The HTC vive is the most impressive piece of technology i've ever used

Been full aboard the VR train for 3 years now, I do full time VR development and have used practically every piece of VR tech out there, including Oculus Rift CV1, PSVR, and the Vive Pre. Wednesday, my Vive consumer version arrived, and for the first time I was able to play with it in the comfort of my own home, in privacy, for as long as I want.

Let me first qualify my statement by saying that I think headset-only VR like the Oculus Rift CV1 is pretty awe inspiring, but not nearly in the same way the Vive is. I liken trying the Oculus Rift to the uncanny valley - the closer you get to being "inside" the game, the more you notice the disconnect between areas of the tech that aren't quite up to par. The first time you try an Oculus Rift DK1, you think it's amazing that it looks like you're in the game, but you quickly realize how much you miss the ability to lean around. The first time you try the DK2, with it's ability to track your position from sitting down, you regain the ability to lean but then you suddenly miss your hands. So you grab a pair of razer hydras to track your hands, but that only highlights how much you miss the ability to track your position when not facing the camera (i.e. 360 degree space), how much the wires from the hydra bother you, how much you miss your feet, and so forth.

The Vive, I feel, is the first piece of VR consumer technology that gets everything "good enough" that you don't have any immediate short comings spring to mind that takes you out of the game. To be sure, there is room for massive improvement in virtually every aspect of the headset, but there is nothing really missing that I consider a deal breaker. It all begins with the Vive's method of positional tracking, which is flat out amazing. I've never used a tracking technology so precise - my entire room is tracked and, try as I might, I can't make any of my VR objects - either headset or controller - lose tracking.

The ability to actually walk around my room, and for the VR tech to compensate, is revolutionary. It's so incredibly hard to explain what it's like without letting someone try it. The best comparison I can give is that it feels what everyone assumed the Wiimote or Kinect would be like, but failed to deliver. The biggest change over the wiimote is the feeling of proprioception in your hands. Proprioception is a subconscious area of our cognition that allows us to know where our body parts are in relation to each other without visual confirmation. What this means, in layman's terms, is that we use proprioception to know where our hands are without looking at them. This area of the brain is one of the first areas affected by alcohol, which is why part of the sobriety test is for people to lean back and touch their fingers to their nose while their eyes are closed. Proprioception is localized only - outside of relative constraints of the body, we lose proprioception. This is where the wiimote faltered. The wiimote proposition was more like "When I move my hands this way, this guy across the room moves his hands in the same way, which is cool!" Lost in that is where the guy's hands across the room were in relation to his body. The Vive's proposition is more like "I am the guy, his hands are my hands." This manifests in things like Audioshield, which is sort of like a VR version of elite beat agents. Where EBA was confined to a 2D screen, Audioshield takes place in 3D - the notes don't only come left and right and up and down, but also along the Z axis. And not just in front of you, but also above and below you. It would be essentially impossible to play the game without proprioception. Because the game is in VR, it feels like a dream to play. You don't spend any time thinking about controls, it's as intuitive as can possibly be. It's a rather interesting phenomenon that, no matter how old or young the player of Audioshield is, I don't have to explain the controls beyond "touch the dots."

the failure of kinect was, of course, the imprecise control. The Vive has the most precise positional tracking I've ever used. When I walk around the room, I feel like I am there. The best example of how precise and cool the positional tracking controls are came from Vanishing Realms, which is a bit like Zelda in VR. The first time you get your sword, you are dumped into a room with a skeleton warrior coming at you. you have no weapon to attack him with, and behind him is the alter with your sword. So he's coming at me in VR and I'm sort of panicking trying to figure out how to get aorund him. He winds up his sword and swings it at me, and I duck in real life; to my astonishment I actually dodge his sword swing in VR as well. As the sword passes above my head, I, in real life, step forward beside him, pivot around, dash forward and grab the sword, then turn around and lunge forward to strike him behind the back. He reels in pain, turns around, and swings his sword at me. I parry his sword swing with my sword, pushing it down and to my left, which exposes his ribs. From there, I pull back and swing through his rib, shattering him in two, and killing him in the process. In the course of the action, I have walked and lept and dodged all around my room. In retrospect, the entire encounter was astonishing - I didn't press a single button. None of what I did was a canned animation. Everything I described and did, I actually did. It was me doing those tasks. The game has no set defined "dodge" mechanism, there is no "duck" button. It doesn't do anything beyond define a shape (the skeleton's sword) that is a hit box, and give my own head (through the position of my headset) it's own hit box. I dodge by simply making sure my head isn't in the way of his swing. I parry his sword attack by making sure my sword's hitbox is in the way of his sword's hitbox. This level of interaction is what Kinect promised and failed to deliver, but it's here in the Vive.

This vanishing abstraction between on-screen action and real life pantomiming is precisely why the Vive is so amazing. My father is 65 years old. He stopped playing video games when the Sega Genesis came along because 3 buttons was too complex for him. Hand him a modern Xbox controller and the 15 buttons and 2 analog sticks are just too much for him. As a result, he's basically never played a first person shooter before, or something like Metal Gear Solid, or uncharted, or any of that stuff, because the controls are too abstract for him. Yet I put him in Budget Cuts, a VR FPS stealth title, and he was able to pick it up with breeze. Being able to tell my dad, "hide behind that wall" and have him instantly know how to do it -- by bending over and physically hiding behind that wall, rather than mapping that to a button press -- that is so cool. He put on the VR headset to try budget cuts "just for a few minutes." When he was done, he asked how long he had played, expecting that he had been in VR for like maybe 20 minutes. He had actually been playing for 4 and a half hours. Time melts in VR.

I could keep going on and on, but suffice to say the HTC Vive has surpassed my lofty expectations. Even if you've tried VR in the past, you haven't tried it like the vive presents it. It feels as big of a shift in computing as the move from 2D to 3D was. It's the real deal. I wish I could show everyone this tech, because it's the neatest thing I've ever tried. Gamestop and the Microsoft Store have both announced they will begin selling and demoing the HTC vive in person in the next few weeks - I urge everyone who can to try it out and be amazed. It'll be an experience that sticks with you for a long time to come.

Comfort is important. Sorry if you mentioned it and I somehow missed it, but how heavy is the HTC Vive as compared to the others?

In any case, I'll be skipping this entire first batch of VR hardware altogether. Looking at a purchase in about a year or so from now. Hoping the price will have come down somewhat.

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Originally Posted by Thierry Henry

Comfort is important. Sorry if you mentioned it and I somehow missed it, but how heavy is the HTC Vive as compared to the others?

In any case, I'll be skipping this entire first batch of VR hardware altogether. Looking at a purchase in about a year or so from now. Hoping the price will have come down somewhat.

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It's much lighter and more comfortable than the DK2 and Gear VR, but not nearly as comfortable as the Rift CV1 or PSVR. The headset is lighter than the DK2 and Gear VR, and because it has an additional "skull cradle" in the back that sort of holds the back of your head where your neck attaches to your skull, the weight is more evenly distributed so it's not resting on your face. But the CV1 and PSVR are lighter, and the fabric material that makes up the CV1 feels better on your face. PSVR goes a step further because the headset doesn't rest on your face at all, it's on an arm that holds it in front of your eyes.

The downside is that the form of PSVR and CV1 let light in much more. The Vive, because it presses against your face, effectively blocks all light from entering. Also, sort of a comfort thing - the CV1 comes with 1 faceplate that is removable, but other faceplates aren't available yet. The Vive, by contrast, comes with two (the gear VR also came with two). I find this to be a huge perk, because the faceplates get sweaty and smelly. It's nice to have two so I can have one that I use to demo to other people, and one that is solely mine and nobody elses. The nature of PSVR means it doesn't actually need any faceplates.

One major perk of PSVR and Vive that CV1 lacks is that you can adjust the physical distance between the screens and your eyes with a knob. CV1 doesn't allow this because the area holding the lenses are a bit more engineered (as in, they look nicer - they use a strechable piece of fabric to hold them in place that makes it all look like 1 solid piece, at the expense of them being able to move forward and backwards, only left and right). This matters if you are wearing glasses, because you don't have enough room for your glasses on a CV1, while you can make room for them on the Vive and PSVR. This might be a bit of a moot point, however, because using glasses at all in VR kind of sucks, and there is a company that is kickstarting a lens adapter for PSVR, Vive, and CV1 that works like glasses inside the headset. These custom lens adapters basically change the focus of the lenses in the headset, matching a prescription you provide when you order, so you can wear the headsets without eye glasses. Even if that particular kickstarter fails, if VR really succeeds, a product like this is inevitable.

It's totally normal to want to skip the first gen of VR. The technological diffusion curve says that VR really isn't really to be a 50 million headset market. Most people will not tolerate the rapidly iterating nature of the tech at the moment, nor the overly experimental nature of the software. In 2 years, the tech will be more advanced, the prices will be cheaper, and the game will be better. I fully expect my current headsets to be obsolete in about a year and a half when foveated rendering becomes a thing. To compare VR headsets to GPU, we are in 1995, and I just paid a thousand dollars for an Nvidia NV1 that will wind up supporting all of 5 games. I did so because I want to experience the cutting edge. Most everyone else, however, will be better served waiting for the Voodoo 2.

@OP: Thanks for sharing.

One thing I'm noticing with current VR development is the lack of relaxed, core gameplay mechanics. Sure, the concept of fully translating your entire body in VR is just as exciting; but like you said, it is not without problems. Concious proprioception is key. So thanks for elaborating your experience. I can only imagine some gloves with haptic feedback to aid in achieving that feel.

But I would love to add that, many of us core gamers, beyond the obvious fad that will inevitably transition during the first VR wave, just really want to sit back on our couch and play the game. A bit of motion controls was fine, as long as we could immerse ourselves longer in a game by being able to just sit back with minimal use of our hands (i.e. Wario Land: Shake It!). The kinnect did not allow for this, so it has never survived the fad phase. That is why I hope as a consumer that somewhere along the first VR wave that devs understand that, for some of us, a simple left or right could be just as immersive when playing, even, a third person adventure while merely utilizing a standard control pad to perform all the actions. In other words, think of any game that has ever existed and porting it to a VR headset; only now it truly would feel more immersive by adding a fully spherical view.

I can attest to the fact that, in my gameroom, I have set it up so thay I can turn off the lights, put on my audio headset to block out all other noises and only hear the game at hand, and fully immerse myself in the largest TV I could fit in front of me. I am completely relaxed and can easily forget there is a real world out there. The experience is fully immersive for me. But, yes, it must be story driven. But it works even in games as simple as The Legend of Zelda on the NES. Heck, even turning off the lights while laying in bed playing A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS with headphones is extremely immersive. And, yes, I understand that on the couch or in bed there is only one axis one can work with in a VR headset , Z-axis; with it being flipped to "Y" technically speaking if you're laying supine in bed (a setting or mode not that difficult to do). So, yes, something as simple as moving your head left to right to increase the field of view would definitely add to the immersive experience tremendously, especially when the screen is right in your face.

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Originally Posted by QuickSciFi

@OP: Thanks for sharing.

One thing I'm noticing with current VR development is the lack of relaxed, core gameplay mechanics. Sure, the concept of fully translating your entire body in VR is just as exciting; but like you said, it is not without problems. Concious proprioception is key. So thanks for elaborating your experience. I can only imagine some gloves with haptic feedback to aid in achieving that feel.

But I would love to add that, many of us core gamers, beyond the obvious fad that will inevitably transition during the first VR wave, just really want to sit back on our couch and play the game. A bit of motion controls was fine, as long as we could immerse ourselves longer in a game by being able to just sit back with minimal use of our hands (i.e. Wario Land: Shake It!). The kinnect did not allow for this, so it has never survived the fad phase. That is why I hope as a consumer that somewhere along the first VR wave that devs understand that, for some of us, a simple left or right could be just as immersive when playing, even, a third person adventure while merely utilizing a standard control pad to perform all the actions. In other words, think of any game that has ever existed and porting it to a VR headset; only now it truly would feel more immersive by adding a fully spherical view.

I can attest to the fact that, in my gameroom, I have set it up so thay I can turn off the lights, put on my audio headset to block out all other noises and only hear the game at hand, and fully immerse myself in the largest TV I could fit in front of me. I am completely relaxed and can easily forget there is a real world out there. The experience is fully immersive for me. But, yes, it must be story driven. But it works even in games as simple as The Legend of Zelda on the NES. Heck, even turning off the lights while laying in bed playing A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS with headphones is extremely immersive. And, yes, I understand that on the couch or in bed there is only one axis one can work with in a VR headset , Z-axis; with it being flipped to "Y" technically speaking if you're laying supine in bed (a setting or mode not that difficult to do). So, yes, something as simple as moving your head left to right to increase the field of view would definitely add to the immersive experience tremendously, especially when the screen is right in your face.

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If virtual reality merely becomes an extension of what we already have with the last 40 years of video games, I will consider it a failure of the technology to reach it's potential. It is a bit of a reinventing of the wheel at that point. I don't need VR to be there for me when I sit down and relax and play Zelda, because I already have devices that do that well enough. My mindset stems from the recognition that VR is a new medium, not merely an advancement of existing technology paradigms. Going from conventional gaming to VR is like going from the radio to television. In the end, they wound up serving entirely different purposes. Sure, there is a bit of cross over - music videos are a thing, but by and large television is a different beast from radio. And while, in that particular analogy, they vie for your time, I don't see VR necessarily eating away at your Zelda playing, couch sitting time. It'll be this other thing you do during time you set aside for it.

With respect to the "hardcore crowd" I would say the groups of people who are into full body engaging experiences dwarfs the passive-playing crowd. It is because they invited people to get up and move around the the Wii and WiiFit and Kinect were all big hits initially. That they were generally crappy at what they did is why I believe they fell off. I don't necessarily see the passive crowd and this active crowd as the same, either. Sure there is overlap, but if VR is engaging to many people like it's engaging to me, I believe there are enough people who are into active media to sustain a market.

And, lastly - there are passive VR experiences. There are things you can do in VR that don't really work on conventional displays that are still entertaining and things you'd probably want to do. A good example of such an experience is Sightline the Chair. It's not really a game, nor is it a show or television episode. It's this thing you take in entirely from the perspective of someone sitting on a chair. It's interactive, yet passive. You only need to look around. But it's very entertaining.

All this will become a bit more apparent, I believe, when VR gains a foothold and carves out it's own market. Right now I think it's a bit misunderstood where VR will slot into our lives. The ultimate endgame for all this converging tech is AR, anyways, and at that point it would be more of a ubiquitous and persistent extension of technology, more comparable to a smartphone than a video game.

These impressions make me want to try this badly. I'm hoping demo units become widespread because this is way out of my price range for the time being.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

These impressions make me want to try this badly. I'm hoping demo units become widespread because this is way out of my price range for the time being.

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How about some gifs?

http://i.imgur.com/poEYeBQ.gif
http://i.imgur.com/HeUdhLo.gif
http://i.imgur.com/tUi8L3F.gif
http://i.imgur.com/aE8yYRQ.gif
http://i.imgur.com/8zxtkA9.gif
http://i.imgur.com/YrzuUTz.gif
http://i.imgur.com/ONDoeqX.gif
http://i.imgur.com/mEvB0gH.gif

They will be demoed in Gamestop and the microsoft store for the next several months.

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Originally Posted by TheSonicRetard

If virtual reality merely becomes an extension of what we already have with the last 40 years of video games, I will consider it a failure of the technology to reach it's potential. It is a bit of a reinventing of the wheel at that point. I don't need VR to be there for me when I sit down and relax and play Zelda, because I already have devices that do that well enough. My mindset stems from the recognition that VR is a new medium, not merely an advancement of existing technology paradigms. Going from conventional gaming to VR is like going from the radio to television. In the end, they wound up serving entirely different purposes. Sure, there is a bit of cross over - music videos are a thing, but by and large television is a different beast from radio. And while, in that particular analogy, they vie for your time, I don't see VR necessarily eating away at your Zelda playing, couch sitting time. It'll be this other thing you do during time you set aside for it.

With respect to the "hardcore crowd" I would say the groups of people who are into full body engaging experiences dwarfs the passive-playing crowd. It is because they invited people to get up and move around the the Wii and WiiFit and Kinect were all big hits initially. That they were generally crappy at what they did is why I believe they fell off. I don't necessarily see the passive crowd and this active crowd as the same, either. Sure there is overlap, but if VR is engaging to many people like it's engaging to me, I believe there are enough people who are into active media to sustain a market.

And, lastly - there are passive VR experiences. There are things you can do in VR that don't really work on conventional displays that are still entertaining and things you'd probably want to do. A good example of such an experience is Sightline the Chair. It's not really a game, nor is it a show or television episode. It's this thing you take in entirely from the perspective of someone sitting on a chair. It's interactive, yet passive. You only need to look around. But it's very entertaining.

All this will become a bit more apparent, I believe, when VR gains a foothold and carves out it's own market. Right now I think it's a bit misunderstood where VR will slot into our lives. The ultimate endgame for all this converging tech is AR, anyways, and at that point it would be more of a ubiquitous and persistent extension of technology, more comparable to a smartphone than a video game.

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You're telling us VR is going to be featured at video game stores, yet you don't believe VR is being focused on video games? Not sure if I understand your answer there. The concept of VR is certainly in its infancy (heck, conception), but if you really believe that VR should only cater to the casual gaming crowd, or no gaming crowd at all, then you're just repeating the same mistake already made by Nintendo (and the companies that followed suit) with their headstrong shove-it-down-your-throat approach they took with motion controls. It is a very short-sighted approach and one that will end up killing off VR as a fad; much like motion controls did, as well as 3D gaming after that. In the end, the "casual" (or as you're calling them "active") gamers will move on to whatever new smartphone will feature even better tech just 5 years from now using but a 20 dollar headset. And all who remain supporting the dedicated hardware will be the "core" (or as you call them "passive") gamers. It's not a mystery that's the reason why Nintendo is not in the lead today.

I am not saying the casual gaming crowd should not be catered to. In fact, I am as much interested as the "casual non-gamer" in trying those VR experiences you're so fond of sharing with us. And again, thank you for sharing with us. But understand that all I am trying to convey here is that there will still be a core gaming crowd, and a very large one at that, expecting core gameplay in at least some of the VR games. Saying VR gaming should only feature games that include people standing up is like saying the Wii should've only made games strictly with motion controls (which was not the case); or even worse, like Microsoft saying DRM will be the Xbox One route (which also was not the case).

In the end I feel we will be getting the types of games you shared with us as well as the kinds of games I described above. The only thing is that I predict it will be mostly be those "active" 15 minute games closer to shovelware, especially at first. Sony is releasing their VR headset in October. I sure as hell would not even touch it with a 10 foot poll if I knew that every developer associated with it had only a mind to provide its library with shovelware.

And, yes, I understand the repercussions that VR will have in all aspects of life, but you're posting on a gaming forum. As a surgeon, I have zero interest in VR in the medical field. I don't agree it has the implications that some people lead others to believe. But, again, we are in a gaming forum talking about video games. And I certainly hope you understand that when someone here approaches you about VR tech, they want to know games. ;)

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Originally Posted by QuickSciFi

You're telling us VR is going to be featured at video game stores, yet you don't believe VR is being focused on video games? Not sure if I understand your answer there. The concept of VR is certainly in its infancy (heck, conception), but if you really believe that VR should only cater to the casual gaming crowd, or no gaming crowd at all, then you're just repeating the same mistake already made by Nintendo (and the companies that followed suit) with their headstrong shove-it-down-your-throat approach they took with motion controls. It is a very short-sighted approach and one that will end up killing off VR as a fad; much like motion controls did, as well as 3D gaming after that.

I am not saying the casual gaming crowd should not be catered to. In fact, I am as much interested as the "casual non-gamer" in trying those VR experiences you're so fond of sharing with us. And again, thank you for sharing with us. But understand that all I am trying to convey here is that there will still be a core gaming crowd, and a very large one at that, expecting core gameplay in at least some of the VR games. Saying VR gaming should only feature games that include people standing up is like saying the Wii should've only made games strictly with motion controls (which was not the case); or even worse, like Microsoft saying DRM will be the Xbox One route (which also was not the case).

In the end I feel we will be getting the types of games you shared with us as well as the kinds of games I described above. The only thing is that I predict it will be mostly be those "active" 15 minute games closer to shovelware, especially at first. Sony is releasing their VR headset in October. I sure as hell would not even touch it with a 10 foot poll if I knew that every developer associated with it had only a mind to provide its library with shovelware.

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The vast majority of VR content is not gaming related, it is film related. The number of VR film projects out there dwarfs the number of VR games out there. And I'm not saying devs should cater to any sort of "gamer" market at all. I am saying VR is it's own medium and will carve out it's own audience, not some sliver of existing gamers. You seem to have misread much of my post, in fact.

And VR is sold at places like best buy and newegg.com. And the microsoft store isn't a gaming store. Gamestop is also selling VR headsets, but then again they also sell comic books, movies, action figures, and so forth.

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As a surgeon, I have zero interest in VR in the medical field.

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My day job is doing neuropathic VR research and development for chemotherapy patients. We have a VR simulation that effectively turns off the pain regions of their brain. We make chemotherapy patients feel better simply by putting them into VR headsets.

Your view is laughably short sighted. But hey, feel free to disagree with our published results. You can find them in multiple journals.

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Originally Posted by TheSonicRetard

The vast majority of VR content is not gaming related, it is film related. The number of VR film projects out there dwarfs the number of VR games out there. And I'm not saying devs should cater to any sort of "gamer" market at all. I am saying VR is it's own medium and will carve out it's own audience, not some sliver of existing gamers. You seem to have misread much of my post, in fact.

And VR is sold at places like best buy and newegg.com. And the microsoft store isn't a gaming store. Gamestop is also selling VR headsets, but then again they also sell comic books, movies, action figures, and so forth.



My day job is doing neuropathic VR research and development for chemotherapy patients. We have a VR simulation that effectively turns off the pain regions of their brain. We make chemotherapy patients feel better simply by putting them into VR headsets.

Your view is laughably short sighted. But hey, feel free to disagree with our published results. You can find them in multiple journals.

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I don't understand your enmity here. If you can't even take a suggestion, then why even bother sharing?

And awesome. Congrats on your research. Got any on gaming? Seeing how I don't treat cancer patients, my interest in VR for the treatment of my patients remains at zero (very close to how much you know about medicine, so stick to gaming ;)). But hey, nice comeback using my own words "short sighted".

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Originally Posted by QuickSciFi

I don't understand your enmity here. If you can't even take a suggestion, then why even bother sharing?

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What suggestions? Your post is littered with presumption and little backing. It's not a series of suggestions, and what few you make ("Don't poo poo seated experiences!") ignores the response I already gave ("VR supports seated experiences.")

Further, this topic wasn't an invitation for you to spew your poorly read thoughts on market sensibilities, it was to give my impressions on what current VR has to offer.

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And awesome. Congrats on your research. Got any on gaming? Seeing how I don't treat cancer patients, my interest in VR for the treatment of my patients remains at zero (very close to how much you know about medicine, so stick to gaming ;)). But hey, nice comeback using my own words "short sighted".

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Stick to gaming yourself, because you very clearly know nothing about VR.

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Originally Posted by TheSonicRetard

What suggestions? Your post is littered with presumption and little backing. It's not a series of suggestions, and what few you make ("Don't poo poo seated experiences!") ignores the response I already gave ("VR supports seated experiences.")

Further, this topic wasn't an invitation for you to spew your poorly read thoughts on market sensibilities, it was to give my impressions on what current VR has to offer.



Stick to gaming yourself, because you very clearly know nothing about VR.

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Buddy. Take it down a notch.

And please, learn to converse. Not argue.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LcK5cMYVHm...2Bnowhere!.jpg

What I mostly want to know is: where do you work that you get to do full-time VR development?

I should be getting an Oculus Rift CV1 next month (hopefully) and intend to do VR development as well, on a limited freelance basis at first if possible. Maybe I'll work on some research projects in my own time at first, but sooner or later I would have to start making money with it to get any further. It's kinda hard to know where to start with that though, so I'm eager to learn what and where other people are doing.

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Originally Posted by Barone

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Vintage but gold meme. Can't rep.

I'm super interested in the Vive tbh.

I was just talking to a friend about this earlier today! I guess one of his coworkers brought in his unit for the office to mess around with and it was so amazing to him that he plunked down the money on a preorder already.

https://media.giphy.com/media/oOK9AZGnf9b0c/giphy.gif

A Sega-16 TSR/Krejlooc post?

I know the Gear VR is on a different level than the Vive but I get very motion sick when using Gear VR for more than 15 min. Does the Vive have that blurry unfocussed areas off to side when you are not looking at text or picture directly if that makes sense?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tejE7anLROw