New VR Headest actually looks viable for average gamers

[dmarkwick 261]

ArmA is supported by Nvidia's 3D vision, thank you very much.

But - does it support the left-eye-only separation I keep banging on about (and which you ignore ;)) If not then it can be supported all it likes, it's essentially limited in use. It might not sound like a big deal, until you actually notice that your ironsighted weapon is aligned down the middle of your face.

And IZ3D is defunct and bankrupt as of August, 2012.

I didn't know about the company's state, but the driver itself still works fine :)

---------- Post added at 13:20 ---------- Previous post was at 13:17 ----------

In my opinion the most important thing about HMDs (and Rift in particular) is the FOV. Stereoscopy is just a side effect, and you don't even need to play in 3D using your HMD. 2D HMD with a large FOV and accurate headtracking is (to your brain) a lot more "3D" than a stereoscopic monitor with limited FOV. Besides, perception of artificial stereoscopy is affected by a lot of different factors, one of them being your natural ability to percieve it. I'm working with 3D video on a daily basis, do a lot of 3D gaming and test 3D equipment (monitors, 3dtvs, projectors, camcorders), all this with no eye strain or headache. My gf on the other hand can't take more than a couple of hours of 3D. Using a HMD like Oculus, you don't need to pump the stereoscopic effect up too. Perception of 3D using a set like that is much more natural (no window violation, ghosting etc.).

I would agree with this. 3D is not really *that* useful a gimmick, it can be a nice immersion enhancer, but most of the time it's not. Set up correctly, any object over 200m or so should have no 3D element to it. Still, I did enjoy it while I toyed with it, so it did have value.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

But - does it support the left-eye-only separation I keep banging on about (and which you ignore ;)) If not then it can be supported all it likes, it's essentially limited in use. It might not sound like a big deal, until you actually notice that your ironsighted weapon is aligned down the middle of your face.

Reduce convergence - you're aiming for pop-out effect, which isn't the point of quality immersion. You need minimal separation afterwards to conjure a 3D effect.

I didn't know about the company's state, but the driver itself still works fine :)

They'd failed to secure investment and partnerships - this 3rd party driver is probably not that good, eh? :)

---------- Post added at 13:35 ---------- Previous post was at 13:32 ----------

I would agree with this. 3D is not really *that* useful a gimmick, it can be a nice immersion enhancer, but most of the time it's not. Set up correctly, any object over 200m or so should have no 3D element to it. Still, I did enjoy it while I toyed with it, so it did have value.

Funnyguy is right, you overemphasize 3D, while overlooking an immersive, boundless visual experience, provided the FOV is around 80-90 and the optics system is right for the job -- you will not see borders, no matter how hard you look. That alone is worth it. Well, that and head tracking.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Iroquois Pliskin

[dmarkwick 261]

Reduce convergence - you're aiming for pop-out effect, which isn't the point of quality immersion. You need minimal separation afterwards to conjure a 3D effect.

No. You're not getting it, I knew you weren't.

If you bring your gun up to ironsight in 3D - what would you expect to see? In fact what you see is the weapon ironsight aligned with neither eye. Which is useless as you will agree. The weapon ironsight appears aligned with your nose not one of your eyes.

What you want is a 3D driver that allows you to leave the right eye where it is, and only separate the left eye to the left. That way, the ironsight is aligned to your right eye when you bring it up. It's difficult to describe but the first time you raise your rifle to your eye in 3D you will instantly know what I mean :)

Almost all 3D drivers move the right eye to the right, and the left eye to the left to give a 3D view.

Separation not convergence BTW, which are different things.

[funnyguy1 0]

Reduce convergence - you're aiming for pop-out effect, which isn't the point of quality immersion. You need minimal separation afterwards to conjure a 3D effect.

Convergence AND IO (interocular, or stereo base). When viewed on a normal 3D display, stereoscopy needs to be exaggerated to be even noticeable. IO and convergence tends to be a lot bigger than it should be, and stereoscopy isn't even the most important depth cue in real life. It's one of many other cues that allow us to percieve depth. Moreover, there's not a single 3D display solution that's free of problems. While using HMDs (with great FOV and accurate headtracking) stereoscopy can be reduced to the role of depth enhancment. Once you move your head, and your VR avatar reacts the right way (provided there's no latency on the tracking software/hardware side), your brain is sold. That's why I'm so excited about the Oculus Rift project. I'm a 3D enthusiast, and it seems like the perfect 3D solution, ironically without so much emphasis on the stereo 3D itself. As a gamer I pursue immersion and realistic simulation, so ArmA/Rift seems like the perfect mix for me:)

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

No. You're not getting it, I knew you weren't.

If you bring your gun up to ironsight in 3D - what would you expect to see? In fact what you see is the weapon ironsight aligned with neither eye. Which is useless as you will agree. The weapon ironsight appears aligned with your nose not one of your eyes.

Never had this problem. :rolleyes: What you describe happens when you jack up the converge in your "IZ3D" driver. If BIS had supported 3D properly, you wouldn't have to minimise 3D to make it playable.

[dmarkwick 261]

Never had this problem. :rolleyes: What you describe happens when you jack up the converge in your "IZ3D" driver. If BIS had supported 3D properly, you wouldn't have to minimise 3D to make it playable.

No, it's not. It's nothing to do with convergence, and I'm not minimising 3D. I don't think I'm ever going to get this across so I'll just have to let it go by. You'll realise in time, first time you raise an M16 to your face in 3D, which by the sounds of it you never have yet. :)

Edited August 13, 2012 by DMarkwick

[4 IN 1 0]

Which should be just like how a rightly looking through sight.

The fact is that game developers are the one responsible for creating proper off set for the eyes(which is properly done in the doom 3 demo

Which means you can only blame developers for not giving a damn about leftys.

Edited August 14, 2012 by 4 IN 1

[dmarkwick 261]

Which should be just like how a rightly looking through sight.

The fact is that game developers are the one responsible for creating proper off set for the eyes(which is properly done in the doom 3 demo

Which means you can only blame developers for not giving a damn about leftys.

Well, not only developers :) you can't "blame" a developer for not supporting something they had no intention of including. The point is, that a sufficiently good driver can overcome a lot of developer non-inclusions, and the ability to specify separation per-eye is one rather easy, but hugely useful, feature.

[4 IN 1 0]

Fair enough, lets blame AMD for their lame ass driver instead:p

[dmarkwick 261]

Blame ALL the people :)

[4 IN 1 0]

No No No! You don't understand, if there is an award for the most shit driver developer ever existed, AMD(ATi for old time sakes) really is one of the top 3:p

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

AMD really doesn't give a rat's ass about stereo 3D.

Compare:

1) http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-hd3d/Pages/hd3d.aspx

2) http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GDC2011/Stereoscopy.pdf

The former references defunct 3rd party driver with hoops and loops to go through in order to enjoy 3D with cardboard glasses. Nvidia's documentation is actually pretty decent and shows their enthusiasm by working with developers to un-fuck their own games.

Hope AMD gets bought out by Samsung, so we can see some cutting edge competition once more.

---------- Post added at 14:46 ---------- Previous post was at 14:41 ----------

DIY Oculus Rift - Can't wait until December? :)

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=15247

[Parts List]

Updated on 12-Aug-2012 5:45pm PST

Confirmed:

1x NT68674.5X LCD control board (from http://bit.ly/O3Kn1o)

1x 5.6" TFT LCD,1280*800, HV056WX1-100 (from http://bit.ly/O3Kn1o)

2x UltraOptix SV-2LPLED 7X Aspheric (confirmed to work! http://bit.ly/MVqSy3)

$170 for controller board and screen on eBay - http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-6inch-TFT-LCD-1280-800-HV056WX1-100-plus-7in1-board-/290734588827?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b121c39b#ht_6382wt_1163

Only problem would be sourcing the exact specs for lenses used on Oculus Rift.

[funnyguy1 0]

BIS should really make friends with the Oculus team and add support for the HMD in ArmA, like, right now. Even just for the publicity sake. Guys behind HAWKEN did it, and they're the second company (the first one being ID Software) that'll have a product working with the Rift. Palmer is getting a lot of attention right now, so imagine him saying ArmA 3 would be the ultimate game (because, well, it will) to play with his HMD. Here's the video

Edited August 28, 2012 by funnyguy1

[4 IN 1 0]

Maybe you should send Maruk a mail to ask him about that, maybe he will reply it in like....within the next 10 years:p

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

BIS should really make friends with the Oculus team and add support for the HMD in ArmA, like, right now. Even just for the publicity sake. Guys behind HAWKEN did it, and they're the second company (the first one being ID Software) that'll have a product working with the Rift. Palmer is getting a lot of attention right now, so imagine him saying ArmA 3 would be the ultimate game (because, well, it will) to play with his HMD. Here's the video

Technically, ArmA already supports HMDs in the form of head free-tracking - only work to be done is to program for the gyro/accelerometer motion tracker, which pretty much is like TIR with 1:1 tracking scaling.

Four new updates since I posted in this thread, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/posts/288523

Update #4 is the most interesting,

Aug. 16, 2012

Exciting news today for the whole Oculus community: We've expanded the team with some amazing key hires. If you've recently watched the Oculus Kickstarter video, you're already familiar with these three industry veterans:

Brendan Iribe, former Chief Product Officer at Gaikai and co-founder/CEO of Scaleform, joins as our CEO. Brendan will be leading the Oculus charge on all fronts, especially leveraging his relationships with top game developers, publishers, and hardware companies.

Michael Antonov, former co-founder/CTO of Scaleform, has agreed to join as our Chief Software Architect. Michael, who architected the Scaleform SDK - one of the most widely adopted video game middleware solutions ever, will lead the architecture and development of the Oculus SDK, making sure it's super fast and efficient, as well as easy-to-use and well documented.

Jack McCauley, who has over 25 years of experience designing and manufacturing consumer hardware for companies like Atari, RedOctane, Activision, EA, and Microsoft, has come on board as our Vice President of Engineering. Jack will be be responsible for taking all our research and actually creating the hardware that you guys will ultimately receive.

Quick Update

... on what we've been up to aside from recruiting:

We're tweaking the hardware design for the developer kit. Our latest prototype is actually lighter than the original, which was already less than 0.5lbs. We've also come up with an elegant solution to help us reduce the amount of cabling.

We're meeting with game developers around the world (literally!), showing the Oculus Rift, and discussing what the future of video games with VR support may look like.

We're ramping up our hardware operations and looking at partnerships with the best possible companies. In fact, Brendan and Jack just returned from China where they toured factories and established a close relationship with a major device manufacturer.

Of course, we're hard at work developing the Oculus SDK, including Unreal Engine and Unity integrations, as well as the samples / documentation we'll be providing to the Oculus developer community.

PC game engines by companies like id Software, BIS' RV, VALVe's Source, UnrealEngine, Unity3D, whatever engine Bethesda uses for their games - these will be the most supported. I almost included CryTEK there by mistake, but that company is an unquantifiable value nowadays.

Some fellow already built a copy of Oculus Rift from the parts listed, http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=15247&start=105#p79162

---------- Post added at 20:26 ---------- Previous post was at 20:09 ----------

P.S. That whole HAWKEN mechwarrior game presentation with CEO of an indy studio speaking has so much cohesion and a ton of humility on top of that by all the people involved. I can totally see people going out and buying this headset for their favourite game.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Iroquois Pliskin

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Bethesda is still being a tight-ass, there's no TIR support in Skyrim as far as I'm aware. Something like this in future games would go a looong way, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6002

lqs2lTyP2Uo

Decoupling head from torso, hands from torso = win.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Iroquois Pliskin

[sparks50 0]

How would you see your controllers? I'm sure its good in a simple fps like Doom, but it might be problematic in a sim or Arma which uses the entire keyboard.

[Tonci87 163]

How would you see your controllers? I'm sure its good in a simple fps like Doom, but it might be problematic in a sim or Arma which uses the entire keyboard.

Valid point!

[dmarkwick 261]

How would you see your controllers? I'm sure its good in a simple fps like Doom, but it might be problematic in a sim or Arma which uses the entire keyboard.

Indeed. So as far as I am concerned there are 2 real problems to overcome I guess.

[EricM 0]

Virtual keyboard overlay : press space and a semi-transparent keyboard appears on your screen, click on the key.

Similar to a tablet when you need a keyboard...

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

How would you see your controllers? I'm sure its good in a simple fps like Doom, but it might be problematic in a sim or Arma which uses the entire keyboard.

You'd have to tailor the layout to your left hand, I can already access almost everything from the WASD area: N, M, V (optics), Z, X, C, R, G - not much else is needed, I'd say you could easily adapt to remember these keys. Or have a cut-away just below your eyes, though these light-stoppers are used to provide maximum contrast and brightness for the display = immersive-ness.

[dmarkwick 261]

You'd have to tailor the layout to your left hand, I can already access almost everything from the WASD area: N, M, V (optics), Z, X, C, R, G - not much else is needed, I'd say you could easily adapt to remember these keys. Or have a cut-away just below your eyes, though these light-stoppers are used to provide maximum contrast and brightness for the display = immersive-ness.

Hmm. Yeah. Actually, no :) I have much more going on than just keyboard & mouse, there's a HOTAS, gaming keypad, I can't make use of a display that means I can ONLY see the display. If it were more like glasses & less like goggles, then yeah sure.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Run to the hills! (J*O*)J People will adapt, provided they're motivated enough. An HMD, a chair plus a steering wheel and pedals, on the other hand, in a sim like rFactor or Project CARS is a dream come true for some.

[dmarkwick 261]

Run to the hills! (J*O*)J People will adapt, provided they're motivated enough. An HMD, a chair plus a steering wheel and pedals, on the other hand, in a sim like rFactor or Project CARS is a dream come true for some.

Oh yeah I'm sure. But for ArmA specifically, or in fact any sim that requires complex controls, maybe less so.

[doveman 7]

Maybe you could have a webcam facing your keyboard and have that overlayed on the display, so you can see where your hands are in relation to it.