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...is the HTC Vive. This thing has been life-transforming since I took delivery of it on April 6th. I mean it just blows everything away. The feeling of visiting other lands, the freedom of moving in a 1400 cubic foot area. Painting masterpieces in the air... Seeing things I never imagined, almost as if IN PERSON... being immersed in strange, psychedelic, liquid realms of unreal color and sound and fluid dynamics.
Here's a pretty random quote from one of many reviews users have posted, just a nice succinct description:
Quote:
“Not only is this definitely the future of gaming but I believe it is also the future of exercise. I was worried that it would not live up to the hype, but it definitely does. In my opinion, the Vive is the closest thing to Magic that human beings have ever created. I actually teared up a little bit at one point because I've been waiting for this my whole life and it's finally here. Best 800 bucks I've ever spent.”
I'm so excited about the present and the future of this technology. This is a paradigm shift.
The adoption of technology you have to wear has never been much successful, e.g. 3-d TV. I realize this is different but that doesn't change the fact you have to wear something on your head. Once the novelty wears off it becomes a difficult sell.
Meanwhile I await the news reports of people falling down and breaking their necks.
LIFE TRANSFORMING??!?! Come on now. Fun and cool as hell but... LIFE TRANSFORMING?!?!
I still think the greatest invention that you young people take for granted was the LCD Monitor. I can carry 6 monitors at once today. 10 years ago? Errr.....
The adoption of technology you have to wear has never been much successful, e.g. 3-d TV. I realize this is different but that doesn't change the fact you have to wear something on your head. Once the novelty wears off it becomes a difficult sell.
Ahh yes, the tired old "3DTV" comparison. 3DTV had very little going for it. It didn't really do anything for you. I tried it and although I liked Avatar in the theater a lot, 3DTV was unmistakeably lame. Meh.
On the other hand, there are technologies that DID impact the world in a big way, plenty of them. Why does nobody ever talk about those? VR and AR have huge investments and ecosystems already, and the biggest tech companies in the world (Valve, HTC, Facebook, Sony, Samsung, Google, Apple, LG) are putting huge resources into the future. Just two days ago there was a new $100M venture called ViveX announced. It's already *vastly* more capable and impressive and useful than 3DTV ever promised.
VR and AR is awe-inspiring -- I mean that it literally inspires awe, because I've seen it do so many times. I've demoed the Vive for about 18 people, some of whom went in very interested, some of whom were 'meh,' and some of whom had negative impressions of it. The reaction has been so amazing. I almost like demoing it more than using it myself -- it's so priceless to see people taken aback and inspired and surprised. Everyone, from skeptics to enthusiasts, has come out of it with huge smiles and impressed. Demoing has become one of my favorite things to do.
We're in first-generation VR, and it's only a month old today. The Vive could be more comfortable, the Rift IS more comfortable, but I've heard almost no negative feedback about wearing the headsets. People don't want to take it off!! When you see other people doing it, you want to jump in and do it yourself, and THEN you understand. The form factor will get better over time, but even now it's SO worth wearing something. I LOVE it.
It's understandable that not everyone will buy in to first-generation VR, as it is expensive, and it's a new way of thinking to devote space in your home to it. That kind of thing will change, as it does for any consumer electronics product. I'm an early adopter and I enjoy showing people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman
Meanwhile I await the news reports of people falling down and breaking their necks.
The Chaperone system keeps me safe. The one thing that's happened to me so far (and in VR I run, I jump, I duck, I crawl on the ground, I spin, I strafe, I get a REAL workout) was in Job Simulator after a bottle of wine at a VR party. Our guests were eating so I donned the Vive myself and was working in the Kitchen in Job Simulator and got so immersed that I leaned on the counter. Unfortunately the counter didn't exist for my physical body so down I went.
LIFE TRANSFORMING??!?! Come on now. Fun and cool as hell but... LIFE TRANSFORMING?!?!
Yep -- in that it has transformed my life. I now exist in three realities -- consensus reality, my dreams, and my VR environments. Simply put, I feel as if I teleport elsewhere. When I use the Vive I form memories of *having been somewhere else.* When I come back, I feel like I'm coming back. The internet was life transforming. VR is life transforming. It's the technology / consumer product that's had the biggest impact on ME, by far, since 1994, and makes me extremely excited that this is just the beginning, so I in all honesty and truthfulness confirm that it is life transforming.
I've done things in VR, already, one month in, that have changed the way I look at things. I can't wait to try new things in VR all the time. I've joined a wonderful community of VR developers and enthusiasts that's growing by leaps and bounds.
What we humans have created is a new communication, experiential, and artistic medium. Painting in Tilt Brush, in the "air," in 3D, with light and many other materials, is the most expressive I've ever been able to be with my art, I simply adore it. I experienced a simple 15 MB app last Friday called WhiskersBox that was probably the most beautiful and wondrous thing my eyes have ever seen, a feast for the senses. And the feeling of MOVING in VR.
I liked this quote from one of the many new users on the Vive subreddit: (EDIT: oops, just realized I already posted it in my first post in the thread )
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrine
I still think the greatest invention that you young people take for granted was the LCD Monitor. I can carry 6 monitors at once today. 10 years ago? Errr.....
Young people? How old are you? I'm 41.
I... can't tell if you're joking or not. LCD screens? I hardly noticed. I don't really carry monitors around very often though. You seriously can't be comparing thinner monitors with the amazing environments you can visit and experiences you can have in room-scale VR, right?
In a few years I reckon I won't have any physical screens. I can already use Virtual Desktop in VR with 4 virtual monitors, which is really cool, but the resolution is understandably limited for first-generation VR headsets (a lot of this comes down to where we are in the evolution of GPU speed, right at 6 trillion operations per second right now). Second generation VR should be 4K (1920 x 2160 per eye), 135 degree FOV, 120 Hz refresh, which will help a lot, but third generation VR (3450 x 3890 per eye, 165 degree FOV, 144 Hz refresh) will be where VR and AR truly replaces physical screens.
The adoption of technology you have to wear has never been much successful, e.g. 3-d TV. I realize this is different but that doesn't change the fact you have to wear something on your head. Once the novelty wears off it becomes a difficult sell.
Meanwhile I await the news reports of people falling down and breaking their necks.
There will be a learning curve like then people were throwing their wii controller at their TVs.
I thought I'd also respond to this post of yours from 519 days ago, from another thread on a similar topic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrine
You can't be this naive.
Because WE'VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE. Yea, it was exciting in the 90's... and guess what? It sucked. It didn't just suck. It was HORRIBLE.
I agree. Smartphones would have sucked too if, if someone had tried to make one in 1989, which is about as apt as comparing HTC Vive to 1990s consumer VR.
Here's a comparison. We'll use the 1995 Forte VFX1, which was pretty much the biggest and best VR you could get at home in the 90s.
Resolution: 263 x 230 per eye = 60,490 pixels per eye Screen Tech: LCD, 256 colors, high persistence, low fill percentage (high screen-door effect) Refresh: 50 Hz (not that you could really run anything at 50 fps, just that the screens could do 50 Hz) Field of View: 45 degrees diagonally Optics: rudimentary at best Positional tracking of headset and ability to walk around in a fairly large area? nope, only seated orientation tracking, and not very accurate tracking at that Tracked motion controllers? nope 3D Positional Audio and HRTF? haha Massive ecosystem and user-friendly tools for development, support, and distribution of software? oh he|| no Did anyone feel presence or even immersion? not even in the slightest Were computers very fast back then? no, we were just seeing the launch of the VERY FIRST true 3D card, the 3DFX Voodoo 1, in 1996, and we had Pentium 133s with 16 MBs of RAM (for $3000) as our state-of-the-art systems -- needless to say, they couldn't sustain very good realtime 3D in VR
Here's the Vive:
Resolution: 1200 x 1080 per eye = 1,296,000 pixels per eye (over 21 times as many) Screen Tech: OLED, 16 million colors, low persistence, high fill percentage (screen-door effect is greatly reduced, you never notice it when immersed and doing things) Refresh: 90 Hz (and I've never gone below 89 fps once in running the Vive) Field of View: around 120 degrees diagonally with optimum fit Optics: high quality custom variable depth fresnel Positional tracking of headset and ability to walk around in a fairly large area? yep, six degrees of freedom and 19' x 17' x 10' (3230 cubic foot) roomscale tracking has already been demonstrated with only 2 Lighthouse base stations and the tracking quality is OUTSTANDING -- you can jump, duck, crawl, etc. Tracked motion controllers? yep, sub-millimeter tracking of two controllers (so far) with six degrees of freedom within the entire room-scale area, and again the tracking is essentially flawless (it's very hard to occlude the tracking) and you can see your controllers inside the simulation 3D Positional Audio and HRTF? oh yah, and when it's done well it's phenomenal and renders any prior "3D audio" (on a flat, small window) pointless Massive ecosystem and user-friendly tools for development, support, and distribution of software? Unity, UnrealEd, Lumberyard, CryEngine VR, SteamVR, Direct3D 12, and massive online communities dedicated to supporting all of this Does anyone feel presence? Frequently! So many of the people I've demoed for have come back with "it feels so real," "it felt like I was really there," etc., and people are really taken aback at how PERSONAL being there feels -- I'm not showing them something on a screen that they can just dismiss, I'm sending them to a space that they then inhabit. It's so great to see skeptics get engaged and "get it" Computer power? My 6700K and GeForce 980Ti with 32 GBs of RAM is very capable; the 3D card is around 200,000 times faster than the best 3D card from 1996 and has 1500 times as much VRAM
------------------------------------------
So, yes, we had pretty objectively crappy VR in 1995.
VR in 2016 (which I call the first generation) does NOT suck, it's actually quite convincing and immersive and fun.
Second and third generation VR and AR will bring higher resolutions, wider fields of view, higher refresh rates (though 90 seems to be indistinguishable from reality for me), eye-tracking and foveated rendering, stereo pass-through AR, vestibular stimulation, completely wireless usage, real-time photogrammetry, complex finger and hand tracking, whole body tracking, lip sync and expression tracking, lighter and smaller form factors, customized HRTFs, leaps in GPU power, leaps in the usability of in-VR dev tools, etc.
It'll only get better, but it's already wonderful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peregrine
Put something out there, THEN you will see some excitement. Now? Just more blablabla...
There will be a learning curve like then people were throwing their wii controller at their TVs.
Yah, in my house we have a mandatory "wear your lanyards" rule for the controllers.
If I'm just working on one of my paintings in Tilt Brush or messing around in Fantastic Contraption or Modbox or something I sometimes won't wear them but if I'm in Holoball or Blarp! or Budget Cuts or something like that I always wear them. But new users must wear them.
Here's my friend in AltSpace with the lanyards on (on an old Vive dev kit) and also using Leap Motion and staring at a mirror: http://i.imgur.com/JsV5i9k.gifv
My autistic middle son suffers from a number of ailments. He has to spend every day attached for 8 hours to an IV for IVIG infusions and saline supplements. He has to be still for treatments, so this really limits his ability to "Be a Kid" and play freely outside and with friends. Recently, I let him try the Vive to see if he could handle the experience. Well, he more than handled it -- he was transported to another world. He now is able to travel to places, see other worlds, and interact while constrained with his chest port. I kept thinking of Bran Stark from Game of Thrones when he takes control of other beings.
I've been a long time VR supporter, with a DK2, CV1, and now the Vive. But the room scale with tracked controllers were the tipping point for him. I let him try various things before, but with an xbox controller the immersion wasn't convicing enough. I'm eagerly awaiting the Oculus touch.
With the Vive, he sat on top of the castle tower shooting arrows down in "The Lab" for hours. His creativity in Tilt Brush was inspiring. He loves Portal 2 and having him see GLaDOS in VR, his mouth dropped, and he stepped back. I really feel that VR can play a huge role in giving people with limited mobility the ability to experience things they thought were unreachable.
All of the efforts from Valve, Oculus, HTC, /u/palmerluckey, John Carmack (one of my life-long idols), and many others are going to make a much larger impact on the world outside of the gaming realm. I am really hoping that VR sticks around for good this time. I've loved VR and follow it for entertainment, but as a parent, seeing your son feel like a real kid is priceless.
I am greatly appreciative and want to thank the community as a whole.
I'm close to your age.,Keep in mind there is also the significantly cheaper GOOGLE CARDBOARD. I got a free one from Google. The viewers can be bought for Less then $20. You put your phone in and VOILA... VR.
It is NOT as good as the what... $700 Vive or the $600 Occulus. Don't remember exact prices on those. But it is certainly an inexpensive way to experience VR.
It is very cool, I never meant to imply that it isn't. As the OP said it's very fun to show people and since it's cheap, I've had 4 people buy their own cardboard viewers.
I just don't quite agree (yet maybe?!?) that it is life changing.
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