So a slightly more production-ready version of cardboard, but requires a specific phone that not one customer has yet.
When do we stop buying into the Google product hype? How many other chase-the-rabbit approaches to products is Google going to shove in front of our faces before we realize it's almost all smoke and mirrors? It seems completely laughable to me that this "product" will even exist past 2017, let alone be any kind of leader in anything (innovation, market share, creating a new market space, etc.).
I know jaded cynicism is never attractive, but it's honestly baffling to me how these threads aren't peppered with what I would think to be well-justified skepticism when it comes to Google and their ambitious hardware products. They almost never succeed, period! You never even hear about them most of the time a few months after they get launched, and the only time when you do is when the PR machine is working fast and furious to prop it up (see: Glass).
So sure, let's all pretend that wearing a pair of underwear on your face stuffed with a cell phone is going to advance VR. Yeah. That seems totally plausible.
i have a feeling you are going to come to regret this comment. google has made the right move here. they've introduced VR capabilities to the android platform in a way that, unlike cardboard, will set a baseline good experience for users (performance, frame rate, thermal, etc.) they've introduced a low price point, casual piece of hardware that will get good VR into as many consumers' hands as possible. the have made it so 3rd party vendors can compete in the ecosystem. they are providing an open platform for building and distributing VR software. they have included a controller peripheral as part of the standard which radically increases the surface area of applications.
basically, to me this is the path that seems the most likely vector for mass market VR adoption. the high end PC VR is too expensive in 2016, and the console based VR, while definitely compelling, still has at least one order of magnitude less addressable market.
iterating from here to more standalone devices like those shared already by qualcomm is an obvious transition on this platform and I'd imagine most VR devices sold in 2017-2018 will be portable standalone HMDs running android.
I don't ever regret having an opinion and sharing it, at least so long as I don't get annoyed and my tone gets away from me.
I hear what you're saying, but I just don't buy any of it. I DO agree that this is the kind of product that needs to take off if VR at home (given current technology, we should remember) is going to take off, and my reply to that is VR at home given current technology will remain niche for the foreseeable future.
Right now we're playing with Tamagotchis and calling them virtual pets, when the real virtual pets will be cool owls. What we call VR today will be as lasting and as useful as an Aibo - more something that should get us excited about what the future will actually bring, instead of what current tech companies try to fool us into getting hyped about today.
Yeah, and unlike gaming VR, I think mobile VR has the potential to truly catch on and spread. It's cheap (80$ vs. 600$+), it's easy to use (no wires or crazy rig needed), and you can use it anywhere (lay on the bed, use outside).
Well, no. As of today it's $685 + $80. In the future if you either already have the phone or if the magical "partners who have signed up" start delivering Daydream-capable phones then it's only $80. And I'm not trying to be pedantic - if this was, say, supported on many phones then I'd agree with you. But your argument is essentially that a product only useable on an itty bitty tiny fraction (well, okay, today nobody) of the cell phone market is going to push VR into the home. That seems highly unlikely to me.
So I am currently working on a game for Daydream VR. I jumped at the opportunity as soon as they made the announcement and bought a 6P to help with the dev and testing. I agree with the commenter that mentioned Daydream is more likely to spike mass market interest than say Vive. I lurk on the Unreal Engine forums quite a bit and participated in a few game jams and if there is something I have noticed it is that Vive and Oculus are currently reserved for serious VR enthusiasts and marketing stunts (pretty obvious I suppose). The barriers to entry and use are just still too high. Cost of VR hardware makes it a no no for most, and having to prop sensors up around your lounge and hang cables from your roof can make things very unsexy very quickly.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that there is a hell of a lot of hype about VR at the moment, and not just in the enthusiast circles. So if someone can lower that barrier to entry to a reasonable level where your semi-early adopters can partake and start showing off their gear at work and with friends then I think it is likely to see success.
I don't think there will be any shortage of content creation, and I also don't think the argument about available phones is too valid. The current race that is underway with phone creators to develop the next best phone paired with the obsession of people to own the best phone will make sure a lot of people are walking around with VR ready phones in no time.
I hope this wasn't completely incoherent, but this conversation also reminds me of this : https://xkcd.com/1497/
Yes, you're right, but this is a phone that thousands of people will get either way, regardless of the VR, just for the phone itself.
No one will ever buy a 600-800$ VR headset for anything else than using it in VR. And that's the ONLY thing it will be used for.
The phone will be used every single day of your life for doing everything, from messaging people, watching videos, browsing the web, playing games, etc.
If you want this to be a fair comparison, then also include the 1000$+ gaming rig you'd need for the VR headset to work.
Why do you care what is possible (literally) today? Clearly this is meant to steer the direction of the entire android ecosystem in a direction where many android phones will be VR capable. It will (potentially) have massive effects on the actual capabilities of the phones people have in their pockets once they roll over to new ones in the coming years, than had it not been done. To your point about price, the thinking is obviously that the differential cost to go from a non-VR user to a VR user if you are purchasing a cell phone in 2017-2018 will be tens of dollars. Unless daydream capable phones are significantly more expensive (and those additional costs are not going anywhere other than for the VR capabilities), then the price of the headset will be the effective cost to a consumer to be able to gain access to VR.
The reason GearVR exists is because your average android phone cannot perform well enough to provide a good VR experience. It requires specific engineering that would not otherwise be done for the common day to day smartphone use cases. Daydream is meant to be a holistic solution to that problem. I guess it sounds to me like you're disappointed that nobody can wave a magic wand and make current android devices VR capable, but sadly enough it does require better sensors, thermal characteristics, and general graphics performance than what any off the shelf android phone can do today.
There are a lot of ways google could have executed on the idea "how do we try to make mobile VR take off" that would have had major problems. The way they've actually done it to me seems the best of all possible worlds. You can question if mobile VR is a viable avenue to mass market adoption of VR, but if you assume that's a goal worth persuing, then critique daydream from there. For me, it certainly seems to me, based on raw numbers alone, to have the highest potential. But even if it turns out to be a poor concept, I can't imagine a better way to execute on trying to prove if it is than what they've done here.
Other manufacturers are likely all scrambling to catch the VR train so they aren't left behind. I expect all top-end phones to support VR within the next 2 years, if not 1 year. So within that time the cost will fall down to $80.
Dude. It's a $79 strap that puts your phone in front of your face. It's a cool toy. They're obviously not trying to compete with Oculus with this. What are you ranting on about?
And in a lot of places, it'll come for free with the phone. I know Fi is doing it, and I think Verizon might too. I know friends that got Gear VR for free along with their Samsung phones.
I imagine the novelty wears off pretty fast, but the wow factor for first time users is pretty awesome. I would say just taking it to work/friends and sharing that experience makes it more worthwhile and also aids the VR cause! :)
A valid question. I used cardboard once. I stopped using it as I got dizzy, and secondly my wife took a photo of me whilst I was using it and it became obvious that I looked completely ridiculous.
At least with other game forms and controllers (eg xbox/playstation/even Nintendo chuck) you don't look completely ridiculous using them.
1) A new product standard that will be supported by all upcoming flagship Android phones. Your criticism is that they're announcing something ... new?
2) Providing a cheap VR experience for everyone seems pretty reasonable. It fills out the price/performance curve between Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, and probably doesn't suck. Finally, since it's so cheap, they can literally give it away to all Pixel pre-orders.
Also, they're building on a VR platform established by Cardboard. While Cardboard was an obviously cheap experience, it was also a 20% project / experiment that I'm glad they released. Why not enable your developers to build fun / cheap experiences?
I'd say the GearVR is the more production-ready version of Cardboard, but requires a specific phone that only a segment of customers have. I own a GearVR and S7, and Daydream seems very similar to that hardware while addressing a few of the out-of-the-box issues that GearVR has:
1. GearVR has no controller. Daydream's controller provides both direct and motion input.
2. GearVR has decent resolution with the S7. Phone resolutions should only improve over time, and so will the experience (particularly the screen-door effect).
3. The GearVR hardware is hard plastic and a little uncomfortable after 30-45 minutes. This headset seems to go to some length to avoid that problem.
4. From what I understand, the GearVR has high-resolution sensors inside of it to offload some of that processing from the phone. This has the effect of tightly coupling the GearVR hardware to Samsung, since they're the only ones making compatible hardware (to my knowledge). Daydream is more of a reference, so there will soon be more compatible phones out there.
5. Publishing apps to GearVR requires going through Oculus (Facebook), period. On the S7, plugging into the GearVR is actually a hard shortcut to Oculus. You may not agree that Google is better, but I doubt it's going to be as walled-in.
i think points 4 and 5 are massive ones that people aren't seeing past. The GearVR was better than cardboard because of the improved IMU + scheduling preemption. These are things people always glaze over because they're obviously too technical for consumers to care about.
Now Google is setting a standard and while before there was no reason for VR ready IMUs in phones, now phones will have the proper heardware and Anrdoid N low latency mode to hopefully make them as capable as an S7+GearVR out of the box. This integration is a massive step in the right direction. It's VR pushing manufacturers to reconsider what the "basic" phone looks like.
So sure, let's all pretend that wearing a pair of underwear on your face stuffed with a cell phone is going to advance VR. Yeah. That seems totally plausible.
Tell you what, let's try this. In a year (let's say next 10/1/17, easy to remember) we'll start a timer. How long to do you think that timer will run before Google makes a single press release, blog post, software update or even any other mention of Daydream? That is, after one year, what do you think their commitment to Daydream will be, measured by even a whisper of talk about it, or any evidence at all it hasn't been wholly abandoned?
I don't think Google has been bad when it comes to hardware. They are not a hardware company but they try to do interesting things. They were way ahead of the curve with Glass which was technically solid for the time but marketed horribly. They were the first to nudge VR towards mobile/mass adoption with cardboard...an idea that quite frankly I don't think many companies would even think about trying.
I think they have good teams for both AR and VR in place and they are committed to both. With AR they are probably back to wait and see but I doubt they are not thinking about/working on a Glass followup.
This VR google is a direct iteration on cardboard. I think their message is pretty clearly "we think people have cell phones and they ought to be good enough for first gen VR experiences". There's plenty of non-hardware issues to work on when it comes to VR so I sympathize with the position (I did preorder the Sony VR which should arrive soon as I think that's a potential hardware sweetspot).
Pixel I know nothing about and have no opinion about but they have been tremendously helpful in getting better cell phones into our hands from the software side by working on Android. I actually think the modern Android experience is quite a bit nicer than the modern iPhone experience.
I think it's a bit silly to expect a (software) company to have spectacular launch after spectacular launch. Those aren't easy things, failure is the most likely outcome. Google does seem to be invested in the right spaces and certainly seems to have smart people working for them.
Edit: And obviously it's a great prototyping tool if it'll be supported by the major engines. I'll gladly take a more comfortable cardboard to quickly prototype some VR ideas. As a bonus I get it on less powerful hardware so I have a good "worst case"
We need to get past the idea of strapping a phone to your face as "VR". It's not. It's a neat toy that is interesting for a few hours, and that's it.
The bare minimum for VR is what Valve has achieved with the Vive: full 6 degree of freedom tracking with tracked hand controls. Anything less is a toy and a distraction that is poisoning the well of public perception.
Very well written criticism. I agree with most points you made specially the fact that if google wants VR to go main stream and really cares about users it should have put more emphasis in Cardboard which works for all phones including iPhone.
Putting more emphasis on proprietary headset and phone shows only one reason behind this move - they want to make $$ selling Phones and VR headsets.
I think the approach of giving it a fabric look and feel will be huge for the non techy consumer market appeal. This device looks like something that I can put on and relax on the couch with. The other VR headsets I've seen are much more of a "strap this hard plastic gadget to your head" feel.
The difference is Google Daydream is really making the fabric texture very, very obvious. It almost looks like a soft American Apparel tshirt or something like that: http://i.imgur.com/F2iR3nm.png
It's quite a nice touch, but it's not evident at all from their marketing material for the most part. It's pretty noticeable if you hold the actual device.
From what we saw from the pictures the material in contact with your skin looks pretty much the same as what Occulus / steamvr has, only the appearance looks different.
Do you think people will come home and sit with screens 5cm in front of their faces after a long day?
Personally I do not know anyone who thinks that wearing a headset like this is acceptable, nor can I see it becoming popular with consumers (eg how often do you see someone with a bluetooth headset for calls on these days). I certainly couldn't see my mum sat at home with one of these on - could you?
Perhaps my perspective is biased by where I am (the UK).
I agree. But isn't this limited by the fact it runs from a phone? Otherwise Oculus and whoever else are wasting their time developing custom hardware, no?
Of course it's limited, but it beats the high-end solutions in other metrics (I'd guess price (if you aren't buying a phone just for it), weight, computer requirement, cabling) so there's going to be a market if it manages to work otherwise. The high-end solutions require quite a big commitment in comparison.
I'm sick of phones as the basis for VR. I tried Cardboard, it has real problems. The battery life is bad when you're doing 3D things, the phone gets very hot on your face, and the GPU is underpowered for pretty much every purpose including rendering a realistic enough scene for VR immersion.
In my mind, there's no other way for VR to go mainstream except for mobile. Average people will not buy a multi thousand dollar gaming rig, and the big software companies want to see how big of a whale this thing really is.
If VR is going to go beyond the high end gaming niche, people are going to have to be able to access it through the computer in their pocket.
I tried the Playstation VR. It was definitely cool and better than mobile VR solutions but motion sickness is a big problem. I played a really intense space fighter game, and I had a headache for a while after. I am not especially susceptible to motion sickness either. Perhaps after using the headsets for a while I will adapt but then again am I going to pay the $4-500 for the PS VR and take the chance I won't? If it was a sick feeling free experience I would 100% buy it.
Have you tried a HTC Vive with a decent (GTX 970 or better) graphics card and cpu? Apparently being motion sick is all about the framerate and resolution, and I don't think the Playstation has a graphics card that can handle a framerate that won't make you sick.
I'm not a VR enthusiast, but I've tried the Oculus with the basic demo app and got sick within 3 minutes. I spent a good 20 minutes playing games on the Vive and felt fine.
That's an interesting data-point because my understanding was that motion-sickness was purely a function of biology. It seems it's at least weakly coupled to something else, in your case. Could it be something other than frame rate?
The best demo/test I've come across for this is Minecraft in VR for the Occulus Rift. It has a "theater"-mode, in which you can play Minecraft on a "big screen" in a room in VR. This mode works great for running around and doing things. And it has a first-person mode, which works great -- for standing still and looking around. But I'm pretty sure the only people that can play and walk/run around in first-person mode, are the 0.5% of US fighter pilots that don't get motion sickness at all.
I think it's a great way to demo the limits that motion sickness places on experiences for the vast majority of people. It's more than just being in control, and there are other effects at work, just like hand-held video footage without image stabilization is painful to look at. But my pet theory is that the big one is working with your body - if your body sits in a chair, your avatar should too (ie: drive a car, fly a spaceship is ok, walking around an art gallery at a leisure pace, not so much).
Probably because of the full room position tracking and using teleportation for longer distances instead of a controller. If the viewport/camera moves but your body doesn't move you may experience motion sickness.
I suspect (speculate) that the issue is with normal vision being a sequence of saccades, wherein you don't actually see anything between point A and point B, vs most VR which is a smooth glissando between points.
I heard of one hack, for minecraft or something, that snapped view angle increments to 30degrees or something like that, and it was helpful. That would simulate saccading.
Expect a lower point of view frame rate (vs animations that don't change point of view) would be helpful. i.e. smoothly move whatever is in your hand, or that pig on the landscape, but turning your head triggers saccade emulation.
> I suspect (speculate) that the issue is with normal vision being a sequence of saccades, wherein you don't actually see anything between point A and point B, vs most VR which is a smooth glissando between points.
Why would your eyes not saccade when wearing a VR headset? The screen isn't the source of saccades. Your eyes are.
because your eyes are looking straight ahead for the most part. It's like seeing the world through a narrow view point like binoculars (sans magnification).
You can dart around within that narrow window, but mostly you are looking around by turning your head. You are subjected to more visual motion than you would in real life.
Your eyes still saccade when you turn your head. If your headset is causing your eyes to stop saccading properly, I'd expect that means it's not rendering fast enough. I also don't see how adding jitter to the turning would fix this. That seems like it would just cause major disorientation. Maybe I'm totally off though.
I was at the mall and had a chance to try out an occulus rift. It was a very pleasant surprise. My speculations were completely wrong, it felt very natural.
Yeah, hard to design FPS games where you can't move. Then again, mobile had a similar constraint - a touchscreen is a piss-poor substitute for keyboard and mouse or gamepads... And yet a massive number of games have found good approaches on this. Obviously the big difference is that phone gaming is "free" on that you already paid for the hardware. Not many people would buy a phone just for gaming.
The GPU in the PS4 pro will be the RX480 desktop-equivalent graphics card. This has a slight lower passmark than the Nvidia GTX 970, which is the minimum spec for the HTC Vive.
Of course, it's not like and like - you can't just compare cards like that, and Playstation have the advantage of controlling the hardware and software configurations (which has always been an advantage for consoles), but saying it easily has the resolution and framerate sounds suspect - I expect it will just about have the resolution and framerate.
I'll find out in a week - I'm going to the Playstation Future of Gaming Tour, and I'll be able to compare it to the Vive with a 970.
I thought the resolution was also tied to motion sickness, but I could be wrong.
I've noticed on benchmarks that the relationship between resolution and framerate is exponential - so a lower resolution will go a long way to a higher framerate.
You're still talking about an audience that's predominantly gamers. The mobile phone market by default has a much larger market. My parents have phones that can do VR, they don't have a Playstation.
The gamer audience is pretty damn big. It's not an obscure hobby. A huge number of households have gaming consoles.
It's way way way bigger than the number that have custom built ultra-high end PCs.
Phones that will be powerful enough to provide a good experience for more than a short amount of time (due to battery, etc.) and with the abilities of other VR systems (hand controllers, positional tracking, etc) are going to be a fair ways off.
A vast swathe of "the gamer audience" is on mobile though. The bulk of the numbers are people playing the likes of Candy Crush and Temple run, not COD or Halo. Just the ones who flesh out the most money for gaming.
Does that really detract from my point that the PS VR is probably the most mainstream way of introducing VR we'll have for a while that isn't heavily constrained and doesn't require thousands of dollars of hardware?
Yes all gamers (including phones) is a bigger group than console gamers, but there are still a TON of console gaming households who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games.
> who have proven willing to throw down real money to buy hardware to play specific games
It remains to be seen how many of these will buy a VR headset. Peripherals have always been a very marginal aspect even on dedicated gaming hardware. If there's an actual killer application (i.e. a must have game) I could see myself buying into it, but as long as the VR "games" are either glorified demos or badly converted regular games that are worse than their non-VR counterpart, I won't spend a cent on it.
With some exceptions like Game of War, Candy crush and Pokemon Go the average mobile user doesn't play that much. They just need a quick 5 minute distraction. That's the wrong mindset for VR.
PS VR is $400 without a move controller or $500 with a couple. In addition to buying a PS4 if you don't already have one. Yes, 40m people around the world have a PS4, but a lot of people that would play with VR don't.
The Daydream is likely going to work with most top tier Android phones in the coming year or two and will likely start working with mid tier phones soon after. You'll be able to use it anywhere you want and bring it with you to friends and family. And it's only $79 with the included controller.
While I have no doubt the PS VR will have similar success to the HTC Vive and Occulus, I think VR with a phone as a base will likely have a wider market due to economics and market penetration.
I have a Vive and have tried VR porn. There's not a lot of say. You get some pretty bad uncanny valley issues and having a first person view of porn is weird and unatural and frankly unsexy. Porn that 'happens to you' doesn't really work.
I don't think porn VR is the killer app people think it is. Perhaps in a few generations especially in conjunction with tele-dildos or robot sex dolls or somesuch, but that's a lot to ask when ordinary 2D photos and videos get the blood flowing with much less hassle.
VR photographs can be both be captured and viewed on a smartphone.
Big screen playback of YouTube and Netflix through a smartphone would offer a much better experience than watching a limited selection of titles on a postcard sized screen on the back of an aircraft seat.
Given that you're going to own a smartphone anyway, an accessory that's an order of magnitude cheaper than high end VR seems like it has a place.
Actually, I think that using VR to watch movies in constrained spaces (i.e. airplane seat) would be a fantastic idea. Having just been on a long and boring flight, I would have given quite a bit to watch a movie on a "big screen", even if it was virtual.
> Frankly, [high end gaming] seems to be the main use case.
That's the case now, that and porn will be the early adopter uses.
But I'm pretty sure the Killer App is going to be feeling like you are in the same space as someone you're not actually in the same space with. Which doesn't require much technologically.
You could probably get social presence with a pair of microlasers pointed at pair of lenses, plus spatial audio.
(I definitely am not trying to be sarcastic, your statement is pretty much what I think, but somehow whenever I try to think of these practical opportunities, I fail to grasp anything with even remotely the potential user base of gaming.)
Training. There are already training sims for surgical assistants using consumer hardware. Extend that to any job that involves highly skilled work away from a keyboard and mouse. Nursing, mechanics, maintenance, construction machinery, etc...
Design and simulation. The auto and oil industry have paid millions for whole-wall, multi-user, 3D display systems because they want slightly better visualization tools for people doing car design and oil exploration. Spending on that saves them 10X on avoiding wasted effort. Commoditize that to fashion, gadgets, furniture...
Real estate. In the near future, you would be considered an idiot to pay for a building to be built without walking through it first. Very soon when shopping for a house, you will walk through 50 prospective houses in VR before bothering to visit 5 in meatspace. Architects already call VR visualization "cheating" because it is so much more effective --even for professionals-- than drafting and CAD on flat media.
Education. Firing full-scale catapults is a much more engaging way to teach physics than staring at diagrams of catapults.
Tourism. VR won't replace going there. VR will replace not going there. To say that most people don't go to most places is a comic understatement. For people who can't travel because of personal/financial/health constraints, being able to get out of the house/hospital bed/nursing home for just a while would be quite a boon.
Socialization. The telephone is basically lightweight social VR. Social VR is like the telephone but more intense. The phone will not be replaced by VR. VR opens up more intense options for being with other people you couldn't be with otherwise. Instead of just sitting in the same room having a chat, you can hike through Minecraft mountains, play D&D, paint a sculpture, or shoot catapults together.
Education for one. A properly scanned museum would be interesting to walk through.
Able to walk around construction projects before they start. Able to walk around construction projects as they are built.
Main deal I could expect out of a cheap version of VR technology with decent enough data connection is telepresence. One could attend any event, large or small, around the world as if you were there.
I imagine videoconferencing / telepresence type things have a lot of potential? There's all kinds of interesting ways you can imagine a VR meeting could be more effective than your typical group Hangout/Skype video call.
360 videos, especially of exotic locations (the great Pyramids, temples in India, etc.). I really enjoy these now (using cardboard), but better resolution and smoother panning would be even better.
I used Autodesk Homestyler to take floor plans of a preconstruction condo and visualize what it looks like in 3D. But ideally, it would be much cooler to walk around with a VR headset on to really get an idea of the space (given you don't bump into walls or fall in a lake). I'm not a VR expert so I'm not even sure if Daydream supports this or if the user must be stationary.
Autodesk previously demoed their app working with project tango so you can walk around holding a tablet as a viewport.
> In what situation would you watch netflix on this as opposed to your 60 inch TV?
I don't have a 60 inch TV, I do have a phone (and tend to keep a pretty recent one), so the marginal cost of Daydream over what I would have anyway vs. the marginal cost of a 60-inch TV over what I would have anyway is a pretty clear win for Daydream.
The Kinect is truly giant in computer vision/hobbyist circles. Your metaphor may be good, but not for the reasons you mean - I think gaming won't be impacted, but industries will be.
Like I said before, I imagine the large platform companies want to see how much a revenue generator it can become if it reaches mass appeal. This can only really happen on mobile.
Give it a few years and affordable PCs will be able to power VR just fine. A device like the Rift will also become much cheaper over the next few years. Given how easy the Rift is to set up (pretty much just plug it in along with a single webcam that sits on your desk), I don't see any other major impediments to it going mainstream once the prices fall.
Mobile VR still has an important unsolved problem too (absolute positional tracking throughout a room). Google and Oculus's John Carmack are working on this problem (independently of one another), and hopefully we'll see some of their work make it into commercial products in the next few years. But for now it's a real limitation of mobile VR devices.
I've tried the Samsung Gear VR. It doesn't feel immersive at all, it just feels like I'm looking at a phone strapped on my head.
I agree that the multi-thousand machines to power an Oculus is too expensive to go mainstream, but phone-based VR suck too much to go mainstream. The resolution is too low, headtracking is not good enough...
At best people will get those phone VR headset for free, play a little bit with it, show it off to their friends and as soon as the novelty wears off it will collect dust.
VR needs a much, much better experience to become a thing. Either PC-based VR becomes cheaper or phone-based VR becomes better I don't know, but that's not for 2017.
Surrendering your phone to your VR device is a hassle. It's a lot of work to make sure your battery is adequately charged, remove it from its case, sync all of your peripherals, and insert it in the headset.
I think that ideally VR should be a standalone device that connects to nothing but power, WiFi, 4G/5G, and bluetooth. (And yes, it can have a 3.5 mm jack too.) The basis for this technology would naturally be a built-in mobile device, so mobile VR is in this sense the path forward.
> Surrendering your phone to your VR device is a hassle.
Yes, but it is cheaper than duplicating the hardware of a flagship phone in a VR device, which is basically the atlernative, given that the phone-based VR devices are using the sensors, display, and basic compute functionality (CPU/GPU/RAM, etc.) of the phone.
Eventually, the necessary hardware for acceptable VR will be cheap enough that its not worth the hassle of surrendering a phone for it, and it will be viable for the mass market as a standalone device, but right now I think -- outside of very narrow niches -- the phone-as-core VR display design makes a lot of sense.
This is the right answer. Putting your phone into a visor is an awkward stop-gap but ultimately it needs to be something that can interface with your phone, wirelessly, so you can simply pop it on whenever you want to play around with some VR.
This meme is blatantly incorrect. You don't require a multi-thousand dollar rig for VR, let alone gaming at maximum settings. A multi-thousand dollar rig is strictly enthusiast-grade - that is when you put components into the PC for no practical purpose whatsoever and in some cases to the detriment of performance (e.g. 4-way SLI/Crossfire). Even $1000 is pushing the boundary of enthusiast.
Getting into PC-based VR can cost less if you go with entry-level VR components. This $850 PC[1], for example, will crush nearly all VR titles with little-to-no compromise.
Valid and educated criticism levied against PC VR would be the price of the devices themselves, the annoying cables and the immaturity of the optics (both the Vive and the Oculus are different imperfect trade-offs).
Completely valid criticism. That being said, the Gigabyte Aero 14 is a fantastically priced and built gaming laptop that might be able to pull off VR (if not, you can get GPU enclosures now).
Personally I find that roomscale is a bit of gimmick, but I'm more interested in seated VR titles because I'm one of the lucky few that don't get VR sickness (another valid concern).
I have more like a $600 gaming rig (i5 6500, 8b ram, ssd, gtx 1060 6gb). I don't have a Vive yet but I have no worries that my GTX 1060 should handle VR just fine.
The theory is that most VR games target the 970, as soon as you find yourself in the 10X bracket you should be all set. I was using my DK2 on a 660Ti+2600k just fine. I demoed the setup at work with a few games (mostly DiRT and NoLimits 2). Out of the 30 or so people that tried it, only one person felt uneasy.
One thing I'd definitely recommend you do before purchasing a VR setup is demoing it for a decent amount of time. If you're susceptible to VR sickness, that's $800 down the drain.
That's not that big a deal. Today's high end gaming is tomorrow's mainstream gaming and the day after tomorrow's budget gaming. If the market wants it, the market will get it.
I think there is a market for both. I think that you will see systems bifurcate (like you see right now with games -- high end rigs and consoles vs mobile) to high end systems and low end systems.
I think VR can only become mainstream/ubiquitous once it has an "iPhone moment" that fundamentally changes what VR even is in the first place. Right now everyone is thinking about how to make the VR we heard about 30 years ago. Sure, we have faster processors and everything is smaller and lighter now but if you look at VR demos from the 80s it's really all of the same stuff taking the same approach with all the same issues and all the same empty promises. VR's problem right now is it's just the same boring novelty it's always been.
1) A dark box on your head with a screen (or a projector) inside
2) Direct connection to the brain
We're not even close to solving #2, and even if we were, I'm not sure many people would agree so a surgical procedure.
We could create a light weight version of #1 without the box - something like glasses with screens or low-power laser projectors, but then you'd need to be in a relatively dark place for the true immersion. Dlodlo V1 VR is doing that, I think. And ODG R-7 Smartglasses, kind-of.
I'm not even necessarily talking about just the hardware specifically - the whole experience stinks. Nobody's really figured out what to do with it yet. I think mainstream VR as a whole will have to be something way different from what's being made now, and I don't know what that even looks like.
To counter: VR on the smartphone is great for visualizing preprocessed data. I love being able to view 3D research data on a comparatively cheap device and that I can share the visualization with everybody that has a phone, not only labs that have decided that it is worth it to buy a dedicated headset. Moreover, setup of the Cardboard is trivial compared to other headsets (no matter how easy it might be, you can not beat "just launch this youtube video").
Out of curiosity what sort of data and data visualization strategies would VR be particularly well suited for over more traditional visualization methods?
A good pitch would be: Medical diagnostics/pathology professionals are really exited about VR as (according to those I have spoken to) the 2D presentation of 3D data impedes making precise diagnosis (which VR solves).
>We are working with a number of smartphone manufacturers to create a specification for Daydream-ready phones. These smartphones enable VR experiences with high-performance sensors for smooth, accurate head tracking, fast response displays to minimize blur, and powerful mobile processors. [1]
Given Google's track record of being able to deliver hardware they actually had available for a demo at their product and service announcements I don't hold out much hope for this ever happening.
Here's betting that the first killer app for phone VR will be viewing fpv videos made with those silly snapchat glasses. I mean, aside from porn. And watching movies in bed without disturbing your SO.
I've actually played around with this (used to make 'immersive' 2D videos for fitness equipment; [1] is a former startup of mine). We tested existing footage in VR: completely nauseating.
That is, it's nauseating if you're trying to imagine that you're running or biking through an area, because the movement doesn't match your movements. There are a few exceptions.
Our content was live action video, but massively stabilized (it almost looked like CG; many partners assumed it was). So I'm not optimistic that standard video would work for this, at all. Just my two cents, though it's a pretty well-informed couple of pennies.
>if you're trying to imagine that you're running or biking through an area
I mean videos in the general sense. I watch 2d videos (while using fitness equipment) on a VR headset and find it enjoyable. The best part is blocking out all of the visual distraction from my environment. I look forward to getting a higher resolution headset.
I know nothing about the hardware behind VR so a quick question: if the GPU had enough power, could the experience be the same as HTC Vive/Oculus or is there something hardware wise on those that simply doesn't work on a phone? For example I thought there was some kind of special screen in real VR headsets, different from phones.
- Positional tracking, being able to move around in your environment rather than just move your head (will be solved eventually on mobile, see inside-out positional tracking)
- Custom made screens for VR, Rift/Vive have 90hz refresh rates, I believe Daydream phones will be 60hz (same as GearVR)
Eh, phone VR is fine, though cardboard kind of sucks. No low persistence, no full usage of the phone's resources, no additional IMUs to help with tracking. GearVR is a lot better in that regard, though the missing positional tracking is really what is missing. I wish Google would productize Project Tango properly already.
I'm sure Daydream VR is still like that, just like Gear VR was at first. I'm finding the 2016 GearVR much improved, however. It has a separate power jack for the headset, for example, so you can prevent the phone from having to do everything and burning up.
All I want for Christmas is mobile positional tracking. Leap Motion. John Carmack. Google Tango. ZED. Who will be The One? Who will get positional tracking into a phone or headset?
Edit: In my fantasy world Carmack is teaching himself chip design and will put a low power positional tracking computer vision ASIC in the next GearVR. Why Oculus isn't putting the full force of their company behind that National Treasure of a man I have no idea.
This could be straight out of the show 'silicon valley'. Gorgeous polar lights as the background of a sleek landing page, a strange but appealing geometric structure hovering between dark outlines of trees --> scrolling down, a pair of diving goggles are revealed that you can use to stick your phone into. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited and it's probably going to be cool, it's just hilariously stereotypical.
The difference between some random Android device running a Cardboard app vs a Samsung Gear VR running a Gear VR app is night-and-day. Daydream certified phones and apps should be about as good as Gear VR. We'll see if it's a little better/worse/same soon.
More like Google Cardboard was a toy Daydream. As in, Daydream was always the intention, but some hackers did a quick proof of concept in cardboard and it kinda took off.
My daughter and I bought this and really liked it. Meant to try and build a simple VR demo with it, but we never got around to it. She drifted away from programming and more into art. Maybe she'll come back around again.
Seems that way. Some of us were expecting a Tango powered, positional tracking VR workhorse, but instead got a cloth cardboard, with only inertial tracking, but with a much needed controller.
Seems okay for a cheap 1st gen consumer device, but people who want to game in VR are probably going to go the PSVR or Vive route.
Really disappointed that it does not support the current line of Google phones - in particular the Nexus 6P. At least it is not listed as officially supported on the website - which only lists the Pixel:
Daydream SDK currently only works on Nexus 6P, but comes with this warning:
> Caution: The 6P's thermal performance is not representative of the consumer Daydream-ready devices that will be launching later this year. In particular, expect the 6P to thermally throttle CPU and GPU performance after a short period of use, depending on workload.
That is precisely the problem - the 6P was touted as the best top-of-the-line Android phone when it was launched - just a year ago. And now, it is "not representative of the consumer Daydream-ready devices that will be launching later this year". So while Pixel is ready for daydream VR today, it very well might not work at all with the next big thing that Google announces in a year or six months..
Unfortunately the overheating issues on 810 made a lot of this gen Android devices unable to perform well under load for extended periods of time. There's nothing you can really do when the SoC throttles down to almost no performance after a bit of time.
What's the alternative? Not announce new features that won't perform well on current hardware? If details emerge that they could have made the 6P perform well but chose not to, that's something to be disappointed about, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
If you realize too late your product is not fit for purpouse [1], you recall and replace it. Especially if you're a big estabilished company flush with cash and an expensive brand to protect. (I wonder if their decision to drop the Nexus brand had a part here...)
[1] Obviously the VR SDK is not the benchmark here, the other well publicized overheating problems with consumer apps are
Yeah, I'm pretty peeved. I have a Nexus 6P and seeing that Daydream doesn't support it (unless I root it and turn off the thermal throttling perhaps?) is absurd.
Would it be possible to use Google Pixel as a personal high resolution monitor?
2560 x 1440 is the equivalent of a 27 inch monitor...if you wore it as a headset, how big would the monitor equivalent be? 50"?
If I could attach this to my Mac and use the headset instead of hunching over a 15" laptop, I'd be very happy!
The actual resolution you get in an HMD is much, much lower than the screen resolution. For example, a movie theatre screen in an Oculus Rift CV1 with a resolution of 2160 x 1200 (1080 x 1200 per eye) would have an effective resolution of about 720x480.
Of course, you can create as many of these screens as you want in a virtual space, but the resolution combined with the distortion will hinder any text-heavy work.
One of the issues here is the content isn't tied directly to the pixels in the display. You have competing rasters: the raster of the input video (or desktop rendering), and the raster of the display device. They don't necessarily interact in a nice way.
That's actually the reason VR experiences seem so low-rez (well, among many others) despite having high resolution displays.
You loose half the resolution since each eye needs to be looking at the same thing. Second since you're looking at it in stereo you need to have the desktop a decent enough distance away from you to be able to focus on it or you'd go cross eyed.
I think this is what causes the effective resolution to drop to that much lower level.
Starting with a 2560x1440 mobile device, you'd need to get a very different head mount -- with a larger distance from the eyes to the screen for the same device -- to make that a useful 2560x1440 screen for coding or other non-stereo "flat" work vs. a pair of 1280x1440 screens for stereo 3D work. The latter is what you get from a phone-in-a-box VR displays with a 2560x1440 phone display.
Now, there might be a use for stereo 3D displays in programming, but I don't think anyone's developed and proven the tools that demonstrate this use.
Does this offer any advancements over the Oculus/Samsung GearVR? Given that they're launching a full year after Oculus, I would hope for something more than a direct clone.
I would anticipate some significant losses in fidelity---Oculus has an IR sensor to record head displacement, not just head tilt. There's a subtlety to the way your head moves since the pivot is not directly behind your eyeballs that the Oculus captures by monitoring translations in addition to rotations; trying the Cardboard vs. Rift was a night-and-day experience for this reason, and I didn't see anything today that suggests they have a solution for that part.
But on the flip-side, this and the GearVR are the only solutions I'm seeing that remove the cords dangling around. So that's a big win.
Google have implemented their own version of asynchronous time warp in the Google VR SDK (can't remember what they call it atm), so that ought to make it on par with Gear at least, until either gets positional tracking.
GearVR doesn't have positional tracking, has a slightly worse field of view than the rift, and obviously can't compete with a gaming PC in terms of graphics performance.
That being said, not being tethered is a huge plus. Carmack likes to talk about how great the Gear is with a swivel chair; I think he's completely right on that point. You're not going to get the 'presence' you can achieve in the vive, but there's something to be said for the type of immersion you get when not getting tangled up in a cord.
Its great for viewing 360 photos and watching videos, and if you like the low-poly aesthetic there are some diversionary games.
Edit: also, as others have mentioned elsewhere, the focus wheel is fantastic feature on the Gear, especially if you're passing it around in a group.
Note that 'worse field of view' corresponds to 'better effective resolution' for a fixed number of pixels. There's always a tradeoff between FOV and pixel density. I think the Gear made a good compromise for more passive experiences, for what it's worth.
But most significantly, the auto calibration and focusing. (Currently, if you have a VR headset and want to use it with a phone, you have to go through a painstaking process of making sure the phone is in the dead center. Sometimes even when you have centered it, it can get a little bit off if you shake the phone really hard or whatever... and then you get headheaches if it's not properly aligned). This is a pretty big deal in my view.
Other than that, the whole integrated environment and the new joystick-like interface thing is a pretty big deal too.
That's only compared to Cardboard though. Gear VR locks the phone in place, so there's no calibration step. Gear VR also has a focus wheel, which while not perfect, does let you hand it to a friend who can adjust it to their vision. Not as good as just putting glasses inside, but glasses come in lots of sizes, and I'm sceptical of claims to be glasses-friendly, which so far haven't proven to be the case (Vive, Rift, and Gear are far from it).
Plus isn't the GearVR limited to specific Samsung phones? The Daydream headset seems more like a nicer version of cardboard in that it's a "dumb" headset and the phone does all the work.
Ordered a Pixel to upgrade my Nexus 5 but not buying the headset so I guess I'll find out when I plop it into my Cardboard headset to test it out.
The controller is a big plus, but otherwise not too much. Comfort factor seems nice, but I'd have to try it to say what's better.
I'm worried about apps being able to run at 30fps on Daydream, because even 60fps like the Gear has can be slow for good VR.
That said, this looks like it will do well and I'm pretty stoked for it. OC3 starts tomorrow, so I'm hoping for some announcements from Oculus/Samsung to compete with this!
The latest rev of the GearVR headsets has a more generalized touch input on the side (what was originally a 4-way controller is now a square touchpad with support for swipe gestures). Oddly it seems a variety of content on the Oculus store is actually using this as an in-game control now, e.g., swipe/tap on the side of your head to shoot your laser pistol. I haven't tried these for long enough to tell if it's an effective control scheme or gets tiresome, but it works surprisingly well on first blush. Curious how much of a difference this remote makes; without in-world positional tracking I'm not convinced it's adding much to the experience.
The touchpad has had swipe support for a while, and works pretty well depending on the game, but it's still stuck to the side of your head. We joke about getting a gorilla arm from extended use...
Daydream has a definite advantage with their remote, but I think Samsung offering a bundle with their gamepad could close that gap a little bit, or even offering something similar to the Daydream remote.
The Rift remote looks very similar too, minus the positional tracking, but is still really handy for casual Rift games.
I think the big differentiator Gear can play on is social games. Oculus has been putting an increased emphasis on their social platform, and I think we'll see more of that this week too.
I don't think the actual device is really any different. I mean its just two lenses in a box, really. I think the idea (who knows how this will play out) is that Google is going to create a meaningful VR ecosystem, which currently does not exist at all for GearVR.
1. Hand controller
2. Breathable soft fabric
3. Lighter
4. Fits better over glasses
5. No electronics in the headset
6. Forward compatible with future phones, both from Google and others (Gear VR requires a new headset for each new phone)
It's a VR exclusive version of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" where you are a wizard (and therefore have a wand, too) and explore the Harry Potter universe.
They talked about it earlier during the live stream. Looked like a unique experience from "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" where you're a wizard.
Got stuck in the middle seat for a 14 hour flight to Asia. Put the GearVR on and was transported into a full empty row to myself https://www.instagram.com/p/BDkY2oqzLZV/. It was truly incredible. The 2D in VR experiences (movies, games displayed on a giant flat screen) are way under appreciated.
This is one of the only practical uses for everyday non-techie people I've been able to come up with for these phone-based VR systems (like GearVR). It could also apply to college kids living in small dorms and such. I can't see my mom buying anything like this and strapping it to her head while sitting contently in a huge suburban house. Then again, I never thought I'd see her using an iPad, iPhone and messing with a SmartTV at the same time...
I agree with you. The difference with the iPad and a smart TV is that they are comparable to "normal" activities (like reading a book, and watching TV). The interaction with the items hasn't changed, just the way it is presented and the control of it (eg the TV remote has more buttons now).
With this, it is an entirely different scenario. You can no longer hear things (telephone, door bell, someone shouting for help). The iPad and smart TV do not stop interaction with other humans.
This does. It's about as attractive as being in a room full of people at a party and a moody teenager (not saying all are BTW) sitting resting their face on their fist with earphones in, staring at their phone. It's just not social.
I do not see this becoming mainstream, despite the excitement from the tech community (and those who enjoy isolating themselves, or perhaps us developers who are perfectly happy to sit in a room with others in silence, typing). We devs are normally seen as odd - admin staff at work say "the developers don't ever talk!!"; this will only exacerbate the problem. So, although some of us may enjoy sitting in a room with a device strapped to their face to the chagrin of those around us, I can't see it being socially acceptable.
I do like the notion of comfort the fabric provides. Seems portable.
I used to commute by bus, approx 45 minutes each way. I don't think I would've used this on that trip. Extending that, I don't think I'd be particularly interested in using this at home, as infrequently as I genuinely plop down for an immersive HDTV (or 3D) experience (ex. football games & films are my draw, not very often). I just giggle a bit to myself thinking what I'd look like wearing one and bobbing my head around in public or at home. Heh.
Yeah, we all saw how Glass went over. Perhaps this is made out of cloth so aggressive bystanders don't cut their fists on it when they punch you in the face?
A proprietary VR framework for a specific flavor of mobile phone with inadequate displays that will make people want to vomit if they try to use it for any serious amount of time. Wonderful.
God forbid we come together on WebVR instead of turning the VR space into yet another "monopolies punching eachother" not-invented-here pit fight.
What advantages, besides standardization, does WebVR bring to the space?
VR is still a relatively high-performance 3D realtime application space. Those aren't generally adjectives I associate with either "JavaScript" or "Browser," so if I were trying to invest in an experience the average consumer will enjoy, I'd be extremely skittish about this tech stack unless I can see some successful high-performance demos.
WebVR advantages: open (not owned by a single entity), connected (travel from experience to experience without having to close and open), publish a web page in ten seconds vs. one month (six months for Oculus), no installs / downloads which is better suited for long-tail content, ability to be responsive / gracefully degrade (for better or worse).
I've got a GearVR with Galaxy S6 and the display is adequate. Not one of the 6 or so people I've let try it have wanted to vomit.
No one is stopping you from running with your own WebVR platform, my guess is that it's not an easy thing to make money off of (which is what Google does).
> I've got a GearVR with Galaxy S6 and the display is adequate. Not one of the 6 or so people I've let try it have wanted to vomit.
Try using it for an hour or more. Keep a toilet handy.
> No one is stopping you from running with your own WebVR platform, my guess is that it's not an easy thing to make money off of (which is what Google does).
It's fun to pretend this is a passive thing that doesn't hurt the rest of the industry, but they've cannibalized talented people for this project that were previously working on WebVR. So I'm sorry if I'm not all that jazzed about torturing developers for the next 10 years with several shitty proprietary SDKs for doing VR development that won't work with eachother, when we could have a standard we can all come together and agree on and that runs on every device and platform with the same code. Have we seriously learned nothing from mobile phone competing SDKs and proprietary app stores nightmare?
> Try using it for an hour or more. Keep a toilet handy.
I don't think that's quite fair. Some people might get nausea from using VR while others won't. Just like carsickness doesn't affect everyone, "VRsickness" doesn't either.
It's not about an individual's tolerance, it's because the phones are not capable of having a refresh rate that's fast enough for your brain's ability to process it. That's why all the serious VR headsets right now require a physical cable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBtXMtUNpdE
It's going to be a very long time before mobile phones are capable of refresh rates sufficient to prevent this issue. The fastest consumer graphics cards are barely capable of keeping up with this rate as-is. Aside from being yet-another proprietary SDK for VR development, Google VR is DoA regardless because it depends on a hardware platform that simply won't work well for what it's trying to do.
>refresh rate that's fast enough for your brain's ability to process it
Lol can we keep junk science out of threads like these. Nobody knows enough about the tech yet to say things like this, especially with such vehemence. Let's start with the fact that the visual system definitely doesn't have some sort of unitary processing rate. It's incredibly context dependent, just like VR.
From personal experience I have never had VR sickness, and I use my Note 4 Gear VR every week on flights to watch multiple ~2hr movies and play timepass games with no ill effects. On the contrary it's pretty fun once you get off HN and actually try it...
I think what we've learned from the past several years in game development is "Let Unity paper over the SDK differences, and if you need to rip apart the engine, hire a subcontracting game dev studio to port your stuff to other architectures."
Your GearVR is polling it's position and velocities at 1000hz, about 5x that of Daydream. Your GearVR is a much, much nicer device than this fabric cardboard.
Standardization typically comes 5-10 years after the initial wave of hardware innovation. During the early years, it benefits individual companies to be able to iterate on both the hardware/software quickly. Once hardware stabilizes it's much easier to begin discussing software standardization.
Or we could discuss standardization right now and not waste billions of dollars trying to trick developers into building on ephemeral platforms via prison-inspired app stores that don't have their best interests in mind https://webvr.info/
The only "big" change that came about so far has been the HTC Vive controllers (which are amazing). The ridiculously simple solution for WebVR was to add support for them to the Gamepad API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API...
This is a great example of how the hardware can differ but the software can be the same. Both Oculus and Vive work on WebVR, including the Vive controllers. Nobody had to throw away everything and start over just because of a hardware innovation.
If we start seeing special SDKs for each platform, this benefit goes away.
A proprietary VR framework for a specific flavor of mobile phone with inadequate displays that will make people want to vomit if they try to use it for any serious amount of time. Wonderful.
That's neither fair nor accurate. Google wants to do VR at Android scale and they're starting with their flagship phone. The claim about the display and vomiting just isn't true.
God forbid we come together on WebVR instead of turning the VR space into yet another "monopolies punching eachother" not-invented-here pit fight.
People are coming together on WebVR! Chrome, Edge, Firefox, the GearVR browser all have experimental support for it and the spec is working its way through the W3C review process.
The "phone on the face" approach to VR is a solid one, but it's going to be Apple that makes it work and owns it because they control the ecosystem.
VR needs low end alternatives and "phone on the face" is it. From what I have read, Samsung's POTF device actually works quite well.
Manufacturers such as Apple will see it as appealing because it gives incentive to buy new and more powerful phones.
Google's POTF likely won't succeed (mind you it might have if they had more control over the fragmented Android ecosystem), but Apple's POTF, when it is announced, will be the winner in this category.
Were you wondering why the new audio port on the iPhone 7? That's the VR POTF port.
The livestream of the Google hardware event had some more details (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y0KOeXViI)
The event is still going one (but discussing other products)
The important thing to consider is that VR is a new medium. Google's new VR offering ties in with the most recent communication tool we've had: the smartphone. Using the Pixel to onboard users into VR is a very smart move. It makes the technology accessible in a non-threatening way. Will it succeed? I don't know. It will, however, bring VR closer to being mainstream. We don't know how VR and smartphones being combined will play out in the long run. Not combining to find out would be foolish.
The only thing I could honestly see myself using this for is reading. I don't see much use for VR outside gaming. The movie going experience is already pleasant enough that i don't really see myself transferring from that model. Home watching movies is always a semi-social experience for me as well, but I feel as though putting on this mask, and having to coordinate with your partner when to start the movie, kind of takes away the whole point of watching a movie. From a business perspective VR is way to obvious of a field for any one company to get a strong hold on one corner of the market. It will take some serious technology or innovation to break through and i've sat here for the last 20 minutes trying to think what that would look like and I can't come up with a single idea besides maybe having a patented solution to the motion sickness problem. Even then, it's highly unlikely that one company will win out in this market like apple did with the iphone. That being said, i'm glad google is creating competition in this space, even though i believe it will end in a net loss. Making the platform depedent on a new phone might be good for the phone, but i think they are ensuring that the plateform itself loses. Maybe if they made the field of vision adjustable, so that every phone could be used with it, this VR would have a much larger market. Also, they could still push their new phone by saying " You think the VR experience is great with your iPhone? try this new phone that is specifically built for the VR, oh, and by the way, it's much better than the iPhone in all these areas, why not give it a shot?"
Does anyone know if the headset is supported by the Nexus 6P?
The 6P is a very capable device and I don't see a reason to upgrade mine. But I am thinking of trying out some Daydream VR development.
I know that till now, 6P was the only device to develop for Daydream, but I'm wondering how well would it work with the actual headset released today. Maybe just run at some low fps but not too bad for trying it out? Or is the headset locked for only "Daydream certified" phones (I doubt they'll lock out the 6P though).
"Caution: The 6P's thermal performance is not representative of the consumer Daydream-ready devices that will be launching later this year. In particular, expect the 6P to thermally throttle CPU and GPU performance after a short period of use, depending on workload."
Sounds like a home-made heatsink could increase performance for that device. And based on the photos of Daydream, I'd say there's room to install one... I think getting good heat transfer connectivity might be tough (does that device get hot on the front or back?) and weight might be a problem.
As much as VR pundits may hate it, if VR will succeed (as in: used by a broad audience), it will be in this way rather than as dedicated device. That is, if Google actually supports these APIs and does not throw early dev adopters under the bus (I fear this will happen, though).
Like it or not, but Apple will have to make a move.
I like how Google is trying to bring VR into everyone's home. However, how accurate can the head movement tracking actually be without some kind of external tracker? I'm sure there must be some perceptible drift between the actual position of your head and the tracked position.
I've been suspicious as well about that at first, but after having tried Google Cardboard myself on a OnePlus 3, I was surprised by how accurate accelerometer powered head tracking worked.
I'm sure there are specific cases that aren't covered by this level of accuracy, but overall, it works perfectly fine.
It's not just accelerometer, the gyroscope is what makes it so stable.
The gyroscope combined with the accelerometer and the compass is able to accurately find your relative motion in 3D space without any external references (just the initial point) using simple physics. But yes it also drifts but very slowly.
I wonder if there's any way to periodically compensate for the drift, such as with video information taken from the camera or something like that? Seems like it should be possible to do this.
Yeah, it's an important point. There's two primary aspects to head tracking - translational motion and rotational motion.
Tracking rotation can be done pretty cheaply & with low latency these days, and I expect the Daydream viewer will probably handle it quite well.
Translation is quite a bit more challenging, and I'm not expecting much in that department for this iteration. The issue can be addressed to some degree with a neck model that maps rotation to translation, but it can't handle real translation, such as leaning or walking around.
This is on par with Oculus/Samsung's current mobile solution, the Gear VR headset.
It's definitely important for really immersive VR experiences. I've not used the Vive or retail Rift but even on my Rift dev unit, tracking makes a huge difference in immersion versus just orientation tracking.
I'd imagine that this is to be expected as it's a sort of "VR Lite" compared to more fully featured platforms. VR experiences will need to be designed with the limitations of the platform in mind and not rely on moving around in 3d space but rather focusing on head orientation.
I really wish the mobile VR platform could also be run as a low latency wireless display for a decent PC. Seems like it could get many more PC gamers to try VR (already own phone, pc, just spend $80 on headset), and cement Daydream in as the baseline platform. There are were rumours of sufficiently low latency and cost effective wireless display tech 6 months ago so it should be feasible.
Such a partnership could be in both Google and Valves interest, really good counter to Occulus/Facebook too.
What are the hardware requirements? I've seen only vague talk about low-persistence displays, high performance CPUs and GPUs and sensors. How low should the persistence be? What FPS? Is there any specific level of performance required from CPUs and GPUs, like a specific number on a benchmark or a particular Qualcomm processor?
Prediction: Someone's going to put two cameras into a phone and do pupil tracking. Or, can programmatic analysis get by with one?
P.S. For bonus points, add pupil dilation measurement for emotional analysis. And bloodflow including respiration (perhaps in conjunction with periodic micro-movement).
Most of the weight will be whatever phone you slot into it most likely. And absolute weight isn't as important as it being properly supported. The difference between the Vive headset properly and poorly adjusted to your head is night and day.
For most people the best use for these googles is being able to a watch 60 inch TV when other wise you couldn't. Headphones have a similar use of letting you play a stereo when other wise you couldn't.
I just wonder if VR is ever going to be for the big masses. Right now it feels like 3D Television. Everyone is pushing it and I admit it's nice like 3D television is nice.
There's rotational tracking (look up, down, left, right), but not position tracking (moving head from side to side, walking). The Remote apparently has positional and rotational tracking though, which is new to mobile VR.
The application space is roughly the same as that of Cardboard and Oculus/Samsung GearVR. Which I'd say is roughly split between videos, 3D game-like experiences, and games.
"Requirements: A Daydream-ready smartphone, like Pixel"
Pixel is the only one for sale I believe that is Daydream ready, but more are on their way from other manufacturers. ex: ZTE Axon 7 and Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe[0].
To be fair, the new phones are supposed to have MUCH higher accuracy in tracking which is necessary to make it feel like you're actually THERE (what's generally referred to in VR as "presence").
The Samsung phones work around this by putting extra sensors in the VR headset itself.
Yeah. The only reason I say this is because their "supported phones" link just links to the Pixel. They're not outright saying it only works on that device, but that does sort of imply it.
The headset must be device agnostic, I'd imagine, put whatever fits in there. But the Daydream software might be walled off.
Any manufacturer can produce a Daydream-ready phone; ZTE and Asus have already announced theirs. To ensure a good experience, Daydream-ready phones must meet a set of minimum standards. They need consistent performance, low motion-to-photon latency and Android N. Google don't want to harm the Daydream brand by opening it up to phones that won't provide a good VR experience.
I wouldn't expect many people to upgrade their phones purely for Daydream, but it may be a factor when their contract is up for renewal. Daydream compatibility is attractive to phone manufacturers who are struggling to differentiate their handsets or offer a compelling reason to choose a high-end device.
its interesting how wildly different these big companies are when it comes to product delivery. Apple will not say a word until they are ready to ship. Google will announce way in advance so their developers don't have much choice but to ship. "done but buggy > perfect". I suppose release dates get delayed often. Not sure which approach is better.
I was disappointed they didn't announce a merging of Chrome OS and Android, and a full-blown "proper" laptop running a local OS to compete with Windows/OSX.
This may sound far-fetched, but given how many apps they have for their platform(s), it would be a good move. I am not keen to buy a Chrome OS laptop (why do I need permanent internet connectivity? microcomputers negated the need for a mainframe...), but one that runs its own local OS that can operate independently of a remote system (like many Android apps that save locally, then sync periodically) would be good.
It's not, but it's not meant to be. It's a place for more people to get to experience it because it's still way cheaper than buying the current best solution Vive + a gaming system capable of running it then get excited for the Vive or Oculus 2+ in a few years when the specs to run them are easier and maybe we can fit the positional tracking onto the headset instead of requiring lighthouses.
Totally. This is the early adopter "Sure I'll blow $100 on this toy along with my new phone" kind of stuff. People that get these kind of things now will show friends. They'll get excited. Those friends will buy into VR in droves when the kinks get worked out.
When they say, "take a look at the devices designed and built for virtual reality", and the only device is the new Pixel, I have to wonder if this means that the Pixel has a display with an unusually high refresh rate or resolution, or if Google just really wants to kill the ecosystem before it begins with needless exclusivity.
Bring back the View-Master! I personally would never buy something that I have to strap around my head. Remember those things called helmets? Even today, it is a struggle to get both kids and adults to where them. I think these companies are completely missing the mark about VR. I would use a View Master over Oculus, Google, etc.
I can assure you that both the View-Master and helmets are still around. If you don't want to strap something to your head, then great: don't (although I really do recommend wearing a helmet while biking).
Cardboard does fill the low-end 'view-master-like' niche, but until the display technology gets a lot smaller, strapping something to your head is the most practical solution.
Should I be concerned? Isn't the reason I would want to avoid doing that for long times eyestrain? Isn't the eyestrain caused by the eye struggling to focus on something so close? Don't the optics in VR systems allow the eye to focus much more comfortably?
Or are you asking more about the impact of non-visible EM band emissions?
I actually meant maybe we shouldn't be holding a heat and RF-emitting screen two inches from our eyeballs. My phone gets hot when streaming a lot of music - I can only imagine how hot it gets while using all that processing power to run a VR program!
Until something sticks in the market, it's good to have a variety of products. The differences for software devs are essentially some camera projection settings and tolerances to sensor error.
> "The study found increased (although still low) risks of these tumors in male rats exposed to RF radiation, although there was no increased risk among female rats."
> "There was again a suggestion of a possible increased risk in the 10% of people who used their cell phones the most, but this was hard to interpret because some people reported implausibly high cell phone use, as well as other issues."
> "Some studies have found a possible link. For example, several studies published by the same research group in Sweden have reported an increased risk of tumors on the side of the head where the cell phone was held, particularly with 10 or more years of use."
> "A recent small study in people has shown that cell phones may also have some other effects on the brain, although it’s not clear if they’re harmful. The study found that when people had an active cell phone held up to their ear for 50 minutes, brain tissues on the same side of the head as the phone used more glucose than did tissues on the other side of the brain."
How can people dismiss this as not worrying? How can people bring these concerns into discourse without being labeled a Luddite?
Sigh, kinda disappointed given all the hype and secrecy around this, and makes me doubt the near future of VR (I have a Vive, and was a believer until this point). For VR to really take off, we do need a "good enough" experience for the mass while letting the Vives driving the leading edge. Cardboard was clearly not good enough (otherwise it would have taken off by itself already), Daydream (with Pixel phone) just seems like a polished version of cardboard, but still not good enough: actually, is it in anyway better than cardboard towards the direction of Vive? Slightly higher resolution? A little bit more comfortable, maybe easier to setup, and that's it? How about 6 degree of freedom, more precise controller tracking? at least 1K per eye resolution? Just wish Daydream won't kill VR by over-marketing it and fails to deliver. If that happens, it may take another decade for VR to come back.
>For VR to really take off, we do need a "good enough" experience for the mass
Says who? VR has the Vive, the Oculus, and soon the PSVR. Later it will have an Xbox headset. So you have the PC and consoles all supporting games. Exactly what else do you need? As a vive owner I don't understand why people think there's this natural market demand to have these in every pocket and every home. They are specialist devices. Most people aren't drawn to VR, even if it was made super simple and super cheap. This is like saying the Fallout series is a failure because its not on mobile. We need to stop this mobile-centric thinking. Mobile has its own use cases. Its not a universal thing.
> Most people aren't drawn to VR.
That's an interesting observation, especially from a Vive owner. From my limited experiences, everyone I showed Vive to was blown away by it (demo ranges from teenagers to non-techie adults), and definitely wanted to use it more, the only problems for them to have one of their own immediately are 1) price point, 2) setup complexity. On the contrary, Cardboard users responses were lukewarm in general.
Regarding VR for the mass, I see it as a new content consumption platform, the fact that it's mostly for games right now doesn't mean it'll stay in that way. Isn't introducing/promoting VR for the mass exactly what Daydream is intended for? Otherwise I'm not sure why Google is interested in pushing a platform just for a niche market.
To drive adoption, you need an app that people want to use over over, not just marvel at, or play for a couple of hours. It seems personal big screen video content has the chance to be that breakthrough app, and daydream seems a lot cozier than cardboard for long term interaction. Good for plane trips, commuter rail, ect.
Besides, it seems likely that Playstation VR will have the marketing spend which will drive awareness of consumer VR in the coming months.
When do we stop buying into the Google product hype? How many other chase-the-rabbit approaches to products is Google going to shove in front of our faces before we realize it's almost all smoke and mirrors? It seems completely laughable to me that this "product" will even exist past 2017, let alone be any kind of leader in anything (innovation, market share, creating a new market space, etc.).
I know jaded cynicism is never attractive, but it's honestly baffling to me how these threads aren't peppered with what I would think to be well-justified skepticism when it comes to Google and their ambitious hardware products. They almost never succeed, period! You never even hear about them most of the time a few months after they get launched, and the only time when you do is when the PR machine is working fast and furious to prop it up (see: Glass).
So sure, let's all pretend that wearing a pair of underwear on your face stuffed with a cell phone is going to advance VR. Yeah. That seems totally plausible.