Tag: Virtual Reality

Oculus Rift now available for pre-order

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Oculus CR-1 - now available to pre-order
The Oculus CR-1 – now available to pre-order (image: Oculus VR)

Following a pre-announcement on Tuesday, January 5th, Oculus VR have confirmed that the Oculus Rift headset is now available for pre-order (for Windows users) for shipment to the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States.

The price for the headset and accessories is a nominal US $599 (€699 in Europe and £499 in the UK), although as the announcement notes, this is exclusive of tax and shipping costs, and the price may vary for non-USD purchases.

Oculus VR indicate that pre-ordered set will start shipping on March 28th, 2016, and limited stocks will be available to retailers later in April 2016. However, Engadget report even the March 28th ship date may have slipped due to the initial volume of orders already received by Oculus VR, and that some outside of the US may have had problems in placing orders.

The Oculus Remote is "esigned to make it simple and intuitive to navigate VR experiences"
The Oculus Remote is “designed to make it simple and intuitive to navigate VR experiences” (image: Oculus VR)

The complete package comprises the Rift headset with built-in headphones and microphone, sensor, and an Xbox One controller and the Oculus Remote.

Those pre-ordering also secure the opportunity to pre-order the Oculus Touch hand controllers when they become available later in 2016 (the  release of the latter was pushed back to the second half of 2016 to allow further time for development  / testing).

Also included in the package is a copy of Playful’s Lucky’s Tale, a platform game which has enjoyed much exposure and positive response as a part of Oculus Rift demonstrations, and also EVE: Valkyrie.

Those pre-ordering are reminded that a fairly hefty PC is required to obtain a suitable Rift experience, with the specifications listed as : NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater GPU;, an Intel i5-4590 equivalent CPU or greater; at least 8Gb of RAM; compatible HDMI 1.3 video output; 3 free USB 3 ports (and 1 USB 2 port) and Windows 7 + SP1 or greater.  Oculus also report that PCs supplied by manufacturers meeting this specification will start to ship with an “Oculus Ready” logo, and the company will be making suitable PCs with headset available for pre-order in February (presumably in the US only) at a starting price of US $1499.

A compatibility tool is available for download to help determine if your PC is “Oculus ready” and those wishing to pre-order can do so through the Oculus Shop.

The compatibility test will tell you if your PC is ready for the the best Oculus Rift experience
The compatibility tool will tell you if your PC is ready for the best Oculus Rift experience

There has already been some excitement following the announcement by those SL users who are interested in the Lab’s upcoming virtual worlds platform, “Project Sansar”, as this is being built very much with the Rift in mind (although use of a Rift headset with “Sansar” is not a requirement).

While the experience is acknowledged to be somewhat less-than-optimal, it’ll be interesting to see of the Oculus VR announcement spurs the Lab on update the Second Life Oculus Rift project viewer for those wishing to try the headset in Second Life. There have been promises that such an update is coming down the pipe, but until now it has likely been sitting at the back of the queue while the Lab pushes out updates and capabilities liable to be more widely appreciated by SL users.

Oculus CR-1 with microphone, Oculus Remote and Xbox wireless controller
Oculus CR-1 with sensor, Oculus Remote and Xbox wireless controller (image: Oculus VR)

As noted above, Engadget report that the initial response to the pre-order announcement has been positive. There is undoubtedly a lot of interest in HMDs from gamers around the world, and most likely from the curious and those with specific uses for the headset. However, it’ll be interesting to see how things go over the coming year. Whichever way you look at it, the Oculus Rift CR-1 and its nearest rival, the HTC / Valve Vive represent fairly hefty investments, and many might prefer to wait and see how the market develops in terms of newer, more compact headsets, lower prices, etc., before committing.

I confess to being in the latter category. To me, the potential of VR still lies down the road, and I’m more than happy to see how the hardware side of things shapes up, and what really develops in support of it in terms of practical applications which might appeal to me (games most certainly ain’t it). I also have to admit augmented reality holds far more fascination for me in terms of it potential for “every day” use than do most things so far imagined with VR.

In the Press: the future of VR with Bloomberg

Posted on by Inara Pey
Emily Chang from Bloomberg Business discusses the future of VR with Ebbe Altberg and AltspaceVR CEO Eric Romo
Emily Chang from Bloomberg Business discusses the future of VR with Ebbe Altberg and AltspaceVR CEO Eric Romo (via Bloomberg Business)

On Monday, December 7th, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg appeared alongside AltspaceVR’s CEO and founder, Eric Romo  on Bloomberg Business with Emily Chang, to discuss How to Find Realistic Timeline for Virtual Reality. In the interview, which lasts just under 5 minutes, the three discussed the potential of VR including.

The foundation for the interview is a report by TrendForce which proclaims the VR market will be worth around US $70 billion by 2020, with some US $20 billion coming from hardware purchases and US $50 billion from software and applications. It’s the latest in a bullish series of predictions on the future of the technology, many of which have gone unchallenged – and even then, TrendForce believe their prediction is an “understatement”. But how likely is it?

The Trend Force prediction for VR growth (via Bloomberg Business)
The Trend Force prediction for VR growth (via Bloomberg Business)

US $70 billion represents a tenfold increase in market worth for an industry slated to generate around US $6.7 billion in 2016. However you look at it, that’s a pretty steep growth curve. Both Ebbe and Eric see it as “reasonable”, with the latter citing the idea that a lot of companies which might not be considered as “VR companies” seeing a value proposition in the technology and leveraging it within their business model. In particular, he refers to the expected upsurge in VR as a paradigm shift comparable to that witnessed with the smartphone revolution.

Others are more cautious, as is the case with Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe, who is shown commenting:

We definitely believe the mass market … there’s going to be a lot of adopters, early adopters, of VR. but if you’re looking at the kind of smartphone scale, you know, billions of users out there, that’s going to take a long time.

While not nay-saying the potential of VR, other analysts view the TrendForce report as being unhelpful. When approached by Tweak Town, for example, Moor Insights & Strategy’s VR Analyst Anshel Sag, had this to say:

$70 billion by 2020 is more than extremely ambitious, $70 billion assumes that VR is a mature and mainstream market. There is no way that VR will explode into such a mature market within effectively 4 years. While I am extremely optimistic about the future of VR, such projections do nothing but hurt the future of VR by setting unrealistic expectations. There are no players in any part of the market that could turn this industry into a $70 billion industry in 4 years.

During the Bloomberg discussion, there is an acceptance that VR needs to overcome certain technical hurdles to gain more of a mass-market appeal. Certainly, these issues – cost, reliance on high-end supporting technology, etc. – are real, and doubtless will be overcome. But they aren’t the single issue facing VR in terms of its adoption.

Like it or not, VR is actually an isolating experience. Sure, you can in theory see anything, go anywhere, etc., while using it. But you do so at the expense of pretty much cutting you off from the rest of the world around you. It curtails your ability to properly interact with the things around you, to multi-task, etc. For many people and situations, even those seen as potential VR use-cases, that could curb the appeal.

There’s something else as well to be considered when discussing VR and its potential; what might be called the elephant in the room: augmented reality.

While AR is off to a slower start that VR, it is fair to say that it has the potential to reach into many of those markets and use-cases as seen to be ideal for VR, and offer a more attractive option in doing so. Initial AR systems are far more self-contained and portable; those on the horizon promise a wealth of capabilities (up to and including VR). More to the point, they do not isolate users from the world around them, something which could make AR far more practical and appealing for everyday use in the house, at work, on the street, etc.

By the time VR is really in a position to offer low-cost, lightweight systems freed from requiring high-end computing power, it could be facing stiff competition from AR for many of the markets seen as "ideal" for its use
By the time VR is really in a position to offer low-cost, lightweight systems freed from requiring high-end computing power, it could be facing stiff competition from AR for many of the markets seen as “ideal” for its use (image via CastAR)

So, it could be said that AR appears to be a far more natural proposition for widespread adoption and use, becoming a far more natural evolution from (and with) mobile and smartphone technologies. Hence why some put AR’s market worth as being in excess for US $100 billion by 2020.

Which is not to say that VR doesn’t have a place in the future. There are very niche and compelling cases where it will gain momentum. But whether it will ever reach the level of adoption comparable to the smartphone, as is so often cited, is questionable. There is no reason why, that for many of those potentially uses of VR outside of entertainment and gaming, AR might not offer a far better value proposition for take-up when compared to VR, leading to the latter being subsumed by it well before it has the opportunity to reach the scale of growth predicted for it.

You can catch the Bloomberg video by flowing the link towards the top of this piece, or you can catch the audio below.

Jeremy Bailenson talks potential and pitfalls in VR

Posted on by Inara Pey

A Tweet by Loki Eliot drew my attention to a Q&A article in the San Jose Mercury News with Professor Jeremy Bailenson, in which he discusses Virtual Reality and raises some interesting points to consider on the future of the technology as a mass-market product.

Professor Bailenson is well qualified to comment on VR. He’s the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, and his main area of interest is the phenomenon of digital human representation, especially in the context of immersive virtual reality. His work has been consistently funded by the National Science Foundation for fifteen years, and his findings have been published in over 100 academic papers in the fields of communication, computer science, education, environmental science, law, medicine, political science, and psychology.

Professor Jeremy Bailenson (image: Stanford University)
Professor Jeremy Bailenson (image: Stanford University)

While he is immersed (no pun intended) in the technology and believes in its potential, as he tells Mercury News reporter Troy Wolverton, he is no VR evangelist. In fact he harbours mixed views about some of the uses being touted for VR in the future, and is convinced the current emphasis on VR within the gaming environment isn’t the best use for the technology.

“When Commissioner Adam Silver of the NBA came to my lab, he thought that I was going to try to convince him that one should watch an NBA game from VR. And I can’t imagine what would be worse than that,” he tells Wolverton early in the interview.

He continues, “I’ve never worn an HMD (head-mounted device) for more than a half an hour in my life, and nowadays, I rarely wear one for more than five or 10 minutes. And a two-hour NBA game would be pretty brutal on the perceptual system. I believe VR’s really good for these very intense experiences, but it’s not a 12-hour-day thing.”

In terms of VR and games, he says, “I don’t believe that video games are an appropriate market for this. Especially when you get into the highly violent games — do you really want to feel that blood splatter on you? I don’t think it’s the right use case.”

His belief is that VR is best suited to specific uses, rather than a catch-all new wonder technology. But even then, he sees limits on how much VR will be used. Not because of any technological limitations, but simply because of the physical impact they have on our vision, and what flows out from that.

“Think about how much time you spend on your device a day. It’s more than six to eight hours, and that’s a long time to be wearing a pair of goggles,” he says. “But even if that wasn’t the case, the real problem is that the visual experience with an HMD necessarily produces some eye strain, and that gets fatiguing over time.”

It’s hard to argue with him on this; computer vision syndrome is a recognised condition affecting around 90% of those who use a computer for more than 3 hours a day. The effects are temporary, but can include headaches, blurred or double vision, neck pain, dry or irritated eyes, dizziness and polyopia. With HMDs placing screens mere centimetres from the eyes to the exclusion of all else, there is a risk the symptoms could be more particularly felt, thus limiting the degree to which we remain physically and mentally comfortable when using them.

Computer vision syndrome (CVS) already affects around 90% of people who use a computer screen for more than 3 hours a day. The affects are temporary, and more irritating than harmful - but could they nevertheless impact the degree with which we use VR HMDs?
Computer vision syndrome (CVS) already affects around 90% of people who use a computer screen for more than 3 hours a day. The symptoms are temporary, and more irritating than harmful – but could they nevertheless impact the degree with which we use VR HMDs?

So where does he see VR having particular application?

Part of his work involves him in building VR systems which allow physically remote people to meet and interact. He uses these to study how such systems change the nature of verbal and non-verbal interaction (hence why High Fidelity ask him to become an advisor), as well as exploring how VR might change the way we think about education, environmental behaviour, empathy, and health. It’s perhaps not surprising that he sees these as the primary uses for VR.

“VR experience changes the way you think of yourself and others and changes your behaviour,” he notes. “And when VR’s done well, it’s a proxy for a natural experience, and we know experiences physically change us.”

Even so, he does remain concerned of the potential negative influence of VR on people.

“Am I terrified of the world where anyone can create really horrible experiences?” He asks rhetorically. “Yes, it does worry me. I worry what happens when a violent video game feels like murder. And when pornography feels like sex. How does that change the way humans interact, function as a society?

“The technology is powerful. It’s like uranium. It can heat homes and destroy nations.”

All told, the interview is an interesting read which serves to get the grey matter boggling a little more on the subject of VR, how it might be used and the impacts it might have.

Related Links

High Fidelity launches US$15,000 STEM VR Challenge

Posted on by Inara Pey

HF-logoFew people involved in VR and augmented reality are unconvinced that these emerging technologies will have a profound effect on education and teaching. As has been seen in both Second Life and Open Simulator, even without immersive VR, virtual environments offer a huge opportunity to education.

Now High Fidelity is joining in, and is doing so in a novel but enticing way: by offering up to three US$5,000 grants to teams or individuals who want to build educational content within High Fidelity.

The new of the opportunity, which the HiFi team is calling the “STEM VR Challenge” (STEM being the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in education), was made via a blog post on the High Fidelity website from Ryan Karpf. In it, Ryan says:

High Fidelity recently had the pleasure of showing off our open source virtual reality platform to educators and technical integrators at the ISTE conference in Philadelphia.

To demonstrate one way educators can use our platform, High Fidelity worked with DynamoidApps to develop an interactive model of an animal cell that can be explored on one’s own or with an entire class. The vast alien looking environment goes beyond just showing the parts of the cell, also showing some of the processes taking place. Travelling around with your classmates and teacher allows for real time question and answers and sharing of ideas.

If you want to visit this animal cell, login and go to cellscience/start, and fly towards any cell you see to begin your journey. Hitch a ride on a motor protein and jump off at one of the huge mitochondria along the way!

The interactive model of an animal cell created by High Fidelity, working with DynamoidApps (image courtesy of High Fidelity)

The model itself, in keeping with High Fidelity’s open-source approach to their platform, is being offered free to any who wishes to modify it, with the companying hoping it will become the first of a catalogue of educational units created within High Fidelity.

To further kick-start things, High Fidelity are inviting educators, be they individuals or groups, to take up the STEM VR Challenge, to submit proposals for educational content in High Fidelity which meets the criteria set-out in the Challenge website, namely that the content is:

  • HMD (e.g. Oculus Rift) featured
  • High school age appropriate
  • STEM focused
  • Social (can be experienced by >3 people together)

Proposals meeting these criteria and abiding by the rules and are eligible to enter the Challenge, should be submitted via e-mail to eduvrgrant-at-highfidelity.com. On offer are up to three grants of US$5,000 apiece to help further develop the selected ideas. In addition, awardees will have direct access to High Fidelity’s technical support, and have their content hosted by High Fidelity. To find out more, follow the links to the High Fidelity blog and the STEM VR website.

Related Links

With thanks to Indigo Mertel for the pointer.

Oculus VR acquires Surreal Vision, and Connect 2 announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

My colleague Ben Lang, over at Road to VR, brought news my way of the latest acquisition by Oculus Rift, following the company’s formal announcement on May 26th.

Surreal vision is a UK-based company which grew out of Imperial College London, and is at the bleeding edge of computer vision technology. One of the founders is Renato Salas-Moreno, who developed SLAM++ (simultaneous localization and mapping) technology. As Ben explains in the Road to VR blog post:

Using input from a single depth camera, SLAM++ tracks its own position while mapping the environment, and does so while recognizing discrete objects like chairs and tables as being separate from themselves and other geometry like the floor and walls.

SLAM therefore offers the potential to take a physical environment, scanning it, and literally dropping into in a virtual environment and have people interact with the virtual instances of the objects within it.

The other two founders of Surreal Vision are equally notable. Richard Newcombe is the inventor of KinectFusion, DynamicFusion and DTAM (Dense Tracking and Mapping) and worked with Salas-Moreno on SLAM++, while  Steven Lovegrove, co-invented DTAM with Newcombe and authored SplineFusion. All three will apparently be relocating to the Oculus Research facilities in Redmond, Washington.

The acquisition is particularly notable in that it follows-on from Oculus VR acquiring 13th Lab at the end of 2014, another company also working with SLAM capabilities. They were acquired alongside of Nimble VR, a company developing a hand tracking system. However, at the time of those acquisitions, it was unclear what aspects of the work carried out by both companies would be carried forward under the Oculus banner.

Richard Newcombe, Renato Salas-Moreno, and Steven Lovegrove of Surreal Vision (image courtesy of Oculus VR)
Richard Newcombe, Renato Salas-Moreno, and Steven Lovegrove of Surreal Vision (image courtesy of Oculus VR)

Surreal Visions, seem to have been given greater freedom, with the Oculus VR announcement of the acquisition including a statement from the team and their hopes for the future, which  reads in part:

At Surreal Vision, we are overhauling state-of-the-art 3D scene reconstruction algorithms to provide a rich, up-to-date model of everything in the environment including people and their interactions with each other. We’re developing breakthrough techniques to capture, interpret, manage, analyse, and finally reproject in real-time a model of reality back to the user in a way that feels real, creating a new, mixed reality that brings together the virtual and real worlds.

Ultimately, these technologies will lead to VR and AR systems that can be used in any condition, day or night, indoors or outdoors. They will open the door to true telepresence, where people can visit anyone, anywhere.

Connect 2, the Oculus VR conference, is promising to provide
Connect 2, the Oculus VR conference, is promising to provide “everything developers need to know to launch on the Rift and Gear VR”

On May 21st, Oculus VR also confirmed that their 2nd annual Oculus Connect conference – Connect 2 – will take place between September 23rd and September 25th at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, CA.

The conference will feature keynote addresses from Oculus VR’s CEO Brendan Iribe, their Chief Scientist, Michael Abrash, and also from John Carmack, the company’s CTO. It promises to deliver “everything developers need to know to launch on the Rift and Gear VR”. As noted in the media and this blog, the launch of the former is now set for the first quarter of 2016, while it is anticipated that the formal launch of the Oculus-powered Gear VR system from Samsung could occur around October / November 2015.

System specifications for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift were announced on May 15th, and caused some upset / disappointment with the company indicating that the initial release of the headset would be for the Windows environment only – there would not be support for Linux or Mac OS X.

At the time the system specifications were release, Atman Binstock, Chief Architect at Oculus and technical director of the Rift, issued a blog post on the system requirement they day they were announced, in which he explained the Linux / OS X decision thus:

Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline.

The Windows specifications were summarised as: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater; Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater; 8GB+ RAM; compatible HDMI 1.3 video output; 2x USB 3.0 ports; Windows 7 SP1 or later. All of which, Binstock said, to allow the headset to deliver, “to deliver comfortable, sustained presence – a “conversion on contact” experience that can instantly transform the way people think about virtual reality.”

Oculus VR confirm: consumer headset to ship Q1 2016

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday, May 6th, Oculus VR confirmed the consumer version of their headset will commencing shipping in the first quarter of 2016, with pre-ordering due to start later in 2015.

The news broke via a press release from Oculus VR, and Tweets from Oculus VR, Palmer Luckey, and the company’s Vice President of Product  Nate Mitchell (shown on the right).

The announcement ends months of speculation on when the consumer version of the headset might be available, with many originally predicting it would be ready for Christmas 2014 and then Christmas 2015. Despite such speculation, Oculus VR has always carefully avoided mentioning any approximate idea release dates. As I reported in these pages, even as recently as November 2014, Oculus VR Brendan Iribe was playing down any idea of any (then) near-term release of the headset:

We want to get it right. We really do. We’ve gone out there and we’ve set this bar and said, “we are going to get it right, and we’re not going to ship until we get it right” … We’re getting very close … We want it to be a beautiful product; there’s no reason it can’t be a beautiful product … so we still have a way to go, and we’re still working on a number of things, but we’re getting much closer. We like to say it’s months, not necessarily years, away [but] it’s many months, not a few months.

Click for full size

That something might be afoot by way of announcements was initially hinted at in a May 5th Tweet in which Palmer Luckey commented I love it when a plan comes together!

This brought an inevitable run of replies, many seeing it as a hint about the Oculus CV1 (as the consumer version of the headset has sometimes been referred to), including the humorous response seen on the right regarding the headset’s form factor.

Details of the headset are rather scant in the announcement and the images a little on the dark side (I’ve lightened the contrast on them below), with the release merely stating:

The Oculus Rift builds on the presence, immersion, and comfort of the Crescent Bay prototype with an improved tracking system that supports both seated and standing experiences, as well as a highly refined industrial design, and updated ergonomics for a more natural fit.

No details on pricing or quite when in 2015 people will be able to start pre-ordering the headset, and there are certainly no details on the technical aspects of the headset. However, one potentially interesting aspect of the announcement has already sparked some speculation, as it refers to the upcoming release as, “a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality”. This has prompted Techcrunch to comment:

There’s no mention of a third-party computer necessary to power the Rift, which previous Oculus developer kits required. That means the Rift might ship with a game console-esque device to handle computing for the headset. An all-in-one box could make virtual reality much more accessible to consumers, especially those who don’t own a high-grade gaming PC.

A front view of the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)
A front view of the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)

In terms of specification, the announcement was equally enigmatic, stating, “we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift”, with the last part of this statement leading Techcrunch to also speculate whether Oculus VR might also announce a line of in-house developed games to go with the launch.

Given the backgrounds of many of those involved in the company, such an idea might not be wild speculation. As it is, it is already known that Oculus VR is helping to develop immersive movie experiences. Furthermore, in February 2015 it was confirmed that Facebook is developing VR apps, with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox saying that experiences as varied as flying a fighter jet to sitting in a Mongolian yurt would serve as inspiration, and describing the technology as “sending a fuller picture … You’ll do it, Beyoncé will do it”. Ergo, Oculus VR-branded games are not beyond the realm of possibly.

What the announcement does more-or-less mean is that unless something unexpected happens, the Oculus Rift will definitely be available after HTC / Valve have started shipping their own Vive headset, which looks set to hit the market around the same time as Samsung’s  (Oculus-enabled) Gear VR2, towards the end of 2015.

A view from under the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)
A view from under the Oculus consumer version (courtesy of Oculus VR)

While there has been a lot of hype about the possible demand for what is effectively a first generation headset from Oculus VR, there have also been some notes of caution sounded in some quarters. As gamesindustry.biz notes, Ben Schachter, a Macquarie Research analyst wrote to Facebook investors, stating:

While there is not yet any info on pricing or available units, we expect relatively small number of units and think that the initial device will be supply constrained. We think that the early versions of the device will be more about showing what is possible from gaming and other entertainment genres, and build demand for later versions of the device.

Mr. Schachter isn’t alone. While price may no longer be a limiting factor in obtaining a headset, Jacki Morie, herself a VR pioneer (and whose work has been featured in this blog a number of times) recently warned that care should be taken in how the potential for VR is promoted, in particular pointing to things like an Oculus VR sponsored art contest as a means to send out completely the wrong message about VR to a wider mass market audience and potentially damaging the technology’s credibility as a useful tool.

I actually doubt the wheels will seriously come off the cart with VR this time around, bad marketing campaigns and the like notwithstanding, although Jacki clearly has a point about getting the right message out there in the first place. However, I do tend to think that Mr. Schachter’s comment about the build-up of demand is well put. VR will profoundly alter many ways of doing things for all of us in time; but the the speculation and hype that will not follow Oculus VR’s announcement aside, it’s still going to be a few years or so before we see VR as being as ubiquitous a piece of technology in our daily lives as we do the mobile ‘phone today.