- Joined
- April 23, 2010
- Messages
- 688
The Oculus Rift DK2 has been shipping to buyers for the past couple of weeks. I got mine about 1 week ago and its been a couple of days on an off playing around with it. For anyone that is not aware the Oculus Rift is a virtual reality head mounted display unit basically a monitor strapped to your head.
The device is still in development (thats the DK2 or Development Kit 2 part) so its still very rough around the edges and there are not too many demos or games supporting it yet but surprisingly there are quite a few. I ordered the Rift earlier this year before Facebook bought it (still not sure what that means and probably nothing good) about when DK2 was shipping date was announced and available for purchase. I really bought as a bit of a lark not expecting much but a toy that I could play with. Together with the Sixense STEM controllers and the Kinect, I thought it would be an interesting play thing if I have time to program for it.
I have to say that it is a great little piece of hardware but its got a ways to go. It will need higher resolution screen and better framerate before they release it and at least the latter is expected in the customer shipping version next year. My understanding is over the DK1 version it adds the positional camera which tracks head movement so it knows which way you are looking and can adjust head position properly so that you things are not distorted. It supports 1920x1080 resolution and needs at least 75 fps to work well so good graphics cards help quite a bit.
In the demos that support, it is far more amazing of an experience than I expected. My initial expectations were set by the Tuscany Demo that ships with SDK that is required to be installed. Pretty simple and what I was thought I would be getting. Low interactivity and somewhat disorienting.
I figured few games would work but enthusiasts have been busy and several games have pretty good support. Skyrim looks absolutely amazing and I really just want to explore more with it. The interface I heard was terrible but I haven't had too many issues other than having menu items just out of the field of vision which presumably is fixable with some mods. Half Life 2 just got beta support a week ago and going through the intro levels was another eye opening experience. The wait screens make me want to throw up but that's another issue altogether and hopefully will be fixed soon enough. There is a Hang gliding demo from Epic as well as a couch knights and a few other demos that really show off the hardware and also show how far it has to go to give a good experience to people other than enthusiasts.
For starters, I recommend going over to the Oculus-ready Games and Demos forum at oculusvr for demos. There is a Skyrim thread with updated Virieo Perception Drivers which have been fixed for the DK2. Also hints on setting up Half Life 2 and precompiled Unreal Engine Demos. The Titans of Space is a short but sweet demo on just how small we really are and some great visuals of the planets. Someone created a Museum of game characters so you can look at static models for a couple dozen games and get a matter of perspective.
Has anyone else picked one up yet? I'm a convert at this point and didn't expect to really be one. But perhaps I was predispositioned as I did buy one after all. I'm cannot wait for more games to support this style of play but the down side is likely that they are going to mostly be FPS, Racing and Flight Sims I fear.
The device is still in development (thats the DK2 or Development Kit 2 part) so its still very rough around the edges and there are not too many demos or games supporting it yet but surprisingly there are quite a few. I ordered the Rift earlier this year before Facebook bought it (still not sure what that means and probably nothing good) about when DK2 was shipping date was announced and available for purchase. I really bought as a bit of a lark not expecting much but a toy that I could play with. Together with the Sixense STEM controllers and the Kinect, I thought it would be an interesting play thing if I have time to program for it.
I have to say that it is a great little piece of hardware but its got a ways to go. It will need higher resolution screen and better framerate before they release it and at least the latter is expected in the customer shipping version next year. My understanding is over the DK1 version it adds the positional camera which tracks head movement so it knows which way you are looking and can adjust head position properly so that you things are not distorted. It supports 1920x1080 resolution and needs at least 75 fps to work well so good graphics cards help quite a bit.
In the demos that support, it is far more amazing of an experience than I expected. My initial expectations were set by the Tuscany Demo that ships with SDK that is required to be installed. Pretty simple and what I was thought I would be getting. Low interactivity and somewhat disorienting.
I figured few games would work but enthusiasts have been busy and several games have pretty good support. Skyrim looks absolutely amazing and I really just want to explore more with it. The interface I heard was terrible but I haven't had too many issues other than having menu items just out of the field of vision which presumably is fixable with some mods. Half Life 2 just got beta support a week ago and going through the intro levels was another eye opening experience. The wait screens make me want to throw up but that's another issue altogether and hopefully will be fixed soon enough. There is a Hang gliding demo from Epic as well as a couch knights and a few other demos that really show off the hardware and also show how far it has to go to give a good experience to people other than enthusiasts.
For starters, I recommend going over to the Oculus-ready Games and Demos forum at oculusvr for demos. There is a Skyrim thread with updated Virieo Perception Drivers which have been fixed for the DK2. Also hints on setting up Half Life 2 and precompiled Unreal Engine Demos. The Titans of Space is a short but sweet demo on just how small we really are and some great visuals of the planets. Someone created a Museum of game characters so you can look at static models for a couple dozen games and get a matter of perspective.
Has anyone else picked one up yet? I'm a convert at this point and didn't expect to really be one. But perhaps I was predispositioned as I did buy one after all. I'm cannot wait for more games to support this style of play but the down side is likely that they are going to mostly be FPS, Racing and Flight Sims I fear.
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2010
- Messages
- 688