Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate.
Death to the Project Santa Cruz, long live the Oculus Quest. Now that Oculus Connect 5 is officially in the books, we know the real, consumer-facing name of Facebook’s upcoming standalone VR headset and we actually had the chance to go hands-on with the device from the show floor in San Jose.
We got to play Superhot VR, Tennis Scramble, Dead and Buried Arena, and Face Your Fears 2 on the device and overall came away extremely impressed. The Oculus Quest will ship in Spring 2019 for $399 and includes two 6DOF Touch controllers as well as the headset itself, which is entirely standalone, 6DOF, and wireless. It represents a middle ground between the Go and Rift.
We still don’t know the full launch lineup, but we do know at least 50 games will be ready by the release date including Moss, Robo Recall, and more. All of technology is really, really impressive — but is it enough?
At the OC5 keynote Mark Zuckerberg said that in order for a VR ecosystem to be self-sustaining and successful, it needs about 10 million users. There are only 3 million PSVR headsets out there and we still don’t know a number for Rift, but it’s fair to assume less than 1 million since that hasn’t been announced yet. In our hands-on I stated that this could be the VR headset for everybody, but what do you think?
So, if the Quest is going to be the breakout success that Facebook hopes, it needs to do really, really well. Which brings us to the following question: Do you think the Quest will outsell the Rift? Will it do so well that the Oculus Quest becomes Facebook’s primary device going forward? Will this become the best-selling headset ever? Why or why not?
Let us know what you think down in the comments below and make sure to watch our live Q&A show from last week for more details.
Could Oculus Quest, Facebook’s newest standalone VR headset, ever be used to run PC VR experiences? It’s not likely, but the company did discuss it.
Oculus boldly proclaimed that Quest could deliver ‘Rift quality experiences’ at its reveal at Oculus Connect last week. In reality, though, the kit just isn’t as powerful as the PCs that run Rift, which is why games like Dead And Buried are making compromises to fit onto the platform. The idea of plugging a Quest into a PC to serve as a replacement Rift is an attractive one, then, but Oculus CTO John Carmack isn’t making any promises.
“We did not add any dedicated hardware to act as a PC display (it was debated a lot),” Carmack replied when asked about possible PC VR streaming to Quest on Twitter, “but we have a research project going to see what we can do with maxing out WiFi streaming. No promises…”
Wireless streaming to PC VR headsets has become an increasingly promising means of cutting the chord between two devices over the past few years. HTC is even starting to roll out an official wireless adapter for its Vive VR headset this month. That said, users need a strong WiFi connection to keep any additional latency to a minimum.
With its improved display resolution and inside-out tracking, PC VR support could make quest an attractive upgrade for existing Rift-owners. Oculus is courting developers to bring some of Rift’s biggest games to the platform, including Moss and Superhot, but wireless streaming could let users experience those games with higher fidelity visuals and perhaps even grant access to games that don’t come to Quest. Sadly, it definitely doesn’t seem like such a feature will be available at launch early next year.
ILMxLAB, Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment division, is bringing a Darth Vader-themed VR series to the recently announced Oculus Quest. With six main films dedicated to telling to Vader’s story though, you’d think there wouldn’t be much left to say about the franchise’s archetypal ‘dark father’. The developers behind the upcoming Vader Immortal however say in a blog post that there’s more to learn about Darth Vader, and it’s going to be canon to the series.
Written and produced by David S. Goyer, screenwriter behind a prolific body of works including The Dark Knight franchise and the location-based VR experienceSecrets of the Empire, the new VR experience is slated to be a three-part series set between Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
The studio is staying pretty tight-lipped for now on specifics, although we’ve been told that users will visit Darth Vader’s castle on the lava-world of Mustafar, which was first seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There, we’re told that we’ll “encounter Vader himself and wield a lightsaber.”
According to ILMxLAB, Vader Immortal “counts [as canon], and was hatched and developed with guidance from the Lucasfilm Story Group. It will be an official part of the overall saga, adding to what we know of Vader and his story, and of everyone and everything else that Vader Immortal touches.”
“We came up with the concept, and then we had a conversation about where in the timeline it would fit,” Goyer says. “Everyone felt very strongly that it’s a legitimate Vader story and that it advances the ball in terms of who he is and what his goals are. We were also determined to make sure that it’s a story you can only experience in VR. There aren’t any other plans to port this into any other medium. We wanted to design it specifically for VR.”
Users will also be able to explore Vader’s castle, which ought to reveal what Goyer calls “some other depths to his character that might be difficult to experience in other mediums.”
Vader Immortal is set to launch in tandem with Quest sometime in Spring 2019.
Every weekendVRFocusbrings you a number of sports and eSports related virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) stories as part of This Week In VR Sport. This week, the Mount Royal University Cougars women’s soccer team is using VR to help with recruitment and training, Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR is coming to PlayStation VR, and Oculus talk about the blood, sweat, and tears of eSports at Oculus Connect 5.
Mount Royal University Using VR Try-Outs For Their Women’s Soccer Team
Those looking to earn a spot on the Mount Royal University Cougars women’s soccer team may soon find that their try-out goes beyond the pitch and into VR.
As reported by globalnews, the University is looking to explore how they are use VR technology to help them recruit players and train athletes already on the team. This came around following Cougars head coach Tino Fusco notices the importance of review match footage. After reaching out to Mount Royal University associate professor Anthony Chaston, a way to incorporate VR into his coaching was developed.
By taking 360-degree video of Cougars players during practice matches the plan is to use the footage to immerse players and recruits into a real soccer scenario and see how they perform. The system could also be used by the coaches to provide them with a unique perspective to review plays and improve their teams performance.
“If I can get a recruit in my office and sit her down and put the headset on her and actually be on the field and be able to see 360 degrees, now I’m able to challenge the athlete and say, ‘Do you understand the game?’” Fusco said.
The solution could see the recruitment process for the team become more in-depth while all allow Fusco a means to challenge the teams knowledge and performances in an immersive way. As the technology continues to get rolled out to the team, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest.
Racket Fury: Table Table VR Coming To PlayStation VR Next Month
Earlier this week it was revealed that developer 10Ants are bringing their VR table tennis title to PlayStation VR next month. Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR was originally released for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive back in 2017 and then the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR earlier this year. Now, the title will be coming to the PlayStation VR headset giving even more players a chance to enjoy some sci-fi inspired table tennis.
“We can assure that the game is exceptionally challenging, engaging and fun! Thanks to the advanced physics, developed in cooperation with professional TT players, every match you’re about to play is going to be a really immersive experience” said Sebastian Boczek, CEO of 10Ants Hill in a statement.
Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR gives players the chance to experience a realistic and immersive table tennis experience that will see them traveling to a range of sci-fi locations. With advanced physics and challenging AI opponents to face, the title is able to recreate the real-world feeling while also putting a few twists on things. There is even a workshop where players can develop their unique robot-character to create the ultimate table tennis player.
Oculus Talk eSports At Oculus Connect 5
At the recent Oculus Connect 5 event, Christopher K. McKelvy, Head of eSports at Oculus to the stage to deliver a short keynote on the companies current and future VR eSports plans. Titled “Blood, Sweat, and Tears: A Tale of VR Esports” the talk explores what makes VR so appealing within this rapidly growing and expanding market sector. Oculus have a vision to grow the VR eSports ecosystem and feel that it will play a key part in the future of gaming as a whole.
As mentioned in the talk, the market is on track to have an audience size of over 500 million with $1.5 billion (USD) expected in revenue. Titles such as Onward, Sprint Vector and The Unspoken are some of the titles that are mentioned during the talk as being some of the most played and most successful on the Oculus store.
Oculus are of course heavy invested in the VR eSports scene being involved in the VR League, which held it’s season 2 finals at the Oculus Connect 5 Event. One part of the keynote that is a nice touch as well is that McKelvy spends a moment talking about the players and some of their stories, even sharing his own. The full talk, which last around 17 minutes, can be watched below and goes over Oculus’ strategy to revolutionize eSports and keep creating more excitement.
That is all for This Week In VR Sport. For more on immersive sport news keep reading VRFocus and remember to check back next week for another This Week In VR Sport.
Oculus Connect 5 is now officially in the books! The past few days in San Jose, CA have been full of excitement and news for the VR industry from all of the upcoming Rift games like Stormland and Defector to the official announcement of the $399 standalone VR headset, Quest. We’ve got a lot to unpack today and discuss, along with a live Q&A for all your burning questions!
We’ll be livestreaming ourselves (that’s me, David Jagneaux and Ian Hamilton) from meat space as our actual selves in the real world in front of a green screen to show footage and images. The stream will be starting at approximately 2:20 PM PT and we’ll aim to last for around an hour or so. We’ll be livestreaming directly to the UploadVR Facebook page will also be using Restream to go directly to YouTube, Twitch, Periscope, and Mixer as well. Either way, you can see the full stream embedded right here down below once it’s up:
Oculus hat vor wenigen Tagen die Oculus Quest angekündigt, doch viele Informationen sind erst nach der Präsentation durchgesickert. In diesem Artikel geben wir euch alle Fakten an die Hand, damit ihr selbst entscheiden könnt, ob sich das Warten auf die Quest auch lohnt.
Oculus Quest – Grafik und Rechenleistung
Eine der wichtigsten Fragen ist sicherlich: Wie gut sehen Spiele mit der Oculus Quest aus? Zwar kann man heute noch kein finales Fazit ziehen, aber erste Eindrücke geben uns bereits einen Hinweis auf die Leistung der VR-Brille.
Die Oculus Quest besitzt ein OLED-Panel mit einem PenTile Sub-Pixel Layout. Dementsprechend sind die Farben knackig und die Schwarzwerte ansehnlich. Dafür kann es aber beim Abspielen von Szenen mit hohem Kontrast zum Ghosting kommen. Ähnlich also wie bei der Oculus Rift, jedoch ist der Screendoor-Effekt geringer ausgeprägt und erinnert eher an die Vive Pro. Laut Road to VR sei es nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass Oculus auf dieselben Displays wie HTC setze.
Die Framerate der PC-Brillen schafft die mobile Lösung jedoch nicht und setzt auf eine feste Rate von 72 Hz (Oculus Go kommt auf 60 Hz). Die Linsen wiederum sind identisch zu den Linsen der Oculus Go, was der Brille zu einem großen Sweetspot verhilft, jedoch auch zu God Rays bei hohem Kontrast führt. Glücklicherweise besitzt die Quest im Unterschied zur Go einen Regler zum Einstellen des Pupillenabstandes, wodurch der Bildeindruck für viele Menschen deutlich besser sein sollte.
Doch großartige Hardware bringt nur wenig, wenn sie nicht anständig befeuert werden kann. Oculus setzt bei der Oculus Quest auf einen Qualcomm-835-Prozessor, welchen wir auch in neuen Smartphones finden können. Danke Optimierungen und Verzicht auf die typischen Smartphone-Funktionen bleibt jedoch mehr Power für die Darstellung von VR-Inhalten übrig. Dennoch sind die Inhalte für die Oculus Quest nicht mit Inhalten für eine PC-Brille vergleichbar. Ben von Road to VR schreibt hierzu auf Reddit:
“Erwartet “eine gute Grafik auf Mobile-Niveau”. Alles, was bei der Connect gezeigt wird, verwendet sehr einfache Texturen und Beleuchtungsmodelle, sodass sie in der Lage ist, ein gutes Anti-Aliasing zu erzielen, aber man kann immer noch sehen, dass die Pixel auf dem Bildschirm nicht so genutzt werden, wie es mit PC-Headsets möglich ist. Wie wir bei der Go gesehen haben, wird es wahrscheinlich ein breites Spektrum an Inhaltsqualität geben. Einige Sachen auf der Go sehen schlecht aus und andere Sachen sehen überraschend gut aus. Es kommt darauf an, wie gut die Entwickler/innen darin sind, ihre Titel zu optimieren und innerhalb der, durch die Hardware gesetzten Grenzen zu arbeiten.” (Quelle: Reddit)
Generell scheint Oculus die Zielgruppe der Gamer im Blick zu haben. Allerdings scheint man eher den Nintendo-Weg gehen zu wollen. Einfache Grafiken sollen durch einen schnellen, simplen Zugang und spannende Konzepte ausgeglichen werden. John Carmack zog selbst auf der Connect 5 einen Vergleich zur Switch und sagte:
“Realistisch gesehen werden wir mit der Nintendo Switch als Gerät konkurrieren” (YouTube) und ganz abwegig scheint diese Idee nicht. Immerhin ist die Oculus Quest theoretisch eine geschlossene VR-Konsole, die alles mitbringt, was ihr zum Zocken benötigt. Zudem steht schon ein Nintendo-Like-Spiel mit Tennis Scramble in den Startlöchern:
Oculus Quest – Tracking, Arena-Scale und Controller
Auf der Connect hat Oculus verschiedene Arena-Scale-Spiele gezeigt. Darunter Dead and Buried Arena, welches auf die neue Inside-out-Tracking-Technologie Oculus Insight setzt. Mittels vier verbauter Weitwinkelkameras in den Gehäuseecken der Brille wird die gesamte Umgebung sowie die Position der Controller erfasst und mit Computer-Vison-Algorithmen in Echtzeit verarbeitet.
Dabei wird die Position des Trägers mittels Kopf- und Handtracking ohne externe Sensoren ermittelt, was freie Bewegungen im Raum ermöglicht. Das Guardian-System verhindert währenddessen wie gewohnt die Kollision mit Objekten in eurer Umgebung, auch in mehreren Räumen dank Multi-Room-System. Das Tracking kann innerhalb mehrerer geschlossener, gut ausgeleuchteter Räume oder einer großen Arena eingesetzt werden. Insgesamt ist die Abdeckung einer Reichweite von bis zu 3,7 Quadratkilometern möglich.
So auch in der vorgeführten Demo-Version des Arena-Shooters. Innerhalb der MR-Erfahrung treten bis zu sechs Spieler/innen gleichzeitig in einer 450 Quadratmeter großen Fläche im Lastertag-Stil gegeneinander an. Dank dem Tracking-System können sich die Kontrahent/innen frei in der Arena bewegen und hinter echten Deckungen vor virtuellen Geschossen Schutz suchen. Das Arena Scale wird zum Start zunächst allerdings nicht für Konsumenten nutzbar sein. Derzeit befindet sich das System noch in einer experimentellen Phase. (Quelle: Road to VR)
Die 6DoF-Controller der neuen Quest-Brille ähneln stark den Touch-Controllern der Oculus Rift. So teilen sich beide Varianten dieselben Buttons und Thumbsticks. Eine Veränderung findet man lediglich im Design, da der Tracking-Ring umgekehrt wurde, um den Kamerasensoren das Auffinden zu erleichtern. (Upload VR)
Image courtesy: Upload VR
Gabor Szauer erläuterte in der Keynote “Porting Your App to Oculus Quest” die Limitationen der neuen Controller. Demnach decken die verbauten Kameras der Brille zwar den vorderen Sichtbereich ab, sobald man seine Arme jedoch zu weit nach hinten streckt, kommt es zu Tracking-Verlusten. Das hat einen maßgeblichen Einfluss auf diverse Gameplay-Elemente, die derzeit in verschiedenen Titeln zum Einsatz kommen. Entsprechend ist es nicht möglich mit den Controllern hinter den Kopf zu greifen, ohne das Tracking zu verlieren.
Die Entwickler/innen können diesem Problem jedoch mit einem geschickten Algorithmus entgegentreten, um die ein bis zwei sekündigen Situationen zu überbrücken. Dadurch kann beispielsweise das Greifen hinter dem Rücken gefaked werden, wie es andere Inside-Out-Systeme, wie die Windows-VR-Brillen bereits vormachen. Ein weiteres Tracking-Problem kann beim Übereinaderhalten der Controller auftreten, wenn das Sichtfeld zwischen Kamera und Eingabegerät blockiert wird. (Quelle: Upload VR)
Oculus Quest – Preis und Verfügbarkeit
Als Zwischenstück zwischen Go und Rift soll die neue Quest die besten Eigenschaften beider Brillen kombinieren und damit einen unkomplizierten Einstieg in die Virtual Reality überall in der Welt ermöglichen.
Die Oculus Quest soll mit 64 GB Speicher ab Frühjahr 2019 für 399 US-Dollar erscheinen. Wie viel die neue Brille hierzulande kosten wird, ist derzeit noch nicht bekannt.
Speaking on stage at Oculus Connect this morning, Oculus CTO John Carmack gave his signature unscripted talk, somehow going into depth despite covering a wide range of topics from Go to Quest to Rift, and plenty more. Part of his talk offered some insights into the relative power in the Quest headset and the expectations that developers and users should consider.
Oculus Quest is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip which isn’t uncommon to find in modern smartphones. Because it doesn’t have to be crammed into the tight confines of a phone, however, the processor can be run more aggressively without overheating. In fact, Quest has a fan inside to further dissipate heat and keep the headset at peak performance.
Photo by Road to VR
But how does a Snapdragon chip with active cooling translate to actual processing power and what kinds of games and graphics can developers expect to achieve? Oculus CTO John Carmack offers some insights..
“In terms of raw processing power […] Quest is in the neighborhood of the power of a previous gen Xbox 360 or PS3 […],” Carmack said at Oculus Connect. “But the important thing to keep in mind is that most games in that generation rendered a 1,280 × 720 view at 30 FPS and most of them didn’t have very good anti-aliasing. While in VR, we’re hoping you can render at 1,280 × 1,280—twice for stereo—at 72 FPS, which is eight and a half times more pixels than you would have on an old [Xbox] 360 game. Plus you want to be at 4x MSAA and Trilinear Filtering which are some percentages additional on top of that.”
So even though Quest has roughly the processing power of an Xbox 360, the greater demands for rendering VR content at higher resolution and framerate mean we shouldn’t expect to see ‘Xbox 360’ graphics from Quest any time soon, says Carmack.
“So it is not possible to take a game that was done at a high quality level, like a AAA title for [the Xbox 360] generation, and expect it to look like that in VR—it’s so many more pixels to wind up rendering.”
But, Quest isn’t without at least some advantages, which developers should hope to exploit to optimize their titles.
“On the upside [Quest has] far more texture memory and far more main memory in general than [anyone] had on those platforms, so some of the development can be easier, and in many cases you can trade really rich textures for complex shaders and multi-pass rendering in different ways,” Carmack said.
But whether or not Quest can deliver graphics which come close to what’s seen on PC today doesn’t impact the “core magic”, as he puts it, that Quest can deliver.
“I do stand by the statement that I made that the core magic of any Rift experience can be brought to [Quest],” he said. “But you can’t ignore the level of processing power differences. A big high-end PC can use up to 500 watts of power, and something like [Quest] is burning 5-something—there’s almost a factor of 100 difference in the total power.”
Image courtesy Oculus
Given Quest’s positioning between the low-end Go and the high-end tethered Rift, Carmack believes that Quest will be look at by customers as a portable gaming device, and that means direct competition with Nintendo’s popular Switch console.
“Essentially, realistically we are going to wind up competing with the Nintendo Switch as a device where I don’t think there’s gonna be that many people who say ‘I’m not gonna buy a PS4, I’m gonna buy a Quest instead,’ I think we’re gonna have people that—like I’m a gamer, I’ve got my brand of choice for the main console, maybe I’ve got a PC to play games on—I’m gonna pick up a Quest as a mobile device, very much like the Switch is [perceived by consumers] right now.”
If that’s true, it means Quest will need to deliver very compelling content and tremendous value to customers in order to be relevant to a large number of users, especially considering that Switch sells for $100 less than Quest, and could be even cheaper by the time Quest launches in Spring 2019.
Auf der Oculus Connect 5 wurde die neue VR-Brille Oculus Quest enthüllt. Mark Zuckerberg verspricht, zum Startschuss über 50 Titel auf dem Niveau der Oculus Rift bereitzustellen. Um welche VR-Spiele und -Erfahrungen es sich dabei handelt und welche Entwicklerstudios ihre Arbeit für das neue System bereits bekannt gegeben haben, erfahrt ihr hier.
Oculus Quest – VR-Spiele und -Erfahrungen für die neue VR-Brille
Die neue Oculus Quest möchte als mobiles VR-Spielsystem den Mainstream erobern. John Carmack sieht sie in direkter Konkurrenz zur Nintendo Switch, um ortsungebunden in ein virtuelles Gaming-Erlebnis einzutauchen. Damit die Käufer/innen bereits zum Release genug Auswahl erhalten, sollen laut Oculus über 50 VR-Titel bereitstehen.
Einige Studios hielten nicht lange hinter dem Berg und veröffentlichten kurzerhand ihre anstehenden Releases. So veröffentlichte das Team von Superhot, dass SUPERHOT VR auf der Quest spielbar sein wird. Eine Demo wurde bereits auf der OC5 vorgestellt. Auch die Titel Moss von Polyarc Games, Robo Recall, The Climb und Dead and Buried wurden bereits bestätigt. Auch Sci-Fi-Freunde kommen mit der neuen VR-Erfahrung Star Wars: Vader Immortal voll auf ihre Kosten.
Eine einzigartige Arcade-Multiplayer-Erfahrung soll Dead and Buried Arena bieten. Mit Mixed-Reality-Technologie bezieht der VR-Titel dank eingebauten Kameras das reale Umfeld mit ein und vermischt somit virtuelles Arena-Shooter-Gameplay mit Deckungen aus der realen Welt. Wie der MR-Titel umgesetzt wird, bleibt noch abzuwarten. Auf der OC5 konnten bis zu sechs Teilnehmer/innen auf einer 450 Quadratmeter großen Fläche gegeneinander antreten
Sportlicher geht es dagegen in Tennis Scrampe zu. Mit einem Schlaggerät eurer Wahl dürft ihr auf dem virtuellen Tennisplatz in Wettkampf treten und euch die Bälle um die Ohren hauen.
Neben den VR-Spielen wurde der angsteinflößende Nachfolger Face Your Fears 2 von Turtle Rock Studios verkündet. Erneut dürft ihr euch euren Ängsten stellen und in gruselige Szenarien eintauchen.
Face Your Fears 2 is at #OC5 being played hands on for the very first time! Check it out if you're here… and very, very brave. pic.twitter.com/dp8Sg6e3Kn
Oculus Quest – Unbekannte VR-Titel von bekannten Entwicklerstudios
Wenn auch bisher noch ohne öffentliche Releases, haben diverse Entwicklerstudios ihre Arbeit an VR-Software für die kommende Oculus Quest angekündigt. Dazu zählen Twisted Pixel (bekannt für Wilson’s Heart), High Voltage Software (bekannt für Dragon Front), Sólfar Studios (bekannt für In Death), Ready at Dawn, Schell Games, Vertigo Games, BigScreen und viele mehr.
Hugo Barra, Vice President von Facebook VR, kündigte die Arbeit der Devs folgendermaßen an:
“Diese Teams erforschen derzeit, welche Möglichkeiten die Oculus Quest offenbart und welche zukünftigen VR-Titel damit umsetzbar sind.”
One of the first titles announced for Oculus Quest is the oddball Project Tennis Scramble; a tennis ‘simulation’ that really wants you to know to it’s heard of the Mario Tennis series. And this is no bad thing; next to the aggression of Dead & Buried Arena, the puzzling of SUPERHOT and the rather dry horror of Face Your Fears 2, Project Tennis Scramble is the only light-hearted experience yet seen on Oculus Quest.
The experience begins with a short tutorial wherein the player grabs a racket and is taught to hit the ball. Simple enough; but in doing so you are also taught about the limits of the play space. Project Tennis Scramble was in fact the only experience at Oculus Connect 5 which offered two different sized play spaces; one for each player. Once the tutorial has ended the player is transported into a brightly coloured arena that sits somewhere between a Super Mario videogame and #Selfie Tennis, and then the man himself pays us a visit.
A giant ball with arms floats from the ceiling and suddenly upon the screen appears Jason Rubin, VP of Content at Oculus. He delivers a message welcoming the players to Oculus Quest and to Project Tennis Scramble itself, with thanks to Armature for their work, and wishes the player fun. It’s a rather peculiar introduction, but a welcome one given Rubin’s last-minute absence from Oculus Connect 5.
Matches in Project Tennis Scramble are directly comparable to Wii Sports’ tennis; the direction and speed of the player’s contact with the ball has less importance than simply making said contact. The players build a rally and as they do two special effect devices appear within the scene and hitting either of them will induce a variety of changes, such as turning the ball into a beach ball or shuttlecock.
The match set-up at Oculus Connect 5 was a simple first-to-five points arrangement, but that certainly helps with the flow-through of players on a busy show floor. How Oculus and Armature plan on expanding the formula into a fuller experience – or even if they will attempt to create a product from this tech demo – remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be unlike Oculus to offer Project Tennis Scramble as a free download with Oculus Quest in a similar fashion to Farlands with the Oculus Rift.
That would of course be the best-case scenario for Project Tennis Scramble, as while it is fun for a few minutes it’s an undeniably shallow experience. Much like Wii Sports, Project Scramble Tennis is an easy sell to many people, but now that we’ve had been through that Wii phase would it be enough to sell the $399 (USD) Oculus Quest on? It’ll make a good stepping stone for friends and family of the early adopters, but Project Scramble Tennis in itself is unlikely to be the title that convinces anyone to part with their cash.
Legendary programmer and Oculus CTO John Carmack took the stage today at Oculus Connect to have another one of is famous off-script, stream-of-thought talks. Carmack was instrumental in architecting the company’s mobile VR platform, so when he talks about the 3DOF standalone headset Go, pretty much everyone listens. There’s a few sore spots in Oculus Go that Carmack thinks could be solved in the next generation of low-cost VR standalones.
“One of the really gratifying things to me is that the problems that people have with Go right now, they tend to be real world problems rather than ‘VR geek’ problems,” Carmack explains, starting off into his hopes for the next generation of casual mobile devices.
According to Carmack, the most important area for improvement is battery life. This, he explains, could be done in a number of ways, including putting in a bigger battery, a higher-spec battery, having more power-efficient silicon, or streamlining code. Even with a higher-spec battery though, one of the areas that definitely needs to improve is fast charging.
“It’s great to hear people have a device that they’re upset – that they’ve used Go earlier and it’s not fully charged up and they want to use it again. That’s a good problem to have.”
Image courtesy Palmer Luckey
One area that still needs a lot of work, Carmack says, is in the comfort department. In typical Carmackian fashion, he spoke candidly about Oculus’ priorities, saying he didn’t think the company has really put comfort at the top of the list. “It’s all been about packing the technology in and somehow wrapping a comfortable shape around that technology,” he said somewhat dejectedly, later pointing to hardware hackers who’ve improved Go by replacing the headband with a halo-style band, similar to the one found on PSVR.
“If we start getting to a point where we’re willing to sacrifice some technology in some cases in the name of comfort, for a lot of people that’s going to be the right trade-off.”
More internal storage is important too, but what Carmack calls a “failure of the product” is the Go’s controller inherent ability to drift, requiring a user to recenter its virtual position to match the physical object. Here, in the casual class of standalone VR hardware, there’s an argument to be made for inside-out depth sensors and some kind of optical controller tracking like that implemented in Oculus Quest, the newly announced high-end standalone headset with positionally tracked headset and controllers. The associated cost to the system’s compute overhead however makes this a daunting task.
Better resolution is also on the list, although Carmack thought cellphone companies would have started producing 4K resolution panels for smartphones by now, which the VR industry would co-op into VR headsets. “VR companies are going to have to foot the bill on next generation display density increases,” he concludes.
Photo by Road to VR
The seemingly lesser items on Carmack’s list garnered quick mention, including hand tracking, which could technically replace a controller for casual media consumption, although it comes with a significant computational cost.
An ambient light sensor could allow the headset to automatically adjust the displays illumination intensity for those moments when you’re in a dark room and don’t want too much light leakage to disturb another person.
Because the sun’s rays can ruin VR displays by magnifying through the headset’s lenses, sunburn protection for a next generation device makes sense to Carmack. An LCD layer that darkens upon contact with the sun’s rays could work, although a quick fix could be making the faceplate of the headset so it isn’t flat so users don’t leave it resting on tables, lenses pointed upwards.
Photo by Road to VR
In the end, Carmack reveals that the Oculus Go was initially a side project, and that Oculus Quest was the big gamble. Since the headsets were developed contemporaneously though, and targeting different sectors of the market—Oculus Go focused on media consumption, and Oculus Quest focused on gaming—there hasn’t been enough time to learn from Go and implement much into Quest, meaning some of these outstanding wishes aren’t entirely solved by the upcoming Quest.
The experience begins with a short tutorial wherein the player grabs a racket and is taught to hit the ball. Simple enough; but in doing so you are also taught about the limits of the play space. Project Tennis Scramble was in fact the only experience at Oculus Connect 5 which offered two different sized play spaces; one for each player. Once the tutorial has ended the player is transported into a brightly coloured arena that sits somewhere between a Super Mario videogame and #Selfie Tennis, and then the man himself pays us a visit.
The match set-up at Oculus Connect 5 was a simple first-to-five points arrangement, but that certainly helps with the flow-through of players on a busy show floor. How Oculus and Armature plan on expanding the formula into a fuller experience – or even if they will attempt to create a product from this tech demo – remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be unlike Oculus to offer Project Tennis Scramble as a free download with Oculus Quest in a similar fashion to Farlands with the Oculus Rift.
