Oculus has finally confirmed an upgrade to the current Oculus Rift, revealing the Rift S today. Due around the same time as standalone headset Oculus Quest, the company had a couple of new titles to discuss for the mobile device, one of which is Shadow Point, the latest from British team Coatsink Software.
Known for titles including Esper, Augmented Empire and They Suspect Nothing, this new virtual reality (VR) experience by Coatsink looks like an epic puzzle adventure. In Shadow Point players head up to a mountain observatory to unravel the mystery of a missing schoolgirl. They’ll head to a strange world in the heavens, encountering all sorts of surreal locations whilst solving an elaborate assortment of puzzles along the way.
Having previously used the voice acting skills of Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul), and Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black, Star Trek Voyager), the studio continues to stay on point courtesy of the legendary Sir Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men, TED).
Shadow Point is set to include full locomotion support so players can wander around to their heart’s content, with the experience designed specifically for Oculus Quest. Coatsink have yet to confirm whether Shadow Point will be a launch day for the headset, or whether it’ll arrive soon after.
Oculus Quest is Facebook’s completely wireless head-mounted display (HMD), with inside-out tracking, Touch controllers, built-in audio and running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. Listed for a Spring 2019 launch retailing for $399, the device has already had several videogames confirmed for launch, including Moss and most recently Beat Saber, which was only confirmed this week.
With it being the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 this week expect lots of VR news over the next couple of days, with VRFocus bringing you the very latest updates and announcements.
We all knew 2019 was going to be a special year for virtual reality (VR), three years since the original consumer headsets arrived it was time to bring some new toys to the table. HTC Vive did that with the Vive Focus Plus and Vive Pro Eye, while rival Facebook and its Oculus Quest headset is soon to arrive. However, it’s the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 and surprise surprise the Oculus Rift S has now been officially announced.
Rumours first emerged last November, claiming that the Oculus Rift S wouldn’t be a new model, rather an upgrade with slight improvements. From what’s been announced today ‘slight improvements’ doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s been done.
Firstly, the Oculus Rift S is still a tethered headset, with Oculus’ head of VR Nate Mitchell mentioning to VRFocus at GDC 2019 that: “We didn’t think wireless was right for Rift S at this point,” referring to weight and balance when adding a battery. The device has had the expected upgrades with a higher resolution display offering a resolution of 2560×1440 and improved optics to make experiences look even better, with new ergonomics through a partnership with Lenovo. There’s no mechanical IPD adjustment anymore, with the new headset featuring a face slider similar to PlayStation VR.
One of the biggest changes from the original Oculus Rift is that the Rift S now features inside-out tracking – so no more external sensors. It’ll have five sensors – one more than Oculus Quest – with the fifth providing a larger tracking area.
Thanks to Oculus’ software the Rift, Rift S and Oculus Quest will all feature crossplay compatibility to help populate multiplayer videogames, plus VR titles will be able to offer cross-buy compatibility as well – although developers decide this not Oculus.
When it comes to the controllers, the Oculus Rift S’ is the same as Oculus Quest, and they’ll both work with the original Oculus Rift. However, the original Touch controllers will not be compatible with the new head-mounted displays (HMD).
Oculus will be making a big push on Rift S and Quest this year, recently Oculus Rift has been getting harder and harder to find at retailers. “We’re in the process of phasing out the original Rift right now… we don’t expect there to be any crossover at all,” was the response VRFocus got from Mitchell on Rift vs. Rift S.
Oculus Rift S is scheduled for a Spring 2019 launch, with a retail price of $399 USD. With the headset competing with Oculus Quest at the same price point it’ll be interesting to see how the market develops. Oculus is confident, however: “We believe this price point and this hardware is right for the audience right now,” Jason Rubin, Oculus’s Vice President of Content commented to VRFocus. As further details are released, VRFocuswill keep you updated.
Oculus today announced the new Rift S headset which ditches external tracking sensors in favor of a five-camera inside-out tracking system. The headset also gets a slight bump in resolution over the original Rift while moving from OLED to LCD displays. A brand new head mount design revamps the headsets ergonomics with a ‘halo’ style strap and top strap. Rift S will be priced at $400 at launch this Spring.
Rift S is Oculus’ first new PC VR headset since the launch of the original Rift back in 2016, but the company has made quite clear that this isn’t a ‘Rift 2’, hence the use of the ‘S’ moniker, which Oculus chose to signify that Rift S is a replacement for Rift, not a sequel.
Oculus Rift S Specs at a Glance
Here’s a quick look at the Rift S specs and further down is a deeper look at the most important changes and how they compare to the original Rift.
Pricing: $399
Availability: Spring 2019
Weight: A little more than Rift
Display:
Resolution: 1,280 × 1,440 per eye (2,560 × 1,440 total)
Type: Single fast-switch LCD
Refresh Rate: 80Hz
Field of View: ‘Slightly larger than Rift’
IPD Adjustment: Software only
Tracking:
Type: ‘Insight’ inside out – five cameras
Capabilities: Supports 6 degrees of freedom head and controller tracking
Recommended Environments: It should work in almost any lit indoor environment.
Recommended Playspace: Oculus Rift S works with your environment, so you can play standing or sitting, in spaces big or small.
Tether:
Length: 5 meter
Connections: DisplayPort 1.2 & USB
Passthrough:
Passthrough+: Low latency stereo-correct passthrough video
Guardian: Boundaries traced from inside headset using passthrough
Recommended PC Specs:Same as Rift except need DisplayPort 1.2 or later and just one USB 3.0 port instead of three
Even so, Rift S is more than just the original Rift with some new components inside. It’s an entirely new headset, and in fact Oculus says they tapped Lenovo to help in design and manufacturing.
Rift S brings a bump in resolution over the original, now using a single display which amounts to 1,280 × 1,440 per eye, up from the 1,080 × 1,200 displays in the original Rift, which gives Rift S 1.4 times the total number of pixels of the original Rift. This is also the same resolution found in Oculus Go, and a lower resolution than Oculus Quest (1,440 × 1,600). Rift S lacks the hardware IPD adjustment found on Quest, but supports software adjustments.
Not just a change in resolution, but Rift S now uses LCD displays rather than the OLED displays in the original. OLED displays typically have richer colors and better contrast than LCD displays which makes them great for dark content, but LCD displays for VR have gotten better in the years since the Rift first launched, and bring some benefits of their own.
Among the biggest benefits of moving to LCD over OLED is improved ‘fill-factor’ which means less screen door effect (the unlit space between pixels). So while the resolution improvement from Rift to Rift S doesn’t bring a significant increase in fidelity, it does bring a notable reduction in screen door effect which helps boost immersion. LCD is also typically devoid of mura.
The Rift S displays run at 80Hz, a change from the original Rift’s OLED displays which run at 90Hz. Oculus says that one reason for moving to a slower refresh rate was to avoid needing to increase their recommended VR specifications (to ensure that developers can continue to target one specification as the install base grows).
The lenses in Rift S are new and improved over the original Rift, and Oculus says they’re similar to what’s in Oculus Go and Quest (which have been touted as having better clarity and less pronounced god rays). The company tells Road to VR that Rift S has a slightly larger field of view than the original Rift, but declined to provide a specific figure.
Inside-out Tracking with ‘Passthrough+’
Image courtesy Oculus
On the tracking front, Oculus is ditching its outside-in ‘Constellation’ tracking system for ‘Insight’ inside-out tracking. That means getting rid of the external sensors needed for the Rift and instead using cameras on the Rift S itself so that the headset can understand its position in the world. As before, an on-board IMU does high frequency tracking while the inside-out system is largely used for less frequent drift correction.
The Insight system on Rift S is similar to Quest but has five cameras instead of four, and uses a different configuration. Instead of cameras mounted at the corners of the headset’s front panel, there’s two cameras toward the bottom of the front panel which face forward, one camera on the left and right of the headset which aim slightly downward, and one camera on top of the headset which faces the ceiling.
Not only does Insight mean that the headset is easier to use and set up, but it will also support larger (potentially unlimited) playspaces, and also means ‘room-scale’ tracking out of the box, which is a big shift from the default ‘front-facing’ setup used by the original Rift (which did support room-scale with an extra sensor and a more complicated setup). This aligns the headset’s tracking capabilities nicely with both Quest and other room-scale headsets like Vive, and may give developers a more consistent design space which would make it easier to design games that work across multiple headsets with fewer tweaks. Good timing considering the recent OpenXR news.
With cameras on-board, Oculus is also bringing pass-through video to the headset for the first time, a feature which allows users to see outside of the headset through the cameras. Oculus says they took extra care to make the camera input stereo-correct and low latency; they claim that passthrough on Rift S is better than anything else out there, including Quest’s passthrough function, which is why they’re calling it ‘Passthrough+’.
With passthrough on Rift S, Oculus has also developed a novel and likely easier way to facilitate Guardian setup (the headset’s boundary system). Instead of looking at the computer screen while using a controller to trace the edges of the playspace, users will simply wear the headset and use passthrough to look at the environment through the headset, then use the controller to trace a line on the ground to define the boundary.
New Design & Ergonomics
Image courtesy Oculus
Though the original Rift design has aged quite well, Oculus has scrapped it in favor of something brand new. The company says they partnered with Lenovo on the design and manufacturing of the headset, and some elements of Lenovo’s other VR headsets appear to shine through.
Most notably, Oculus has moved to a ‘halo’ style head strap with a crank on the back which tightens the band. The head mount mostly rests on the forehead while the rear of the strap offers some counter-weight for balance. Unlike most halo head mounts, Rift S adds a strap over the top of the head as well, which helps distribute some weight across the top of the head.
With the visor ‘hanging’ in front of the user’s eyes (instead of being squeezed against their face), Oculus has added a lens-to-eye distance adjustment; press a small button underneath and you can move the visor closer or further from your face. This is a welcome feature for both maximizing field of view across different face shapes, and making to fit glasses inside the headset.
The headphones on the original Rift have been removed in favor of a hidden ‘channeled audio’ approach for Rift S that’s similar to Quest and Go. Instead of over-ear headphones, there’s small openings along the headband near the user’s each which pipes in left and right audio. Rift S also now has a 3.5mm jack on the side of the headset for users who want to use their own headphones, though the halo-style headband may get in the way of certain headphones.
Oculus says the Rift S weighs “a little more” than the Rift’s 470 grams, but has declined to provide a specific figure.
Release Date and Price
Oculus says that Rift S is due out in Spring and will cost $400. The headset will replace the original Rift which the company says is being phased out.
Amidst GDC 2019 today Facebook announced a new version of the Oculus Rift called Rift S. It’s priced at $399 and will release this Spring.
Rift S replaces the original Rift. Apps and games are fully compatible between both. Just like the original, Rift S is powered by your gaming PC so should work on both the Oculus PC Store and other stores like Steam.
Updated Screen & Lenses
The original Rift used dual PenTile OLED panels for a total resolution of 2160×1200. Rift S replaces this with a single LCD panel with a resolution of 2560×1440- the same panel used in the Oculus Go standalone. That’s roughly 40% more pixels, and each pixel now has three subpixels instead of just two.
This provides a higher detail image with reduced “screen door effect”. However, you don’t get the deep blacks of OLED since LCD displays use a backlight. The refresh rate is 80Hz compared to the 90 Hz of the original, but we didn’t notice a difference.
Arguably the main flaw of the Rift was the “god rays” in the lenses which occured in high contrast scenes. Rift S uses the “next generation” lens technology introduced in Go which almost entirely elminates this issue. There’s no word on field of view just yet, but expect it to be similar to other Oculus headsets.
‘Insight’ Inside-Out Tracking: 5 Cameras
The Rift used external USB sensors for positional tracking. They were difficult to set up and you needed to buy a third for full 360 degree roomscale. Like the upcoming Oculus Quest standalone, Rift S instead uses onboard cameras for “inside-out” tracking.
However whereas Quest uses 4 cameras, Rift S uses 5 and they’re in different positions: 2 in front, 1 on each side, and 1 on top. This should provide a wider controller tracking range than Quest and should eliminate many deadspots.
When we tried Asgard’s Wrath, controller tracking was very fluid and we were even able to reach behind our back to grab the shield. When we played Stormland, we were able to grab a part of a wall behind us to shoot in the opposite direction while hanging.
The controllers are essentially identical to the original Oculus Touch, but with the tracking ring on the top instead of bottom. This lets the IR LEDs inside the rings be seen by the headset. These exact same controllers are used on Quest.
Rift S isn’t compatible with the original Rift sensors. Facebook seems confident their five camera system is so good you won’t miss sensors at all.
Comfortable Halo Strap
Whereas the Rift used a semi-rigid strap, Rift S uses a much bulkier rigid halo system similar to PlayStationVR. We found it to be a noticeable step up in comfort, balancing pressure well across the head.
However, it is now a heavier headset overall with the new strap making it fit less easily into luggage or storage.
The nose gap has also been redesigned, so you’ll no longer see much light from the real world coming from below.
No Physical IPD Adjustment
Each person has a different distance between their eyes- their interpupillary distance (IPD). The Rift, like the HTC Vive and Samsung Odyssey, featured physical lens separation adjustment to let users adjust the lens IPD to their own IPD.
Like PSVR, Rift S’s lenses are fixed in position. Instead of hardware adjustment, you enter your IPD in software. This wil correct scale issues, but unfortunately people with a very narrow or wide IPD will still experience blur and other visual issues.
Strap Pipe Audio
The Rift featured integrated headphones. These were removable but used a non-standard connector so you couldn’t use your own headphones. Rift S removes these headphones and instead features the same audio system as Go and Quest (GIF of Quest):
Sound is piped through the side straps directly to your ears. Having nothing against your ear makes sound feel more natural and lets you hear others around you, but the downside is it can be heard by others in the room and the audio quality may be lower.
The headset also features a 3.5mm jack so you can use your existing headphones or any you buy in future.
New Guardian, Passthrough+
The Rift’s setup process involved tracing out Guardian boundaries without wearing the headset. These boundaries appeared in VR when you get near them, but couldn’t be seen during setup and had to be redone if sensors were moved.
Rift S features a “proprietary technology” passthrough mode Facebook calls Passthrough+. This uses computer vision algorithms to deliver “stereo-correct passthrough”- although the view is black & white, not color. It can be activated at any time in Dash.
Passthrough+ is integrated into the new Guardian system. You now set up Guardian by drawing the bounds inside Passthrough+ and if you walk outside the bounds in VR, Passthrough+ will auto activate so you don’t bump into things.
PC Requirements & Cables
Despite having a higher resolution display than the Rift, Rift S maintains the same CPU and GPU requirements. That’s likely because it uses a similar default render resolution.
Whereas the Rift used a 4 meter HDMI cable, Rift S uses a longer 5 meter cable with a DisplayPort end. Just like Rift you’ll need 1x USB 3.0 port for the headset too, but since there’s no sensors anymore that’s the only USB port you’ll need.
There’s a Mini DisplayPort adapter in the box for laptops. There’s no word on VirtualLink support yet- there may be an adapter in future.
At a special GDC Oculus media event this week we got a chance to go hands-on with Sanzaru Games’ upcoming Norse-themed action adventure game Asgard’s Wrath, presented on Oculus’ newly unveiled ‘Rift S’ headset. It’s beautiful, difficult, and will definitely require time to master, as enemies are both difficult and also require a specific style of interaction to slay—something that may not be entirely intuitive at first.
Unlike Marvel Powers United VR (2018), the studio’s latest title isn’t the result of another Marvel/Sanzaru partnership, although it’s clear they’ve borrowed more than a few design cues from Marvel source material. The starting point—a gilded, mechanical observatory at the base of the rainbow bridge, Bifröst—felt like it was ripped directly from the film Thor (2011), looking eerily similar to Heimdall’s preferred chillout spot from the movie. Once you’re in the game proper though it departs a bit from the Marvel cinematics and settles into something more Skyrim-ish in nature, focusing on the earthy and decidedly more dangerous world of Midgard.
Before I get into the meat of the demo, I just have to say this first: so far Asgard’s Wrath is a strikingly beautiful game, and features some fine polish that is clearly approaching the ‘AAA’ department in terms of visuals.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
Before I started, I was told by Sanzaru that Asgard’s Wrath would feature 30+ hours of gameplay spread out over combat, puzzles, an overarching narrative, a cast of human avatars to embody & collect throughout the game, and wild animals to beguile and turn into allies. For the purposes of the demo though I was given an opportunity to play a quick taste of the beginning story, a few combat tutorials, and a wave-based combat sequence in a small arena—a total demo time of about 20 minutes.
Starting at the golden Bifröst observatory for a quick locomotion tutorial (the demo featured snap-turn and free motion), I was beckoned to walk down the rainbow road, which clanked into existence beneath my feet as I made my way to the portal to Midgard—the realm of humans and all sorts of nasty creatures. Transported to the world of mortals, I found none other than a horn-helmet-clad Loki entangled in an epic battle with a massive Kraken. As a giant, I was waist deep in a sea littered with tiny wrecked Viking ships, the scene of the battle where I would face off against the doubly massive octopus creature while consequently learning the ropes of the game’s melee combat system.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
As the sea undulated around me, miniature wreckage bobbing up and down in the swell, the Kraken began to fight back by flinging ships at me to deter my mission of freeing Loki. Cutting the ships down mid-air with my single-handed sword, I was then assaulted by short serpent creatures which would latch on to my body if I didn’t slice them to bits first (or alternatively grab them with my bare hands pop them like blood-filled balloons). That last bit was a little unexpected, and I was pleased to see the world work in a way I intuitively understood. Positional audio alerted me to the worm’s location, as they locked onto me while making a high-pitched scream.
Worms properly slain, the Kraken then went through a few loops of picking me up by its tentacles and stabbing me in the chest with a barbed proboscis, then putting me back down so I could slash at face-to-face. Eventually defeating the Kraken after a few successive loops, my ‘lesser-god’ status ostensibly became Loki’s new pet project. That’s where the story bit ended for my demo, and where I would start my true combat tutorial so I could learn how to face off against some decidedly more human-shaped foes.
From there I was transferred to a combat arena, stepping into shoes of a human hero called the ‘Shield Maiden’.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
To be clear, melee combat here isn’t purely physics-based; simply holding up your sword to block an incoming attack invariably results in the enemy landing a hard hit on you, knocking down a fair bit of your health points in the process. Enemy swords appear to clip through any weapon that doesn’t have enough force behind it; banging your sword and shield together elicits a weightless (and equally disappointing) clip-through. This, I find, is emblematic of the problem VR melee games face currently. Either they are entirely physics-based and risk resultant weirdness of incorrectly colliding with game geometry, or they require very specific movements from you to activate ‘parry’ or ‘slice’ and conversely don’t provide the immersion that physics-based weapons and enemies typically boast. Sanzaru is trying to find the right balance of each for Asgard’s Wrath.
Weapons essentially feel immaterial in Asgard’s Wrath. The game seems to be more centered around executing specific melee actions or gestures during key moments in the enemy’s animation, like parrying a sword attack, knocking a throwing dagger out of the air, or knocking back a baddie with your shield at key moments as they open up and telegraph specific attacks. That means you can’t swing willy-nilly, and that’s something I can appreciate without a doubt. Again, I only got 20 minutes with the game, so my impressions are more of a hot take than the end-all, be-all.
That said, all of this took a bit more practice to get right than I would have thought, especially because a failed parry or strike would leave the enemy entirely unphased. When I was confident I had parried correctly though, which lowered the baddie’s defenses, I was allowed the graceful, head-slicing execution I had been searching for.
Image courtesy Oculus, Sanzaru Games
At first, it wasn’t entirely apparent to me why I wasn’t able to hit/parry/disarm the baddie with confidence. It turns out each enemy has a specific animation that signals it’s ready to be attacked, but without a clear understanding of this (as someone playing a demo of the game) you’re basically hoping to catch him mid-strike and hope for the best. I imagine the game proper would give me more than ample time to figure this out, but it’s safe to say it’s not a title you can simply know how to play intuitively. That said, if Sanzaru plays their cards right and ultimately lands on a compelling combat system, it could form the basis of a norm going forward which will benefit players and games of the future.
After two combat tutorials, I then headed into the wave-based arena where I could apply everything I learned. As the Shield Maiden, I had a few holstered weapons at my disposal. My character, which I was told was one of many heroes to embody and collect throughout the game, had a one-handed sword, a magical throwing axe, and (of course) a shield.
While the battle axe does much less damage than a solid strike of the sword, it was probably the most satisfying to wield thanks to some aggressive aim assist to make me feel like I was throwing it correctly most of the time. Flicking my wrist would retract the axe back to my hand, letting me tactically toss it and get double the damage by recalling it straight through the backs of the ghoulish, hulking enemies. Destructible shields, health potions and a few other weapons were also scattered about.
Consumables like health potions are kept in a separate quick inventory that you can call up by depressing the left analogue stick. I have stupid hands, but it bears mentioning that I would often bring up the menu by mistake as I mashed down on the left stick for translational movement, instantly putting a stop to my awkward slashing as the game would pause thinking I wanted to fiddle with my inventory.
Image courtesy Oculus, Sanzaru Games
Even with my new found weapon skills and a handful of potions, enemies were surprisingly difficult. The pallid man-monsters eventually started showing up with more and more strike-resistant armor which I would have to break first before getting a clean blow on the fleshy bits of the six foot-tall beasts. I only got through five baddies before eventually running out of health potions and falling to my inevitable death—proof enough that I wasn’t entirely useless at the game’s combat system, but had a long path to mastery.
Upon death I was awarded a treasure chest, which—depending on how well I fought—contained more valuable loot such as animal pelts and larger amounts of gold, the latter of which could be used to buy stuff like potions and better gear.
In the end, I still really don’t know what to think about Asgard’s Wrath. I’m allured by the promise of “30+ hours of gameplay” and the well-realized graphics, but I still want to know how well the game’s non-combat moments will weave together combat sections and story. It’s still way too early to tell at this point however, as Sanzaru has only stated that Asgard’s Wrath will be due out sometime in 2019. As we understand it, there’s still plenty left to seebefore we get a clearer picture of exactly what Asgard’s Wrath is all about.
Zum dritten Mal wurden die Viveport Developer Awards veranstaltet, und wie jedes Jahr auf der diesjährigen GDC 2019 verkündet. Zu den Gewinnern in den verschiedenen Kategorien gehören unter anderem Apex Construct von Fast Travel Games und Bait! von Resolution Games. Die Sieger-Titel stehen ab dem 2. April im Viveport zur Verfügung.
Dritte Viveport Developer Awards – Gewinner auf der GDC 2019 verkündet: Apex Construct, Bait! und mehr
Ambitionierte Entwickler konnten im Vorfeld VR-Erfahrungen und -Spiele für die alljährlichen Viveport Developer Awards einreichen, um eine Chance auf Preise im Wert von insgesamt 50.000 US-Dollar zu erhalten. Zur Preisausschüttung gehören Geldpreise, Tickets für die GDC 2019, Vive-Hardware sowie Marketing-Unterstützung in Videoform im Format Viveport Developer Stories.
So konnte sich als erster Gewinner Apex Construct von Fast Travel Games in der Rubrik Entertainment gegen Blind von Tiny Bull Studios & Fellow Traveller durchsetzen und den ersten Platz auf dem Siegertreppchen einnehmen.
Im Education-Bereich wurde VR Frog Dissection: Ribit-ing Discoveries von VictoryVR als Sieger ausgezeichnet. Im Finale konnte das virtuelle Sezieren eines Frosches mehr Überzeugen als VR Regatta – The Sailing Game von MarineVerse.
In der künstlerischen Kategorie Arts & Culture wurde Claude Monet – The Water Lily obsession von Lucied Realities & Arte, Camera lucida, Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie mit dem ersten Platz ausgezeichnet. Die VR-Erfahrung gewann gegen den Finalisten MasterpieceVR vom gleichnamigen Entwicklerstudio.
In der Sektion Arcade wurde Shooty Fruity Arcade von nDreams Limited für den Platz eins auserwählt. Die VR-Erfahrung Summer Funland von Monad Rock muss sich mit dem zweiten Platz zufriedengeben.
Zusätzlich wurden in drei Wave-Kategorien Devs für die mobile Plattform Vive Wave ausgezeichnet. So konnte sich Bait! von Resolution Games (Entertainment), Star Chart von Escapist Games Limited (Education) und Paint VR von COSKAMI LLC (Arts & Culture) eine Auszeichnung in den Rubriken sichern.
Pimax präsentiert auf der GDC 2019 seine neue Brainwarp 1.0-Software, die mit Fixed Foveated Rendering,Smart Smoothing und Refresh Rate Switching das Äquivalent von FacebooksAsynchronous Spacewarp und Valves Motion Smoothing für die Pimax 5K- und 8K–Brillen darstellt und somit ein deutliches Performance-Upgrade darstellt.
Pimax Brainwarp 1.0 – Fixed Foveated Rendering, Smart Smoothing und Refresh Rate Switching für Pimax-Brillen
Das Fixed Foveated Rendering steht derzeit nur für Nvidia-RTX-Grafikkarten zur Verfügung. Die Funktion ermöglicht es, nur einen bestimmten Bildausschnitt im Sichtbereich in voller Auflösung zu rendern, um Rechenleistung zu sparen. Der vom menschlichen Auge kaum wahrnehmbare Rand wird zeitgleich in der Auflösung reduziert, um Rechenleistung zu sparen. Das Feature soll in naher Zukunft auch auf ältere Grafikkarten ausgeweitet werden. Oculus verwendet die praktische Funktion ebenso für seine Oculus Go und kommende Oculus Quest.
Ein Beispiel für Foveated Rendering von SMI
Das integrierte Feature Smart Smoothing aktiviert sich automatisch bei einem Framerate-Einbruch unter 90 FPS und sorgt für eine bessere Bildrate bzw. Darstellung der VR-Inhalte. Dabei wird die Framerate auf die Hälfte reduziert, während die restlichen Frames dank eines Algorithmus künstlich erzeugt werden. Sobald die GPU wieder die gewünschte Performance erbringen kann, wird auf die Standard-Rate zurückgeschaltet.
Durch das Refresh Rate Switching ist die Framerate sowohl für die 5K- wie auch für die 8K-Brille individuell festlegbar. So können die Nutzer zwischen einer Bildwiederholrate von 90 Hz, 72 Hz oder 64 Hz (bei der Pimax 5K und 5K+) bzw. 80 Hz (bei der Pimax 8K), 72 Hz oder 64 Hz auswählen.
ILMxLab is to finally demo its upcoming Star Wars Virtual Reality series, Vader Immortal at the annual Star Wars Celebration event in April.
We reported on ILMxLAB’s latest immersive VR experience way back in October last year, after the studio revealed that their forthcoming built-for-VR experience, set in the Star Wars universe, would form part of the official canonical Star Wars universe. The new experience is being co-developed with Facebook’s Oculus Studios and is due to debut on the company’s forthcoming standalone VR headset Quest.
After remaining schtum for months, ILMxLAB today announced that Star Wars fans can look forward to more details on the experience being revealed during this year’s annual Star Wars Celebration event, due to take place between April 11-15 in Chicago. They’ll also be able to go hands-on with the first episode.
Star Wars Celebration is the pinnacle fan event for the franchise, attracting 1000s of attendees every year and is traditionally a venue for big Star Wars announcements, trailers and games to be teased.
ILMxLAB has announced it’s to let fans in attendance go hands-on with the first episode of Vader Immortal, with demos powered by Oculus’ Quest headset, at the show. Here’s a snippet of the press release to set the scene:
Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series transports fans to the dark lord’s home turf of Mustafar, and with lightsaber in hand, puts them at the center of an original Star Wars story. The canonical immersive adventure takes place between Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope, and is set up by the events of Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, ILMxLAB’s award-winning location-based virtual reality experience.
ILMxLAB is also due to hold a panel discussion to dive into details on the first episode of Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series. The panel will feature David S. Goyer, the author of the debut episode, known for his work on the The Dark Knight film series.
Image courtesy Oculus
The timing is excellent as, although we still don’t yet have a firm release date for Oculus’ brand new high-end ‘standalone’ VR headset Quest, Facebook have said we’ll see the device ship some time in Spring – so even assuming the worst – it won’t be long before Star Wars fans can ‘get their vader on’, so to speak. Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series is confirmed as an Oculus Quest launch title.
If you’re heading to Star Wars Celebration, you can catch the panel at 1:30pm CST on the main stage.
At GDC this week Qualcomm announced an update to their VR845 reference design which allows it to also wirelessly connect to a gaming PC. The first headset to be based off this design and using its technology is the Pico Neo 2.
The Neo 2 will launch in the second half of this year. They aren’t announcing price just yet, but the Neo 1 was $749 and the Qualcomm VR845 development kit is $1600 so don’t expect it to be cheap.
In standalone mode the headset will have access to Viveport M– HTC’s mobile store used on the Vive Focus Plus. That means you’re not going to be getting access to the same level of games as Oculus Quest. But if you’re using your PC for games, standalone mode should be sufficient for media viewing.
In wireless PC mode it will work with HTC’s Viveport PC store, but it will likely work with SteamVR also thanks to that platform’s open driver model. Yes that’s right, you should be able to play SteamVR games wirelessly on this headset.
The wireless connection to the PC uses 60 GHz technology, just like the HTC Vive wireless adapter and TPCast. That allows for significantly higher bandwidth than WiFi and for low compression with low latency, but has to be within line of sight of the headset and needs a dedicated transmitter- not your router. This will likely add significantly to the cost, so it’ll be interesting to see whether the transmitter is included or sold separately.
There are no images of the Neo 2 or further details yet, but we’ll keep you updated as soon as Pico provides further information.
At GDC 2019 today Pimax released two new software features aimed at making its headsets easier to run. Fixed Foveated Rendering (FFR) and Smart Smoothing. The features work for both the 5K+ and 8K headsets.
Fixed Foveated Rendering renders at a lower resolution everywhere except the center of the lens. This is the same technique used on the Oculus Go and Quest standalone headsets. Pimax claims this provides a 10-30% performance improvement. Right now it only works on NVIDIA RTX GPUs, but the company is working on bringing this to older cards too.
Smart Smoothing is similar to Facebook’s Asynchronous Spacewarp and Valve’s Motion Smoothing. When your GPU isn’t making framerate, Smart Smoothing forces the running game to render at half framerate and synthetically generates every other frame. When the GPU is no longer being strained, the app is returned to full framerate.
Unlike Facebook and Valve, Pimax is giving users the ability to change the headset’s refresh rate. As well as the default refresh rate of 90 Hz and 80 Hz for the 5K+ and 8K respectively, users can now change it to 72 Hz or 64 Hz.
These new features and options are all aimed at making the Pimax headsets easier to run on existing GPUs. Tom’s Hardware recently benchmarked the headset using the $700 RTX 2080. While they were able to run simplistic games like Space Pirate Trainer smoothly, games like Arizona Sunshine and Serious Sam VR required turning the field of view down to 120° and setting the resolution far below native.
Hopefully the combination of FFR, Smart Smoothing, and the option to use a lower refresh rate will improve the Pimax experience.
Oculus Quest is Facebook’s completely wireless head-mounted display (HMD), with inside-out tracking, Touch controllers, built-in audio and running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. Listed for a Spring 2019 launch retailing for $399, the device has already had several videogames confirmed for launch, including Moss and most recently Beat Saber, which was only confirmed this week.
Rumours first emerged last November
Thanks to Oculus’ software the Rift, Rift S and Oculus Quest will all feature crossplay compatibility to help populate multiplayer videogames, plus VR titles will be able to offer cross-buy compatibility as well – although developers decide this not Oculus.
