Vive Pro Launch

[Thaldor]

11 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Yeah Facebook has a (deserved) reputation. Still a little sceptical of potentially judging HTC so differently.

 

There are definitely niches where the Vive is better. Another one is if you use glasses and they don't fit in the Rift (some may not fit in the Vive either, but at least it has more room so your chances are better).

 

Why would you take apart a controller and turn it into a gun? Makes no sense when it already lets you mimic a hand in VR, which can hold both guns and all kinds of other stuff. Use for tracking other stuff is possible but more limited than with Vive trackers due to size/layout. I think Oculus was technically first to market on that point with Rock Band VR tracking your guitar using an attached controller, but it's definitely not as good of a solution for general usage.

 

On the other hand, tracking all kinds of objects might not be a great idea when you can just have hands in VR to track anything you could possibly (or impossibly) hold. Trackers make more sense to me if they're tracking other body parts (feet etc.), but then I'm not sure if VR is really ready for that anyway. Lower priority probably, and not something I'd want to spend money on right now. YMMV.

 

3.5x4.0m is a huge play area. The Rift tracking system does start to look a bit silly with that kind of area available, but then it isn't really designed for that, and the vast majority of people won't have that much space set aside for VR. It was 3% of Vive users by June 2016, and the figure will only have gone down since then (as VR expands beyond the most hardcore enthusiasts).

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/358720/discussions/0/350532536103514259/

Breaking down controllers was and probably still is a thing in VR development, just the fact that there's a lot of "broken" controller for Vive (most of them have problems with the touchpad) and availability of the Vive Trackers is bad (in EU, still no continuous sales). As long as the tracking and the other HW works it's completely good idea to turn the broken controller into something more useful. Also it's possibility to turn ordinary things trackable without adding much to their form by including the tracking into them from a broken controller.

 

Probably for normal gamer that doesn't make much sense. But when you consider where else VR can be useful and what else we can combine with it, having the opportunity to track physical objects and other than just the headset and controllers is quite a big feature. What I'm currently playing with is combining Leap Motion and trackers, so you don't even have controllers in your hands, but you still have hands in the game and when you grab something like a gun, you acctually pick up physical "gun" and all you need for that is just Vive, Leap Motion and mount for it, tracker and some airsoftgun. Of course that can be used almost anywhere, first thing we did when we got couple of trackers was tracking a real coffee mug within a game so you can drink cofee without taking off your headset, because "productivity"

 

Whole own world is then the XR possibilities. Even real MR is still highly experimental and even if it's apparently possible for both Vive and Oculus, both don't advertise it a lot (with MR I mean mixed reality filming mostly, having a real camera tracked in the game and having it also film the player in the real world and composing that into a video where the player is acctually in the game). How about a party game, where one player is with headset in VR and others can join in with their phones/tablets and use them as a windows to the VR? No problem, as long as you can track those phones and tablets and can stand the Wi-Fi latency. And this is where those stereo cameras on Vive Pro come to the picture and enabling AR vision (there's a few other real AR headsets out there, but they are all kind of wonky in their own way, like Meta2).

 

And this all is already possible and while I cannot say what I'm really working at the moment, I can say that quite a lot of this is just a normal day at the work for me and that we aren't making anything for gamers but working on to develope educational software.

[Misanthrope]

I remember that when VR started to come out it recommended at least a 290 or a 970 for the VR experience (Also: boy does time ever flies by fast)

 

Seeing this ups resolution and such are the requirements bumped? It seems counter intuitive that a gen 2 device doesn't goes down in price but also significantly raises the entry bar due to current GPU pricing trends.

 

I really think they should have sit on this a while longer so you don't basically tell your customers "Improve your VR game by spending another 1000 on a new headset, new sensor and yeah drop another 800 to 1000 on a new GPU to push it"

 

Kinda goes against the idea of making the VR stuff more accessible as time goes on to achieve better adoption rates, this seems to be the opposite.

[Sniperfox47]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I remember that when VR started to come out it recommended at least a 290 or a 970 for the VR experience (Also: boy does time ever flies by fast)

 

Seeing this ups resolution and such are the requirements bumped? It seems counter intuitive that a gen 2 device doesn't goes down in price but also significantly raises the entry bar due to current GPU pricing trends.

 

I really think they should have sit on this a while longer so you don't basically tell your customers "Improve your VR game by spending another 1000 on a new headset, new sensor and yeah drop another 800 to 1000 on a new GPU to push it"

 

Kinda goes against the idea of making the VR stuff more accessible as time goes on to achieve better adoption rates, this seems to be the opposite.

Minimum reqs are identical to the normal Vive (other than port requirements obviously. Now 1 DisplayPort 1.2 + 1 USB 3.0 vs 1 HDMI 1.4 + 1 USB 2.0).

 

To see the benefits of the resolution you'll need a better GPU, but the pixel density, improved audio, etc. works with the exact same hardware with almost identical performance.

 

Keep in mind, with a lot of VR titles they're not rendering at the native headset resolution anyways. They're doing things like dynamic setting switching and dynamic resolution to scale performance and avoid async. reproj. anyways, so rendering at a lower resolution (that of a normal Vive) is probably going to just happen automatically on a lot of titles if your GPU can't handle the full Vive Pro resolution.

[Misanthrope]

17 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Minimum reqs are identical to the normal Vive (other than port requirements obviously. Now 1 DisplayPort 1.2 + 1 USB 3.0 vs 1 HDMI 1.4 + 1 USB 2.0).

 

To see the benefits of the resolution you'll need a better GPU, but the pixel density, improved audio, etc. works with the exact same hardware with almost identical performance.

 

Keep in mind, with a lot of VR titles they're not rendering at the native headset resolution anyways. They're doing things like dynamic setting switching and dynamic resolution to scale performance and avoid async. reproj. anyways, so rendering at a lower resolution (that of a normal Vive) is probably going to just happen automatically on a lot of titles if your GPU can't handle the full Vive Pro resolution.

How is that possible?

 

You can't magically produce increased pixel density while maintaining the same system requirements.

[Sniperfox47]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

How is that possible?

 

You can't magically produce increased pixel density while maintaining the same system requirements.

Because you render and output at a lower resolution and then scale it? Same way you can render a game at 1280x720 and output it to a 1920x1080 screen? Or play at FHD on a UHD screen?

 

Just because the native resolution is higher doesn't mean you have to render at that resolution.

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Because you render and output at a lower resolution and then scale it? Same way you can render a game at 1280x720 and output it to a 1920x1080 screen? Or play at FHD on a UHD screen?

 

Just because the native resolution is higher doesn't mean you have to render at that resolution.

But those gains aren't that substantial or even that noticeable most of the time: It would be like getting a 4k monitor but doing nothing but upscaling 1080p. You might get some visual improvement out of it but it's going to be mostly negligible. Certainly not worth over $1000 for the investment on the new headset which goes back to my original post: you really need to also upgrade your GPU along with it and those are prohibitive right now making this headset a doomed-to-fail curiosity for the very rich, not unlike the Titan V at the moment.

[Drak3]

7 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

How is that possible?

 

You can't magically produce increased pixel density while maintaining the same system requirements.

Render at lower resolution, scale up. That'd how an RX470 can still be a viable VR GPU in some of the more demanding than average VR games.

 

The Vive Pro will also do this, but I hope those of us with a 1080+ get native or closer to native in every application possible.

 

It's also not being targetted for the mainstream market, mostly just professionals and enthusiasts.

[Sniperfox47]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

But those gains aren't that substantial or even that noticeable most of the time: It would be like getting a 4k monitor but doing nothing but upscaling 1080p. You might get some visual improvement out of it but it's going to be mostly negligible. Certainly not worth over $1000 for the investment on the new headset which goes back to my original post: you really need to also upgrade your GPU along with it and those are prohibitive right now making this headset a doomed-to-fail curiosity for the very rich, not unlike the Titan V at the moment.

...except with VR it means you have more dense pixels. The Vive Pro's resolution bump has really very little graphics quality improvement. What it does is *drastically* cut down on the screen door effect. Meaning you can actually read text at a moderate distance. And make out details and patterns that your brain would otherwise break up due to the pixel split.

[Misanthrope]

Just now, Sniperfox47 said:

...except with VR it means you have more dense pixels. The Vive Pro's resolution bump has really very little graphics quality improvement. What it does is *drastically* cut down on the screen door effect. Meaning you can actually read text at a moderate distance. And make out details and patterns that your brain would otherwise break up due to the pixel split.

Ok you make a solid case as to having some tangible improvements, they seem like nice quality of life things to add to be fair to you.

 

I just think the price should have been lower it's a really hard pill to swallow by anyone who doesn't already has one or is very interested in VR and they should be aiming at better adoption rates, but I'll just remain skeptical instead of dismissive.

[Sniperfox47]

11 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Ok you make a solid case as to having some tangible improvements, they seem like nice quality of life things to add to be fair to you.

 

I just think the price should have been lower it's a really hard pill to swallow by anyone who doesn't already has one or is very interested in VR and they should be aiming at better adoption rates, but I'll just remain skeptical instead of dismissive.

Better adoption rates are why the normal headset dropped price $100 (probably due to another undetailed lighthouse revision).

 

The Vive Pro is *not* targetted at base consumers. It's Pro in the sense of AMD Firepro, not in the sense of MacBook Pro.

 

It's not a direct successor to the Vive or anything like that and they'll continue to exist side by side.

 

And honestly I'm not surprised at the ridiculous cost. Some of the stuff like the new display panels and designing a new sensor chip that are compatible with SteamVR Tracking 1.0 while being able to leverage the benefits of SteamVR Tracking 2.0 can't have been cheap.

 

We'llprobably see a Vive 2 in 2020, but until then if you want a better consumer headset then the Vive or Rift you're probably best waiting for LG's SteamVR headset due later this year.

[Sakkura]

2 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Breaking down controllers was and probably still is a thing in VR development, just the fact that there's a lot of "broken" controller for Vive (most of them have problems with the touchpad) and availability of the Vive Trackers is bad (in EU, still no continuous sales). As long as the tracking and the other HW works it's completely good idea to turn the broken controller into something more useful. Also it's possibility to turn ordinary things trackable without adding much to their form by including the tracking into them from a broken controller.

Oh okay, I thought you meant deliberately breaking down controllers that were working fine.

[Sakkura]

25 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

We'llprobably see a Vive 2 in 2020, but until then if you want a better consumer headset then the Vive or Rift you're probably best waiting for LG's SteamVR headset due later this year.

On that note, it's a bit concerning that LG doesn't have anything to show at GDC this year. They showed off their prototype at GDC last year, but they've been awful quiet for awful long now.

[Sniperfox47]

32 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

On that note, it's a bit concerning that LG doesn't have anything to show at GDC this year. They showed off their prototype at GDC last year, but they've been awful quiet for awful long now.

Eh they're probably just getting pressured by Microsoft for making it SteamVR rather than WindowsMR. It'll be fine.

[Matu20]

On 3/19/2018 at 9:40 PM, Sniperfox47 said:

699CAD

I get that you are from Canadialand, but so few of us are and it just doesn't make sense to include specific remarks like that, why not just use the "global currency" USD at all times?

 

Great article btw, read every word and got the most valuable info out of it, no need to check source.

[Jtalk4456]

On 3/19/2018 at 5:43 PM, Bcat00 said:

Meh, the VR fad is pretty much over at this point. The only way they will ever make it big is by these companies working with VR arcades to make it popular enough that price makes a steep drop. 

 

 

I disagree I think it's just beginning. The price does need to drop. Honestly the biggest hurdle is multiplayer. Imagine how serious vr would get if there was vr call of duty and two kids could each put on a headset and use the controllers to move across the map to kill each other

[Bcat00]

25 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I disagree I think it's just beginning. The price does need to drop. Honestly the biggest hurdle is multiplayer. Imagine how serious vr would get if there was vr call of duty and two kids could each put on a headset and use the controllers to move across the map to kill each other

You never took business 101 did you

[Jtalk4456]

38 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

You never took business 101 did you

I did actually, and I would love a detailed explanation of your 7 word argument based on a wild assumption and no actual reasoning. 

[Sakkura]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I disagree I think it's just beginning. The price does need to drop. Honestly the biggest hurdle is multiplayer. Imagine how serious vr would get if there was vr call of duty and two kids could each put on a headset and use the controllers to move across the map to kill each other

That already exists... there are also co-op shooters and so on.

[Jtalk4456]

7 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

That already exists... there are also co-op shooters and so on.

I mean it kind of exists, but it's not as simple as what i'm talking about.

First off, wireless needs to be there for every headset and needs to be $50, not 300, or even better be a part of the headset itself, not sold as an accessory.

Second, it needs to be at the point where there's 1 xbox or playstation console hooked up and 2 wireless headsets hooked up to that one console in the same room.

Right now the only real way is how linus did it with 3 curtain separated rooms and a beast of a computer using VM's. It needs to be simpler than this for it to turn from a fad into just another part of gaming at home.

 

Also whenever sword art online is a thing, I'm taking the risk of an evil overlord killing us off, maybe take out an insurance policy beforehand

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I disagree I think it's just beginning. The price does need to drop. Honestly the biggest hurdle is multiplayer. Imagine how serious vr would get if there was vr call of duty and two kids could each put on a headset and use the controllers to move across the map to kill each other

Kind of there's already clones of the most popular games for VR.

 

STAND OUT: VR Battle Royale = PUBG

Pavlov VR / Bullets And More VR = Counter-Strike

Onward = Call of Duty / ARMA

[Jtalk4456]

9 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Kind of there's already clones of the most popular games for VR.

 

STAND OUT: VR Battle Royale = PUBG

Pavlov VR / Bullets And More VR = Counter-Strike

Onward = Call of Duty / ARMA

My issue isn't with the games available but rather with the setup required. the great thing about consoles isn't price vs pc gaming, it's the fact that two people can sit down next to each other and play together. They don't have to connect to someone over an internet connection to be multiplayer. It makes the experience more enjoyable. So until fred and geaorge can plug 2 headsets into the pc or console and be in the same game at the same time in the same room, it will be stuck at the enthusiast or hobbyist level

[Thaldor]

4 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I mean it kind of exists, but it's not as simple as what i'm talking about.

First off, wireless needs to be there for every headset and needs to be $50, not 300, or even better be a part of the headset itself, not sold as an accessory.

Second, it needs to be at the point where there's 1 xbox or playstation console hooked up and 2 wireless headsets hooked up to that one console in the same room.

Right now the only real way is how linus did it with 3 curtain separated rooms and a beast of a computer using VM's. It needs to be simpler than this for it to turn from a fad into just another part of gaming at home.

 

Also whenever sword art online is a thing, I'm taking the risk of an evil overlord killing us off, maybe take out an insurance policy beforehand

Problem with wireless VR isn't going to be solved with 50$ gadgets in a long time, almost as long as having a console with enough power to run 2 good VR headsets (I count PSVR as a VR headset you buy to your kid when you don't want him/her to get into VR gaming and demanding more, like you buy your kid the cheapest and the worst guitar when you want them to dissappoint and bury the dreams of becoming rockstars). If you haven't tried, try to use your phone as wifi camera and you get why wireless VR is quite expensive problem. Even moving 1080p resolution stuff wirelessly without latency is a problem and what kills VR instantly is latency and you have quite a lot more data moving than just 1080p video.

 

Also 2 players sharing one play area is already possible with Vive, why LMG did it as they did it is probably because they didn't know that you don't need 2 lighthouses per Vive and that lighthouses are that "stupid" that having more than 2 in a single room working at the same time messes up everything. As I said earlier we have 4 Vives working at the same time every day at our office with only 2 lighthouses. Then there's the problem of having a game that is multiplayer and that doesn't involve other than room scale moving. There's no problem if the players are forced to be in the same play area and they cannot "move" in the game by themselves (as in teleport or locomotion with the play area which would mean they still share the same play area but aren't in the same spots as in real life within the game). One thing could be that there's ghost of the other player always seen on the play area, but it's extremely dangerous because in the heat of the game players usually even forget the chaperones and start to hit things.

[Jtalk4456]

6 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Problem with wireless VR isn't going to be solved with 50$ gadgets in a long time, almost as long as having a console with enough power to run 2 good VR headsets (I count PSVR as a VR headset you buy to your kid when you don't want him/her to get into VR gaming and demanding more, like you buy your kid the cheapest and the worst guitar when you want them to dissappoint and bury the dreams of becoming rockstars). If you haven't tried, try to use your phone as wifi camera and you get why wireless VR is quite expensive problem. Even moving 1080p resolution stuff wirelessly without latency is a problem and what kills VR instantly is latency and you have quite a lot more data moving than just 1080p video.

 

Also 2 players sharing one play area is already possible with Vive, why LMG did it as they did it is probably because they didn't know that you don't need 2 lighthouses per Vive and that lighthouses are that "stupid" that having more than 2 in a single room working at the same time messes up everything. As I said earlier we have 4 Vives working at the same time every day at our office with only 2 lighthouses. Then there's the problem of having a game that is multiplayer and that doesn't involve other than room scale moving. There's no problem if the players are forced to be in the same play area and they cannot "move" in the game by themselves (as in teleport or locomotion with the play area which would mean they still share the same play area but aren't in the same spots as in real life within the game). One thing could be that there's ghost of the other player always seen on the play area, but it's extremely dangerous because in the heat of the game players usually even forget the chaperones and start to hit things.

I agree it'snot there yet, but eventually it'll be cheap enough and powerful enough to be like that. Do you have or know of any info about how the setup with one lighthouse works?

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I agree it'snot there yet, but eventually it'll be cheap enough and powerful enough to be like that. Do you have or know of any info about how the setup with one lighthouse works?

We are very far from it. TPcast can do wireless VR, but it's kind of wonky and has a lot of their own magic in it to make it work and even then it's quite fragile with connection at least when there's a lot of other wifis around.

 

How the setup with multiple Vives with one set of lighthouses works?

Basicly it's just something that SteamVR Tracking 1.0 has build into it as a flaw. The lighthouses themselves are really "stupid" machines, all they really do is sending synced IR-laser grid to the playarea and connect to the PC only for power management. The Vive doesn't really connect to the lighthouses in any way, just uses the IR-laser grid to get it's position in the play area and all the tracking is done in the Vive. The status icon in the SteamVR acctually shows that the Vive can see the grid of the lighthouse. Problem with more than 2 lighthouses also stems from this, as Vive only sees the IR-laser grid of the lighthouses and has no idea how the lighthouses have synced between each other, if you have mirror or something really shiny around the play area even that can mess with the tracking since it ruins the laser grid and same thing happens if you have more than 2 lighthouses, you acctually can mess with the Vives tracking with only a common TV remote that uses IR-led and in some cases sunlight also can produce tracking problems. But this allows you to use multiple Vives with only one set of lighthouses, because Vive doesn't care to which PC the lighthouses have connected for power management (for best results you want to disable it from every PC you want to use, because it might start to bounce from PC to PC and when one PC shuts down it can ake the lighthouses with it and you need to manually restart them), as long as you have the laser grid in the play area you're good to go and can divide bigger play areas to smaller ones as long as they all are in the grid area (just remember to have good bufferzones between the smaller play areas to stop people from hitting each other).

 

To set up multiple Vives with only 2 lighthouses just position the lighthouses so that they cover all the space that you want to use as play area (if you exceed 5m diagonally between the lighthouses and they cannot sync optically, just use the included sync cable between them and set them to A and B channels instead of optical B and C) and run the room setup as normally for every Vive. No rocket science needed

[Sakkura]

12 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I mean it kind of exists, but it's not as simple as what i'm talking about.

First off, wireless needs to be there for every headset and needs to be $50, not 300, or even better be a part of the headset itself, not sold as an accessory.

Second, it needs to be at the point where there's 1 xbox or playstation console hooked up and 2 wireless headsets hooked up to that one console in the same room.

Right now the only real way is how linus did it with 3 curtain separated rooms and a beast of a computer using VM's. It needs to be simpler than this for it to turn from a fad into just another part of gaming at home.

Wireless will definitely be a big deal, and yes it's way too expensive right now.

 

Having 2 people in the same room playing in VR is not a good idea. You're just reducing the usable area for each. One of the great things about VR is it virtualizes presence, so you can be playing with someone thousands of kilometers away but feel like you're standing right next to them.

12 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

My issue isn't with the games available but rather with the setup required. the great thing about consoles isn't price vs pc gaming, it's the fact that two people can sit down next to each other and play together. They don't have to connect to someone over an internet connection to be multiplayer. It makes the experience more enjoyable. So until fred and geaorge can plug 2 headsets into the pc or console and be in the same game at the same time in the same room, it will be stuck at the enthusiast or hobbyist level

Same as above, being next to each other in the real world is unimportant with VR.