Selling my Vive tomorrow, before it's too late (unsellable due to something better on the market). < 50 hours use over several months. The visual quality is awful, not just resolution, but the lenses are terrible as well. Glare, very blurry except for a narrow center, the rings of the fresnel lenses are very noticeable. The glare is unbearable in any games with a lot of contrast, like space sims, that retro arcade hall game was terrible in this aspect, too, whatever it was called.
I'm not going back to try VR till the resolution is something like 8k per eye and the optical quality is far better. FOV needs to be much wider, HMD lighter and more comfortable, and of course wireless (I know you can get this now).
I have a dedicated home theater and room scale still does not work, because you will never have enough physical space in a regular home, and have to teleport around in games anyway.
The only games that really work are seated cockpit games. Racing, space sim, flight sim, etc.
Nausea was not an issue for me. Nor the "anti-social" issue, I've never been a party gamer, I like to play games alone, in a dark room with headphones on, sat at my desk staring at a monitor, or alone on the couch with a gamepad in my home theater enjoying surround sound and a 106" screen.
All made-for-VR games I've tried so far have been mediocre and more like small demos than full games. Best experiences were games not made for VR but with added VR support: Assetto Corsa and iRacing. Probably the only two games worth having VR at all for, but personally I'll wait for 6th gen or whatever will be good enough for me.
The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.
I hope that you realize that 8k/eye at 120Hz is in the 100Gb/s range with compression, that you won't see because it's already a retina display (60ppd) at 130deg view angle.
Also there are NO GPUs that could come close to rendering a single eye today at even 60Hz (even 30Hz would be absolutely top end).
So, I think your requirements are completely unrealistic, but I agree that the current VR (1k/eye at <90Hz with 20-30ms latency) is unusable and gives me a headache. I suspect that around 2-3k/eye at 90-120Hz with 10-20ms latency will be sufficient to be usable.
Unfortunately, that almost certainly means Foveal rendering (since UHD at 60Hz is too hard and 120 is right out), which will take some time. However, it probably also means that the bandwidths might be possible to untethered mulit-Gig wireless. Having an unteathered system that used a high powered GPU would be really nice.
<edited to add>
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...
As slow as growth has become in the graphics card and general computing industry, getting to the point where we can do 120hz at 8k per eye is a lot further than 10 years off. It will require a significant change in how (where?) we're generating graphics, not just better hardware.
You're absolutely right... But by rendering separately the high resolution and low resolution views (each at 1k, but one 4x upscaled) we could do 60Hz today. It only requires 2 FHD renders (which is less than a 4k 2eye view at UHD) so 60Hz is very reasonable... possibly 90-120Hz. It also cuts the bandwidth by 8x (2/16) without compression.
It won't, no worries. Eye tracking in an HMD, whether AR or VR is hugely complicated from engineering point of view. There is a reason why an HMD eye tracking kit costs several thousands of USD.
Moreover, from the rendering point of view, foveated rendering is a fairly complex thing to integrate into a 3D engine too. It is definitelly not "free".
No panacea but another important piece of the puzzle. The software part may be complex - but it is just software, and once done, we all benefit from 10x battery life. Eye tracking hardware is complex but Lots of ongoing R&D - the outcome of which will be sensor chips which can be added to HMDs.
Assuming that it's feasible to do ~1080p per eye at 120hz today, 8k per eye is only 16 times more pixels. And considering that increasing the pixel size is embarrassingly parallel, I don't see that as a problem to be able to do in 10 years.
8k x 8k per eye at 120Hz is 64x more pixels at 1/3rd increase in frequency ~= 85x more processing power. Making the (maybe faulty) assumption of doubling processing power every 2 years and that current setup is processor limited, this sort of processing power is ~13 years away.
Same computation but with 4k x 4k per eye predicts ~9 years of progress needed.
I guess I misspoke about being 1920x1080 which is a "2K" screen split in two. An 8K screen split in two would be ~4000x4000 per eye which is still 16x as many pixels as I said, plus the 33% increase in frame rate which I didn't include which matches your second one. Although with how embarrasingly parallel it is, I don't think it's as far off as it seems. Especially considering that it's the previous generation graphics cards that can handle current day VR fine so we're 1-2 years into the 9 years we have to wait, and with so many pixels anti-aliasing can probably be turned off completely. You could probably build something today that could do it, it just would be very expensive and I don't think 8K panels at cell-phone size exist yet.
Also, eye-tracking + foveated rendering will severely reduce the load. Once that works reliably, you just need the cheap, super-high PPI, low-latency screens (which might almost exist today, though at high cost due to lack of a mass-market).
>Selling my Vive tomorrow, before it's too late (unsellable due to something better on the market).
The Vive came out like 8 months ago. I would hardly say even the craziest company (cough Apple) would rush out a new version that quickly.
>Glare, very blurry except for a narrow center, the rings of the fresnel lenses are very noticeable.
You are probably wearing it wrong. There are two adjustments you can make. There is a small knob at the right-bottom edge, turn it and it changes the lenses width (how far apart your eyes are), this is not likely the issue. The second adjustment is focal length (how far away the screen is), if you click out the left circle that attaches the strap to your headseat, you can turn it to adjust focal length.
The third adjustment is wearing it right. I know this sounds really dumb but you have to wear it much lower than you expect. I was wearing it very high up, like glasses, when the better position is like wearing goggles.
But overall, yeah, the resolution isn't great but things like blurriness can be fixed.
Maybe I'm substantially less sensitive to the aberrations you mentioned, or your lenses are not the same as mine, but my experience is much more positive.
I've given demos to probably more than 75 people at this point, and there are always some people who complain a lot and then we adjust the way they're wearing it and all is good.
Yea he's probably wearing it wrong, and just doesn't want to put in the effort to fix anything or try any games outside of the ones he's deemed "good". Everyone I've shown the Vive too has been blown away, 2 have purchased one.
> I would hardly say even the craziest company (cough Apple) would rush out a new version that quickly.
A side note: although Apple does come out with new product versions rather quickly, it's worth noting that they take a very long time to create the first version of their new products. More often than not those efforts don't even end up seeing the light of day. Now that I think about it, it's probably why Apple hasn't thrown their hat into the VR ring. Once they do decide to go to market with a brand new product category it typically has a ton of polish and iterating from that point on can be done incrementally and rapidly.
Sorry, what I meant by Apple throwing their hat into the ring was actually releasing a product. They've been working on myriad products over the years that they ended up throwing out. For a company like Apple, working on a product and releasing a product is a far greater distinction than for other companies.
I agree with this sentiment. I can't speak for the Vive, but I did get to try an Oculus headset (but not the new Touch controllers) over the holidays for an extended period of time.
The head/motion tracking was spot on and I didn't notice much lag at all. The problem was more with the resolution of the screen, FOV, and light leaks. I constantly had to trick myself in order to feel immersed. Also, if you don't have near perfect vision, the display will look even worse and its quite uncomfortable to wear the headset with glasses.
I think we're on the path, but the first generation headsets out there now are more in line with an expensive tech demo than anything else. I suppose that it is to be expected though. I look forward to future iterations.
> The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
This is a very valid criticism. The current limitations of VR require developers to design different kinds of games. I found Valve's The Lab to be excellent. It's frustrating as a designer, because you may not be able to make the game you want, for VR.
I haven't actually played any games in VR yet, but is there any reason the headset couldn't display a normal game? Even if it doesn't need VR and doesn't benefit in any way from head tracking or 3D visuals, just imagining a hypothetical future situation where all 2D monitors on the face of the Earth are replaced by VR headsets, you could still play Pillars of Eternity on a VR headset and it wouldn't be any worse, right? There's no technical reason a VR headset couldn't replicate a regular monitor?
SteamVR has a theater mode. The issue is the pixel density isn't really as high as you'd like it to be. You're using 2160x1200 resolution to render over most of your field of view, so the effective resolution of a rendered TV/cinema screen is actually lower than you might like. It's like playing on a 720p or maybe even a little lower resolution. Also, how will you see your mouse? That's actually not a huge problem if all monitors were replaced there could just be mouse tracking in the simulation.
It's possible, but the resolution and pixel density has to go up before it can be an effective replacement for the amazing screens we have.
I think minecraft is a great illustration of some of the limits of vr today: it defaults to a theatre mode, but also has the option of pov gaming. The latter is terrible for moving around - but works OK for standing still and looking around.
For now simulator-like games such as Elite:Dangerous are the most interesting. I'm sure we'll Se a couple of nice "room scale" games - but "sitting in a cockpit" fixes many of the issues related to movement etc.
Then, I think a backpack rig (Pc) coupled with custom controllers (eg: a softgun with tracking hardware and trigger support) will enable vr theme park games; a typical indoor paintball range with padded corners mapped in 3d - rendered over with vr goggles. I assume the first ones would need custom tracking hw.
>Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.
While I agree with many of your sentiments, I don't think you are realizing that only 2-3 years ago an HMD meant something like a Sensics zSight or one of the Collins/Rockwell ones. Starting price $40k, FOV around 30-60 degrees, SXGA resolution and input either frame sequential signal or two VGA/DVI cables (one per eye). And no tracking whatsoever - you had to buy external tracker, either magnetic or optical one ($10k+). No controllers neither, but a professional Flystick 2 (needs external tracking) could be yours for about $2k.
And on the low end you had stuff like Vuzix VR920 for about $400 or, then brand new Sony HMZ-T1 for $800 or so, if I recall right, with terrible resolution (Vuzix), FOV (Vuzix - 20deg yay) and latency (4 entire frames - Sony). Neither had tracking nor controllers neither.
So calling the current generation of HMDs "dated" and "crappy" is a tad unfair. You have obviously never had to use the "previous gen".
8k displays in HMDs would be great but are not going to happen for quite some time yet. Not even 4k, actually. The reasons for that are several:
* HMDs are still a very niche market. So to get components to make one you either pay a large premium to get a made to measure parts you need in low volume (=> that's partly why the Sensics HMD did and still do cost so much) or you have to use parts where the economy of scale works in your favor.
Until HMDs are a mass market device, the only source where to get (relatively) cheap displays in sizes that fit the form factor are smartphones, resp. displays that were meant for them. So until there is a mass produced 4k/8k smartphone, an 8k HMD is not going to happen. And 4k on a phone is a gimmicky nonsense, 8k even more so, so not likely to happen any time soon.
Development of a custom 2k display starts to make sense only when you are planning on buying 100k+ of them, otherwise the manufacturer won't even talk to you. It just isn't profitable. And it gets only more expensive for 4k and 8k resolutions, with insane engineering problems when you are trying to stuff 4k pixels into something 5" across instead of 100" (TV ...)
* You likely don't realize how much electrical a computational power driving of a 4k display needs. Most PCs would struggle with 4k@90Hz or more and even super high end PC would have major difficulties driving an 8k display. An HMD that nobody can use is not much of a product, IMO.
* Bandwidth issues - very few 4k display panels can manage 4k@60Hz, 4k@120Hz that you would want for VR is virtually unheard of. And 8k@120Hz ... well, maybe a decade off? If ever - it is not needed for TV and phones and VR alone is way too small market to make a manufacturer produce something crazy like that.
There is also the question of how do you talk to such panel - normal HDMI tops out at 4k@30Hz, anything more and you need either the recently standardized HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort or some proprietary stuff, along with expensive cabling. Don't get me started on 8k ...
Bandwidth is also why HMDs are not wireless. Until very recently (few months) there simply were no solutions on the market that could manage to transmit the volume of data needed and keep the latency low. You cannot use heavy compression, as has been common for e.g. wireless TV streaming stuff, because it adds too much latency and/or visual artifacts. There are now some solutions coming but we have to see how good they will be. And, of course, none of that will likely work for 4k+ without (massive) changes. Oh and you trade a cable for battery life and having to lug a battery either on your head or belt now.
So, to conclude - your usability gripes about the hardware are valid, but if you want to wait until they are solved, you will have to wait for a very long time. The vendors had to make engineering and economic tradeoffs and even then are not making much (if any) money on the hardware. So one needs to remain with both feet on the ground.
The current crop of HMDs is perfectly OK for many applications, even professional ones. That doesn't mean it is good for or should be used by everyone. That's fine as well - nobody forces you to.
I don't get why you, or the other person who replied, concluded that I thought 8k per eye was feasable now. I only said that was when I was going back to try VR. I'm positive we have at least that resolution in 10 years. I am also perfectly aware of all the challenges involved in outputting such a resolution and manufacturing such a display.
I'm not going back to try VR till the resolution is something like 8k per eye and the optical quality is far better. FOV needs to be much wider, HMD lighter and more comfortable, and of course wireless (I know you can get this now).
I have a dedicated home theater and room scale still does not work, because you will never have enough physical space in a regular home, and have to teleport around in games anyway.
The only games that really work are seated cockpit games. Racing, space sim, flight sim, etc.
Nausea was not an issue for me. Nor the "anti-social" issue, I've never been a party gamer, I like to play games alone, in a dark room with headphones on, sat at my desk staring at a monitor, or alone on the couch with a gamepad in my home theater enjoying surround sound and a 106" screen.
All made-for-VR games I've tried so far have been mediocre and more like small demos than full games. Best experiences were games not made for VR but with added VR support: Assetto Corsa and iRacing. Probably the only two games worth having VR at all for, but personally I'll wait for 6th gen or whatever will be good enough for me.
The games I like the best works better without VR. Sim racing games could be one exception, but are, for the moment, better with a triple monitor setup. Games like Pillars of Eternity have no need for VR, IMO.
Certainly VR has potential, I just think the HMDs we have now feel old and dated already. It's 2016 (when released) and it's heavy and wired, basically ski goggles with crappy monitors and crappy lenses hugging my face.