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woah

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Posts posted by woah

  1. I don't really understand this, unless you were talking in irony. Everyone is complaining about Facebook and it's dominance in the social network area and nobody seems to notice that Steam is trying to do the same with PC gaming: Forcing everyone into the same over-connected DRM network that only Valve controls by announcing gadgets like the Steamboxes and Steamcontrollers...

     

    I understand the issues with Steam and I wish it was better, but a publicly traded company like Facebook (whose CEO is almost as sociopathic as wall street itself) is on a whole different level. Valve has explicitly stated that they will not go public due to their own personal beliefs (which I happen to agree with). I really don't think Zuckerberg or Wall Street give a shit about the ideal Oculus is trying to acheive, and while some may be able to imagine how their goals could be at least somewhat aligned, there will come a point when the desire to maximize short term profit will trump all else. At the very least I'll be surprised if the device is open, doesn't require license fees, and isn't heavily patented. The desire to be The Virtual Reality Device is simply too enticing.

     

    I'm really surprised that Oculus was convinced by Zuckerberg when he said their goals will remain intact and that they will operate independently (because this has never been said following a controversial acquisition by a pubicly traded company...). But I guess $2 billion can help one rationalize things.

  2. I thought this was an interesting and very accessible explanation of some of the challenges with designing, configuring and setting up a VR headset (and it also notes some of the problems that may not have been solved by Oculus yet and the ramifications of them). It covers things like how the anatomy of each user (e.g. eye separation) affects the appearance of the projected image and how to correct for it, the motivation for using curved displays, etc etc. I encourage you to watch it if you're at all curious about this stuff. Only very basic knowledge of computer graphics is necessary.

     

  3. Woah, hadn't heard of Alien: Isolation until now. I love the original Alien movies and I have some very fond memories playing AvP2 (specifically the multiplayer, what a blast that was). Thanks for bringing my attention to it (even if it may end up being a somewhat crippled experience as a result of the console focus).

    • Like 1
  4. Stone mason, eh? What's that like as a job?

     

    OT: Yep, spend too much time in front of them I'd reckon.

     

    Well I'm fortunate to have a very good crew and "boss" (put in quotations because it genuinely feels very odd referring to her as that ... which should give you an idea of what type of person she is), but essentially my day will consist of listening to interesting audiocasts and joking around with my coworkers while doing relatively strenuous manual labor (but not back-breaking--there's a 60 year old woman that works with us too). You get to enjoy the weather for better or worse, but there are few days where I'd rather be cooped up in an office. I guess most important for me is that I'm able to come home with no stress on my mind and plentiful "mental energy" (which I then use to work on projects during the evenings and on the weekends)--something that my prior place of employment left me with virtually none of. And then I also don't have to deal with any corporate culture bullshit, that dreadful "I live my work" sort of feeling, that part of you that always lingers at the office even if you're not physically there, anxieties about the imminent workweek, etc. etc.

     

    The downside is of course the compensation, which for me effectively means no family or expensive toys, a small house that's far from civilization, and I cut it pretty close from time to time (the fact that my country seems to be going out of its way to create some sort of first-world third-world hybrid doesn't help either). And in general you have to be OK with physical labor, getting filthy/sweaty, and getting injured once in a while.

     

    But I can't stress how important it is to have a good crew to work with. If I was stuck with a bunch of closed-minded rednecks that listened to Howard Stern all day and had nothing interesting to talk about, I might be less positive.

    • Like 4
  5. In the mid 20's, but I certainly wish I was younger!

     

    Wish I could hang right around 22 indefinitely. I can't understand the people with good lives that say they "want to die some day" or the naturalists that believe humans "have to die" (actually, I suppose I can understand them as I used to think the same way when I was younger and--at least I feel--dumber). Life has too much capacity for me to want it to end--too many experiences, too many things to learn and explore. Mind you, I didn't always think this way: for a while I was bored with life! This idea seems so insane now, but having experienced it myself I can sympathize with those who are victims of that terrible illness. Now I wake up every day with an unquenchable fervor--sometimes I even lose sleep as a result of it. It really is cruel how short life is given, e.g., the expanse of the universe.

     

    Here's to the potential for science to prolong my life! I'm not going to waste time being anxious over my death--that does not make sense either, but if the opportunity to substantially prolong my life ever becomes a reality, I'll certainly take it.

     

    I'll become a lobster if I have to.

  6. Completely agree! It's so difficult fo find a forum capable of intelligent discussions that lack the usual ornery snark and intellectual one-upmanship (the manifestations of which are often too subtle or mild in individual cases to warrant moderation, but collectively create a depressing atmosphere that is self-reinforcing). Likewise, the members here seem to be, I suppose, rather worldly and open to many different experiences.

     

    And then you're all very nice too!

  7. http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/01/13/2048231/ces-2014-ohio-company-is-bringing-military-grade-motion-sensors-to-gaming

     

    According to the above, they are using a sensor setup due to the delays of an optical based system--and I guess the Oculus Rift's head tracking has such low latency due to the white LEDs. But as you say, why not do the same for a full body suit? Aside from the obvious problems with occlusion (which could be a big problem I suppose if you're looking for very good accuracy), the interview notes that this was technology "refitted" from military applications (so they probably didn't start with the idea of creating a full body motion suit, but rather "how can we apply this technology elsewhere?"). Personally I'm all for low latency and higher accuracy even it means I'd have to put on a suit, but I do wonder if they will have any problems with "drift" given they lack the reference point a optical based system provides.

     

     

    Also, other news in VR: At Dev Days Valve demo'd its own VR headset prototype. People are saying it's as good (or better according to some comments) than the Oculus Rift "Crystal Cove" prototype. They also said they plan to develop their OS around the use of VR and provide standard interfaces for developers. Perhaps if Valve can get the jump on the other consoles with it, VR could be a major and unique appeal of their OS.

  8. Just want to point out that there was also a WIP upper body (and optionally full body) tracking suit at CES 2014 called the PrioVR, and it was being demo'd with the older devkit version of the Oculus Rift. It's being developed by YEI technologies. They actually had a kickstarter a while back and it failed, but they plan to try again in February now that their technology is more refined. Below is a video of the suit, but I must warn you that based on the impressions I've read their presentation doesn't seem to do the suit justice.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0881ORh3Cg

     

    I've been told that there will be 2 or so more revisions of the hardware before they start the Kickstarter again, and they're working on hand/individual finger tracking but there's nothing to announce on that yet. Here's an impression from someone at CES

     

    The folks behind PrioVR had a busy booth all CES, and it was still busy today! I snagged an interview with Paul Yost, head of R&D. After the interview I got to try it! They strapped me into the upper body suit + DK1 Rift, and put me into a simple zombie shooting demo.

    The tracking is spot on. each of my arm joints were articulated in game, which allowed me to do things I never experienced in VR before: shrug my shoulders, rotate my shoulder in its socket, make explicit signals with my arms and hands. This opens up exciting possibilities for non-verbal communication in VR. I controlled the game with two Wii Nunchucks that were plugged into a control box on my chest. Sometimes the nunchuck would unplug - the socket had become loose after hundreds of CES users demoing the unit, understandable. The control box was wirelessly communicating with a base connected to a laptop, surprising because of the incredibly low latency. ALL of the sensors stayed with me the entire time - no jitter, no misreads, no confusion. I would like to see a quicker set up, which they are working on. So freaking cool

     

    Source: http://www.reddit.co..._day_3_wrap_up/

     

     

    I imagine getting one of these suits synced up with an Oculus Rift with headtracking would be an amazing experience.

  9. I think disabling the mouse altogether would be more trouble than otherwise--I'd imagine it would be awkward and one would quickly strain their neck (assuming bodily rotation is controlled by rotating one's head to an extremity at the left or right). Instead one would let the mouse control their virtual body's forward facing orientation and use the rift's positional headtracking to allow the freedom of simultaneously orienting one's virtual head. This would be much more natural and would permit interesting combinations (for example, one could run down a hallway and look over their shoulder behind them).

  10. I am still a little sceptical about the Rift. Don't get me wrong, I am not one of those nay-sayers, but there is a certain downside to the whole concept, which I think will prevent the Rift from booming as much as everyone thinks.

     

    A few months ago I paid a visit to the 3d innovation center of the heinrich-hertz-institute in Berlin. They showed a 180 degrees 3d projection, which is really immersive because your whole field of view is filled out with the virtual content. In fact, it was too immersive. After a few minutes I became a little dizzy and had to sit down (please note, I am 27 years old, so this is not a question of age ;) ).

     

    After some thinking about it, I found a reasonable explanation for this. You see, having your peripheral vision filled out with virtual content disengages you from your feeling of presence. Your visual system tells you that you move when the camera moves, whereas all your other sensory functions tell you that you're remaining still. You have no point of reference anymore and your brain does not know which sensory functions to trust.This might be a little less severe in the case of games where you have a lot of control over what happens to the camera, but seeing how many people actually throw up from playing with the rift, I think my own observations and reasoning are pretty solid.

     

    So in conclusion, the many people like me who cannot handle too much 3d immersion are better of with a regular VR-Headset with lower fov.

     

    I think that's one of the hardest challenges Oculus is facing. Any bit of inconsistency is noted by your brain and then you feel sick (of course it affects some people more than others). This is the reason why they're putting so much effort into reducing latency--the difference in the experience between 40ms and 20ms is huge; the brain is very sensitive. We can only hope they get it consistent enough to be tolerable.

     

    And even if the hardware is optimal, the games will have to be very careful about how they treat the user. Some examples: (1) you're in a racing game and it suddenly freezes up or even just lags a bit; (2) there is a bug with the camera causing it to go wacky; (3) one's ingame head collides with a surface while one's actual head continues to move in that same direction (as if it is penetrating the virtual surface); (4) one falls "through a map" and experiences the all too common visual anomaly; (5) you're playing an online game and--as in the Half Life engine--the admin is permitted to execute commands on your client, perhaps unexpectedly setting your sensitivity to extremely high. There are tons of situations where the inconsistencies could cause one to lose their lunch.

     

    Despite my enthusiasm, there is definitely a part of me that doubts whether or not the increased immersion and new possibilities permitted by such technology will be worth the potential discomfort. The only thing I know is that if I ever get one I will have a bucket next to me at all times :)

    • Like 1
  11. First off, I know there are some other threads which have diverged into conversation about the Oculus Rift, but they're pretty dated and I figured there should be a thread largely dedicated to the rift itself since I think most would agree that it's shaping up to be the most promising consumer-level VR headset out there.

     

    But anyways I'm making this thread today because Oculus just unveiled their new prototype at CES--the "Crystal Cove"

     

    http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/07/ces-oculus-rift-makes-evolutionary-leap-with-new-motion-tracking-hands-on

     

    The IGN video player is garbage, so here's a youtube link to the video:

     

    They now have positional headtracking and a new OLED display--two things I've been particularly excited about. The positional headtracking means they're no longer limited to rotational headtracking--now it's responsive to translation too (so in Thief one could lean around a corner / over a balustrade, peek through a keyhole, or perform a multitude of other precise actions). The OLED display should mean a very good contrast ratio and a low display response time in the microseconds (as far as I know, OLED is the closest we'll get to CRT level response times and contrast ratios for many years ... and having a technology that can actually display black again would be great for Thiefy games).

     

    They've also reduced the overall latency and blurring--the IGN article stresses that this was the most significant improvement. From what I've picked up around the web, the devkit rift is ~45ms, this new prototype's latency is 30ms, and they expect to have the first consumer version's latency below 15ms (supposedly <20ms is the "holy grail").

    • Like 1
  12. I've always preferred Thief 2 in gameplay, atmosphere, and story, but maybe that's because I started with Thief 2 (a friend at the time advised me to skip Thief 1 based on my personality). After playing it, Thief 1 felt a lot more action oriented--felt like there was a lot less sneaking and too many monsters/ghosts/magic. In general, I think supernatural phenomena are best used sparingly. And I'm not saying that Thief 1 didn't have many good moments, but while playing many parts of it I found myself repeatedly thinking "OK, when do we get past these annoying monsters/undead and get back to stealing from the nobility's excessively architectured mansions?"

     

    In addition, I liked the level design in Thief 2 much more. The layouts feel more convincing (e.g. rarely did I find architecture or mapper's mistakes/laziness that "broke the illusion"), fine-tuned (e.g. attention to detail with the lighting and contextual music), and enticing, as they seem to really captivate my curiosity.

  13. Guess I've always been a fan of the first two Resident Evils (aka Biohazard). I much prefer the slow paced and puzzle heavy gameplay with a good story. Rather than taking on mobs and mobs of zombies, I like it when almost every adversary presents a challenge and one must be careful to conserve ammunition, pay attention to detail, etc etc. I'd love to see something similar from the first person perspective...

  14. I've got a mouse hook that allows one to play goldsrc-based games (e.g. Half-Life, Counter-Strike 1.6, TFC) with a touchscreen if you're interested (it's not a hack, it just transforms the mouse input prior to process receiving it). Essentially it rotates the optical axis to face the corresponding ingame point of wherever you've tapped on the screen. It's pretty crude (in terms of the math, the program design, and the user interface itself), but it works. Just let me know if you're interested and I'll try to dig it up.

  15. Booster Pack – Get access to an exclusive bundle of optional in-game consumables that can empower you and hasten your progression through Thief.

     

    I wish I could travel 10 years or so into the past and share this with all of the people that were calling me "elitist" for voicing my concerns with the direction gaming was taking.

    • Like 1
  16. So from what's been said it seems like these so called "moderators" are actually clandestine PR types (doing e.g. damage control). Moderators are supposed to enforce the rules for their compensation--no more, no less. These people do not fit that description.

     

    But for god's sake, is there any aspect of life that the amoral class of PR types and influence peddlers won't corrupt? At least here in the US, one is hard pressed to find any bit of reporting/journalism or research that isn't tainted by this bullshit (e.g. on science, politics, product/service reviews, etc etc), and now one can't even take part in a game discussion without some assholes trying to "shape public perception"?

    • Like 4
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