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Rift / Vive / VR General

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
I'm not omitting, I just see some dopey make-believe Pie-in-the-sky stuff , you made a habit of believing.

Static fovated rendering is already in headsets as standard.

Dynamic one for basic resolution management to lessen GPU requirements it is ready today to put in future products. Even used with current lenses it will do just fine. Corners image will look the same as now but you will need 70% less gpu to run your VR games (with AI upscaling)

I already presented you with video which you again omit. So here you again:



Lenses sharpness at the edges is completely separate issue and frankly speaking not that great issue to begin with as even current lenses have pretty wide sweetspot which allow for plenty of dynamic FR with proper sharpness.
 

tritosine2k

Erudite
Joined
Dec 29, 2010
Messages
1,465
Get some good sources you will see plots about singlet vs multi element lens vs. fov, and learn to appreciate facebook's research stage flat lens that won't need multi element to fix field curvature ,as seemingly the dopey lesser manufacturers have no intention fixing that.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
Well like i said lenses shaprness is not really hot issue limiting VR. Resolution still is even with GEN2 and weight. So focusing on lenses right now doesn't make much sense for people who work on this.
 

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
Hyper Dash gets released in a few days on all platforms.



Its a classic arena shooter with dual wielding pistol gunfights and dashing. My favorite sidequest game by far.

Its one of those games that really shines with wireless mode though. My favorite way to play VR right now is to just pop on my Quest2 and play Contractors, Pop1 or Hyper Dash in my living room in which i have 4x4 square meters space to move around.

Yeah the graphics are inferior, but i take a larger playspace over enhanced pcvr graphics at least for a quick shoot em up.

HL Alyx is a must play however. I dont know how there can even be an argument about that.
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6

Image courtesy OpenBCI
Valve, OpenBCI & Tobii to Launch VR Brain-computer Interface ‘Galea’ in Early 2022
Including eye-tracking & "design elements" of Valve Index

By Scott Hayden


Valve co-founder Gabe Newell previously revealed Valve was working on a brain-computer interface (BCI) with OpenBCI, the minds behind open source BCI software and hardware solutions. Now Tobii, the eye-tracking firm, announced it’s also a partner on the project and that developer kits incorporating eye-tracking and “design elements” of Valve Index are expected to first ship sometime early next year.


Update (February 5th, 2021): Newell’s interview, which is referenced below in the original article, didn’t reveal whether OpenBCI project ‘Galea’ was the subject of the partnership, however now Tobii has confirmed that it is indeed the case along with a few other details.

Tobii will be lending its eye-tracking technology to Galea, which it says will incorporate design elements from Valve Index. Developer kits for early beta access partners will ship in early 2022, the companies say.

Reading between the lines somewhat, it appears Galea will not only include the sensors-packed strap, but also an eye-tracking enabled, possibly modified Valve Index headset.

Original Article (January 28th, 2021): Newell hasn’t been secretive about his thoughts on BCI, and how it could be an “extinction-level event for every entertainment form.” His message to software developers: start thinking about how to use BCI now, because it’s going to be important to all aspects of the entertainment industry fairly soon.

How soon? Newell says in a talk with News 1 that by 2022, studios should have them in their test labs “simply because there’s too much useful data.”


Gabe Newell (right), psychologist Mike Ambinder (left) | Image courtesy Valve
Newell speaks about BCI through a patently consumer-tinted lens—understandable coming from a prominent mind behind Steam, the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, and not to mention an ardent pioneer of consumer VR as we know it today.

To Newell, BCI will allow developers to one day create experiences that completely bypass the traditional “meat-peripherals” of old in function—eyes, ears, arms and legs—giving users access to richer experiences than today’s reality is capable of providing.

“You’re used to experiencing the world through eyes, but eyes were created by this low-cost bidder that didn’t care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it got broken there was no way to repair anything effectively, which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is not at all reflective of consumer preferences. So the visual experience, the visual fidelity we’ll be able to create — the real world will stop being the metric that we apply to the best possible visual fidelity.”

On the road to that more immersive, highly-adaptive future, Newell revealed Valve is taking some important first steps, namely its newly revealed partnership with OpenBCI, the neurotech company behind a fleet of open-source, non-invasive BCI devices.

Newell says the partnership is working to provide a way so “everybody can have high-resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets, in a bunch of different modalities.”

Back in November, OpenBCI announced it was making a BCI specifically for VR/AR headsets, called Galea, which sounded very similar to how Valve’s Principal Experimental Psychologist Dr. Mike Ambinder described in his GDC 2019 vision for VR headsets fitted with electroencephalogram (EEG) devices.


OpenBCI hardware | Image courtesy OpenBCI
Although Newell doesn’t go into detail about the partnership, he says that BCIs are set to play a fundamental role in game design in the very near future.

“If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake,” Newell tells 1 News. “Software developers for interactive experiences — you’ll be absolutely using one of these modified VR head straps to be doing that routinely — simply because there’s too much useful data.”

There’s a veritable laundry list of things BCI could do in the future by giving software developers access to the brain, and letting them ‘edit’ the human experience. Newell has already talked about this at length; outside of the hypotheticals, Newell says near-term research in the field is so fast-paced, that he’s hesitant to commercialize anything for the fear of slowing down.

“The rate at which we’re learning stuff is so fast that you don’t want to prematurely say, ‘OK, let’s just lock everything down and build a product and go through all the approval processes, when six months from now, we’ll have something that would have enabled a bunch of other features.”

It’s not certain whether Galea is the subject of the partnership, however its purported capabilities seem to line up fairly well with what Newell says is coming down the road. Gelea is reportedly packed with sensors, which not only includes EEG, but also sensors capable of electrooculography (EOG) electromyography (EMG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and photoplethysmography (PPG).

OpenBCI says Galea gives researchers and developers a way to measure “human emotions and facial expressions” which includes happiness, anxiety, depression, attention span, and interest level—many of the data points that could inform game developers on how to create better, more immersive games.

Provided such a high-tech VR headstrap could non-invasively ‘read’ emotional states, it would represent a big step in a new direction for gaming. And it’s one Valve clearly intends on leveraging as it continues to both create (and sell) the most immersive gaming experiences possible.

https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-openbci-immersive-vr-games/
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
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Messages
1,765
Location
dm6


Nightdive developer confirms full VR mode for System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition
Andrew Boggs

2021 Feb 17, 04:08

System-Shock-2-VR.jpg

Classic game centric developer Nightdive Studios has confirmed its upcoming enhanced edition of seminal sci-fi adventure System Shock 2 will include a fully fledged VR mode after a tease for the feature was released earlier this year.

The enhanced version of the classic game was announced way back in 2019 and it was originally planned to have improvements to co-op play and employ the same engine used to create its enhanced version of System Shock 1 - which added the likes of 4K support, achievements, and improved controls. Now, they will have all that and more, a VR version of the game.

Speaking to IGN, Nightdive confirmed that the VR version of the game even has its own development team.

They said: “During the process of reverse-engineering the missing libraries for System Shock 2, we had an opportunity to play around with the idea of creating a standalone VR version. And so, we brought on an [VR] expert to look about the cod and give us a brief idea of what kind of things we could do.”

The VR will be totally playable alongside the standard PC experience, that means that one player could be in VR and play a co-op game with a friend on a regular PC. This VR version of the game doesn’t look like it will be some tacked on stripped down version of the game but instead a fully fleshed out and playable version able to compete with the regular game.

They have yet to announce the released date for the VR version, but they were keen to point out that it is still in the prototype stage at the moment and will likely release it some point after the standard game has launched.

https://www.vrfinal.com/nightdive-d...-vr-mode-for-system-shock-2-enhanced-edition/
 

tritosine2k

Erudite
Joined
Dec 29, 2010
Messages
1,465
Patent: Optical Field Curvature Control Using Multi-Layer Fresnel Lens In Vr

Publication Number: 10215890

Publication Date: 20190226

Applicants: Google
Optical Field Curvature Control


...but hey, noone said curved displays are E-Z (not even for megacorps apparently), so this exists (and stray light stuff because it's so apparently ridged) :

831e2d2b41682bf66e6efeckbu.png



(And optical aberration outside dead center IS a foveation issue because your eyes rotate ).
 
Last edited:

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/02/23/introducing-the-next-generation-of-vr-on-playstation/
February 23, 2021
Introducing the next generation of VR on PlayStation
50092820456_effd2224dc_k.jpg

First details on the next-generation VR system coming to the PS5 console.

unnamed-file-761.jpg

Hideaki Nishino Senior Vice President, Platform Planning & Management

More than four years ago, we launched PlayStation VR to offer a transformative new way to play games on PS4, providing a much stronger sense of presence and deeper immersion to players compared with traditional games. In that time, we’ve seen tremendous experiences that have propelled virtual reality gaming forward, including highly acclaimed titles like Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Tetris Effect, Blood & Truth, Moss, Beat Saber, and Resident Evil 7 biohazard. We’ve also enhanced the experience for some PS VR titles when played on PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5.

Today I’m pleased to share that our next-generation VR system will be coming to PlayStation 5, enabling the ultimate entertainment experience with dramatic leaps in performance and interactivity. Players will feel an even greater sense of presence and become even more immersed in their game worlds once they put on the new headset.

We’re continuing to innovate with our new VR system so that our fans can continue to enjoy the unique experiences that are synonymous with PlayStation. We’re taking what we’ve learned since launching PS VR on PS4 to develop a next-gen VR system that enhances everything from resolution and field of view to tracking and input. It will connect to PS5 with a single cord to simplify setup and improve ease-of-use, while enabling a high-fidelity visual experience.

One of the innovations we’re excited about is our new VR controller, which will incorporate some of the key features found in the DualSense wireless controller, along with a focus on great ergonomics. That’s just one of the examples of future-proof technology we’re developing to match our vision for a whole new generation of VR games and experiences.

There’s still a lot of development underway for our new VR system, so it won’t be launching in 2021. But we wanted to provide this early update to our fans, as the development community has started to work on creating new worlds for you to explore in virtual reality.

We also want to thank all of our PS VR players for your continued support — with upcoming games like After The Fall, Sniper Elite VR, and Humanity, there’s much more to come for PS VR whether you’re playing on PS4 or PS5. With both PlayStation VR and the next-generation VR system we’re building, our commitment to virtual reality as a medium for games is stronger than ever. We look forward to sharing more details in the future!
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6
Fucking finally, I've been waiting for this so long.
Some more info

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/cultu...cialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social


PlayStation’s Jim Ryan: ‘We’re making a completely new VR format for PS5’

By Robert Leedham23 February 2021
Surprise! PlayStation head honcho Jim Ryan has some news to share on PS5 stock, Sony’s 2021 release schedule and a new PlayStation VR headset

Jim Ryan has a lot to get off his chest. If we’re honest, it’s a lot more than we’d prepared for. You see, usually when you interview someone – not least the president and chief executive officer of Sony Interactive Entertainment – you go into that conversation with some semblance of what’s to come. So when we got offered 20 minutes with the PlayStation boss out of the blue last week, it did seem a bit too easy-going to be true. “A follow-up to our PS5-related chat last November,” we thought, “should be a breeze.”

Then the affable Geordie started dropping bombs. A follow-up to PlayStation VR? Confirmed with dev kits out in the wild and an “easy single-cord setup”. More free games for those stuck at home during the pandemic? Yep, Play At Home is back starting with 2016’s Ratchet & Clank and a three-month trial to anime subscription service Funimation with “some cool stuff with indie games” to follow. What about PlayStation games on PC? A whole slate of them is on the way starting with Days Gone this spring. And as for Sony’s publishing timetable for the year? Well, Covid has been up to no good again and booted Gran Turismo 7 back to 2022. Don’t worry, plans for the Uncharted movie and Last Of Us TV series are very much on track.


So, yeah, all of our best-laid plans went out of the window in quite spectacular fashion. What follows next is an edited version of us scrambling to get our heads around a grand splurge of announcements that pretty much set the PlayStation 5 up for most of 2021. As ever, Ryan remained cheerily straightforward company. You don’t get a lot of waffle from the chap: either a full answer or a quick demur with few tangents for the sake of chewing the clock off an interview. Since half the known universe would be out for blood if we didn’t ask the obvious question, we took a little detour of our own to start things off.


GQ: Since we’ve got you here, when is everyone who wants to buy a PS5 going to be able to easily buy one?

Jim Ryan: All I can say is we’re working as hard as we possibly can. You may have read that we sold 4.5 million PS5s at the end of December – that’s more than we did PS4s in 2013 and that was the high watermark for the PlayStation generation. So, with everything in the world throughout last year, we feel like that was fairly decent. One in four of those who have bought a PlayStation 5 do not have a PS4 and those around about half are new to the PlayStation Network. So it’s really nice that we’re able to bring in people from outside.


I know there were people who wanted a PS5 and couldn’t find one. We’re very sorry about that and obviously grateful that demand has been as strong as it is.

What’s holding back production? We’d imagine it’s more than just Covid.

Obviously in a pandemic supply chains become a little more complicated than would normally be the case. You know, one very visible example is the difficulties in the semiconductor market. You know, whether it’s automobiles, smartphones, PCs or games consoles, the problems in all those areas are very widely documented. We had to move to a distribution model that is entirely online and that’s something that we never had to do before. And, finally, just the level of demand for PlayStation 5. So, you know, all of those things kind of combined.

We’re working as we always have, but with renewed vigour and energy post Christmas to get supply up, it will increase as each month passes. And the situation will start to get better hopefully quite quickly. We have been relentless in terms of trying to increase production and I really can’t say any more than that.

So, just to be clear, there’s no date on it? You’re doing your best and it will happen when it happens?

We’re doing our best. I was just looking at the supply figures for the UK – we put a considerable amount of product into the UK market last week. And that will continue over weeks and months to come.


Fair enough. We imagine you’ve got a roadmap for 2021 in terms of the games that you want to release. How fixed is that given the disruptions Covid-19 has caused to development? Returnal recently got pushed back a month.

Yeah, we’re feeling pretty good about Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Horizon Forbidden West. And, you know, there are two approaches to this: you can either hold the date and put out the game irrespective of quality or you can ship it when it’s right. We have always taken the latter approach. There have been some fairly high-profile instances of publishers trying the former approach.

That’s one way of putting it...

It never works at the best of times. But I think in this world, where creative people are working remotely, you’ve just got to respect the fact that that development needs to take what it needs to take and to get the games right.

So one game you didn’t mention there that had been dated for 2021 is Gran Turismo 7. What’s going on with that one?

At this point a PR representative for Sony jumped into the call promising a statement on GT7 – probably in the hope that we’d actually ask about some of the many new announcements. You can read that statement below...

“GT7 has been impacted by Covid-related production challenges and therefore will shift from 2021 to 2022. With the ongoing pandemic, it’s a dynamic and changing situation and some critical aspects of game production have been slowed over the past several months. We’ll share more specifics on GT7’s release date when available.”


All right, PlayStation VR 2. The second PlayStation VR. What are we calling it at the moment?

We’re not calling it anything at the moment.

So the obvious question is what’s changed from the first headset?

So this will be a completely new VR format for PS5. PlayStation has considered VR as a strategic opportunity and a big innovation story. We think there are two themes that you’re going to see: us capturing the technological progress that has taken place since the present VR system came to market and a considerable amount of lessons learned. Because the present system was our first one. [Changes will be] things like moving to a very easy single-cord setup with this one and many other similar learnings. Dev kits are about to go out.

VR is getting a lot more traction now, but it’s still a nascent market. Why make a follow-up to the first headset?

We believe in VR and have been extremely happy with the results with the present PlayStation VR and think that we will do good business with our new VR system for PlayStation 5. More importantly, we see it as something beyond this coming iteration that really could be really big and really important. We like to innovate; we think our community likes us to innovate. I’d turn around the question and say, “Why not?” For us, it’s a very logical step to take. We’re very excited by it and we think that people who are going to make VR games for our new VR system are going to be very excited too.


So the big difference, which you mentioned there, is that it’s going to be one cord that you connect to your PlayStation 5…

That was a very simple and visible illustration of a lesson that we’ve learned from when iterating from the present system to the new one. We’re not actually releasing any specs at this stage. That will start to come over the course of this year when we’ll be talking more.

The PS5’s launch line-up was very bullish. Can we expect the same for this new PS VR?

We’re not saying anything specific today about any developer support, whether it’s our own studios or any of our publishing partners, but obviously we will launch our new VR system with appropriate software support.

Fair enough. So releasing PlayStation games on PC was something that Sony PlayStation held back on for a long time. Now it sounds like you’re very much on that bandwagon. What changed?

I think a few things changed. We find ourselves now in early 2021 with our development studios and the games that they make in better shape than they’ve ever been before. Particularly from the latter half of the PS4 cycle our studios made some wonderful, great games. There’s an opportunity to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognise the economics of game development, which are not always straightforward. The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the calibre of the IP has improved. Also, our ease of making it available to non-console owners has grown. So it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.


This is following on from your publishing Horizon Zero Dawn on PC in August last year. How did that go?

We assessed the exercise in two ways. Firstly, in terms of the straightforward success of the activity of publishing the game on PC, people liked it and they bought it. We also looked at it through the lens of what the PlayStation community thought about it. There was no massive adverse reaction to it. So we will continue to take mission steps in this direction.

Jim%20Ryan%201%20high%20res.png

So you noted earlier that the PS5 has already brought some new users into the fold. It was also said by Sony that 87 per cent of people with a PlayStation 5 are subscribed to PlayStation Plus. How does that affect your plans for the platform moving forwards?

It’s pretty much what we expected. The early audience is an audience that likes to engage with PlayStation Plus; many of them like to play online multiplayer and they like the instant PlayStation Plus collection.


You’re going to give away some more old games for free as part of Play At Home, but you’ve also increasingly released new games to PlayStation Plus subscribers, such as Destruction AllStars and Bugsnax. Is that something that’s going to continue?

Yes, it is. We see this is a very interesting and innovative way to publish games and to make games available to our subscribers. It works for us as the publisher and we know that subscribers to PlayStation Plus love it.

And, finally, what was the last game you played on PlayStation 5?

Astro’s Playroom is a great game. You know, for an old-time PlayStation guy like me, I love all those Easter eggs that go back into all those games that I enjoyed many, many years ago.
 

A horse of course

Guest
If it helps keep VR thrive, all good. Not interested in more PSVR myself though.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Several reasons one should care:
- Oculus/Facecock are not appreciably in the PC Games Market anymore, they're going to fund/produce Mobile Shovelware from hereon out. PSVR, especially one aimed at PS5 Specs is basically of similar performance to PC
- PSVR, even though rather rudimentary sold over 5 million units and is arguably the best selling single HMD, this one might do the same or better broadening the high-end VR market as opposed to Mobileshit (I'm also expecting Valve to release Half Life: Alyx and possibly other upcoming VR games on it)
- SONY has first-party studios producing VR games and third parties will be targeting the platform instead of the "Quest" trickling down PC titles. A lot of titles like Moss, Paper Beast, Robinson: The Journey, Falcon Age or Tetris Effect that first released on PSVR eventually ended up on PC (Personally I'd still like to see ResEvil VII, Deracine, Table of Tales and Ghost Giant ported). Maybe there'll even be SNOY VR releases on PC like Zero Dawn/Days Gone
- Depending on the hardware used, it might actually even be a decent PCVR HMD with Custom drivers or similar and might actually work like a good VR HMD with proper Positional Tracking and Tracked Controllers as opposed to one only Perkel can like
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6
PSVR can easily have the best VR controllers with the Dual Sense haptic feedback. Also looking forward to Resident Evil 8 (according to leaks they're already testing VR but couldn't meet the FPS expectations on the last gen consoles), Astrobot 2, Gran Turismo 7 and Dreams (native PS5 version).
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6
SteamVR Update Brings Full Support for OpenXR 1.0, A Huge Step for the Open Standard
ByBen Lang

Feb 24, 2021


The latest update to SteamVR, version 1.16, now includes full support for OpenXR 1.0, the widely backed industry standard which aims to make cross-platform VR development easier by allowing developers to build around a single API rather than porting their apps to many different APIs for different headsets. SteamVR’s support for OpenXR 1.0 is a huge step forward for the adoption of the standard.


SteamVR is the leading platform for PC VR thanks to its wide ranging support for every major PC-compatible headset. This makes it one of the most important platforms to adopt OpenXR, which will make it easier for developers to create applications which work seamlessly across a growing number of VR headsets.

Valve says that version 1.16 of SteamVR, available today to all users, “now passes all OpenXR 1.0 conformance tests on Windows for Vulkan, OpenGL, D3D11, and D3D12.”

This means that Valve is now giving VR developers the greenlight to build and distribute OpenXR apps which will seamlessly support major headsets with less work from developers. Such apps will also be compatible with other OpenXR platforms even outside of SteamVR (for instance, a developer could theoretically distribute the same OpenXR application on Steam and Oculus PC without making any changes to the code).


Image courtesy Khronos Group
SteamVR version 1.16 also brings a handful of fother improvements, including more options for VR app rendering performance (like throttling, prediction, and motion smoothing). You can check out the full patch notes here.

OpenXR has been in the works for several years, and has garnered backing by many key players in the XR space. The 1.0 version of the standard was announced in 2019 and has been slowly but steadily finding its way into key VR platforms and game engines like Oculus Quest & Rift, Windows Mixed Reality, Unity, Unreal Engine, SteamVR, and more.


https://www.roadtovr.com/steamvr-update-brings-full-support-openxr-1-0/

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/250820/view/3044967019267211914
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Last edited:

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6
Just remember that Doom 3 BFG Edition had full VR support a long time ago and Zenimax made Carmack remove all the VR code from the game because of the Bethesda-Facebook lawsuit. And now they're trying to cash in on VR lmao

 

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