Hi guys, since I haven’t seen any thread about Sony’s announcement regarding it’s VR project, which I thought would be a hot topic here, I’ have been wondering if any of you have the Oculus Rift, I’m really excited about these technologies and seriously considering to buy the new DK2 in conjunction with MS’s Kinect to implement some ideas based on phenomenology (a mind theory besides other things). Any experiences?

I haven’t tried either but I think they’re pretty cool ideas, especially with the head tracking. I wonder if it covers your field of vision as to put you in the game or just look at a screen like the Virtual Boy.

The best thing about the Sony Morpheus is that the Move is compatible. Let the rip-off technologies come together! I kid, but seriously, a Star Wars game where I am a Jedi is still something I want. Kinect isn’t good enough to handle that, I’d prefer some buttons anyway.

Oculus Rift has a lot of potential too, as it’s going to be open-source? Or at least somewhat like that. Like how the best uses of Kinect 1 wasn’t official games but applications made by regular people.

I was one of the original backers of Oculus Rift on Kickstarter and have had my Dev Kit for about a year now. It covers almost your complete field of view and with it’s head tracking, puts you in the middle of the virtual world where you can freely look around. I shouted out loud when I was first standing in the tuscany demo! It’s extremely immersive. After a little while, I almost forgot that I was standing in a virtual room.

The first dev kit has a lot of limitations. A low-res display, causing large pixels – the so called the screen door effect. If you don’t move your head slowly, you notice a lag, so latency could be better. And not all movements in all directions are detected; for example you could not lean to the side to peek around a corner.

All these things will be fixed or at least must less noticeable with the new dev kit. I don’t know if I’ll get it or wait for the consumer version this time, though.

One thing is for sure, the consumer version will change gaming!

I really envy you KR115E haha.

I’ve got the idea that it should be possible to create a strong sense of “decoupling” by using Kinect and Oculus Rift by reproducing your movements using the tracking capabilities of Kinect but not to place your “virtual head” over your “virtual body”, but instead to letting you see it from a 3rd point of view. There are already experiments using VR which make you feel you’re out of your body by feeding a stereoscopic video of yourself by moving a dual camera around, but I imagine that if you are given a task like a puzzle to solve by using in conjunction the visual and physical sensations, since you stop worrying about the simulation and have to concentrate in the task at hand, it could retrospectively create the illusion of some kind of onmipresence, just like when after you do any task you have the experience of having been conscious of all the sensitive stimulus (vision, hearing, etc.) regarding of not being paying attention to all of them at the same time.

I know that Kinect 1 has a lot of lag and may not work at all for what I envisioned, but I think that something like Move won’t suffice either, so I have to settle for Kinect 1 until the 2 is available for PC.

I was hyped when Oculus Rift was announced first. I didn’t back because I rather wanted to wait for the consumer version. I have to say that I’m kind of disappointed that it is not available yet.

I heard only good things about Morpheus so far. Depends a little on the price point but knowing myself I will most definitely ending up owning it. Not so sure about the Rift anymore.

Yeah from a consumer perspective I prefer Sony’s solution too, I just can’t handle PC gaming anymore, tried it once and I ended up spending more time trying to get the games running at a smooth framerate without losing visual fidelity than playing them. I know I know, console gaming is far off from the perfect visual/smooth experience, but since you can’t tweak anything I just completely forget about that and just enjoy myself playing. But from a developer perspective I don’t see Sony allowing Indie access to their VR SDKs anytime soon, so I will eventually double dip if Morpheous catchs on, for now just want to make sure the Rift is a justified purchase.

I watched the Tested.com review of both from GDC, and I gather that Morpheus is a direct clone of the Rift, with a bigger budget thrown at the product design side of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony had a spy back the KS just so they could get access to the “behind-the-scenes” development info. It uses the PSEye (or whatever it’s called on the PS4) for the head tracking (using visible LED’s rather than the Rift DK2’s IR ones), but knowing Sony, they won’t be passing the savings on to the consumer.

If I get either, it’ll definitely be a Rift, just so I’m not locked down to a single platform. But I’ll most likely just wait till prices come down on smallish, low-latency, HD screens and cobble together my own version from eBay bits. I’m actually more interested in the CastAR system.

Sigh… Facebook is buying Oculus Rift.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/25/facebook-oculus-vr-2-billion/

Sigh, indeed. I guess I’ll be more interested in Project Morpheus from now on. Unless Facebook has another spare 20 billion to spend and buys Sony, of course…

I know what everybody’s thinking now… but rest assured that Planet Virtual Boy will never be sold to Facebook. 😀