Anybody considering picking up an Oculus Rift..?


Yes, if there's lag, but I'm hoping/assuming you can ramp the visuals down low enough that they don't actually bog down the CPU at all so lag wouldn't be a problem. Pixelated and ugly view would be acceptable to begin with, give me an excuse to upgrade my video card after a month or two.
 
I've never bought a cutting edge gfx card for my desktop... I always like to pick up tech a few years after the fact.
That is why I've pretty much decided on waiting for v2 or maybe even v3 of the rift.

It will give me more time to prepare...

And I like to research a thing to death before I make a decision anyway.

Besides, all you chaps who actually have the time for games are rather lucky. I don't know how ED manages...

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I have a DK2 and GearVR at work, tried to buy the consumer Rift five times on launch, but just kept getting checkout errors and then the ship date started to be increased (as early slots sold out) so not bothering now. More excited by the Vive. We are developing a VR game at work and it is a pretty exciting time technology wise.
 
Palmer Luckey did another AMA on reddit 2 days ago. He gave some pretty good responces to to Q's I thought. Worth a read through

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...palmer_luckey_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/



Here's one question and response


Q: The initial hype around the Oculus was that it was meant to be this affordable and disruptive piece of VR technology that would put VR into the hands of a lot of people creating a cascade effect. At what point in the development process did the shift from being the "cheap, functional, and disruptive," VR headset that would change gaming, to "THE premium VR experience," occur? Why did it occur?

Palmer Luckey: The goal never changed, but the timeline of achieving that goal did. I still want to make VR cheap, functional, and disruptive, but it takes a certain amount of quality to do that. Three years ago, I thought a good enough headset could be built for $300 and run on a decent gaming PC.

Since then, we have learned a lot about what it takes to induce presence, and the landscape of the industry has changed a lot too - we are no longer the only players, and the burden of bringing good VR to everyone is no longer solely on us. The best way to make a technology mainstream is not always as simple as making a cheap product as quickly as possible, that is what lead to the last VR crash! Tesla is a good example - Elon Musk had to convince the public that electric cars could be awesome before he could build the technology that would actually make electric cars mainstream. If Tesla had tried to make a $35k mass-market electric car back in 2008, they would have accomplished little. Instead, they made the Roadster and Model S, proved that electric cars could be awesome, invested heavily in R&D, and now have a clear path towards their ever-present long term goal, making electric cars mainstream.

Virtual reality is actually in an even better scenario. GearVR is already an awesome headset for $99 if you already have a flagship Samsung phone (like tens of millions of other people), and there are other companies entering the VR scene in the near future. Eventually, VR is going to run on every computer sold, and there will be a wide range of hardware at various price and quality points, a lot like televisions or monitors.

The Rift is the first headset capable of delivering presence, the sensation of feeling like you are inside a virtual scene on a subconscious level. As I have said before, VR needs to become something everyone wants before it can become something everyone can afford - I totally understand people who don’t want to spend that much on VR, but this is the current cost of making a really good headset. Much like smartphones, the cost of that quality is going to come down over time - you can buy unsubsidized phones for less than $100 that blow away the best $600 phones from just five years ago, that is what time does to the cost of technology.
 
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That's nice and everything, but I still don't see $600 worth of tech in the Rift. If gearVR is $99 and the phone needed is $600, I don't see what makes the Rift alone that $600 price tag. Not saying it should be $99 or that it's on par with GearVR but I don't see 6x the product, I guess is what I'm saying.
 
thats a interesting point for sure. The DSLR argument Palmer made for the lenses made me think, ok the lenses are just expensive to make as those can alone can sometimes be the price of the rift. But essentially the lenses in the rift and the gearvr are the same, but maybe not, maybe they're using DK2 lenses which were off the shelf. So even if the gearvr was being sold at cost as well, which I highly highly doubt, that would still be hard to justify <500 for the rest.

If this is being built relatively at cost I am anxiously waiting a teardown on this thing for it's BoM.

roughly what I'm expecting to see

$75 for the optics
$150 x2 for the 1080x1200 displays (physical dimensions?)
$50 for the camera
$25 for the controller
$50 for the audio
$10 for the case
$5 for the tiny controller
$75 for the device housing LEDs and the rest of it

Leave like $10 for whatever, cables and stuff maybe?

That's $600... so maybe?

I can't seem to find any 1080x1200 3 inch (im guessing) displays to compare it to, but I'm assuming that's the brunt of the cost right there. How much does ED get his displays for?

Even if that's not what it costs them, that seems like a very acceptable price for a consumer for each of it's parts I think.
 
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Yes, the Rift's price tag includes the headset, the XBox controller, and the "Oculus Remote" as they're calling it.
 
touch controllers are sold seperately as they weren't ready for release when the rift was, and everyone whos been making games for it for the last couple years has been targeting normal controllers. Didn't want to split the ecosystem at launch, they're waiting for later to do that.
 
Oh, I see. I was confused as to what the touch was, I thought it referred to the "Oculus Remote". I wasn't aware there was a whole other line-up.
 
I thought as much...

Glad VR is finally a thing, but I'm going to do MY usual thing and get into this whole VR universe when the tech is more polished, more affordable, and i can actually make use of it for my own purposes.

Blowing money to have the latest and greatest has always struck me as foolish and childishly egotistical.

... and what we have now seems pretty rubbish and gimmicky n e way.

I'm happy to give VR a miss for at least another 5 - 10 years...

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For the average consumer, they should wait, I agree. The problem is that we have been waiting decades for VR to get better, more polished, and cheaper. This has been happening, so for those that want to try the newest stuff even if it isn't perfect, now seems like a good time to jump in and help make it a bigger thing.

I won't be buying any VR stuff yet since my interest has dropped in the 20+ years since I first wanted to play with it. It doesn't help that I have more important things to do with my time now.
 
For the average consumer, they should wait, I agree. The problem is that we have been waiting decades for VR to get better, more polished, and cheaper. This has been happening, so for those that want to try the newest stuff even if it isn't perfect, now seems like a good time to jump in and help make it a bigger thing.
Perhaps, but that el Reg article points out that with Facebook's money behind it, the Rift is almost guaranteed to get to a third public version regardless, so that's the time to support it, not now.
 
Got myself a Gear VR for my S6 phone. It kicks ass. Seriously, it's very, very good. The only thing it's missing is the head motion sensors (rotation tracking is spot-on), and compared to Google Cardboard it's like night and day. SideloadVR has QuakeVR and that is just awesome.

D.
 
Got my Rift on Monday. Couldn't use it because my video card only has mini HDMI but the Rift cable is normal HDMI.
Tuesday I got an adapter and spent about 8 hours trying to get it to work before finally coming to the conclusion that my video card, a GTX 550 ti, is not just too low for anything close to a good experience, it flat out will not work because it lacks certain features the Rift requires.
Today I used my wife's computer which has a GTX 650 ti: success! The experience is, as I expected, very poor with such an outdated card, but at least it works. Watching 3D videos in 360 degrees is actually pretty good, so that's something at least. Actually doing anything that does rendering is pretty choppy. Static images are very nice, I don't think I have a complaint about the actual image quality.
 
Yeah... back when i was hyped on this, I had a GTX 560 ti in my desktop... I thought I would get a rift just for the movies, and I thought the less demanding stuff would run fine...

But since then my card has died and I'm now running on integrated graphics.
I also don't really use the dektop other than as a media box now... I could probably get a new card, but why?
I'm not really a gamer anymore... seems like a massive waste of money right now just to satisfy my curiousity.

I think I will only seriously be interested in VR again when a good experience can be had with a lightweight, compact portable solution...

I'm all about being mobile these days.

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Got my Rift on Monday. Couldn't use it because my video card only has mini HDMI but the Rift cable is normal HDMI.
Tuesday I got an adapter and spent about 8 hours trying to get it to work before finally coming to the conclusion that my video card, a GTX 550 ti, is not just too low for anything close to a good experience, it flat out will not work because it lacks certain features the Rift requires.
Today I used my wife's computer which has a GTX 650 ti: success! The experience is, as I expected, very poor with such an outdated card, but at least it works. Watching 3D videos in 360 degrees is actually pretty good, so that's something at least. Actually doing anything that does rendering is pretty choppy. Static images are very nice, I don't think I have a complaint about the actual image quality.
how did you get it monday? I thought you canceled your kickstarter backing and preorders just started shipping today.
 
I think I will only seriously be interested in VR again when a good experience can be had with a lightweight, compact portable solution...

I'm all about being mobile these days.

Then get a Gear VR. It's portable - no wires. It's just £80 in the UK (not sure how much it will be in your neck of the woods) but of course you'll also need a Galaxy S6 or S7. It's an official Oculus headset so the headtracking is spot on, and the experience is very good indeed. My favourite app so far is Rift Ocean, which is amazing - really feels like you're diving in tropical seas. There's also a great many "experience" apps as well, with lots of immersive 3D/360 degree photos and videos to get into.

I was expecting a more expensive Google Cardboard variant but it's so, so nothing like it. It's very, very good.

Oh, and there's QuakeVR too. That alone is worth the price of entry.

D.
 
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