am doing the game with the VR glasses on, only difference is mine is over 20 years old now, I think I actually got them when I was 18 so that puts them at 22 years old now, sure they can hype it up as some miracle new technology that every man, woman and child on the planet must have, but seriously, that ship sailed eons ago. The games today are on hand held devices, the money is in the quick minute games, hardly the adventure, something to play on the go, that is why Android and iPhones have so many thousands of games on the market now, do you really see people throwing virtual gaming parties?

 

A group of college kids.. maybe... but this technology is dated, doesn't matter how snazzy they try to make it, it is not worth even putting any effort into, this type of system is not for gaming but for simulation, and for military application, urban warfare sampling and the like, virtual cities where our troops can practice maneuvers in within the safety of training centers, but they have to make them light weight, less bulky and get rid of all the stinking cables, at least the VR glasses I had only had 2 cables, one for the serial port on the PC split pair to the video port with audio jack then a separate cable to share the video with the monitor.

 

Seriously, the only real application this has is for demonstration or simulation, let people have a virtual tour of houses or sky scrapers, walk into a architecture firm and get a tour of your house with the glasses on, or military training, maybe even flight training, I know all those fans of the Microsoft Flight simulator would go gaga over this but those individuals usually have 16 computer monitors to get the full flight effects anyway.

 

Just saying this is a total waste of everyones time, I have lived long enough to see this technology come around three times and it has failed the last two, I just don't see it succeeding on the third time either.

 

I have a version of the i-glasses, read this article, has my glasses in it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-people-dont-want-to-wear-computers-on-their-faces-2012-4?op=1

[Pancakes]

I have to say it's easy to disagree with you on this zumwalt. First of all you can't seriously tell me that the technology costs the same to manufacture today as it did 22 years ago. You also can't tell me that gaming has not risen tremendously within the public ethos of the entire world since 22 years ago. Sure handhold is big but handheld gaming is the gateway drug into VR for the masses. Also companies are a LOOOOOT more likely to invest in proliferation of this technology than they were 22 years ago!

 

The internet has made a home for the gamer culture where young, old, male, female gay, straight all play CoD and Minecraft side by side. We are not in the same world as we were in 22 years ago.

 

The question of technology is not always about the technology itself, it's also about the human being's relationship to that technoloygy. And right now people everywhere are giving more LOVE to gaming and companies are making more MONEY than ever. Love and Money = demand and the will to fulfill that demand.

 

I can see executives in companies 22 years ago completely not getting it. I can see people on the streets 22 years ago not getting it. But in the age of Google cars, Google maps, League of Legends, Angry Birds, and Xbox Kinect, I think more pepole than ever would find the idea of VR as a legimate pass time and communication vehicle as a natural progression of technology.

 

You're welcome to your opinion I just find it almost effortlessly easy to see things the other way.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

well... everyone is entitle to their opinion... that's what a forum is all about, sharing opinions... right...

 

well, naturally... the first thing i gotta do is insert my usual humorous quip...

 

while reading Zum's post i couldn't help being reminded of the words of the omnipresent Ralph Kramden

 

 

 

ok... lets get serious for a sec...

 

here are a few things to consider that may help in arriving at a more informed opinion...

 

1- 20 years ago the resolutions and speed of available screen displays pale to what's available today...

 

2- the glasses Zumwalt probably had were merely small displays that showed 2 slightly offset camera views, lacking any advanced software logic to compensate the view from a flat project to a more realistic perspective that Occulus has...

 

3- the latency issues of those old glasses were on the order of several magnitudes higher than is present in the Occulus model...

 

those are just a few of the things that differentiate Occulus from his old VR frames...

 

 

to address specifics of the objections presented above...

 

my VR glasses were thinner, lighter

The whole unit weighs about 379g, or about eight-tenths of a pound, and while it's quite bearable compared to some of the headsets in Palmer Luckey's personal collection, it's definitely far more noticeable than the featherweight prototype we tried at CES. Oculus is quite upfront about the issue, and says the consumer version will almost certainly have a smaller screen, hinting at the recent crop of 5-inch, 1080p cell phones on the market.

http://www.theverge....virtual-reality

 

3d projection and utilized a similar trick to show arms in front when I held out my arms,

that was the work of the guy working on some issues he sees as being necessary to complete the promise of VR... it is not part of the Occulus package...

 

Just saying this is a total waste of everyones time,

well, several distinguished luminaries in the gaming world seem to disagree... Team Fortress 2 was the first game to add support for the Oculus Rift, and can be played right now with the Oculus Rift dev kit by using the "-vr" command line option. Hawken is likely to be the second game to support the Rift... Epic Games, creators of the Unreal Engine, have announced that the engine will integrate support for the Oculus Rift... David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, has announced support for the Oculus Rift with the Unity engine... John Carmack of id Software has stated that he plans to make the Oculus Rift a concurrent part of the Doom 4 development cycle...

 

i could go on, but you get the gist of what i'm saying here...

 

well... that's my opinion... but hey, i've been waiting for this for years, so i am admittedly biased... i'll be interested to hear what Zum has to say after he actually has some hands on time with the Rift...

 

 

--Mike

[zumwalt]

Here is the specs of the 22 year old i-glasses 3d, either way all of the VR devices have one thing in common, the video card drives the video, the glasses are just displayers just like your TV, you have to rely heavily on the ability of your video card in all cases, the i-glasses only ran at a max of 120 Hz though and could only support 1.44 million pixels per display (stereo display), and it only had a 24 bit color depth 22 years ago so I guess it was crippled in comparison to what oroculus has now at 1280 x 800 resolution, so it does have a higher resolution however, that video port plugin on the TOP kills me, all of the other VR glasses put it on the side to allow the cable to go back down by the ear then along the back or arm, I could see myself easily yanking that thing out of the top, once the price gets real, like $150, then I would entertain buying it, if at the very least to put it in a display case with the rest of my VR gear that failed. It still won't end up being some wild fire device you see selling like hot cakes, trust me on that fact, not going to happen and you can quote me on that

 

1.44 Million per Display

VGA / SVGA / XGA scaled to 800 x 600

26 Degrees Diagonal

24 Bit

None Required

13' TBR

25mm

17mmH x 6mmV

7'10", 100% Overlap, TBR

Standard 15 Pin VGA

Flicker Free 120hz display rate

60 Hz to 120 Hz

Full Stereo

< 7 Ounces

Adjusts to Fit all Individuals

Barrel connector

VGA / RCA Audio / Power

Power Cube

On/Off, Volume, OSD

Minimum 100 to 1

Compatible with nVidia-based graphics cards

Adjusts Contrast, Brightness, Audio Balance, RGB Color and Horizontal Centering

[gordonramp]

zumwalt,

Ever good idea has it's time and I think that Gaming has evolved to the point where a new level of realism is being asked for by the masses. Palmer Luckey asked for just $250,000 for his kickstarter and got almost 2.5 million. Such a swell of support can only mean that Gamers see VR as a great new immersive experience.. it may not be for you but surely it would be unwise to rubbish the idea because you tried out some glasses 20 years ago and then lost interest. Remember graphics have come a long way since those days and so have Gamers.

[Flexman]

The rendering aspect is trivial. Enclosed VR brings a set of user-input problems to the table which is where you'll notice the testing focus is with this stuff, VR headsets do have the advantage in that they hide the disapproving look on the wife's face and embarrassed grimaces of your kids

 

These user interface problems are down to individual developers to shake out and tend to be application specific (from the simple "how to navigate" to locking down axis of motion, body vs head tracking).

 

It will be interesting to see how much regular usage these devices get after the honeymoon period. Working with head-tracking stuff has had me ripping the stuff off my head as it really gets to me after a while.

 

I do look forward to trying it out though.