Woohoo! Virtual Reality will soon be ours!

[BodhiSci]

Woohoo!!! Virtual Reality Will soon be ours... :drool:

I thought from the video it was fake news at first, but Google has created a VR head mounted display out of.... wait for it..... cardboard! Better get a smartphone if u don't have one yet, cause that's all you need besides the cutout!

Google aims to dominate Facebook in virtual reality

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been waiting for VR to be common since the 80's. Google and Facebook are investing a ton of money in it and these carboard cut outs will be a great kickstart.

:wave:

 

[Grix]

Unfortunately these "drop-in-phone" VR devices like the cardboard, while pretty cool and makes a glimpse into VR's potential affordable for everyone, can not really compete with the dedicated VR HMD's like facebooks's oculus rift. Maybe this will change in a few years, but for now phones are not really suitable for VR. The latency is way too high, the screen refresh rate is too low and they lack features like positional tracking, low display persistence etc. The only exception is samsungs' gear VR, which includes external sensors and very low-level changes to the android OS itself to reduce latency and optimize for VR. But then again, this makes it almost as expensive as the rift itself, and only works on one type of phone, the note 4.

 

[tttonyyy]

The Rift really is submersive, for gamers definitely the way forward. I felt genuine fear of falling off things. It's been a long time since I felt wowed by new tech - I think the last time was seeing Duke Nukem 3D on a 486

 

[starlight]

Go Google.....the rift appered to be a poorly executed joke from what I saw

 

[tttonyyy]

Far from it - have you actually used one?

 

[Pman]

Hmmmm I have a note 4 (and love it)

 

[BodhiSci]

The Rift really is submersive, for gamers definitely the way forward. I felt genuine fear of falling off things. It's been a long time since I felt wowed by new tech - I think the last time was seeing Duke Nukem 3D on a 486

Haha, that's awesome. I remember that coming out and the same thing. Those were the days... I remember Wolfenstein 3D too, the first! Thinking about all these old games reminds me of computer games in the early 90's like Monkey Island, King's Quest, and Quesrt for Glory.... 256 colors!

Unfortunately these "drop-in-phone" VR devices like the cardboard, while pretty cool and makes a glimpse into VR's potential affordable for everyone, can not really compete with the dedicated VR HMD's like facebooks's oculus rift. Maybe this will change in a few years, but for now phones are not really suitable for VR. The latency is way too high, the screen refresh rate is too low and they lack features like positional tracking, low display persistence etc. The only exception is samsungs' gear VR, which includes external sensors and very low-level changes to the android OS itself to reduce latency and optimize for VR. But then again, this makes it almost as expensive as the rift itself, and only works on one type of phone, the note 4.

Yeah, but it is still VR and it is a lot better than the HMD's people have now (none really for the most part). It is a big jump despite it's primitive nature and obvious limitations... I think it will jump start things if enough people get them and the effect is decent. (I imagine it is if Google is putting their name on it), It's just a matter of what phone you need and how distributed they become, if it strikes a cord in the public that will be very good for other things as FB and Google seem heavily invested.

Expense has always been the biggest issue. Now we have computing power orders of magnitude higher... Just need some good platforms maybe. The technology seems the same to me, should be much cheaper now you'd think. I guess it is a production numbers issue. We are doing so much with phones, tracking and things, you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult. Good HMD's are probably the biggest obstacle. There is no excuse for any HMD not to have positional tracking nowadays. Seriously

Quantum and light computing, that's the ticket