The Inside Story of Oculus Rift (opens in new tab)

(wired.com)

80 pointsrelampago12y ago28 comments

28 comments

16 comments · 6 top-level

polskibus12y ago· 3 in thread

Did Valve really contribute the most important part to Oculus that is the no-nausea experience? If so, on what terms did they share the technology with Oculus? I'm wondering if Valve is the winner in the shadows or the biggest loser.

gatehouse12y ago

IIRC, Valve wants to make games for VR, they don't want to make VR.

soperj12y ago

This is why they let Jeri Ellsworth go with all the IP to CastAR.

polskibus12y ago

That's the current state, but surely if they patented the no-nausea bit of tech, they wouldve earn millions just licensing it. It makes me wonder whether the Valve claim in the story is accurate or perhaps there is another story behind the official one.

2 more replies

clickok12y ago· 2 in thread

It doesn't really mention that Palmer Luckey was working with Mark Bolas' VR group at USC [1] at the time of the Kickstarter. The Rift isn't the product of a lone 18-year-old VR autodidact.

I'm not 100% certain regarding the timeline, but it's starting to seem odd how every article about Oculus seems to marginalize everyone but Palmer and Carmack.

[1] http://interactive.usc.edu/2012/06/12/mxr-lab-members-and-al...

the_watcher12y ago

Most of these articles marginalize key players in relation to the public face

_random_12y ago

It seems that geeks are less excited about Oculus in general since the acquisition thing.

aniijbod12y ago· 2 in thread

Rubin helpfully fills in a lot of blank spaces in what we already knew about this. The one nagging doubt that still lingers sits somewhere between what is doable, versus what is done. The Kinect, for all it's technological triumphs and impressive market performance, still leaves us waiting for whatever it was that made it seem like it was going to change everything. While few who have ever had the Oculus experience have any doubt that it could change everything, we mustn't forget that we are also all still waiting for the first concrete confirmation that this expectation will be met.

rasz_pl12y ago

Kinect rode on Microsoft >$1 billion marketing campaign of lies. Every PR clip showed people interacting with fast paced action packed games in very responsive way.

Reality of hardware was totally different. M$ wasnt ready, Project Natal was couple of years away. They scrambled in panic and bought Primesense. Kinect was basically repackaged Primesense dev kit.

Kinect was supposed to be answer to Wii. Problem is there is a huge difference in speed between tracking 4 points of light versus complex DSP on a point cloud. Kinect had a 100-500ms delay between something happening and skeletal tracking on the screen. Kinect One only manages to cut that in ~half.

You simply CANT do responsive input with latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds. This is why Kinect has failed to deliver what $1 billion of M$ PR promised four years ago.

Kinect is great for puzzle games, art projects, slow complex input.

ryanburk12y ago

do you have sources for the latency numbers for kinect on xbox one? I've searched and can't find anything concrete and the XDK isn't publicly available.

and this might downvote me into oblivion, but is using "M$" still a thing? I don't see how that helps a discussion.

1 more reply

grogenaut12y ago· 2 in thread

I didn't know it had shipped to retail already

teraflop12y ago

It hasn't. That's why the article says: "Now Oculus is hard at work on its long-awaited headset for consumers, which the company predicts will be released later this year, or more likely early next year, or perhaps even not so early next year."

grogenaut12y ago

Yes I get that but the article says how it became a reality. It's been a non-consumer reality for quite a while in arcades. It's still not a reality unless you have a dev kit.

bbrks12y ago· 1 in thread

Sidenote: wired.com articles have a truly annoying UX error. The slider/gallery goes full screen when the user presses 'F', which hides the article.

Not very helpful when you want to find something written in the article by Ctrl+F!

vvvv12y ago

For me, almost every single time: Ctrl+Shift+K, push to Kindle, close the browser.

jesuslop12y ago

Wired, your pages are slooow.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse