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Too many signs that Oculus is dead...

yazze
Honored Guest
Like you have been waiting and waiting for any concrete news about the development and future releases of Oculus rift HMDs.

But following the different reports and news, and analyzing the market a bit, I realize that there are strong chances that the Oculus as a PC tethered HMD might well be dead.

- First of all, and most obvious of the signs: there's been none since the Crescent Bay was released 10 months ago (according to report it was ready 2 months before release in September 2014). Neither there's been any announcement about a DK3 in before the consumer version.

Not only does it make no sense to leave a community pushing a market in the dark for that long, but it's also really bad for that community itself: there's fewer and fewer DK2 experiments and demos being released, and interest in VR or at least the Oculus is steadily slowing down all around me and forums/boards I follow, when VR needs the exact opposite.

And for a CV1 release, something that is -just- an extension of the Crescent Bay or even a DK3 that wasn't thoroughly tested by a beta community of developers, doesn't make sense. Nor releasing a public consumer version that has so many problems and challenges, not only in display image, latency or form-factor but also the fact that it has no hand-motion sensor.

The first thing my "casual" friends try to do when putting the headset is to use their hands, which shows how necessary and obvious this function is for immersion in a consumer product. And what the Leap Motion + HMD is achieving as an experiment is what a DK3 should've been, especially, as I said, for it to be experimented and tested.


- The second strong indicator, is the Mobile VR. An Oculus HMD has a big form-factor, is tethered, requires a computer while adding the costing of the screen component and being a compatibility hassle. Mobile VR targets what everybody already has, a smartphone which is already equipped with screen, gyro/accelerosensors and optimized processors, is untethered AND has a store-ready ecosystem.

If you look at Weareality (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wea ... mitless-vr), they're already providing a visual experience that is far greater that that of the oculus, just because of the 150° FOV, the transportable and untethered form-factor and most-importantly, the price.

Such enterprise are so easy to pull out (I mean anybody anywhere in the world can suddenly come-up and market something that is an order of magnitude higher than the basic HMD set just because of a small innovation). In fact that maybe why Oculus has been putting more effort in helping Samsung update its Gear VR than releasing a new iteration of their own...


- So my guess is that the Oculus as a big, tethered and machine-dependant HMD is DEAD. Rather I think we'll see a new Mobile version similar to that of the Gear VR, but if possible with wireless capabilities for both head-motion feedbacks and also image streaming from computer. Especially since Intel is bringing forth wireless image streaming with WiDi in its Skylake platform, as well as next Qualcomm processors...
72 REPLIES 72

HiThere_
Superstar
I have three words to say about mobile VR : No Position Tracking (which requires a fixed point).

I have three words to say about 120 FPS on a PS4 : Deceitful Marketing Trick (Google "Soap Opera Effect").

I have three delightfully sounding words to repeat about Desktop VR : Going Horribly Right (which hopefully includes reaching a sufficient combination of body/voice/eye tracking).

Because VR isn't about how good you are at ticking any one box (such as achieving the best mobility, the best FPS announcement, or even the best release date...), but about how good you are at ticking every last box.

wheatgrinder
Explorer
There are two types of people;
those that can extrapolate from incomplete data


Use seem to think no positional tracking is somehow impossible to solve on mobile?

That said, I too love desktop VR, and I KNOW that its going to be happy land for a long time, but it will go away. Exponential rate of change man.

HiThere_
Superstar
"wheatgrinder" wrote:
You seem to think positional tracking is somehow impossible to solve on mobile?

No, I think you can solve it just fine right now through an external reference point. A fixed external reference point.

So you can just carry your fixed external reference point with you, and when you want your mobile positional tracking you just drop it somewhere around you and stay next to it... specially if your mobile VR application supports positional tracking.

Thing is, if that fixed external reference point you're carrying around with you could be a laptop, you could then offset a bunch of your smartphone drawbacks to it : The battery weight, the battery life, the fingerprints, the last-gen smartphone APU cost, heat production and power consumption... So you can end up with a cheap cool pair of VR sunglasses instead of trying to stick a fully weighted, fully featured smartphone to your face.

Using a single fully fledged smartphone in a huge and ugly looking DK was only a proof of concept for Oculus VR to begin with : How small, light and cool looking can the CV1 get, once you've got rid of the clumsy looking single smartphone screen requirement from it ? First Sunglass shaped VR headset coming to Desktop GPUs within a year ? ^^

Instead of the future of VR being smartphones, it could be that AR sunglasses are the future of smartphones.

kojack
MVP
MVP
"yazze" wrote:
Except that there's no platform, no new SDK, tool or platform, there as been no upgrade or news for 10 months,

No new sdk in 10 months? 0.4.3 came out 7 months ago, 0.4.4 was 6 months ago, 0.5.0.1 came out 2 months ago, a new one is in testing right now and the audio sdk has had two releases in the last 2 months.
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

VRising
Honored Guest
If reviews are anything to go by, the lack of positional tracking in mobile VR doesn't mean people aren't having a positive VR experience. People are coming from either Cardboard VR or no VR. They don't miss what they don't know. Yes they may think it would be better to move around too but the same thing goes for seeing our hands, haptics, jumping around, smelling tasting, and everything else that makes it closer to real life. The mobile VR experience now is good enough with the right apps and will only get better. Mobile VR will be huge and will be much more adopted than its tethered counterpart.

VegasGh0st
Honored Guest
As time goes on i will have to agree, first bad move was making a mobile device before they even finished there first project, its not even like they needed the money to fund the consumer oculus. Now with each broken release of the SDK - Runtime (5.0.1 is a completely rushed unfinished mess, and they even took out duplicate displays, cmon now)
Lastly the final nail in the coffin is the retard move by Sixsence to pull the razor hydra from shelves, leaving us with wonky and highly varied control schemes. kinect and leap have come to the rescue sorta, but again that leaves us with varied control schemes and additional purchases.
Valve seems to have been doing everything right so far, as far as control and such but knowing valve Oculus Consumer may be on the market 3 years before they release.

Rant aside, FIX Runtime 5.0.1 - add duplicate displays back in, and fix the detection issues, i cant stay on 4.4 forever.
it makes playing new titles impossible.
Nothing is impossible, just time consuming.

yazze
Honored Guest
"nosys70" wrote:
that's exactly the point. convergence. It is about taking the best of everything you need to reach your goal.
if a piece is missing, the you will not be able to reach it.
Oculus was too early. now we got better screen, faster chips, device designed for VR (sensor, lens ?), cheaper prices, so somebody who would
developp a new VR helmet today would probably start with different concept than oculus 2 years ago.
and that is what probably stopped oculus. their design is obsolete, even if their learning are valuables. Unfortunately, convergence must also be followed by adoption.
We have seen that with 3D on TV, convergence was ok, tons of screens are avaialble, glasses goes affordable, content avaialble. But adoption did not reach the required level.
The best clue about that is when content (usually demo or beta provided by developpers) start to fade (and this is the case actually).
there would be no shame from oculus to provide a DK3, with better screen, added feature (where is the nimble Vr project ?, why do we need a camera on pc when samsung can live without ?).
if developpers have to go their own way by supporting other product (leap motion, vive) , all the learning will go elsewhere than oculus.

I don't really care about getting a perfect screen (the DK2 is passable, and a slighlty better one would be fine. I know this can only get better). what i need is a way to get really VR, not locked in front of a camera, 360deg freedom, to be able to use my hands, a reliable direct to screen feature, i need Nvidia supporting their dual card render...

there is no reason why oculus could not deliver that, even if we know it is not perfect. they could even provide that as an upgrade to DK2 (new lens ? add-on Nimble camera, dual usb cam light house ? or better wireless 9dof sensor ?).
there are probably several thousand of developpers that would be happy to throw 100$ on an upgrade of their DK2 to explore new features.


Fucking thanks for understanding, not being hypocrite and being smart.

yazze
Honored Guest
"welby" wrote:
"yazze" wrote:
"welby" wrote:
The Gear VR will never has the same power that a PC could has right now..

To smoothly play and experience the CV1 you will probably need at least a GTX 980 that's both a bad and a good thing.

A bad thing cause despite of Mobile VR like WearVR-GearVr etc you need to buy a powerful pc.. (but probably still cheaper then GearVR+Samsung S6) but the good and best thing is that you'll be able to play games REALLY.. REALLY different to what a Gear VR or even a WearVR could achieve.

We're talking about playing games like Assetto Corsa,Black Desert,entire mmporg worlds that it will never possible to experience in a mobile VR experience.

Right now,and that's pretty already clear,you could has an overall good experience on mobile VR,but yet it's FAR MILES AWAY from the optimal experience like you could have on PC..

That means,MUCH worse graphic,much worse Fps( <60fps) versus the (>90fps) of PC, worste latency,for now(at least) no positional tracking.. and so on.

So they're just two different kind of experience.. probably if we'll never has the same power of a current GPU inside a mobile phone (and we're not so far away :lol: but still i think we'll need to wait a bit before see a Titan X inside a smartphone 😄 ) and like that it's cristal clear that it's right to have two different kind of product:

PC VR Headset to have THE BEST,SMOOTH,LOW-LATENCY,LOW-MOTION SICKNESS,BETTER GRAPHICS experience.. vs
MOBILE VR Headset to have the BEST PORTABILITY,UNTHETHERED experience..

However,i would leave this message here from the latest Oculus news release on their official page:


You got it all wrong, this is typical "pc master race" rubbish ie. people who don't actually know anything about PCs, graphics and experience.

Mobile VR, because it has a store/ecosystem ready, apps calibrated an optimized for these smartphone models, with highly efficient screen, gyroscope, and other things such as an internal integrated processor matching the built-in screen refresh-rate, or a back camera that can be use as a VSlam tracker and a front camera that can be used as an eye-tracker, makes for a WAY BETTER experience than a computer HMD.

Also it's easier to market since everybody has a smartphone, so easier to manufacture and sell at a lower prices, and it's untethered.

What you are referring to as nothing to do with the HMD itself, the graphic cards of your PC which varies from user to user, is not clocked on the same refresh-rate as the HMD screen making frame-rate and stuttering more common, it has higher latency due to the feedback time necessary between head movements, the motion sensor, the usb dongle, the processor, then the graphic cards, which in turn has to output with the specific HMD drivers which might have compatibility problem, images to the HMD. It is a mess of incompatibility, un-optimization, drivers, with no actual unified ecosystem.

The same as mobile VR goes for PS4 and Project Morpheus: the reason why this HMD is said to have the best image and performance with up to 120fps, is because unlike PC this is a tight ecosystem that is way more stable, forward and optimized than the PC ecosystem. Console are programmed "close to the metal" to be optimized to play games that will work the same on all millions of units which all have the same hardware, and the Project Morpheus HMD is synced with the internal card refresh-rate like G-Sync, and has an ecosystem with a store that make distribution easy.

So no PC HMD are not better because of the Graphic Card you may have.

"andyring" wrote:

EDIT: just noticed it's his first post, looks like i've been had!


See above


Well.. thanks to tell me that i do not know anything about PCs.. i'm sure you know them really well to say to someone else that doesn't know them..

But please..

I'm not talking about any Pc master race.. and i don't know why i should do that..

I'm just saying.. if the smartphone are so WELL optimized.. and so good as much as PS4 could do 120fps (that pheraps are not even truly 120fps since they're using some sort of software technique to achieve that..),however there is a reason why we haven't games like Alien isolation on the GearVR isn't it?

Well i don't need to speak more then..

I'm just saying that MobileVR and so unthethered headset that use smartphone that has the same graphic quality and horsepower of a PC are just still away.. and that's not something that has told by Nostradamus (like you're saying with your fatal words "Oculus is dead.. :lol: ") but it's something that is so RIGHT NOW..

John Carmack said that you should have not more then 60k triangles on the Gear VR.. and even with the S6 it will not change so much.. so i'm not saying we're not going to see awesome graphic and awesome games on mobile headset.. but still that (and it seems pretty obvius to me) we're gonna see even much "big" games on PC.. and that's why a "thetered" headset like Oculus will survive.

And stop speaking useless about this "community already there" when speaking about mobile VR.. If so we shouldn't even using our PC right now but we all has a Mac in our home or a PS4 to play instead of a personal computer.. that's something absolutely not true..

Oculus could has success as much as PCs in general have done since now.

And please.. a bit of humilty speaking about something that you couldn't already know..and maybe let's start to stop this "Oculus dead" posts and just wait until E3.. i'm sure we'll be all surprised.


I get what you say, of course we expect a VR Headset to be able to play PC games since that's how we've been introduced to VR.

But due to the many problems of non-compatibility, latency, non-optimization inherent to PC fragmentation, it's unlikely that the next road for VR is on PC.

Let me put it this way: like 3D TVs, which has been following the same cycles every 15 years for about 60 years now, VR could fail and the market not take-off until we get another chance 15 years from now. That's how paradigm shift work: VR is nothing new, what is new is Palmer Luckey breakthrough approach in the today's situation.

Starting from there because of how manufacturing on large-scale is limited, until you have a ready product, that you can only send to that many developers/testers, who are the trendsetting community pushing it forward and creating content for it, you DON'T HAVE all your time. There's an approximate time-span of 5 to 8 years max before your products has completely lost following, interest and disappears if it has not successfully become a consumer product with mass adoption.

Right now the clock is ticking bad. And the reason is because, as I said, PC which were the first platform targeted by Oculus present so many challenges that make it hard to created a "perfect" ie. consumer-ready product. HOWEVER Mobile and Console VR, because they are optimized, locked-framerate, unique configuration ecosystem might be the solution to bring such a product.

So, my bet is Oculus will maybe release a DK3 but the first consumer version it will release will be a new Mobile HMD. Because this is the step needed in the road to bring VR and then achieve consumer-ready PC VR a few years down the road.

yazze
Honored Guest
"Cyril" wrote:
I have three words to say about mobile VR : No Position Tracking (which requires a fixed point).

I have three words to say about 120 FPS on a PS4 : Deceitful Marketing Trick (Google "Soap Opera Effect").

I have three delightfully sounding words to repeat about Desktop VR : Going Horribly Right (which hopefully includes reaching a sufficient combination of body/voice/eye tracking).

Because VR isn't about how good you are at ticking any one box (such as achieving the best mobility, the best FPS announcement, or even the best release date...), but about how good you are at ticking every last box.


Like many other people, you're pulling words out of your butt with actually bringing any substantial argument.

Maybe that's why you're absolutely wrong: how is Desktop VR going horribly right when the market and content offer is LITERALLY stalling?

It's not argument about whether or not one is better than the other, of course PC game/softwares are more powerful, look better. But VR/AR is simply 2x better on Mobile right now, not only from a technic point-of-view but also commercially.

Put simply: PCs, while powerful, have the inherent problem of being awfully fragmented, un-optimized and un-compatible. There are literally hundreds of millions of different PC configurations and builds out there, every components whether inside (CPU, memory, GPU...) and outside (Screen, HMD, controllers, cam/sensor...) presents compatibility and sync issue since they're not built together, for example until G-Sync (and nobody has such a screen) the GPU refresh-rate is not clocked on the screen refresh-rate, drivers for one component to another as well as software are a chaos, and so until the appearance of Mantle/DX12/Vulkan these games and software were not optimized like mobile and consoles.

However each iteration of smartphone is the same build, is optimized the same way, every components are the same, clocked the same, directly integrated into the device. In fact, you mention position tracking but guess what? On every smartphone there's a back camera, which means point-tracking (with VSlam) and AR. Might I add there's also a front-camera that can be easily used as an eye-tracker, as well as integrated mics and speakers.

But the most important factor to consider is commercial (because again it's not a debate about which platform is better in term of power): an external HMD and all it's components are expensive, tethered and take lots of room...but almost everyone already has a smartphone.

End point is that Mobile VR is the safest and best road to go right now to bring VR to mass adoption AND it is a necessary step to not only buy time but also pave the way for a consumer ready PC HMD.

Anonymous
Not applicable
"Cyril" wrote:
I have three words to say about mobile VR : No Position Tracking (which requires a fixed point).

I have three words to say about 120 FPS on a PS4 : Deceitful Marketing Trick (Google "Soap Opera Effect").


But motion interpolation actually works.... frames are rendered in-between sampled frames and pixels moved to account for the in-between movement... It actually works....