Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

http://www.wsj.com/articles/oculus-rift-review-vrs-rising-star-isnt-ready-for-the-mainstream-1459173888

by minimaxir • 10 years ago

111 124 10 years ago

therobot24• 10 years ago

The review read like he was expecting it to be the iphone version of VR. Complaints about using an expensive computer, the cord, having to use muscle memory, etc. come off like the type of person who wouldn't be interested in the Oculus in the first place. While I agree that it looks clunky, really it's the performance that most would-be buyers are interested in.

vernie• 10 years ago

The operative word here is "mainstream"

nyolfen• 10 years ago

for a first gen 600 dollar headset that requires a 1000 dollar pc, i'm not sure this is really true

Retric10• 10 years ago

Is ~50 million people "mainstream"? Considering he complained about downloading drivers this must be very easy to setup.

Gaming PC's used to be ~2,000$, this is 600 + 950PC = 1550$. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/ Which is not free but hardly going to break most people. Don't forget this is just a mid-range gaming PC which many people are going to get anyway which drops this down to the cost of a high end cellphone.

PS: IMO, WoW was mainstream as a PC only MMO with a few million subscribers in the US.

givinguflac• 10 years ago

Isn't "the iPhone version of VR" exactly what would be considered mainstream though? That's what took smartphones mainstream as well.

nawitus4• 10 years ago

That sounds like the review is valuable for most people, since most people would be interested in knowing about these complaints when making a purchase decision about the product.

VikingCoder3• 10 years ago

It IS the iPhone of VR. The first iPhone didn't have over-the-air updates, over-the-air app installs, over-the-air music downloads. The screen was crap (compared to today).

SquareWheel• 10 years ago

More than that, the first iPhone had no third-party apps period and still ran on the EDGE network. Even with all those limitations, it was still groundbreaking. The iPhone made everyone wake up and rethink what we were doing.

The comparison to VR is apt. It really is a game-changing technology.

cmiles74• 10 years ago

Anyone off the street could pick up an iPhone and do something productive in a couple of minutes. Everyone who bought a first generation iPhone was pretty impressed with the product itself; it took me at least a week before I really wished I could install more software on it. And even so, it was still really useful.

Compare this to the Oculus Rift, the average person doesn't even have a machine they can plug it into. I mean, who even has a desktop computer anymore? Everyone I know has a laptop.

The product is clearly aimed at serious gamers who have the money to sink into serious gaming rigs. The iPhone-of-VR it certainly is not.

Karunamon• 10 years ago

Why is everyone using the with-PC price when talking about the Rift? It's a peripheral, not a console.

The target market for this thing already has a gaming machine. It would be like releasing a really awesome gaming keyboard for $100, and having it characterized as costing $1500 since it implies the use of a powerful PC.

Is this bugging anyone else?

empath753• 10 years ago

the 'mainstream' doesn't own a pc capable of running vr.

empath753• 10 years ago

I totally think VR is The Future, but I don't disagree with anything he said. It's an expensive toy for early adopters and developers, still. They're not going to sell millions of these in the first generation. The Vive won't either. I got to try it last week, and it's mind-blowing, but a) it takes up a lot of room and b) there are going to be casualties from room scale VR. Injuries and loss of furniture at least. I only watched people playing for 3 hours, and the guy doing the demo took an elbow to the ribs, and the 1500 pc they were using was tripped over.

prawn• 10 years ago

I think we may well see VR-specific rooms in upper-middle class homes in the future. Or maybe home theatre rooms that can double as VR rooms.

cracell• 10 years ago

That's the problem though.

The VR PR machine is making it sound like these new VR headsets are something anyone can just buy, plugin and play with! But it's more complex than that.

rwmj2• 10 years ago

How does it work with glasses? The original DK1 had an awkward set of lenses that you had to place inside the headset.

A-F1V3• 10 years ago

I tried the consumer version while wearing glasses a few weeks ago. No lenses were changed out and the device just sat over top of the glasses, it was fairly comfortable but I only spent less than 5 mins with it on.

mpd• 10 years ago

A player with glasses is on Giant Bomb's stream as I type this, and says "it ain't great". He's been at it 20-ish minutes.

drzaiusapelord3• 10 years ago

My reading of this is that he's unhappy with using a gamepad for VR, which is understandable. I think the Vive is going to be much more impressive. Oculus launching without proper touch controllers was a very risky move. I think ultimately its going to hurt them, and people will be pissed that they need to spend another $200 to get what anyone would consider a proper VR experience.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4cagl1/giant_bomb_liv...

nice_byte2• 10 years ago

It works almost fine. I had to adjust the headset position on my face a couple of times to get better focus.

VeejayRampay• 10 years ago

I always think about the people developing such groundbreaking technology, sweating for years to craft something revolutionary, putting everything you got into a product, just to get some guy from the Wall Street Journal declare that it's not ready for mainstream. A guy that knows nothing of the challenges, the hurdles and quite frankly, nothing of the actual success the produt will actually have.

But just because Wall Street Journal, that person is somewhat a "voice that matters" even though he's just some random columnist, with no experience in the domain and nothing to back it up but his personal opinion and factoids. How annoying that must be.

forrestthewoods• 10 years ago

I doubt they'd disagree. It's not ready for the main stream. But It is ready for the hardcore niche audience that will build $1000+ dollar machines to power a $600 headset.

All is according to plan.

BillinghamJ• 10 years ago

When you've been deep into R&D and then translating that into a shipping product, it's very easy to not realize that you've been building a product which simply nobody wants or just isn't right.

Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but that's why you often need external pragmatic perspective, like from the WSJ.

rwmj2• 10 years ago

There's nothing particularly new in this article. All of these criticisms have been obvious for years. Oculus/FB seem as if they don't care and are deliberately targeting hardcore gamers. Presumably they know what they're doing.

nawitus4• 10 years ago

He wrote a review for the mainstream person, who is not interested in the challenges of building the product, but rather how good it is.

weego• 10 years ago

This is a major logical fallacy I've faced in "engineering". Technical challenges and effort are irrelevant to the consumer: their contract is the exchange of disposable income for something that they get pleasure / function out of in a way that is measurable against the investment. If you've spent years and invested everything in something that sucks, then it sucks until someone evolves it into something that doesn't. That is why first to market is not always the golden ticket.

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

What you've identified is a primal dismissing of criticism as a discussion technique with any merit. The same could be directed back at your comment, which would create a funny but useless negative feedback loop. As in, your criticism of the author for not having an engineering background means nothing because if you have an engineering background you're not qualified to render an opinion of a journalistic enterprise.

empath753• 10 years ago

I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy VR unless they have tons of extra money sitting around and know exactly what they're getting. And I pre-ordered the Oculus on day one. It's not for everyone. I think there are two kinds of people here -- people who have been waiting for this their whole lives, and people who should probably wait until it gets cheaper.

msabalau• 10 years ago

Many interesting technologies aren't for mainstream users initially. Not everything is a messaging app that can scale to billions of users with dozens of engineers. It is okay to get things right with early adopters before crossing the chasm.

Sir_Substance6• 10 years ago

There’s already another VR rig that doesn’t have a tether—and it costs a fraction of the Rift. Samsung’s $100 Gear VR, made in partnership with Oculus, is powered by a smartphone that you physically insert in front of two lenses. The extra costs of the Rift (monetary and otherwise) would be justified if its image quality were dramatically better than the Gear’s, but it isn’t.

I already got the sense that the author really hadn't done much research before writing the piece, but that statement is very telling. The key benefits of a rift over a gear vr are in it's motion capture, the processing power made available to it by the attached computer and not being time restricted by limited battery life, and I would expect a critic to know that.

As it stands I respect the dudes view, and it'll be one shared by a lot of non-gamers, but this is basically a lets-play, not a critical review.

jsprogrammer2• 10 years ago

Can't you attach your phone to a computer and grid power with a USB cable?

Sir_Substance6• 10 years ago

Off the top of my head I don't think you can with the gear vr (doesn't the USB port get taken up by the headset?), but even if you can, one of the authors key complaints leading into that statement was that the rift was not wireless. If you told him to wire up his gear vr, he wouldn't be impressed.

dreamcompiler• 10 years ago

The Gear VR has an extra USB port that you can connect to a charger which keeps the phone powered while in use. Or (more convenient) you can connect it to a self-contained brick battery you could wear on your waist.

zamalek• 10 years ago

I hacked up a quick head-tracking solution one weekend using my phone and WiFi. The problem was passive calibration. Accelerometers and gyroscopes are noisy and imperfect. Drift occurs and without the Occulus tracker or Vive lighthouses you are in for a frustrating experience.

I own a DK2 and for many concrete reasons disagree with the author, it is not a novelty. Phone-based stuff is most certainly a novelty.

jqgatsby• 10 years ago

Comparison to Gear VR seems inappropriate, given the huge amount of effort Oculus the company has put into the partnership with Samsung.

ZoF• 10 years ago

How does that make comparison inappropriate?

soylentcola• 10 years ago

The difference between something like the Rift or the Vive and mobile-based stuff like Gear are huge when you get down to actually using it. Even discounting the differences between Rift and Vive regarding how they track motion, the Gear doesn't even have positional head tracking, just orientation.

In use, this makes a huge difference if you're looking to put someone in a virtual environment. It's not even restricted to gaming applications. All of the software I've tried on my Rift dev unit and someone else's Gear made this abundantly clear to me. Not being able to lean forward/back/around things takes away a huge part of the "immersion" factor leaving you with more of a souped-up 3d screen.

In terms of cost, for the Gear, don't you also need one of a few specific, expensive Samsung phones? I admit I haven't followed it as much lately so I don't know if they are selling something more affordable with the phone-stuff integrated or allowing the use of other phones. When I looked last, you needed a ~$700 phone plus the Gear. Not too big a price difference between $800 for phone+Gear and $1000 for a good video card+Rift. Personally, when I'm even considering something this expensive, new, and unnecessary, $800+ versus $1000 isn't a huge difference since I'm already spending a lot on something I don't really need.

The other huge thing I've noticed is that all of the best new and in-development VR stuff just isn't gonna be something you can run on a phone or a Playstation. It's gonna be beta software (if you're lucky) and require a powerful, flexible platform like a computer. Down the line it will even out but right now, none of the really impressive stuff I've seen for VR will run on Gear and I doubt it will be in the Sony Playstation store anytime soon. That same console-level polish and ease comes with a flip-side: no access to anything that isn't seamless or marketable just yet.

angersock• 10 years ago

Speaking as somebody who is frustrated with the current dev story for AR and VR...

...maybe the specs wouldn't be so goddamn high if they actually let us do dev work against a lower-level interface. Forcing us to deal with massive frameworks like Unity and Unreal might well be the cause of spec creep. :(

EDIT:

And Meta can go eat a bag of rocks--no public docs on their API, and they seem to be wed to Unity...which can really screw up certain types of AR work they'd otherwise be perfect for.

Oculus, at least, offered a native SDK for the brave and foolish.

MBCook9• 10 years ago

I've been following VR for the last year or so. There is no question that the Rift has better specs and can do better graphics than the Gear.

But I've read more than a few people in the VR space (game journalists, developers) say that there is something special about the Gear because there is no cable. There's nothing you have to keep conscious of so you don't trip over it or feel it on your back breaking immersion.

The Gear VR could be enhanced with better tracking, and as new phones come out it will get better processing power. I think Fowler is right.

VR is very new. Let's say your a consumer who wants to play with it. What's a better investment? $2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?

If you just want to try it for now, play around a bit? The Gear is very compelling.

(I'd love one, but I use an iPhone. I've got a PS VR on order though.)

Sir_Substance6• 10 years ago

$2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?

Your figures are a little off. A rift is (all following figures in USD) $599, and a computer that will support it is generally quoted at $950, making it's package price $1550. You can buy bundles that include a Rift and an Oculus ready PC for $1499[1].

The gear VR only works with very recent phones, and only works on all games without heat problems on the S7. S7's are generally quoted at $700, making the package price $800.

Rough figures, I know, but yours are well out of whack.

[1] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/134240/20160217/oculus-rea...

treebeard901• 10 years ago

It is worth mentioning that the PC requirements would be almost the same if all you wanted to do is play a modern game at steady frames per second (90) on a 2160x1200 monitor.

drzaiusapelord3• 10 years ago

$2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)?

I'm guessing there's a middle ground here. We already have the Solun Q shipping shortly, which uses a low power AMD CPU/GPU combo that can deliver graphics that land somewhere between what a phone and a console can do. All of it running on battery power with no wires.

Its an interesting form factor at the very least. I imagine the first gen of all these products will be pretty poor, but being attached to a $1500 PC is going to be the first problem solved in this space. Its too much of a hassle and cost. Being able to just buy a VR set that you turn on and put on your head is going to be a big win. People won't be intimidated by this and will prefer an all-in-one machine. It'll need to ship with motion controls and somehow get this all to work without a lighthouse/usb camera system.

rnernento• 10 years ago

You are not alone, John Carmack (one of the reasons I started taking VR seriously) is a fan of mobile.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/oculuss-technology-guru-jo...

Gratsby• 10 years ago

$100 investment in a Gear or a $20 investment in Cardboard has you chomping at the bit for more.

It will be another generation before VR really comes to roost, but by putting this in the hands of early adopters it really opens up the imagination of developers - and it opens up their abilities to actually get to work.

iainmerrick2• 10 years ago

To give useful feedback, it's less important for a critic to "know" those things in advance than to actually try out the device (and its competitors) and tell us how it works out in practice.

Sir_Substance6• 10 years ago

I disagree. If that's what I'm after, I could just ask two or three people who own one to render an opinion. It would take me less then a minute to have that thread up on reddit.

The whole argument behind why websites like wsj are allegedly valuable and thus worth un-adblocking or paying 10c an article for or whatever is the trendy solution now is that they're supposed to be offering a higher standard of information than whatever reddit thinks.

If the guy writing the article knows so little about the topic he cannot even make factually correct comparisons between similar but distinct products, I might as well stick to reddits opinion, no?

Xero• 10 years ago

"Another big-picture VR problem: It’s boring to be around people who are using it."

This sentence is pretty emblematic of the product the author of this article was expecting vs the Rift that Oculus pitched in their kickstarter video.

bcook• 10 years ago

His complaint seems just plain wrong... are these VR systems incapable of mirroring the image to a TV?

834572• 10 years ago

nope, mirroring was actually the default setup for the rift and still possible

VikingCoder3• 10 years ago

Another big-picture problem with the news: It's boring to be around people who are reading it.

I also find it's boring to be around people who are Google Searching, or using Facebook.

Pfhreak3• 10 years ago

Not to mention that mirroring the VR experience to a TV or monitor is absolutely delightful to watch. I've had people come over to play Alien Isolation, Dreadhalls, or Volo Airsport, and watching them play was a huge delight for everyone. The responses you get from someone who is trapped in a room with an alien are much more visceral.

astrodust• 10 years ago

You may as well lock people in an isolation pod. This is the problem, isn't it?

tryitnow• 10 years ago

Was anyone expecting it to be really ready for mainstream use?

mattmanser• 10 years ago

In case you missed it, there's another review linked in the article for a hardcore gamer's take:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/28/oculus-rift-is-built-...

It, too, is negative.

kzhahou• 10 years ago

Absolutely!! I mean, we can quibble over the exact meaning, but the oculus team took so long precisely in order to have a wide-adoption product instead of a tech demo, which was available over a year ago.

The Big Question we all have right now is precisely this: will VR enter mainstream or will it be a gimmick? Oculus is supposed to be leading that charge. If they can't break into some huge number of homes, then the VR ecosystem will die before it gets started. Goodbye JauntVR, etc.

radicalman• 10 years ago

This has been my suspicion. The new kids on the block are actually really fucking great. In fact, they have so much hardware expertise and ready audience to launch it mainstream, for example, ps vr

carc• 10 years ago

I've heard the PS VR is very lacking. Source: http://www.gizmag.com/best-vr-headset-gdc-2016/42377/

M4v3R• 10 years ago

I've tried PS VR. Nice gimmick, but the low-resolution and problems with controller tracking didn't make a good impression to be honest.

hartator• 10 years ago

I am bit jealous that this journalist get the ocolus in advance. Specially when he doesn't seem to care that much about it.

drzaiusapelord3• 10 years ago

Many have had it in advance, its just the review embargo was lifted today, so we're finally seeing some third-party reviews.

KayL• 10 years ago

I tried Gear VR before and very disappointed by Display resolution. Hoping someone can tell the different between these 2 devices.

spriggan3• 10 years ago

VR itself isn't ready for mainstream period. The problem isn't Oculus Rift but the tech itself. Who can really spend an hour with a VR headset on ? very few people.

tluyben2• 10 years ago

Oculus is meant for the more non causal gamer; I know quite a few of those and when they are playing they might as well have a VR set on. A friend of mine, when she is playing (and she plays for 3-4 hours per day) seems dead from a distance: when you come closer you see only her eyes and fingers move slightly while on the screen she is walking through large worlds wielding spells and weapons. Very few in % might be right but that is a lot of sales for the solutions that work for these people. I have a few of them (oculus backer, few simple ones that can be uses with a mobile phone) and I see uses as I do enjoy the experience and I do see the opportunity to, when the hardware allows, have enormous virtual screens when focusing on code or other work. My biggest issue for now is that all off them start to physically hurt when the weight of the device pushes the plastic into the cushioning in one location on my face after about 30 minutes.

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

Coming from a background with thousands of hours of hardcore multiplayer gaming, I'm very dis-interested in VR as a gaming platform, most specifically Oculus due to cost. The competitive field sounds like it needs some time to work through which device(s) get the best market traction (flashbacks to HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray). I think the author of the article knows his audience pretty well and meets the review expectations as stated - what is the 'mainstream' use case?

I think one of the most relevant parallells - for now, at this stage of development - is with a projetor. Relatively high cost of entry, takes effort and space for setup, and for basic day-to-day entertainment, kind of overkill. Sure it's great from time to time to take a projector and game rig outside and play Forza on a two-car garage door with a screen so big landing planes can probably see it, no doubt. It's actually nice to have one when other people are over, so it's a more engaging device, unlike putting on a headset.

Honestly I think about the time VR will be considered 'mainstream' is when the more customary (and accessible) entertainment forms start generating in-demand content. Think major motion picture studios, TV networks, and concert-type footage (Rolling Stones in Cuba probably in development as I type this). Or, as one more comparison, once the VR platform is as dynamic and simple as the iPhone environment (games, communication, media) then more people will adopt in turn and the market will diversify in beneficial ways (serious vs. casual gamers, etc).

I'm really excited to see what the 'traditional' creative platforms like music and storytelling are going to do in the environment over time.

justifier2• 10 years ago

my main complaint with the rift is often overlooked, (edit: this is simply untrue, it appears since i walked away from the stereoscopic vr world the issue of ipd has certainly been addressed and efforts have been made to assuage the problem)

and unfortunately i think will only start to be addressed when the number of people who spend more time with the device increases,

the headset is one size fits all

the center of the split screen, the stationary lenses, and i'm assuming the stereo render all presume everyone's eyes are the same distance apart and perfectly level

which is simply untrue, and without configurable variables those minute discrepancies will result in peoples' brains working much harder to compensate

my eyes went cross for an hour after taking off the headset the last time i ever used my dk2, i wonder if i will be reading someone else's similar story in the near future

lfowles• 10 years ago

Quick google for "oculus interpupillary distance":

http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-says-consumer-rift-has-ipd-ad...

justifier2• 10 years ago

i stand corrected, and your linked article is even from june of last year as well

i commend the oculus team for addressing the issue for the consumer product

that said, i think digital stereoscopy is the wrong direction for vision manipulation

there are many minute issues similar to ipd that need to be addressed, an engineering analogue to the curse of dimensionality

if one looks at the history of stereoscopic viewers it is clear they failed to usurp their two dimensional counterparts and i think it of interest to question why that may be

Pfhreak3• 10 years ago

I have an unusually wide IPD (about 73mm), and I struggled with this on the DK2. The image would not focus properly because the alignment of the lenses. I was able to address this fairly easily with a 3D printed set of adjusters.

The consumer rift, however, has a IPD adjustment knob on it for exactly this reason. In playing with the prototypes they had at PAX last August, the IPD was much, much less of an issue.

lisper• 10 years ago

Let me see if I have this straight: the advantage of the Rift over the Gear VR is that the Rift lets you move around and the Gear doesn't. But the Rift has a (fairly short) cable, and the Gear doesn't. Is that right? Because the problem seems so obvious that I almost feel a little foolish pointing it out: cables and movement don't play well together, particularly when, by design, you can't see the cable.

834572• 10 years ago

The rift has cameras that track your movement. That is the main difference that you are looking for. I've used the rift dk1 with extension cables and can actually move around quite freely, though obviously not as much as a wireless setup. With gearvr you can move around but the headset/game doesn't actually know you are moving around as there is no external tracker or reference point like with the rift.

Suttonian• 10 years ago

The positional tracking is useful even if you don't walk around though. Imagine you lean to the side in your chair but you view doesn't change at all - how weird would that be? Or you're stood on the edge of a building, and try to lean over to see below, but you can't because your viewpoint doesn't change. Positional tracking means that would work as expected - it's good even for seated experiences (where a cable isn't really a problem). Besides from what I hear, users get used to the cable after a while, even though all recognize that it's not ideal.

agildehaus• 10 years ago

The GearVR doesn't do positional tracking at all, just basic head tracking. It also has to use your smartphone GPU, which means games are severely limited in comparison to a Rift connected to a GTX 970 or 980.

keypusher• 10 years ago

It's strange to have a non-gamer do the review for this, as he seems to know very little about the field, or computer gaming. I guess they are aiming for a mainstream opinion, but Occulus is not a mainstream device. It's a high-end gaming peripheral. For instance that the author mentions incredulously multiple times that his high-end PC requires two power cables, which I just don't understand. I found his colleague's review (which is referenced in the article, also wsj) much more informative. His take was that it's a pretty cool piece of technology, but needs more games.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/28/oculus-rift-is-built-...

atonse• 10 years ago

Is that how the Oculus team has marketed it? That it's a peripheral only for hardcore gamers, and not at all mainstream? I doubt it.

sp332• 10 years ago

It's not about hardcore gamers if you mean FPS or something. But it's not aiming at the middle of the market. It requires a high-end PC just to drive it, and it's an expensive peripheral, so it really can't be "mainstream". It's about people who are the most interested in VR gaming.

Animats• 10 years ago

Read what Zuckerberg had to say when Facebook bought Oculus.[1]: "This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." He's talking about VR as a social medium, like Facebook.

Sort of like Second Life. Second Life has supported the Oculus Rift since late 2014. Nobody cares.[2]

I can see using one for FPS games, but beyond that, it's not that compelling. There's still no killer VR app.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971 [2] http://www.roadtovr.com/second-life-now-official-oculus-rift...

intrasight• 10 years ago

The general theme of discussion here ("Gaming") completely validates the author's statement that it isn't ready for the "Mainstream"

nice_byte2• 10 years ago

I got a chance to try out both Oculus and Vive at GDC this year. Oculus' image quality was exactly the way the author described - like looking through a screen door. Vive seemed to be much better (and its controllers had mind-blowing force feedback, which added some realism).

Overall, though, I have two major concerns about VR.

The first is limited range of movement. All VR experiences seem to require the player to either be seated or move in a confined space. But think of all the virtual miles you've walked in Fallout or GTA - it's not going to be possible with VR. I mean, sure, you could use a controller, but it's a solution similar to putting fake buttons on a touchscreen.

The second is that I'm afraid that this is as good as VR is ever going to get because of hardware limitations. People sometimes compare the current state of VR to the early days of gaming consoles, implying that it's going to get much better. But the NES and PS4 are separated by 30 years of moore's law, which is predicted to end in 2025 (only 9 years away). The pace at which hardware is getting better/faster is slowing down.

ipsum2• 10 years ago

With all due respect, all of these are known problems, with known solutions.

Problem 1: Check out the Virtuix Omni, as well as software-only solutions.

Problem 2: See foveated rendering.

todd8• 10 years ago

There are quite a few comments on price here. I will wait for more games or at least a compelling game or app before buying one. I'm sure I will though.

Consider the price of the HP LaserJet III. It came out around 1990, and I remember a conversation with a salesperson that said that the price had already come down so much since the HP LaserJet I that it probably wouldn't ever get much cheaper. It was a complex machine, motors, belts, gears, laser, etc., and in today's dollars it cost about $4400. High quality printers today are everywhere and can cost under $100. It's interesting to consider where VR will be in a decade or two.

It seems like an important development; one I've been waiting for since 1977. I was in a graduate-school computer graphics course and I described an idea that I had for a helmet that would capture motion and position of one's head and through two small CRTs present a rendered 3D virtual view. The rest of the class (and the professor) seemed skeptical, but I've always remembered that feeling about VR like there was an idea that was eventually coming.

Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

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