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What's Popular in Virtual Reality's 3-D World? Netflix and TV.
Companies such as Samsung and Facebook's Oculus promote their virtual-reality headsets by highlighting awe-inspiring 3-D experiences for gaming and virtual travel. But one of the most popular activities among early adopters of the technology is less novel: watching 2-D movies and TV.
"It's been a surprise on the VR circuit because much of the work is driven by people coming from the gaming world, who are fairly dogmatic about what VR means," says Anjney Midha, founder of the San Francisco venture capital fund KPCB Edge. Figuring out what people want to do with headsets is crucial if companies such as Facebook are to make the devices widely popular.
Midha says consumer interest in a new way to view 2-D content shouldn't be surprising given the popularity of watching movies and TV on mobile devices with small screens. A 2-D video viewed using a VR headset can fill your visual field as if you were watching on a giant home cinema screen, even if you're in fact in a cramped dorm room or the middle seat on a budget flight. Virtual-reality apps from Netflix and Hulu even surround their 2-D content with a virtual theater, room, or beach scene to enhance the experience. Flat content is less likely to make you uncomfortable or nauseous, as 3-D content can.
People use the headsets in 3D reality to enter a 3D virtual reality where they can experience a 2D representation of 3D reality.
VR Arrives at Tokyo Game Show, Counted On to Revive Industry
Virtual reality has arrived for real at the Tokyo Game Show, one of the world's biggest exhibitions for the latest in fun and games.
That's evident everywhere. Players at the booths are donning chunky headgear covering their eyes and ears, immersed in their own worlds, shooting imaginary monsters or dancing with virtual partners, at Makuhari Messe hall in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba.
The show, which gave a preview to reporters Thursday ahead of its opening to the public over the weekend, features 614 companies demonstrating more than 1,500 game software titles.
It's still anyone's guess how VR will play out as a business in years ahead. But most everyone agrees that's the way of the future. And Yasuo Takahashi, director at Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game division of Japanese electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp., believes 2016 will mark VR's debut year, helping revive an industry that has languished with the advent of smart phones.
Is the video game industry in need of reviving?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @02:37PM
The whole VR situation is dodgy at the moment.
I blame it on money sharks testing the waters to
see how to best fleece the pockets of customers/gamers.
reading on forums about VR headset, support and capabilities
shows that a lot of potential customers or existing customers don't know shit
about VR.
you don't need a special monitor or VR headset to be able to see "depth".
with the right technique, you can make "depth" appear" with paper and pencil.
for a primer on how it works here's a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram [wikipedia.org]
the basics is that humans have TWO eyes.
one technique that needs to be learned is to focus on seperate sets of
images which each eye and the eyes (and brain) then combine it into one image
with depth (bpu=brain-processing-unit, wetware).
there's no person on the planet that can view depth with only one eye. not safe.
should not be allowed to drive a vehicle.
with a monitor shutters or colored (polarized) glasses are required that direct a image on the monitor
to one eye for a short moment and then to the other.
due to processing lag of the brain (~30 Hz) this process with one monitor works.
it is equal to seeing constant movement on the TV or computer monitor in games or with movies.
if the frame-rate drops below ~30 Hz then humans start to see single very
fast frames but no continuity.
with VR headsets, a individual monitor is presented to each eye. the problem being that
the monitors are very very close to the eyes. a monitor with very hi-resolutions (dpi)
and lenses are required.
so to get depth with this setup, one takes a picture with a camera (picture A) and then moves the camera
a few centimeters and takes (the same) another picture (picture B).
if one picture(A) is displayed on the left VR headset monitor and the other picture(B) on the
right VR headset monitor and the user will see a picture with depth (3D).
another way is to fire up DOOM (dos version), take a screen shot(A), then move the hero a bit to the right, and take another screenshot(B), and then show the screenshots in the
two monitor, left monitor screenshot (A), and right monitor screenshot (B), and voila DOOM, the DOS version is now
VR-ready! really! srsly!
so it is actually very very simple. no magic required. nothing "fancy" is happening in the VR headset
or the grafic card except that there are TWO monitors and the grafic card has to output TWO frames (slightly offset,
supposedly to emulate the distance of two eyeballs of the in-game or in-movie vantage point).
for computer games this is/should be very simple. in the most "crazy" version/solution just run two instances of the same game
lock the controls together and define one instance to present/RENDER a slight offset vantage point.
movies need to have been filmed with two camera-lenses.
so my complaint is, that information overall is very scarce.
for example, what if the users is near sighted? what if the user is far-sighted? can the VR headset
lenses compensate/be adjusted for this? spherical adjustment also?
are "old" games that worked on "3D" monitor with shutter glasses supported? which is technically very very
simple but maybe will not be "ported" because ... money?
the situation concerning VR headset capabilities is very frustrating. there are no "stickers" or "logos" or
anything to guide potential buyers. it feels like jumping into cold water, spending a ton of cash
to buy two "retina-class" monitors that can be worn on the head ... but will it works .. with
everything(!!!) 3D, like "old" games that worked on "3D monitors", how about "3D" movies on DVD and blu-ray?
as mentioned above, there's nothing magically happening. technically it works on VR-headsets but is there a
artificial hurdle placed so it doesn't work: dusty 3D monitors/TV need to leave the warehouse /
new up-market (read more expensive then conventional 3D movies) VR-ready DVD and blue-ray version need to be "made" ???
fuck, they might even make a m$ VR-office version that cost double and "works" on a "head-mounted 2 monitor setup"
without ANY extra benefit at ALL ... gullible users, ahoi.
generally, overall, from a distance ... there's not enough (technical) information, which is prolly why
my steamVR-ready rig hasn't been mated to a head-mounted stereo monitor just yet.
actually, if you own a VR-headset there's no need for a monitor anymore ... so maybe this is the problem ... monitor/tv factories
haven’t broken even yet ... hugh panels don't want to sit un-sold? *urrgs* long post.= ^_^
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 17 2016, @02:49PM
My take is that early adopters of the Vive/Oculus/Sony/etc. headsets are suckers, since that hardware will greatly improve in the coming years (panels, other components, and the graphics cards either included internally or externally with your desktop PC).
Cardboard, on the other hand, is a great concept. For $10, your lazy ass can turn your smartphone into a passable VR device with advantages over the Oculus crowd... such as no annoying cables. Your expectations for a $5-10 piece of cardboard with lenses are low, so they will be met or exceeded. While gaming on a smartphone is going to be limited, prerendered VR video needs a fraction of the GPU resources to deliver an interesting experience. The latest smartphones will include hardware decoding of H.265/VP9/etc. to keep framerates steady and limit the effect on battery life. Mobile connectivity speeds are not a problem, since you can use the Cardboard in the comfort of your own home and Wi-Fi network because you don't want to look like a complete tool in public, as with any VR.
There is a lot more VR content appearing on YouTube these days, and more organizations and media outlets (such as the NYT) are experimenting with VR video.
Using AR or VR to create a virtual home cinema (complete with 3D effects!) could be interesting... and save a lot of money, assuming you would blow it on a home cinema setup. Surround sound should be easy to simulate with headphones on - another dropped expense.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:09PM
actually ... cardboard is for suckers too.
if you can "look at stereograms" on a monitor or can see the pictures in the
very nice and fancy book "Magic Eye" then you can use ALL cardboard prog ... err apps
WITHOUT a cardboard "device".
if you look at cardboard APPS without a cardboard attached you will see TWO images.
now if you train your eyes with stereo grams or that book mentioned before (http://tinyurl.com/zd9ueov)
and do the "trick" on a cardboard app without a "cardboard" or "gearVR" headset you get the same thing ... maybe a tad smaller but sharper (tested on NOTE 2 (two) without gearVR or cardboard)
but overall i agree ... as much as i can without (yet) owning a stereo-monitor ... helmet/hat.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:47PM
You lost me at the part about people with one eye not being allowed to drive. I have only one eye and I have driven over 30 years without an accident. Yes, I have no depth perception. I guess my brain has adapted. I don't find it difficult at all but I do have to be careful in parking lots and during close manuvers, otherwise it is all good.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday September 17 2016, @05:00PM
I also drive/bike without my glasses most of the time.
When needed, such as during left turns across traffic, I move my head a few inches. (I think I have explained this before on this site). One movement gets you distance, 2 get you velocity, and 3+ get you acceleration.
They delay involved may make me more cautious than average in traffic.
PS: as I mentioned before, I think the biggest risk is the loss of redundancy. If a bug/rock hits my "good" eye, I can barely see anything: and probably should pull over.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday September 17 2016, @05:03PM
PPS: I do tend to pull out my glasses when driving a car in the rain. The stereo vision lets me look "though" the rain-drops on the windshield. If I fail to do that, My eyes get tired very quickly from trying to focus alternately between the rain drops and what I actually want to see. (Much like a crappy camera with auto-focus).
(Score: 5, Informative) by kaganar on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:56PM
Hi there. VR is my day job. I thought you had some comments and valid question worth addressing.
Some yes -- it has to be viable business instead of money thrown down a tube -- and some no -- this is all very experimental and has a chicken-and-the-egg problem that early mobile phone and apps did. Remember the poor interfaces of early mobile phone apps? Remember the phones with built-in keyboards that died out in a generation or two? We're still just getting fully into the first generation, and it's already pretty awesome. However, there's years to go on getting this stuff completely right and stable.
You're quite right, stereograms have been around a long time. But what may not be obvious is that stereoscopics are not the cool or hard part of VR. The "cool" parts in no specific order are: spatial relevance, immersion, and natural interaction and perception, and these are surprisingly achievable with the right content without stereo, but stereo certainly helps immersion if you've got it.
Here's a few of the reasons why VR is harder than stereoscopics, many of which can be found in Oculus' excellent best practices [oculus.com] section, an insightful read for anyone interested in VR:
I know you meant this somewhat tongue-and-cheek, but that's a potentially harmful perspective -- a lot like saying painting it just putting colors on some paper. As mentioned above, it's easy to get motion sick, and normal video games do not translate well in this manner. Where do you render the UIs? How far away? It requires game-specific modification. Does your game hit 60fps all the time? (Obviously classic Doom will, but newer games won't.) In many games, cut scenes only have content where your view is directed -- in VR you can look anywhere. Furthermore, classically designed cut scenes will create a "where do I look?" problem in VR. What does VR mean for non-FPS games? RTSes? Do you want to be tethered to a keyboard and mouse? No? Different code has to be written to work with VR-centric controllers. More nitpicky, for the software rendering engine in DOOM it was performant to not handle full head rotation, so changing pitch or roll [wikipedia.org] is unavailable -- even in later doom engine games where changing pitch was available, it was (badly) faked with shearing instead of actual rotation.
There's a lot your asserting here. Think of this like swimming versus swimming well. Making computers render pretty graphics isn't that hard. Making them render fast isn't that hard. Making them render pretty graphics fast is much, much harder. Toward that end, various technologies [nvidia.com] are becoming more prevalent [oculus.com] to help us render faster, and faster translates to more content, artwork, and effects, which means more beautiful.
Filming movies with two camera lenses is not enough for stereoscopic 360 content. With today's technology it's not a perfectly solvable problem. To do it correctly, you'd need to be able to produce different pictures for each eye in all orientations from a certain vantage. That means each eye moves relative to that vantage, which means there's no simple transformation going on like mathematical rotation or translation. Right now we fake it in a way that only works reasonably for yaw-only orientations, and even then it requires stitching video with notable compromises usually worked around at a high level content level, not technical, and still produces a result that doesn't actually represent correct stereoscopic imagery under even the best conditions. There's a reason why professional sterescopic 360 recording equipment looks like this [gopro.com] -- monoscopic 360 captures require far fewer cameras, and even the consumer level ones aren't half bad at that.
I'm a little nearsighted with a decent amount of astigmatism -- enough to wear glasses for driving -- and my wife can't see from one side of the bed to the other, but has less astigmatism. The two of us prefer not to wear our glasses during our VR experiences with the Vive, Rift, and Gear systems with some equipment adjustment to compensate for our vision issues. On the Gear this is a simple wheel that rotates to adjust focal length. On the Rift and Vive it depends on where you position the HMD on your head a great deal, and the hardware adjustment features for distance between your eyes (important for correct stereoscopic rendering) also has an effect on the sharpness and optics. I've witnessed far-sighted relatives using these systems, and they also find the experience no more clear with glasses and do not have difficulty seeing unless the headsets shift out of place due to poor strap adjustments.
That said, I'm not aware of specific concerns for optically disadvantaged individuals such as myself -- although I'd have to assume that internally it's a consideration because there's so many of us. I get the feeling it just happens to work out reasonably well.
I can only speculate. First, for many existing games products like vorpX [vorpx.com] are useful -- again, vorpX doesn't work with every game because it requires per-game modification and tweaking, and even then it doesn't work 100% perfectly on every game. I'm certain money is a consideration. Woohoo, more than a million [fortune.com] people used VR in some form in April. But more than 1.2 billion [venturebeat.com] people play games. So, VR, is at a 0.1% of that. That's even worse than supporting Mac as a platform which many companies don't do, even if they run a stock game engine that supports it out of the box. The quality assurance cost alone probably isn't worth it. And then you have problems where content doesn't match the VR experience. Sure, there's creative solutions to make it easier (okay, so just make over there really dark), but it requires stepping through the game and massaging each portion of it, or leaving it in an unpolished state leading to a poor experience and tarnishing the company/franchise/whatever.
No, this is a patently different experience. Like trying to view TV on your eReader. You can, in fact, get pictures to show up on your eInk display, but it will not be of any benefit and look pretty stupid.
Actually, people need both technical and hands-on experience -- trying the various systems in the ideal scenarios for each makes it pretty clear what each one is capable of. I'm not a gamer, but I here's my perspective from using all the commercially available systems:
Because you're covering a much larger field of view, panel resolution needs to be much higher for the effective DPI you want to achieve. Even if you were pushing 4k panels on each eye, you wouldn't get 1080p resolutions. So, no, this does not replace TV yet. Interestingly, it doesn't matter as much when you're moving your head because when your eye is tracking an object it's going through various pixels and the sub-pixel effects allow you to perceive more resolution than their actually is. On the other hand, you still see a bit of a "screen door" effect. When you try on a headset you'll likely see it right away, but in about 10 seconds you totally won't care and probably won't even notice once the content starts.