Dark Engine - Oculus Rift

Rhiyo on 15/1/2013 at 09:42

Oculus Rift is VR headgear that low latency motion tracking and stereoscopic 3d.

Here is the site for more info:
(http://www.oculusvr.com/)

I think, this would be a great addition to every first person emersive game, especially games like Thief, Thief 2 and System Shock 2 (System Shock 2 could be horrifying!)

I'm planning on ordering the devkit this, and I'm really considering trying to develop a way for this to work well with Dark Engine games, do you guys think this would be a possibility? Would this be something anyone else would consider working on or want?

jtr7 on 15/1/2013 at 10:44

There are a few members who are into the idea, or already have some 3D system in place. There's not enough overall interest to gain any momentum, as it's been brought up many times, but you are not alone at all. Of course, any system that really does the job once it's set up, and gets enough praise, then it's a matter of money and payoff to make it something important to disinterested players, rather than a waste of money for poor taffers for what may be mostly a novel yet tacked-on experience that, for the great majority of us, cannot even be tested out first, impressed upon the mind, before purchasing. I hope that you will get somewhere significant with it, and will share your results with us, and in the meantime, track down the players who are very interested. I don't know how distracting the 2D particle effects and sprites will be when their illusion is broken. I'd love to know how the Trickster's final scene looks, myself. Also, places where the skybox intersects the terrain will go from being a 2D texture sliding over a 2D texture, to a piece of the distant sky somehow absorbing the terrain nearby.

Comfort, pricing, and how balanced the depth is would be good to know.

jay pettitt on 15/1/2013 at 12:21

Quote:

I don't know how distracting the 2D particle effects and sprites will be when their illusion is broken.

Interesting point. My guess, given at how readily we are already sucked into some comically low-poly representations of, well, everything, is that it won't matter much and the benefits of the wide angle of view will outweigh any niggles. Just a guess. For an immersion junky's point of view, I'd love to try it.

~~Has anyone been keeping up with things OR?. Have they added functionality for leaning?~~ They have leaning :D [(http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852624/top-shelf-oculus-rift) 23:00]

--edit--
Also, (http://www.oculusvr.com/news/) it sounds like they had a knockout CES2013 so bloody well done them.

~ I know it's not Thief proper, but getting a build of The Dark Mod running on the OR friendly BFG edition of Doom 3 might be the least resistance route to VR thieving.

Rhiyo on 15/1/2013 at 13:24

Quote Posted by jay pettitt

The Dark Mod is a really good idea, thanks for bringing it up.

I am still really interested in getting this working with the Dark engine still, though. Even with all the problems it might have.

The games made in it would just be such a great world to get immersed in. Imagine, having your headphones on, with the oculus rift head gear on, it'd be almost like you are there, especially with no distractions from the outside world (This effect would work so well with the horror aspects of System Shock 2, I'd probably cry from horror).

So if anyone would be interested in helping me with this, I'd appreciate it. This would be an amazing thing to get happening.

Briareos H on 15/1/2013 at 13:46

Quote Posted by jay pettitt

I know it's not Thief proper, but getting a build of The Dark Mod running on the OR friendly BFG edition of Doom 3 might be the least resistance route to VR thieving.

(http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13997-doom-3-bfg-edition-and-tdm-sitting-in-a-tree/) You know very well that the engines for Doom 3 and Doom 3 BFG are very different, and porting TDM to the BFG version won't happen.

jay pettitt on 15/1/2013 at 20:23

Things change. BFG edition has since been open sourced. You'd have to ask someone else for the gritty details, but I can't think of an insurmountable technical reason why TDM shouldn't port over to BFG or why the VR friendly parts of BFG wouldn't port over to TDM.

demagogue on 16/1/2013 at 02:11

Yes both are open source so it's a matter of someone spending enough time doing the port. I hope it happens. But I also hope we get multiplayer too. And standalone. I know we'll get the last one, but the other two... depends.

I would love to have it for T2 just to get inside all those FMs! So many of the classic FMs feel like home to me, so it's only fitting to feel like I'm really walking around in them.

Kerrle on 16/1/2013 at 09:44

It's not out of the question we'll get support; people are building drivers that have already enabled it to work in a variety of older games:

(http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/10/vireio-perception-driver-oculus-rift/)

So we'll see, but there is some reason to be hopeful.

Kerrle on 2/2/2013 at 03:34

The view warping is, yeah, basically just a wide FOV and should be fine.

Thief may not easily support tilting your head left or right (rotation), I don't know.

Kerrle on 5/2/2013 at 11:08

Yes, but for the Rift to feel right, it has to be able to tilt the view as you tilt your head.

The engine obviously supports tilting the view as it does it during the lean animation, but short of a patch by the newdark guys I doubt we'll get support for that type of input.