henke on 18/3/2016 at 11:08
Ouch. So you don't see depth? If you don't see depth IRL you won't see it in VR either. :erg:
I'd definitely try out a Rift/Vive/GearVR before taking the plunge and buying anything. Easier said than done, I know. A GearVR will probably be the easiest to get a demo of in some electronics store. The VR experience in those are as solid as the Rift, minus the positional tracking.
Shadowcat on 18/3/2016 at 14:17
Quote Posted by derfy
So, due to two surgeries done on my eyes when I was young, I lack stereoscopic vision. Will VR work for me?
I'd hazard a guess that Virtual Reality will 'work' somewhat as well as Actual Reality does for you? I don't understand exactly what you do and don't see compared to normal vision, but you'll still be getting an independent image for each eye, so your brain will
probably process them in the (your) normal way.
I would still attempt to try them out first, though -- I'm totally guessing here, and it's a lot of money.
faetal on 18/3/2016 at 14:51
VR (actually anything emulating stereoscopic imagery on a 2D surface) works by using offsets of the generated image to L & R channels (also red / blue of old 3D movies or the different wavelengths corresponding to the filters on the newer cinema glasses (I think that's how they work, someone correct me if wrong)) to simulate various focal points in order to trick your brain into translating that offset into distance, like it does in real life when something is actually 15 m away as opposed to on a small screen right in front of your eyes.
My advice would be to try before you buy, but I can't imagine it working very well.
derfy on 18/3/2016 at 15:40
Basically my brain doesn't merge the images from my eyes - it tends to ignore one or the other. I'm often not even aware of it; I suspect that's due to me dealing with it for so long. I'll give it a shot, of course. Who knows - it might even work!
Malf on 18/3/2016 at 17:27
@derfy: If it's any help I'm partially sighted in my right eye. Everything is severely blurred and slightly askew out of that eye, and I was worried that VR wouldn't work for me (my stereo sight and hence depth perception is AWFUL these days). However, when a guy brought his DK2 in to work I had a go and was pleasantly surprised to find it worked for me.
Thirith on 18/3/2016 at 18:28
Which games/demos did you check out, Malf?
I'm extremely excited about VR, but I've not been able to try any of the devices so far. Last autumn we had a work outing to a lab where they do experiments concerning body perception, using Oculus Rift; they told us about the work they're doing, but they didn't let us try. In winter, a colleague went to some research session where they demoed (
http://www.somniacs.co/)
Birdly, but I only heard about it afterwards. This week my sister sends me a text that she's doing some course where they demoed Gear VR and Oculus Rift; she didn't try them because she thought they were "too futuristic", and she doesn't even know I'm really curious about VR, so the whole thing was wasted on her. In the meantime, I'm giddy with anticipation, but do I get the opportunity of a demo? Grumble. It's not fair, in a totally first-world-problem way.
demagogue on 18/3/2016 at 23:54
I recently got sim sickness from one of those big screen & moving platform setups because of the slight disconnect. It was awful because you can't get it out of you even after you stop, so you're queazy from moving for the next 3 hours. The train ride home was hell. I don't want to feel that again. But people apparently got it in the early days of FPS, and it went away, so maybe it's something they can fix or people can retrain their brain to accept.
Thirith on 20/3/2016 at 09:10
So, yesterday I had my first taste of VR. It was a Gear VR and it was the most boring application ever: a still picture of a Swiss tunnel that's in the process of being built (it was part of some little exhibition about a huge tunnel project that's currently running). The pic was flat, uninteresting and pixellated, so the whole thing barely felt more exciting than a somewhat advanced ViewMaster.
I wish there'd been someone ten feet to the side of this exhibition, giving people a one-minute pop at Elite: Dangerous in VR for a dollar...
Sulphur on 20/3/2016 at 10:06
What'd they call the display? 'Metal Gear VR: Tactical Tunnel Vision'?
icemann on 20/3/2016 at 16:03
TBH I don't see VR replacing consoles anytime in the foreseeable future. VR is only suited to first person type games, so genres like strategy, puzzle and RPGs should be fine for a very long time to come.
What you might see is a divergence of games, with 1 going VR direction and the other staying traditional style.
THAT SAID, when Nintendo brought the Wii with it's motion controls out. Everyone was saying zomg this is the direction of gaming. Fast forward several years later and no it isn't. I see the same happening here. For now anyway.
