Oculus Rift's John Carmack says a new Rift dev kit is in the works...

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/18/oculus-rift-john-carmack-interview/

by wildermuthn • 13 years ago

31 63 13 years ago

wildermuthn3• 13 years ago

It appears there will be another Rift development kit (whether for the public, or for private partners, he doesn't say), with higher resolution and positional tracking. Carmack says that VR is going to 'change the world'. I believe him.

fusiongyro13• 13 years ago

It might change gaming, but as a non-gamer I don't see much point. If the idea is to woo non-gamers like me with amazing games, it's going to have to be cheap and casual, and neither of those are natural adjectives for the Rift. If the idea is to really take over the world, somebody somewhere had better think of an actually compelling office/business use for it. Jurassic Park scientists examining DNA does not count.

For what it's worth, VR has been trying to become a thing since the mid-80s. Much like 3D, it bubbles to the surface for a few years and then nobody cares again for the rest of the decade.

Carmack is clearly an amazing programmer, but I'd like to know what his prognosticatory credentials are. He's also predicting Haskell will be a big deal in gaming. You can be amazing and still be a crackpot. Look at Linus Pauling for instance.

wildermuthn3• 13 years ago

Oculus : Gaming :: Facebook : Harvard

projct• 13 years ago

Have you tried both old VR units and the Oculus demo unit?

TorbjornLunde• 13 years ago

I think Oculus Rift i combination with something like Leap could lead the way for useful 3D-interfaces. I don’t like the term VR reality. To me it’s the skeuomorphism of the 3D-world. Instead of trying to simulate the real world, why not use 3D to express more abstract concepts (like we already are doing with 2D screens).

Of course, in time something like holograms will be more relevant, but in the mean time I think things like Oculus Rift in combination with other technologies can be a nice stop-gap.

1qaz2wsx3edc• 13 years ago

It might change gaming, but as a non-gamer I don't see much point.

It will have a disruptive change to more than gaming. Here's why I believe so:

If you look at human history, we started with writing, then newspapers, then radio, followed by television. The way in which we consume media hasn't changed from television/displays. Virtual reality is the next evolutionary step in media consumption. The final step being human-computer interfaces.

I think because it enters us into a new realm it will be disruptive.

Taylorious• 13 years ago

It is going to revolutionize education. Why would children watch a slideshow about ancient Egypt when they can walk in a digital recreation made by brilliant artists/game designers who worked with leading historians, archeologists, etc. I'll warrant that experiencing things "first hand" will make people learn faster/better.

fooqux• 13 years ago

This is the first I've thought of it, but there is one area that stands to really be improved if they chose to use this technology: porn. And I've heard that supposedly the porn industry is one of the largest drivers of technology when it comes to media consumption.

Especially if they get into the peripheral market...

arrrg• 13 years ago

VEs are great for applications beyond gaming. Especially cheap and accessible VEs. Yeah, the technology has existed for a long time, but it was always expensive. Very expensive. Now it will be available much more cheaply.

One application is therapy, for example to combat phobias. So you show someone with a fear of public speaking (to the extent where they have panic attacks) a room full of people and let them speak. This is already in use, but mostly done in front of monitors.

No, not world changing but still very cool.

qq66• 13 years ago

Fully immersive virtual reality is nearly equivalent to teleportation. What if anyone could travel to any location on Earth that had the right camera systems? If anyone could visit the Great Wall of China? If anyone could visit the moon? If anyone could experience the Syrian civil war from the ground?

It might change our actions as people and as societies. Other mediums like film, television, and the Internet certainly have.

TomNomNom• 13 years ago

I don't play many games either, but one thing I'd really like to use the Rift for is a big virtual desktop. Not a 3D desktop like in the movies, just a regular 2D desktop.

I could have the equivalent of six 30'' screens in front of me; I could switch between them just by turning to look at them - all whilst actually only using a laptop on the sofa (or on the train, but I might look a little odd doing it).

To be good this would require the Rift to have reached a resolution where I can't see the individual pixels - the '4k resolutions' mentioned in the article perhaps. Even if such a device cost $1000 it would still be cheaper than all of those screens.

I can honestly see such a thing being tremendously useful for people who do CAD, deal with big architecture diagrams etc... People who generally like to use a lot of monitors for day to day work.

benched2• 13 years ago

The Oculus itself will not change the world that much, but VR certainly will. The Oculus is simply a step towards real VR. Try to imagine a world in which you can actually lose track of, or be mistaken about exactly which level of simulation you're currently experiencing. Think long term.

pkroll2• 13 years ago

Has Carmack actually predicted that Haskell will be a big deal? I know he's said he WANTS functional programming to be a big deal, and that he's looking to do a Haskell-coded game or engine. But I can't find a prediction on a quick search. Pushing is a lot more sane than predicting. :)

zarify• 13 years ago

I was at an EdTech conference recently and listening to a talk given by a guy who developed training simulators for a living, predominately for mining. That isn't gaming (although they do hire out of the gaming development pool) and is a pretty serious practical application of this sort of thing.

There is a pretty big segment of industry out there for which more realistic simulation of the environment without the need for specialised environments (the aforementioned mining equipment simulators were literally small rooms) would be a huge bonus.

As an educator sure, more immersive stuff for things like geography, history etc would be nice, but I think the training (vs teaching) aspect is more interesting.

TYPE_FASTER• 13 years ago

I think there are a lot of people out there running three screens with multiple video cards driving them. The Rift could actually be cheaper, while being a more immersive experience. I was a skeptic as well until I saw the demo video of iRacing. Wow.

bkev• 13 years ago

I believe it will be important in the architectural and 3D design fields, particularly when interacting with lay people. In the architecture industry, for example, the most common refrain I hear is that clients, who might be spending hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars on a building, can't understand the plans they're looking at; can't visualize their unbuilt structures. This technology changes that; enables them to walk through and fully immerse themselves in their building before it's ever built. It's a visualization game changer.

One might further theorize that the design profession itself might be fundamentally changed by it. When you think about it, the mouse and keyboard isn't an ideal medium for this type of design; it's a crude interaction. Why look at a scaled wireframe of a structure when you might be able to virtually build a structure while being inside it - using your hands and eyes, like clay. You could use your arms to gesture, saying "I want this wall here, and to be this high"; "I want a 3'x5' window on this wall, here", etc. You could mold structures with your hands with this type of virtual reality and some type of motion tracking. It would be ground-breaking.

baddox• 13 years ago

Is this newer than the 1080p model that was being shown at gaming conventions earlier this year, or is this just that dev kit finally shipping?

tocomment3• 13 years ago

I'm not understanding how the android powered standalone headset would work? Would you download games to it? Would it have enough horsepower to run the games? Would it need a huge battery?

deletes2• 13 years ago

No need for a battery, it is just a phone in a headset running older games and you see the screen through the lens.

tocomment3• 13 years ago

Just curious if anyone has an opinion:

Is it worth ordering a dev kit now, or should I wait for this next one to come out?

Also what's the minimum cost rig needed to run an oculous effectively? I only have a 3 year old macbook right now.

wildermuthn3• 13 years ago

I have a dev kit, but unless you want to develop games, I'd wait for the consumer version. There's just too much missing in terms of resolution and positional tracking.

If you just want to demo the rift, here's a map of willing owners: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=21608056830108037...

My Macbook Pro runs the rift just fine, but it all depends on the game.

reustle• 13 years ago

Really, no willing owners in NYC?

tocomment3• 13 years ago

What's wrong with the positional tracking?

Also do you need a certain Mac OS? I'm on something ancient like saber lion :-(

thearn42• 13 years ago

Unless you have some extra cash to burn, it's usually a bad idea to buy development hardware, unless you're interested in developing for it (or at least hacking on it).

malandrew3• 13 years ago

    The bigger issue, though, is head-tracking -- something 
    Carmack's actively concerned with and working to solve 
    ahead of a retail release. "A lot of the work at Oculus 
    has gone into working out better position tracking," he 
    told us. "The tracking side is something that there hasn't 
    been as much of a push for and we're frantically working 
    on a lot of that, because that is one of the other really 
    large issues. But we expect that the next developer kit 
    will have higher resolution and position tracking 
    addressing some of these significant issues."

I find it incredibly refreshing when a company working on a hard technical problem is candid about the engineering challenges that lie ahead.

rocky11383• 13 years ago

A friend came up with the idea of using a QR code sticker on the front of the unit, tracked by the laptop's webcam as you play. This way, you can detect the angle and distance from the laptop and do positional tracking.

Anyone wanna take that on and see if it works?

alcari• 13 years ago

That sounds like a great use for Bokodes[1] rather than QR codes. Bokodes can display different information depending on the angle they're viewed at.

[1] http://web.media.mit.edu/~ankit/bokode/

ealloc• 13 years ago

As I understand, the issue is not so much getting the position data, but getting the data quickly (with low latency) to reduce mismatch between the rendered position on screen and the user's actual position. The Rift has special 250 Hz position sensors for this purpose, and even that's not fast enough. Webcams are usually only 30Hz.

http://oculusrift-blog.com/john-carmacks-message-of-latency/...

jotux• 13 years ago

Distance and angle with respect to the laptop would be the immediate and most dramatic drawbacks. Also the fact that image processing is a lot slower than using on-board high-speed sensors.

joshu• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiducial_marker

twiceaday• 13 years ago

CastAR seems to have solved this problem

http://www.tested.com/tech/458623-testing-castar-augmented-r...

Fuzzwah• 13 years ago

On topic: secret Carmack projects make me very excited. The fact that he mentioned that other oculus content creators were with him in Denver drives up my hopes that its an engine specifically created with the rift in mind.

Off topic: I could listen to Carmack talk about this stuff all day, but putting up with the interviewer saying "sure" at the end of every single one of Carmack's sentences made the video really painful for me.

devx• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if you're aware but Carmack is CTO at Oculus now.

mephi5t0• 13 years ago

Ha, on that picture Carmack looks like an ugly step sister of Kevin Bacon :)

thearn42• 13 years ago

Very surprising, I figured they would go right to the consumer version. It's good to hear that Oculus is taking their time and getting things right.

Oculus Rift's John Carmack says a new Rift dev kit is in the works...

Related Stories