With a 36-million installed base with compatible hardware, ~$150 lower starting cost (including PS4 camera), and the ability for people without a headset to play on the main screen in the livingroom, it looks like Sony might clean up on the first generation of consumer VR.
This will certainly be a big step for VR democratisation. I'm surprised they aim for 120hz, it's really amazing. Can't wait to see what gets out of it.
That's an 8 millisecond frame time! I've seen physics simulations that take longer, never mind graphics intensive systems like post-processing (think Depth-of-Field, Tonemapping, 'HDR'/Bloom).
I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop in quality?
Photo realism isn't going to happen in the first generation. Game developers are going to have to be creative in art direction and gameplay instead. And for games that do this well you won't ever notice a drop in quality.
To me, that's one of the most fascinating things about games. Breakout hits make the right trade offs to push the platform further than you thought it could go. This stands true since games were put on computers.
At this point, photorealism isn't so much a question of hardware limitations as one of scene complexity and interactivity.
If you have a simple enough subject to start with, and bake enough lighting and shadow mapping into the textures, you can make a photorealistic scene on even previous-generation console hardware. Once you start adding more objects, and allowing more things to move, you start needing to calculate more in real time, and you need more processing and rendering power.
A room with a table and a teapot could probably be made photorealistic on a PS3, even at 90 FPS. A densely populated street with moving cars and pedestrians, however, would have to be fairly visually abstracted to hit that target even on a PS4.
They compensate for this with reprojection. If the off board hardware hasn't received a new frame within 8 milliseconds of a move event, they reproject the existing frame moved over by the delta of the move event. I assume the thinking is that you're mostly focusing on one spot, so this ends up "moving" correctly even if the image as a whole isn't quite right (edges cut off or whatever).
This is mostly correct. The games actually get a choice about how they want to render
Most games will choose to render at 60fps, the game reports this to the OS and then the headset will know to reproject between each frame, so the game gets plenty of time to get the next actual frame ready.
Some games will do 120fps though, not sure who will pull that off voluntarily though!!!
Most pixel shader post-processing doesn't work too well with VR to start with, certainly any current implementations will look a little freaky when viewed through two eyes depending on shortcuts that are only convincing from a single camera perspective.
> I'm skeptical at how this will affect the quality of upcoming VR games since less time to render generally means a scene that is less photorealistic. Then again, maybe the immersion (presence) factor will overcome the graphical drop in quality?
For now, by definition VR graphics (which mandate high FPS, high resolution, rendering for each eye) are always going to be behind state of the art graphics for non-VR games.
Personally, I find the idea of non-photorealistic VR environments much more interesting as well.
I think the smart move for the time being for VR is to put realism to the side in favor of strongly art-directed stylized content that focuses on the strengths that the platform has right now and worry about realism later.
I think films are a great example of demonstrating that realism =/= immersion. Movies like Lego Movie, The Incredibles, etc can be just as immersive as live action. The secret sauce isn't realism, it's choosing the right style for the content, gameplay and theme you are going for.
The refresh rate does not necessarily match 1:1 with the frame rate. You can display the same frame multiple times, and this is actually what Sony is doing.
120hz means smooth playback at 24, 30, 60 fps (3 most common formats), because you can simply show each image for 2, 4, 5 frames. 60hz would mean potentially stuttery video at a native 24fps (some movies).
Nope. That's one of the options possible, but not the only mode. The device can present at 90 or 120, and the rendering can be done at 60, 90, or 120. Not sure of all the combos possible though (like can you render at 60 and present at 120?)
In their slide decks they showed a 60->120 mode based on frame doubling plus asynchronous time warping (so head movement is partially taken into account). I don't think they actually allow you to run it below 90hz.
That's a very strange use of the word democratization, a domain error really, because it's about markets, not politics. A better word would be consumerization. Associating democracy with a particular economic pattern is just a swindle to try to make the two inextricable. I suppose that's why Thomas Friedman was so fond of this abuse of language.
No, it's not about markets nor any particular economic pattern; it's about the outcome, while being agnostic to the means. For example, it's also been said that the expansion of (free) public schooling has lead to a democratization of knowledge.
"consumerization" just tells you that something is going into the market, not that it's becoming accessible to everyone. "Democratic" is not the best word but it's better than that.
I actually think being tied to a PS4 is a disadvantage, not an advantage, and a large one at that. The install base of high-end PCs is larger, and upgrading a PC is easier to justify than buying a game console. And for most people, the living room isn't the right place; when you can't see your surroundings, you'd rather be somewhere private.
I'm not sure that's true, although it depends on what you define as "high-end". Steam, as of last February, has 125m active users [0]. According to their hardware survey [1], only 30% of those users' GPUs support DirectX above version 9, with the overwhelming majority of "GPUs" being integrated and not up to the demands of 1080p gaming (a cursory glance suggests we can cut that 30% in half at least).
Given all that, you have ~15% of 125m for a maximum of ~19m "high-end" PCs, which is substantially smaller than the current number of PS4s.
> and upgrading a PC is easier to justify than buying a game console
A GTX 970, the minimum required for Oculus, is around $300 on Amazon. That's not withstanding the extra CPU and RAM upgrades that are likely necessary (per [1]) to support the demands of modern PC games.
There's also the fact that PC games tend to require more and more hardware upgrades as time goes on, while console games tend to use the hardware they have more efficiently. A $350 console can be expected to last 5-10 years without need for an upgrade. A PC needs upgrading every ~3 to keep up to date with modern requirements.
I say all this as someone who exclusively games on PC, don't get me wrong. It's great but it's not the best financial decision for the mass market.
Where did you get that so many GPUs are integrated?
> A $350 console can be expected to last 5-10 years without need for an upgrade. A PC needs upgrading every ~3 to keep up to date with modern requirements.
But will they be able to run games at similar quality and FPS? Many console games run at 30 fps.
You can see that Intel integrated modules make up a sizable portion (~45% of DX11) of most sections, with much of the remainder after that being the kind of GPU you see built into the motherboard on low end PCs.
And after that there are a lot of dated cards like the 9500 GT.
> But will they be able to run games at similar quality and FPS? Many console games run at 30 fps.
That's a good question. I think it's possible though. Developers managed quite a lot on the PS3 and Xbox at 1080p and 30fps. I think that framerate just wasn't a major concern for them at the time. Now they have both new hardware and a strong consumer interest in VR, I think they'll be able to manage it.
A 1000$ PC will probably be able to run games at 1080p at ~60 FPS while the console will run at 30 FPS. One must compare the same games, in which case one will find that the FPS and resolution in consoles is less. So then the comparison is between paying more for better resolution and/or FPS vs paying less for lower resolution and/or FPS.
Also, if you don't upgrade your console, you won't get to play newer games, but if you upgrade your PC every 3 years or so, you'll be able to play newer games, so that isn't a correct comparison. You can always play your old games on your PC forever, without needing to upgrade anything.
Consoles are on a 6 year upgrade cycle, if you wait 10 years your going to be skipping a generation. PS 1994, 2000, 2006, 2013.
That's still probably faster than PC as a 1000$ gaming PC from 2012 would have 4 or 8 GB ram, 1TB HDD or a small SSD, ~570 GTX 2500k CPU. Which can still play new games but your going to want an upgrade soon ish.
Cheaper games, no subscription fees (X box live), and your going to want a PC anyway means consoles don't really save you money.
You're right about the upgrade cycle being shorter than I thought.
> That's still probably faster than PC as a 1000$ gaming PC from 2012 would have 4 or 8 GB ram, 1TB HDD or a small SSD, ~570 GTX 2500k CPU. Which can still play new games but your going to want an upgrade soon ish.
I don't think this is true. In 2013 [0], for $1000, you'd be looking at a GTX 660 and an i5 4430. Witcher 3, one of the largest PC gaming releases of 2015, required [1] a GTX 660 as a __minimum__, just 2 years after you'd have bought that PC. And this is a card that could handle Skyrim on Ultra settings [2] when you bought it.
To keep a PC up to date (playing new games at the quality settings you used when you bought it) you're looking at $1000 initial cost, ~$150/yr for the GPU and $50-100/year for a CPU/RAM upgrade every few years.
So for 10 years of ownership, you're looking at $1000 for the initial purchase, 3-5 $250 GPU upgrades ($750-$1250) and say two major overhauls of CPU/RAM/Motherboard/PSU ($500-$1000). Total cost of ownership is ~$2250-3250, depending how long you stretch it.
For a console you're looking at say 3 console purchases (since you keep them longer, at least one is likely to need replacing at some stage) each at ~$400. Total cost of ownership is ~$1200.
> Cheaper games
Tom Clancy's The Division, the most recent major new release I'm aware of is currently $60 on every platform [3]. This has been my experience with most major games. If you're commenting on indie games, those are available on consoles too.
> no subscription fees (X box live)
A concern exclusively for Xbox owners. This thread is regarding a Playstation announcement.
> and your going to want a PC anyway
Most people can (and do) get along perfectly fine with a cheap $300 laptop which lasts them 2-5 years depending on the people.
I get where you're coming from but I think you're biased by your personal preferences/situation/experiences. Gaming PCs just aren't more cost effective than consoles unless you happen to need a beast of a PC for other purposes (like software development). They just don't make sense for most of the market.
I'm not where you've got your numbers from. I bought my midrange desktop including monitor and peripherals for less than $900 three years ago and yet from a performance perspective it's still 30% faster than the PS4. Somehow that PS4 lasts 10 years but the PC has to be upgraded every year? I merely bought a new mouse and an SSD but you could probably say the same about buying a controller for the console.
Ironically I've seen people argue for consoles because they don't have a lot of money but then proceed buy the other consoles which means the price doesn't matter to them.
You are also forgetting the fact that you can literally get the best consumer PC hardware on the planet for a mere $1700 (i7 6700k + 980 Ti + nice case/mainboard/psu + 512GB SSD + 32GB RAM).
> I bought my midrange desktop including monitor and peripherals for less than $900 three years ago and yet from a performance perspective it's still 30% faster than the PS4.
In raw computing power perhaps but consoles have an advantage over the PC due to the fact that developers will optimize their games heavily and specifically for a console.
> Somehow that PS4 lasts 10 years but the PC has to be upgraded every year
Not sure where you're getting this from. I said that the PS4 would be upgraded 3 times over 10 years (i.e. the console lasts 3 years) and that the PC's GPU would be upgraded every 2-3 years, with other upgrades like CPU, RAM etc. coming around every 4 years. I think that's fair given that a mid range GPU from 2013 can barely meet the minimum requirements of some of the latest games.
> You are also forgetting the fact that you can literally get the best consumer PC hardware on the planet for a mere $1700
$1700 is not a trivial amount of money. Sure you could get a beast of a PC for that price. You could also buy a PS4 and 23 new release games (or say 3 new release games for $60 and 30 older games for $40). I think selling the PC is pretty hard with those kinds of numbers.
If you check Amazon right now Witcher 3 is 41$ for PS 4, and 36$ on PC. Steam sales also allow you to buy an endless stream of AAA games for cheap.
Yes, Witcher 3 is demanding for your older PC. But, plenty of people don't buy a new console the year it comes out either. PC gamers can always push off an upgrade and wait to play any overly demanding game(s).
PS: It's also a good idea to stay on the console upgrade cycle. A lot of PC games are cross ports so late in cycle they run really well on older PC's.
Im not exactly sure where you are getting that GTX 660 will barely run stuff
I'm on 460 GT and in no rush to upgrade (granted, this is on 22 inch 1680x1050 display, so the load is lighter). I upgraded everything else but the GPU recently and it's only in extreme situations that i wish i had something beefier (think planetside 2, few hundred players having a slaughterfest)
> Im not exactly sure where you are getting that GTX 660 will barely run stuff
I'm taking this from Witcher 3's minimum system requirements. I'm assuming that anyone investing in a gaming system wishes to be able to play new releases as they come out. My point is that a GPU from 2013 is right on the edge of losing support of a game released in 2015, just 2 years after it was launched. Meanwhile, this game only just dropped support for consoles released around 2005.
You're considering the launch date of the console, which is its best price/performance time, but that quickly goes down. A GTX 660 is now around $100. Most people will want some kind of PC anyway, and mainstream CPUs are good enough to handle almost any game. All that most people need for gaming is a GPU update. Although this isn't possible with most laptops, external GPUs are already entering the market.
Console and PC gaming are converging. Microsoft is talking about quicker upgrades because the power of hardware is rapidly evolving. The new GPU generations this year will be a huge leap forward, and there's plenty more to come. They're also introducing cross-platform online play. By the way, PlayStation requires a subscription fee for that too now. It was only the PS3 that allowed free online play.
Will most people want a PC? Phone and tablet sales have been eating into traditional PC sales for nearly a decade now. And the PCs people have still been buying are mostly low powered laptops that won't be able to power a Rift or Vive.
Is the install base for high-end PCs (of the level needed to push an Oculus) really larger?
They've sold 36 million PS4s.
An Oculus needs a Nvidia GTX 970 or better graphics card (which goes for $300+ on it's own). I highly doubt that 36 million+ people have purchased one of those (or would, especially on top of the $599 that it costs for the Rift itself).
On the other hand, a console is an easy gift to give, regardless of your technical capabilities, and as a kid, it's easier to endless encourage your parents to get the right thing. Ask for a computer, and you may end up with a chromebook!
The most interesting bit for me was about "Social Screen." If I understand correctly, this will allow two people to play non-VR games on the same PS4 without splitting screen on TV. One person will be looking at the TV, and the other person will be looking at the VR headset. This means that even if we get no good VR games for a while, there will still be nice benefit of owning a VR headset.
There was a similar feature demonstrated with 3D TV's. Both users would have a fullscreen and to a viewer without glasses the images would be overlayed.
I'm always surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for VR and AR on HN. Is there something specific about this vertical that makes it lackluster for this crowd?
I get cynicism and all that but given how much HN users talk about on demand delivery, CRM tools etc... things that are relatively boring in comparison, and the massive growth in the VR/AR industry I don't get the lack of discussion.
a) neither are new or revolutionary, I've been following VR for literally 20+ years, and it's been around in various forms for decades longer
b) despite not being new or revolutionary, real solid use-cases for the technology hasn't really been found outside of "better stereoscopic presentation and head tracking for games"
c) lots of the mistakes that were made in the first several rushes to 3d are obviously about to be made again
d) to "do it right" (e.g. not using it as a fancy 3d-tv strapped to your head) requires lots of expensive equipment and facilities (space to move around in). People will have to make investments in completely changing not only their computing equipment, but even likely dedicating an entire empty room to the endeavor.
e) all the fancy 3d use-cases that aren't in b) above are almost all better handled through existing user I/O schemes an awful lot of the stuff we're hearing sounds like yet another version of Mall Quest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94mwUGCkkg0)
f) it's expensive, I mean seriously. Unless you're meeting minimum system specs in some way, you're looking at $1000+ minimum buy-in on the low-side. I can buy lots of other entertainment crap for $1000 and probably get better dollar/time ratios.
g) it's still incredibly immature. There's at least 3-5 different major incompatible systems bouncing around. To fully participate in all this means costs for f) are x3-x5.
It's not that I'm down on it. When I see VR/AR things, I think "that's cool" and think it'd be interesting to play a game for a couple hours (max) in VR-land. VR has always been cool and interesting. But the obvious downsides to the tech far outstrip any conceivable upside.
I think the thing that is new is that it's becoming accessible to the masses. PCs and Smartphones were certainly only for the "rich" to begin with but it quickly moved downmarket.
This PSVR news is moving that downmarket accessibility faster for VR than happened in the PC market at a minimum.
Your other points are spot on though, which is why I (and basically everyone else) thinks that the VR market has a cap, whereas the AR market really doesn't - at least until neural interfaces come along.
a) VR isn't the new or revolutionary thing. Reasonably priced high field of view VR is. It's pretty clear to anyone paying attention. I think it was probably explained in Oculus's original Kickstarter video if you want to know more.
b) How are games not a real use-case? How many use-cases do you want?
c) Such as?
d) There is no "do it right". There are alternatives with trade-offs. Besides the Vive does allow you to move around. If you are talking about having a huge 2D treadmill, get real.
f) How much was the first PC? The first mobile phone? It will get cheaper, but expecting the first of a new category of products to be cheap is idiotic. It's still cheaper than the first iPhone was (the real cost; not the up-front cost).
g) You don't have to buy all of them, obviously. That's like saying nobody will buy a PS4 or Xbox One because it costs too much to buy them both. I mean, that's a pretty damn stupid argument.
I'm guessing you haven't tried any of the modern VR systems.
So you ranted a bit here and keep referring to this as new or a new category. In what way is this not just a normal iteration on what's been around for decades?
The question was why aren't some folks excited about the current Gen of vr, your kind of breathless reply is basically it. It's not revolutionary is just a neat advancement that fixes some problems but doesnt fix lots of the ones we already know about and were good reasons for the lack of adoption the first 20 times around.
> despite not being new or revolutionary, real solid use-cases for the technology hasn't really been found outside of "better stereoscopic presentation and head tracking for games"
That's an interestingly alternative way to say: VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers. Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
You might as well be in 1952, claiming there has been no other use found for the transistor, other than radios.
> VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers
Well VR covers and has covered for many years a huge number of different technologies. I used a CAVE system decades ago, and I'd still call that VR. If there were some technology that provided a superior experience of immersion, we'd call that VR too, so that statement is pretty close to contentless.
Whether or not a 'superior experience of immersion' is something that is worth paying significant chunks of money and the inconvenience that go with all hardware you need is the real question, and I tend towards suspecting that for the normal consumer with the hardware where it is at the moment the answer is still no.
I still enjoy breaking the VIVE and the Oculus out on occasion, particularly to show people who haven't tried VR before, but neither of them have a huge chance of becoming something that I'll use frequently.
so I'm basically filing your response under the "Vague "this'll change everything" statements don't count" clause. The Oculus, Vive etc. are merely the new kids on the block in a neighborhood that's been around for decades.
> Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
No, VR has literally been around for decades. I've used probably a dozen different systems over the years, some great, some terrible...at this point I feel like the hype machine is preying on either the young who don't remember or the uninformed who simply don't know.
VR systems builders have some very hard problems to solve beyond head tracking and game-style hand controls to become immersive. There's probably 20 years alone researching haptic feedback systems and none of the ones I've used were all that great and had very large performance cost and capability trade-offs.
Solving all of these problems means that all of the issues I highlighted in my grandparent post simply magnify.
The fact that you think the modern hardware, which is easily two orders of magnitude better at 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower price than the hardware of the 90s to which you are referring when you make statements like "not being new or revolutionary" means you either don't know anything about VR 20 years ago or don't know anything about VR today. The fact that you're calling $1000 to $2000 "expensive" also means you know nothing about 90s era VR or modern era consumers.
The fact that you keep harping on "no compelling use cases", when games are a clearly a legitimate use case, how completely different things like racing games feel in VR versus on a TV (I can't play racing games on a TV anymore) means you know nothing about modern VR. There are already people using even Google Cardboard-class devices to do medical visualizations and planning surgeries that they are claiming would have been too difficult without it. Companies like AltspaceVR are already proving that 3D chat can now be done correctly and it's better and more personal than Skype. I know of several architecture firms that have jumped on this, are developing tools in-house to visualize new designs for clients, with stories that it has helped the client rethink bad design decisions. I know of real estate agents who are hopping on this to show off their stock of dwelling units. This is all right now. What more do you want to prove that there are at least some compelling use cases, and why do you assume that, once the devices are in hand, we wouldn't be able to figure out more?
Games like Tilt Brush and Fantastic Contraption are proving that there is a compelling CAD use case that could be developed further into more productive tasks. Have you ever done any 3D modelling? It's ridiculously hard. It's almost as hard as "individually position 1 million vertices" sounds. The sorts of things people are whipping up in these games I can't even imagine trying to build in a tool like Blender or Maya on a PC work station in any amount of time approaching under 6 months.
"Oh, but how many people really need to do 3D modelling?" I don't know, how many people really needed to do email on the go? IF you make it accessible and available, people will figure out their own use cases.
I still challenge you to prove you actually know anything about VR other than having read about it in TIME every once in a while.
I thought HN was supposed to be a board of cutting edge technology enthusiasts, startup visionaries, early adopters, etc. There is a hell of a lot of lack of imagination here.
Goodness you make me feel old. Especially when none of your use cases represent anything new or revolutionary. This current round of vr tech is nothing more than the glorious output of continuous iteration and technological progress. Literally every one of the things you mention had been true for decades.
It's making a longer sword not inventing firearms.
I still don't see how going from being completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people to basically showing up in your kid's happy meals is not a complete sea change. Quantity has a quality all its own.
I asked you which VR system is showing up in kid's happy meals, not which papercraft kit is showing up. If this is your definition of a VR system I have some bridges to sell to you.
A 19th century stereoscope is a more complete VR system than this. Bonus, they can cover the entire box with 3d scenes.
Strapping a phone and some lenses to your face isn't revolutionary.
VR has always been about strapping displays, lenses and motion sensors to your head at a minimum. Smartphones drove pixel densities, the Wii drove down sensor costs. This isn't a new idea, it's not revolutionary by any definition of the word. It's an iteration that might bring us to a tipping point of mass consumer adoption, and it might not.
Millions of people might buy these things, try them out for a few months and decide the fuss isn't worth the stereoscopic immersion. Or my Mom might find she really likes playing driving games in VR. Who knows?
But not a single thing here is conceptually new in any way. It literally is the same idea, with the same use cases done in basically the same way with better tech at a cheaper cost. That's not a revolution.
CDs were not a revolution over cassette tapes. Recording audio was a revolution over not being able to record it at all.
This is neat stuff, it's very cool, and it's nice that it's far more accessible to more people. But it's not revolutionary, and it doesn't fix the major problems that have been identified by many very smart people who've been working on this problem for decades.
> it doesn't fix the major problems that have been identified by many very smart people who've been working on this problem for decades.
You keep pulling out this non sequitur. "variation on theme, therefore core problems not resolved." You've never enumerated what those core problems are. Because as far as I'm concerned, iteration to higher resolution and higher framerate solves several core problems with the old VR systems.
Are you just disappointed that it's all headsets and you won't be able to get your dick virtually sucked yet? Oh wait, no, you can get that, too. No, I won't link to it. Use your own googlefu.
The fact that you aren't aware of the issues, and you have a picture of you with a VR headset on your homepage and are building a VR framework is a pretty impressive example of systematic personal bias and willful ignorance.
There's literally decades of research into VR that you pretend like doesn't exist: from medical and psychological to input and feedback systems that you're blissfully unaware of. Listing it would be like listing the contents of a library. You seem to want to cast yourself as some kind of VR expert or aficionado, but aren't even aware of the long history of your own field! At this point you're just a poser.
However, people who aren't ignorant internet blowhards are aware of this body of work, have been around VR for much longer than your synapses have been capable of firing on the topic, and end up having a much more measured response to the technology. We all know more about what you are doing than you do. We all know who Heilig, Furness, Sutherland, Engelbart, Lanier and Waldern, their works and the limitations of their vision. We're not the idiots in this exchange.
We were learning to fly planes, drive tanks, overcome phobias, shoot guns, find medicines, map the stars, explore cyberspace and meatspace in VR while you were still learning to drink juice from an adult cup.
You seem to take some kind of personal umbrage with people who have a long view of the topic not finding the precious toy you've hitched your wagon to to be the revolutionary second coming. Grow up and maybe learn something first so you can do something better than the mistakes of all the giants who's footsteps you are treading in.
VR is here, it's been here, it's great, but it's not everything, there is no revolution here only evolution. That screen strapped to your head? That's just this year's model of car, not the invention of the horseless wagon. We've all been driving for a long time, congratulations on getting your license.
I think VR and AR (especially AR) has largely failed to prove why anyone should care.
And keep in mind this is coming from someone who backed the original Rift DK and is looking forward to getting the final Rift.
There really hasn't been much in VR-land that isn't just a cool tech demo. "Hey you can walk through this virtual world and it's like you're actually there!" - yep, sure is cool, but then what?
Both VR and AR are at the stage where we have the technology to make whiz-bang cool tech demos that are legitimately technically impressive, but are not real products the masses actually want. Worse, we know we don't have any real killer applications of this tech, so we're branding a lot of these tech demos as products, which only generates more disappointment in the field.
At a previous job we hacked around for a bit with a Google Glass - which isn't real AR, but certainly has similarities. We never could figure out anything real to do with it. Everyone had tons of ideas for cool tech demos, but the only things they accomplished were being cool and making you feel like you're in a sci-fi movie. We could never come up with anything that was truly a lot of value.
Right now VR and AR feel like very early motion pictures - I'm talking about the period between its invention and the development of cinema. We're still at the stage where it's a novelty trotted around like a circus act, and curious people pay a penny to view a 5-second loop of something dumb. Motion pictures obviously found a real place with real substance and lasting demand - VR and AR are struggling to do the same.
Great points. It is interesting to me how little "slack" people developing wholly new technologies get. Even among tech people. It ends up being "meh, it's ok but - doesn't work yet" when I would have expected more "I know how I could improve this to get it to my expectations."
Quite frankly I think this is due in large part to how much most companies hype it.
It's tricky though, because if you don't hype things - anything really, you never catch anyone's attention - and this applies to all things unfortunately. Even wikipedia had a shitload of hype in the early days.
I take a less optimistic view on it - we're in this limbo state where the technology exists but no good application has been found or developed.
Now, it can either achieve its Eureka moment and blossom into something really useful.
Or it can continue to wallow in obscurity finding at most a few niche applications.
Not every technology that is invented is destined to become world-changing like cinema or antibiotics. There are plenty that become the Betamaxes and Segways of history. At one point the Segway was also heralded to be the Second Coming of transportation.
Part of the problem is that the groundwork has been laid but nobody has the slightest idea which direction to go in. To be clear, it's not that we have a wealth of choices ahead of us and can't choose which one, it's that we have so few choices ahead of us that look genuinely promising.
- VR workspaces/entertainment spaces (see: 50 foot theater screen in your living room!)
- Room-sized VR gaming experiences ("experiences" might be overselling a bit, all are tech demos where the room-size motion tracking feels more like a bug than a feature)
- ???
It seems pretty likely at this point that #2 (cockpit style gaming) is likely to succeed, at least moderately, but all of these other things are being tried but just aren't that interesting.
I don't think any Eureka moment is needed to find high value applications to implement. Just nobody has executed well enough yet.
Even if you think conservatively and consider only vr-ifying apps we already have: For VR, some types of games (Elite Dangerous, Until Dawn), applications directly related to design of real physical environments and objects. For AR there many obvious industrial applications even with simple overlaid indicators, eg in inspection and manufacturing. In AR games there are also many quite obvious concepts that should work (think eg party games or outdoor games) and you would be way off to say "we haven't come up with any worthwhile games" at this point.
The thing is...you get pretty good VR devices that won't make you puke every 10 minutes for 399 to 899 soon. Most game engines these days are also free to use and support VR decently well. Basically what I'm banking on is setting this setup free to any interested enthusiast will lead to things we can't even imagine now. I'm hoping the useful stuff will be built by a 16 year old with a random VR headset for their game console hacking around in Unity and not some academic.
It also helps that said 16 year old can share whatever they built with more people and get a better feedback loop. I think cool stuff is more likely to be built if at least one person in your immediate group of friends can actually use it.
[interaction and content are huge hurdles imo, the more people work on it the better]
I want to know if its possible to make an application that will make some task more efficient for people in VR rather than on a 2d screen.
I am having difficulty finding ideas that are more involved than just using the space in vr as an infinite 2d screen. Even with an infinite 2d screen though we have issues in vr because text is not very legible.
I am at GDC right now seeing if I can get ideas based off the games people are making.
Personally I'm not convinced this is a particularly promising avenue of exploration - I can be very wrong, of course.
A couple thoughts on VR-as-workspaces:
- The 2D screen has a lot going for it - I think it's tempting to regard 2D screens as something that only exists in this form because of technological limitations. On the contrary I think 2D screens have evolved into their present forms because they are extraordinarily good for what they do.
- Movement is consistently underestimated. Even ignoring the current resolution limits of VR, any workflow where the user must move a lot physically is destined to fail. Swinging your head around just to perform everyday tasks is a complete non-starter no matter how good the underlying technology is. One of the core features of computing today is that you can use almost all functionality while barely moving - this is a feature, not a bug.
There is a reason why enormous, gigantic monitors are unpopular for everyday work, and it's not just because of cost. There is also a reason why software-based multi-desktop and screen-area management is vastly more popular than multi-monitor setups, and it's not just because of cost. Physical movement in computing is a big deal.
Similarly this is also the deep hole that motion inputs fell into and never found their way out of. Minority Report's cool arm-waving UI looks cool, but is incredibly annoying (not to mention physically tiring) thing in real life that no one in their right mind would want to use for more than 45 seconds.
This is part of what I was talking about when I say the VR/AR is currently all tech demos - they are really cool, but many of these things are strictly worse than the status quo, in a way that's not even due to the limits of VR/AR tech.
A lot of the lack of excitement in this space IMO is because we have this cool tech but we keep trying to find a hole into which to shove it. A large percentage of the stuff we see coming out of VR development seems to be "hey, what if we can replace [perfectly good, functional thing] with a VR headset?", to everyone's collective groans.
How about Entertainment? Being virtually transferred to a remote location, either as tourism or to watch any kind of show (concerts, live theater, sports) should have obvious appeal for any spectator. Watching performances should be a larger market than other niche entertainments that benefit from VR like hardcore gaming.
The increased sense of presence is an instant upgrade over the limitations of TV and handheld devices, assuming the shortcomings of VR discomfort can be avoided.
VR and AR both need just one hit application. What would be a hit application?
1) It should just work, with no annoying aspects. Should be completely intuitive and engaging/fun
2) People want to use it on a regular basis. For example people play games for hours at a time on a regular basis, or use an app every day multiple times a day. Not just a "use it for 10 mins, think it's cool but never use it again" app
TiltBrush came close to this for me. Particularly the dress form scene. As soon as I found it, I picked the widest brush and started sketching an outfit around it. There's no fabric simulation, though no reason there couldn't be eventually, and it was still fun.
One hit application could be an outfit designer, especially if it can export to physical clothes. Even if it doesn't, it's a powerful artistic tool that also reminds me of The Sims.
Besides that, I can see lots of 3D modelling work done in VR. It seems like a natural boon to architectural design.
It could also be the next iPhone, time will tell. But I suspect that will require lighter goggles and better graphics. Full HD is just not good enough at that close range.
The lack of enthusiasm and vision here is amazing to me. VR will change how we online shop, how we create and visualize models, build architecture, check out far away places, hold teleconferencing, buy homes, watch movies, watch sports and learn. It's going to be big. Gaming is a small tip of the iceberg. VR is going to deliver and it's going to deliver big IMHO.
I've been attending conferences talking about the awesome applications of VR and AR for 10 years or so and even then it was a 'mature' research topic. I remember playing in a VR-CAVE as an undergrad years before that and listening to presentations about how this technology will be 'everywhere' in just a few years. I've seen (and worked for) companies invest stupid amounts of money in cutting edge setups only to have them collect dust. I'm just fatigued and disillusioned I guess, and just don't really believe any more. Wake me when it is more than a neat, yet niche, gaming peripheral.
...All that being said, I'm definitely planning on buying a VR headset, as a neat, yet niche, gaming peripheral.
Personally, I can't tell yet the extent to which this is a novelty technology. Stereoscopic 3D has a 150-year history [1] of people saying, "This will change everything!" and then being wrong. Maybe this is finally its time, but maybe not.
This will definitely sell a bunch of units just because everybody wants to check it out. But I think we still don't know the extent to which this will become useful or necessary. Will this be another Google Glass or Segway, meaning basically a flop? Is it a smartphone in 2002, meaning that it's interesting but will take another couple generations to really find a mass market? Or is this the next color television, where it will pretty quickly become the dominant content and device model?
I'm sure full-immersion experience will be something we get to eventually. But if this isn't somebody's first rodeo, they may reasonably question whether this time 3D will really live up to the hype.
[1] Truly! E.g., the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s. Or the ViewMaster. Or 1950s anaglyph 3D. Or the VR of the 90s. Or 3D television, which was the next big thing for a CES or two, and has since vanished.
I think Wii is to blame. We were tricked into believing what would be full featured motions ended up just being wiggling your wrist instead of your thumbs. I'm hopeful though.
Is there a reason to think this will be a high-revenue use case?
Most cinema is about careful, fine-grained control of the viewer's attention, so I think porn has all of the same challenges that movies do. It's just not clear those will translate to a medium where the user has POV control. But I think VR has it worse in a few ways.
One, people just don't consume that much porn. I know people who will spend 20-40 hours a week playing video games, so $500-1000 on hardware is not an unreasonable spend. But for porn?
Two, previous technologies that have benefited from porn have also increased access. VCRs, DVDs, and home computers made it easier for people to get both a larger volume of porn and access to material suited to their specific tastes. Each has also reduced cost of distribution. VR, though, has to compete with the Internet's existing cornucopia of free and low-cost porn. VR will always have a much smaller and more expensive selection.
Three, a bunch of VR distribution will be tightly controlled. You can bet that Sony's not going to be selling any porn, for example. We live in the age of app stores, so I expect a variety of entities to try to control VR distribution channels. If they succeed, it may make VR porn a very small market.
I know this is bandied about a lot, but I imagine you'd hit uncanny valley pretty damn fast in a way that's difficult to overcome. I'll believe it when I see the MVP.
Plastic instruments, motion controllers, Power Gloves™ … it could be a fad (I don't think it will be) but I think the collective excitement about a “revolutionary new gaming interface" has been burnt too many times and people aren't buying into it yet.
It's also not a hype-train you can really invest in unless you experience it for yourself, and not a whole many people have … yet.
The new interest in VR headsets has all the same predictions and the same problems. Ultimately it is about creating a new platform, getting the convergence of content, consumer demand and quality product. The people in the above video had a great product and a compelling gaming experience even if not so well demonstrated in the video. But they were unable to create a market for their product.
Despite going way beyond 640x480 none of the other problems with the original product have been addressed. Sure things may be lighter, faster, better, however these are incremental improvements on things that were not hard. VR also doesn't cut he mustard for intangible things. For instance, a lot of people like looking at real, actual people, hard that it may be to believe. So you are not going to have a 'cyber bar' or 'cyber library' where people are immersed in VR rather than the world around them. No amount of 'tech' is going to make people that like looking at people (and being looked at) want to wear VR in any social situation.
It is tempting to say that the mighty interest from 'newbies' to VR is going to result in everything magically sorted out and for everyone to get the wonders of VR. Whatever Facebook touch turns to gold, right? One can trust that they have the business model that eluded everyone else, plus the perfect timing into the market and the network effects to somehow make VR a day to day essential thing. But no, they still face the same challenges (albeit not 640x480) as were faced in 1995. Creating a wonderful VR headset is one thing, creating wonderful VR games is something else, inventing some must have VR application would be amazing. Even if these things can be done, to create a new platform/content delivery system is something much harder and none of the fundamental UX matters can be resolved.
We're in the hype peak between tech demo and consumer release. There's plenty for the gaming news sites to speculate about, but not much of substance to discuss. We know what the Oculus Consumer Edition and the HTC Vive will look like, so we won't learn anything new until they're out in the wild.
I believe the general attitude is "we're interested, but we're not going to get too excited until we've got real hardware in our hands and there's some meaningful content available".
PSVR uses 60Hz reprojected to 120Hz, so gets a 33% performance advantage over Vive and Rift which run at 90Hz.
It uses RGB-stripe instead of pentile, and actual has more subpixels than Vive or Rift, and it picks up some big performance advantages there (on Vive and Rift you more or less throw away 33% of the subpixels you spent time rendering). It won't quite be up to their quality because your eyes are more sensitive to green, but at current low HMD resolutions green sensitivity less significant than on phones.
With both factors combined, 33% lower framerate requirements 25% or so lower nominal res with much of the quality retained, it will have something like a 50% performance advantage over Vive and Rift. Putting it close to parity with Rift's GTX 970 recommended-spec.
The reprojection will necessarily introduce artifacts related to head movement in general. But particularly head movement in space rather than orientation. The PC HMD version of reprojection is called async timewarp. It only tracks and compensates for head orientation and not absolute position. The same will be true for PSVR's reprojection.
Head positional movement is a lot slower than rotational so this is not so bad/noticeable. Especially if the underlying game is rendered at 60hz rather than 30.
I'd rather have a Tesla Model S, but it's twice the price of my car. PlayStation VR is much cheaper than Oculus or Vive and works with much more affordable hardware.
The absolute price difference is more important here than the multiple. Spending roughly $1k more for entertainment is certainly within the budget of many folks, versus $60k+ for a Tesla over a new Honda fit.
But you're right that the PlayStation VR appeals to the price conscious. Almost as much as not buying one ;)
The difference here is also barrier to "trying it out". I own a PS4, that is currently mostly collecting dust.. I got it last year for a specific game, I played it a lot, enjoyed it, don't regret the purchase, but since then nothing has come out that is interesting to me...
I'm also pretty interested in VR, and am curious to try it out. But my PC would require about $1,200 in upgrades (I checked) in order to properly support the Rift or Vive, not to mention the cost of the unit itself, so I'm looking at at least a $2,000 investment to try VR at home on my PC (I am not counting trying it out somewhere else, I mean owning it and using it on my own time and terms)..
On the other hand, I could spend 500$ to get the PSVR and potentially breathe new life into my PS4?
Even if it's not the top-of-the-line experience, it's a pretty easy choice for someone like me who qualifies as a casual gamer but is pretty curious about this new tech, and wants to give it a shot for the lowest amount of investment.
I would essentially need a new PC yes. I could keep my case, PS and SSD but the rest has to go. And I actually just put about 600$ in upgrades into the machine last year, so it stings a bit.
I'm also not trying to match minimum spec, if I'm going to spend money upgrading for VR, I would want something that will last at least a few years, so I looked into (reasonably) top-of-the-line hardware.
> But you're right that the PlayStation VR appeals to the price conscious. Almost as much as not buying one ;)
The implication here, that there's no market for a $400 piece of video game hardware when more powerful hardware is available at higher price points, is pretty obviously wrong given the success of the PlayStation 4 itself.
The simple fact is, for the price of a Vive, you can get both a PS4 and a PSVR. And the $800 Vive requires a computer even more expensive than itself. This is not an insignificant difference.
That's fair. If you ask people outside the VR bubble if they would trust Facebook, some company called Valve, or Sony PlayStation to make a quality VR entertainment device most would put their money on PlayStation. Not only is the cost much less, you will probably get to try it out at your local Target.
But thats just the gateway drug to VR. From my perspective in the VR bubble I prefer more pixels.
I think the PSVR will have much better unit sales than Rift/Vive, but that the latter will provide tangible benefits to those that enjoy VR experiences.
Valve is indisputably an amazing company with kickass products! But if you're a mainstream consumer, perhaps someone voting for Trump, you've never heard of them. And like the name "Trump", Sony has turned the name "PlayStation" into a brand that appeals to the mass market, not just gamers.
Is a stable 120Hz frame rate realistic on a PS4? Can it achieve that kind of rate just in normal 1080p output? Or will this relegate the Playstation VR to rendering 5-10 year old graphics? Bearing in mind that VR is a lot more sensitive to frame rate jitter than a traditional screen.
I believe (and I could be way off the mark here) there are two modes, one is a kind of frame smoothing to achieve a 'fake' 120Hz similar to what you see with modern LCD TVs, the other is actually 120FPS which is accomplished by dropping the graphics quality down.
You're not going to see Uncharted 4 doing 120FPS natively in PSVR.
I don't get why there's not a greater push to get smartphone/casual VR streaming from the PC using a wired video connection.
Seems much easier to justify a $700 phone purchase that just happens to have decent VR as a feature than it is to justify purchasing a $600 dedicated headset.
But I guess by throwing their chips in with the Vive Pre, Valve decided not to port their in-home streaming + some stereoscopy to phones. Maybe they found it lacking?
I tried a VRBox (a plastic version of the Cardboard) and it had zero presence, it feels like looking through a high tech "look anywhere" View‐Master — which is frickin cool in its own right if you ever liked View‐Master (like me), but it isn't VR.
I realized even my low-end game ideas wouldn't work on that kind of device. It left me with a fear that devices like this would shape mainstream perception of VR as a pointless gimmick, but it sounds like the PS4 may be coming to the rescue.
(Edit: I think I misread your comment, you are suggesting high‐end headsets with proper head-tracking, fresnal‐hybrid lenses etc. — the works — except for the screen part which is supplied by a modern smartphone with a low-latency video port?)
I'm not sure the PSVR can qualify as high end. And I'm not saying this as a subscriber to PC Master Race Weekly, I'm saying it with the limited specs of the PS4 in mind compared to even the minimum requirements of the Vive and Rift.
Given how those requirements are just north of crazy right now, it follows that there must be something that was compromised on to allow the PSVR to work - and also keeping in mind that the Rift/Vive specs are that high just to get VR that's acceptably convincing.. I just can't work up the excitement.
I'm hoping that I'm wrong here, and that they did some kind of insane algorithm or something to do a lot more with a lot less hardware. Anyone who's had hands on the device care to chime in?
We're talking about a PS4 with roughly an AMD 7870 under the hood vs a minimum 290 spec'd for the Rift. Using Passmark, that's 4289 vs 6875.
Admittedly, there are a ton of caveats to those comparisons, and the PS4 has the benefit of system integration, a standard platform, and a dedicated OS.
But that's still a fairly substantial difference. Especially when framerate & latency are no longer quite as optional and able to be fudged.
"And maybe it is just that simple - you don't need super high detail to convey presence."
In my experience with various modern VR systems this is absolutely the case. Latency and proper movement tracking is non-negotiable when it comes to achieving an eerie feeling of presence in the simulated virtual world, but rendering detail is far more optional. Nice to have if you're going for true reality, but not required.
If they've nailed the latency and tracking (I haven't used a PSVR so I don't know if they have) the lesser detail will be lost in the noise, sort of like it is now when you compare the PC version of a game (say, the Division, for a contemporary example) to the console versions.
Everyone knows the PC versions of these games are capable of looking better in A/B tests, but many people are perfectly happy with the lesser detailed version.
I buy PC/console releases on console far more often than on PC despite having a powerful enough PC to run new games just because I find avoiding the pitfalls of driver versions, the perfectly standardized voice communications for multiplayer, etc more valuable to me than the extra rendering detail.
Does anyone have links to someone playtesting the PSVR recently? One imagines there's some quality lost compared to the more expensive Oculus and Rift offerings, and I'm curious to know the difference.
It seems history is repeating itself. This VR hype is going to be killed by lack of business innovation. We've seen this exact scenario with 3D printers. Awesome tech, but with a pricetag that has kept those devices from going mainstream. With VR, the guys are delivering innovative tech, but with the oldschool business model, trying to make money on the hardware. Sony would lead the game if they would lose money, offering a simple to use VR headset for $99 -$199, dominating the market and then make money on games and apps.
What sort of VR headset do you expect for $99? At that price, you get Cardboard and Gear, at best, and those have underwhelmed the market and people who have tried them & Vive/Rift/PS.
The question is: why not lose money on the hardware, to accelerate distribution and put an awesome device in people's hands and then make money on software. So my suggestion would be to sell the $399 devixe for $99. Not push out something crappy
Currently they are the cheapest, and it's easier to reduce prices than to increase them, so maybe they are saving that for later, especially when they learn more about game sales and the business ?
I totally agree that a different business model with low-priced devices might be needed for consumer gamer VR to take off any time soon.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw adoption of expensive VR/AR devices for industrial/enterprise applications in a much bigger way long before consumer stuff takes off. In a lot of ways gaming us a bad place to introduce VR - immersion doesn't necessarily make for a "better" gaming experience once the novelty fades, motion and speed and high quality graphics are hard to deal with, and buyers are fairly price-sensitive. 3D printing is doing relatively well in industrial usage, despite the consumer hype having faded.
They've demoed it a fair bit. Impressions I've heard so far seem quite positive.
This announcement is from Game Developers Conference, which is going on right now and where they're demoing it to a ton of people, so I'm sure we'll get even more impressions soon.
Also a heads up: Based on Amazon's price history you can usually get it between $40 and $50. If you see it for $60 probably worth waiting for it to drop.
Just to clarify, is it possible to use the VR headset as a TV/monitor replacement? I live in a super tiny studio and this would actually make owning a console pretty feasible.
I remain sceptical yet hopeful that they've solved the motion sickness problem. Biggest problem for me playing DK2 was spending more than a minute running around in anything first person induced the urge to vomit.
I see that Star Wars Battlefront has been announced, and the idea of that seems excellent. One thing lacking in the Rift demos was a distinct lack of characters. Lots of vast, empty landscapes, but no actual people.
Rez gets a leg up from being conceptually built around what we thought VR would be like (think Lawnmower Man), and (according to Mizuguchi) designed to accommodate future VR technology from the start.
The game engine has been significantly reworked to accommodate VR; it offers a 360° panoramic perspective rather than constraining you to face forward, and the playstyle in VR is "look to aim" much like Vanguard V. I'm to understand that the enemy placement in the original levels has been changed somewhat to make better use of the technology, and no one has seen "Area X" (all new content) yet...
