Which means that if a developer wants to ship a game for both headsets they'll have to do quite some work, due to the Rift and Vive having two completely different input solutions, and the touch can't really be considered one since the adoption might not even be that great AFTER the rift comes out.
Or they could just say fuck it and completely forget the vivemotes ( hehe, wiimotes, get it ) and make the game just support gamepads.
Well, both input solutions have the basic 2-hand , rotation, position and buttons.
If you make a game to read the XYZs of the controllers and allow button remapping you would essentially have working controls for both the Vive and Oculus (Depending, of course, on if there is a difference in the # of buttons the controllers have. Ignoring finger tracking.)
[QUOTE=Daemon White;48185792]Probably going to be restricted to using the Oculus homepage to launch kinda like Ubisoft games and UPlay.[/QUOTE]
they explicitly said this would not be the case; the rift is just hardware that can be activated by any software, such as a .exe that launches your game
[quote]They don't control it, but they generally have access to it, and can rely on getting support from partners who rely on their game working. That is not necessarily the case for VR.
As a concrete example, SteamVR is currently (and has generally been) pretty much broken when it comes to Rift support. When it does work, support through SteamVR is far behind our own SDK. It is pretty clear that they have been prioritizing Vive, and that is fine. They are working hard to launch a product as well, and it makes a more sense for them to focus on improving their own side of things than to try keeping up with every update we make. At the same time, it shows why relying on someone else to keep things working can be tricky.
These exclusive titles, in many ways, essentially are first party titles. They are funded by us, we have our own staff working on them, and they are optimized around our launch timeline and tech stack. The only difference is that we chose to work with third parties to make them successful instead of competing with them through our own first party teams.[/quote]
I'm pretty angry about this.
Instead of spending the time and effort to make sure these devices play well with each other, they're just saying "oh well they aren't cooperating so neither will we". It's fucking childish and this is taking a completely opposite approach of making "VR easy to use for everyone".
They're passing the buck onto developers and consumers instead. It's bullshit. Now the developers, who instead of making a game and hoping to spend a day to hook their game to work in VR, will have to spend double this amount to fuck around with two different VR SDKs just to get it to work for their entire userbase.
Not to mention, you'll have to buy BOTH the Rift and the Vive hardware in order to really make sure they'll work, when you could have otherwise just spent money on one and just had it automatically work for the other.
And if the developers don't do it? Well if you own the HMD that [I]isn't[/I] supported, well you're SOL, buddy. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get the DK1/DK2 working in a game that [I]should[/I] support it.
This is just like nVidia doing that physx shit. "Oh you want to use all this amazing hardware acceleration technology in your game? Well fuck you, you need to buy nVidia graphics cards in order to use it". Which means that all we get are half-assed GPU accelerated particle physics which do fucking nothing to the gameplay. Good job convincing a developer to waste time on adding mechanics on something that only half of their userbase is going to be able to use.
So what do you suggest, then? Do we standardize the whole market, to be sure that everyone can run everything, cutting experimental features in the process and potentially stagnating the market?
It's not a matter of not cooperating. Every headset has different optics, different tracking systems, and different features. If there's no standard headset, then divergence is natural and necessary toward establishing those standards in the future.
[QUOTE=woolio1;48187287]So what do you suggest, then? Do we standardize the whole market, to be sure that everyone can run everything, cutting experimental features in the process and potentially stagnating the market?
It's not a matter of not cooperating. Every headset has different optics, different tracking systems, and different features. If there's no standard headset, then divergence is natural and necessary toward establishing those standards in the future.[/QUOTE]
Then get the opponent's headset to work in their own SDK, and naturally everyone will choose that SDK because it works so well with everything.
Fragmenting such a fledgling industry into different standards causes confusion among prospective buyers and creates a thicker barrier of entry, and it increases development costs and time for people who want their content to work on everything.
This is the exact opposite of making VR "easy to use for everyone".
They can't all meet up in one room and agree to do everything the exact same way, [B]or else there wouldn't even be more than one headse[/B]t. They each have different goals in user experience based on what they individually believe that players will value most. These products are [I]still in development[/I] and have not even released a single edition yet.
[B]of course they are going to have massive internal programming differences[/b]; they can't support other devices whose programming is subject to wild change, to have to redesign for constantly, on their own dollar[b]
you are being incredibly petty to whine about an industry you do not understand, jumping to conclusions instead of applying some thought or simply reading their own explanations to these concerns[/B]
[QUOTE=bitches;48187403]They can't all meet up in one room and agree to do everything the exact same way, [B]or else there wouldn't even be more than one headse[/B]t. They each have different goals in user experience based on what they individually believe that players will value most. These products are [I]still in development[/I] and have not even released a single edition yet.
[B]of course they are going to have massive internal programming differences[/b]; they can't support other devices whose programming is subject to wild change, to have to redesign for constantly, on their own dollar[b]
you are being incredibly petty to whine about an industry you do not understand, jumping to conclusions instead of applying some thought or simply reading their own explanations to these concerns[/B][/QUOTE]
Then why do we have platforms like Steam which are so popular for everyone? Because someone spent the time to make sure that everyone can put their games on this platform, so the consumers don't have to hunt around for patch_1.1.0.exe on some shady file hosting website. Consumers want their games to just work.
I understand that it sucks to try to support someone else's hardware, but it sucks so much more to not be able to play your favorite games in the VR because the game's VR support is so shit. No consumer wants to spend half an hour trying to figure out why their game isn't working properly in VR - Trying to navigate and find buttons when the screen is sliced in half and shuffled around on each eye.
An enthusiast may be able to cope with it, but not somebody who just wants to play a game on the headset they just bought.
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48187346]Then get the opponent's headset to work in their own SDK, and naturally everyone will choose that SDK because it works so well with everything.
Fragmenting such a fledgling industry into different standards causes confusion among prospective buyers and creates a thicker barrier of entry, and it increases development costs and time for people who want their content to work on everything.
This is the exact opposite of making VR "easy to use for everyone".[/QUOTE]
You say this like this isn't a thing that happens already. There's not one standardized SDK for the console market, and yet it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. Even the Magnavox Odyssey had competition.
Fragmentation is not necessarily a bad thing. It's practically expected at the launch of a medium, be it computers (The BBC Micro, Apple I, and IBM PC all had different hardware that required different programming techniques), video game consoles (The Atari 2600 and the Philips Colecovision were both industry top-sellers, despite using different hardware and software,) phones (iPhone vs Android, Palm vs Nokia, etc). Fragmentation WILL NOT kill an industry outright, even a fledgling one. Instead, it allows developers to build content that plays to the strengths of the platform, furthering the industry as a result.
We've been down this road before. Why would this one thing be any different?
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48187475]Then why do we have platforms like Steam which are so popular for everyone? Because someone spent the time to make sure that everyone can put their games on this platform, so the consumers don't have to hunt around for patch_1.1.0.exe on some shady file hosting website. Consumers want their games to just work.
I understand that it sucks to try to support someone else's hardware, but it sucks so much more to not be able to play your favorite games in the VR because the game's VR support is so shit. No consumer wants to spend half an hour trying to figure out why their game isn't working properly in VR - Trying to navigate and find buttons when the screen is sliced in half and shuffled around on each eye.
An enthusiast may be able to cope with it, but not somebody who just wants to play a game on the headset they just bought.[/QUOTE]
Consumers won't buy a game incompatible for their device unless they don't bother to read clear obvious compatibility labelling that will be applied to avoid unnecessary refund drama and accounting trouble.
Your comparison to Steam itself is entirely irrelevant. Steam competitively won out the competition, most of which didn't even exist at all at its birth. Gamers prefer to have their games in one place, and would too of course wish to have all their VR games supported PC-style instead of console-style device based market segmentation.
We can't have what we want all the time. None of this changes the reality that when you have competing companies, you have different products. When you have different products of [I]an entirely new field of hardware[/I], you [B]cannot ask them to make it the same as everyone else, because it is too soon to make a standard[/B].
[QUOTE=woolio1;48187560]You say this like this isn't a thing that happens already. There's not one standardized SDK for the console market, and yet it's a multi-trillion dollar industry.
Fragmentation is not necessarily a bad thing. Build content that plays to the strengths of the platform, everything else comes later.[/QUOTE]
Console exclusives aren't something that should be in a niche market such as VR. Someone shouldn't have to buy exclusive headsets just so they can play the next flavor-of-the-month.
You really think a lot of people are going to spend a bunch of money to buy StarVR just so they can play Overkill's: The Walking Dead?
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48187597]Console exclusives aren't something that should be in a niche market such as VR. Someone shouldn't have to buy exclusive headsets just so they can play the next flavor-of-the-month.
You really think a lot of people are going to spend a bunch of money to buy StarVR just so they can play the Walking Dead?[/QUOTE]
I did update my post, it's worth looking at.
[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_video_game_consoles"]Also, this page is a thing that you should look at too. None of these had a standard SDK, and yet quite a few of them did relatively well.[/URL]
As for StarVR, I'm still thinking it's a joke, or Overkill has no idea what they're even trying to do, and no firm grasp on the VR industry as a whole. I expect it will flop, precisely because it won't have a decent launch library, if it even launches at all. Oculus having a solid launch library of made-for-VR content is only a good thing.
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48187597]Console exclusives aren't something that should be in a niche market such as VR. Someone shouldn't have to buy exclusive headsets just so they can play the next flavor-of-the-month.
You really think a lot of people are going to spend a bunch of money to buy StarVR just so they can play Overkill's: The Walking Dead?[/QUOTE]
Oculus isn't forcing any games to be made [I]only[/I] for oculus. Developers will support whichever games they personally have a dev kit of. This will be oculus due to oculus funding many games into existence, on the fast track with hardware they know everything about and the future plans of. You cannot call it a bad thing for a company to focus on their own hardware instead of vague things they don't know enough about.
[QUOTE=bitches;48187621]Oculus isn't forcing any games to be made [I]only[/I] for oculus. Developers will support whichever games they personally have a dev kit of. This will be oculus due to oculus funding many games into existence, on the fast track with hardware they know everything about and the future plans of. [B]You cannot call it a bad thing for a company to focus on their own hardware instead of vague things they don't know enough about.[/B][/QUOTE]
That's really the argument in a nutshell, isn't it? It's ridiculous to expect every company that's trying VR now to make the same headset, or agree on something when nobody really knows what it's supposed to be. The only way for the VR market to remain viable is for everyone to try new things, throw the tech at the wall, and see what sticks.
Of course they're not going to make software for each others' headsets right now, they're still trying to figure out software for their own.
Maybe this will incentivise Valve to [i]actually make some games[/i] to support the release of the Vive?
I CAN DREAM
[QUOTE=woolio1;48187560]You say this like this isn't a thing that happens already. There's not one standardized SDK for the console market, and yet it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. Even the Magnavox Odyssey had competition.
Fragmentation is not necessarily a bad thing. It's practically expected at the launch of a medium, be it computers (The BBC Micro, Apple I, and IBM PC all had different hardware that required different programming techniques), video game consoles (The Atari 2600 and the Philips Colecovision were both industry top-sellers, despite using different hardware and software,) phones (iPhone vs Android, Palm vs Nokia, etc). Fragmentation WILL NOT kill an industry outright, even a fledgling one. Instead, it allows developers to build content that plays to the strengths of the platform, furthering the industry as a result.
We've been down this road before. Why would this one thing be any different?[/QUOTE]
I had to do some hardware store stuff but I'm back now.
I liken this more to when Television had first started to be mass marketed. Imagine going back to the twentieth century, where television was black and white and there were only a very small handful of shows were available to it.
Now imagine there was another TV coming out at the same time. Pretty much similar in every aspect, except it used different components in its manufacture. The major difference for this second TV is that they had their own small handful of shows to watch.
Here you are with two small amounts of shows to watch, and they only work on their respective TVs. You might choose a TV because of a show you want to see, but you would, and should feel disgruntled to think that you could have just been able to watch all of the shows available on your choice of TV.
Why should you split the small amount of shows you can watch in half, and be forced to choose and even smaller selection of shows that only your specific set of TV can support? Why should you just sit there and say "This is fine, this has happened before." and be content with not being able to try the VR experience with all the games that support it?
so I've recently noticed a shitton of stuff in my room that I can sell for a quite nice price. How much is the rift expected to be, 350€?
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48188475]I had to do some hardware store stuff but I'm back now.
I liken this more to when Television had first started to be mass marketed. Imagine going back to the twentieth century, where television was black and white and there were only a very small handful of shows were available to it.
Now imagine there was another TV coming out at the same time. Pretty much similar in every aspect, except it used different components in its manufacture. The major difference for this second TV is that they had their own small handful of shows to watch.
Here you are with two small amounts of shows to watch, and they only work on their respective TVs. You might choose a TV because of a show you want to see, but you would, and should feel disgruntled to think that you could have just been able to watch all of the shows available on your choice of TV.
Why should you split the small amount of shows you can watch in half, and be forced to choose and even smaller selection of shows that only your specific set of TV can support? Why should you just sit there and say "This is fine, this has happened before." and be content with not being able to try the VR experience with all the games that support it?[/QUOTE]
You mean like the early days of television, where you couldn't watch content made for Europe on a US TV or vice versa because the television's refresh rate and resolution was locked to the oscillation of the power system in that region? The thing that required the development of NTSC and PAL standards in order to effectively market televisions produced in countries other than their origin? The reason televisions through the 80s had quartz clocks and interpolation circuitry so they could be used in other zones?
Again, we've had this problem before. It's never caused any major issues with any major medium. Unless you're going to claim that television as a technology was severely hampered by that regional split...
[QUOTE=woolio1;48188909]You mean like the early days of television, where you couldn't watch content made for Europe on a US TV or vice versa because the television's refresh rate and resolution was locked to the oscillation of the power system in that region? The thing that required the development of NTSC and PAL standards in order to effectively market televisions produced in countries other than their origin? The reason televisions through the 80s had quartz clocks and interpolation circuitry so they could be used in other zones?
Again, we've had this problem before. It's never caused any major issues with any major medium. Unless you're going to claim that television as a technology was severely hampered by that regional split...[/QUOTE]
Fair enough, but just as you say, it was up to the hardware manufacturers to invest their time into making it so their product would work for other region's shows. Not the show's creators.
His point is that the hardware manufacturers had their own technical reasons to make their products differently.
It isn't as simple as "just a screen on your face" as you are implying, as though Oculus is just arbitrarily making their device differently as a money scheme. Palmer explained all of this and gave examples of design and software differences that require more time for experimentation, but it seems you'd rather ignore that so you can continue moaning.
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48189009]Fair enough, but just as you say, it was up to the hardware manufacturers to invest their time into making it so their product would work for other region's shows. Not the show's creators.[/QUOTE]
Well, that's also not entirely true. Doctor Who, for instance, was converted to NTSC by the BBC for licensing to PBS. If you wanted to get a show across the pond, you had to make it work for the other platform.
[QUOTE=woolio1;48189496]Well, that's also not entirely true. Doctor Who, for instance, was converted to NTSC by the BBC for licensing to PBS. If you wanted to get a show across the pond, you had to make it work for the other platform.[/QUOTE]
And they probably had the financial flexibility to support something like that. We live in a time now where something like this shouldn't be necessary. They should just work.
[QUOTE=Leintharien;48189846]And they probably had the financial flexibility to support something like that. We live in a time now where something like this shouldn't be necessary. They should just work.[/QUOTE]
Except no, because nobody's nailed down the absolute best projection method yet. It's a lot more like the beginning of television than you realize.
Also note: Cinema's gone through three major revisions since its beginning. Academy Standard, which is 1.375:1, Widescreen 1.85:1, and Ultra Widescreen 2.35:1. For each of these, there were exclusive films shot, which could only be played at certain theaters. And don't even get me started on Cinerama...
Display technology is always changing, and is always exclusive. We just happen to only know the tiny sliver of time where it hasn't changed too much.
Woah a lot of posts here recently must be something cool- oh, its just a load of pointless drama.
[QUOTE=woolio1;48190370]Except no, because nobody's nailed down the absolute best projection method yet. It's a lot more like the beginning of television than you realize.
Also note: Cinema's gone through three major revisions since its beginning. Academy Standard, which is 1.375:1, Widescreen 1.85:1, and Ultra Widescreen 2.35:1. For each of these, there were exclusive films shot, which could only be played at certain theaters. And don't even get me started on Cinerama...
Display technology is always changing, and is always exclusive. We just happen to only know the tiny sliver of time where it hasn't changed too much.[/QUOTE]
And it looks like the result of this exclusivity is going to result in a lot of frustration from the end consumer, when they find out their HMD has shit support for a game they want to play, just because hardware manufacturers thought exclusivity was going to help make VR accessible to everyone.
I get that competition is good for the consumer in the long run, and that products will get better over time in order to stay competitive, but why was there a need to get competitive when both companies were initially so cooperative?
[B]Edit[/B]: I just realized there was a thread talking pretty much exactly what I figure we're arguing about, so I guess I'm just wasting everyone's time. Sorry everyone.
[url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1475596[/url]
[QUOTE=woolio1;48181354]Again, exclusives kind of have a point right now. For instance, the Vive has a larger tracking area that Oculus users won't be able to take advantage of. Should nobody make a game that uses that, then, in the interest of fairness? Or what about Oculus Touch's finger sensors. Should nobody use those because the Vive doesn't have them?
Or what about field of view? Should we cap that to whatever the lowest platform's is? Or tracking sensitivity? Or display resolution? Refresh rates?
Of course not. Exclusives that take advantage of tech only a certain platform has is not a bad thing. That's why that tech is in there in the first place, to be used. There will be platform-agnostic VR games, don't worry about that. But being able to use a platform to its fullest is a good thing, and will no doubt shape what makes it into the next generation of headsets.[/QUOTE]
This is a really good point you made on the other thread. I hadn't really considered about the strengths of the exclusivity, only the weaknesses. I mean the downsides suck some major balls, but the strengths can be pretty good, too.
[QUOTE=abcpea;48190434]Woah a lot of posts here recently must be something cool- oh, its just a load of pointless drama.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but at least you get to stare at these sexy legs for the whole page.
Speaking about exclusivity there is Nvidia's Gameworks VR and AMD's Liquid VR. So that might split up the users even more, imagine a game that is built for Liquid VR and thus not working well on Nvidia cards.
Not only you have to find a correct VR device, maybe oculus rift isn't as good as VR device as thought to be with the limited FOV and many other issues, but now you have to worry about having the correct graphics card.
[QUOTE=Toyokunari;48191172]Speaking about exclusivity there is Nvidia's Gameworks VR and AMD's Liquid VR. So that might split up the users even more, imagine a game that is built for Liquid VR and thus not working well on Nvidia cards.
Not only you have to find a correct VR device, maybe oculus rift isn't as good as VR device as thought to be with the limited FOV and many other issues, but now you have to worry about having the correct graphics card.[/QUOTE]
That's where abstraction comes in. Unity and Unreal for example will probably support both paths for different setups. And I imagine no VR dev wants to split his potential audience even further. GPUs have a known market share. Known products. Mature SDKs. VR HMDs are just not at that stage yet.
[QUOTE=Toyokunari;48191172]Speaking about exclusivity there is Nvidia's Gameworks VR and AMD's Liquid VR. So that might split up the users even more, imagine a game that is built for Liquid VR and thus not working well on Nvidia cards.
Not only you have to find a correct VR device, maybe oculus rift isn't as good as VR device as thought to be with the limited FOV and many other issues, but now you have to worry about having the correct graphics card.[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure those are entirely independent of the games, as in games don't need to implement anything special to take advantage of them.
[URL="http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/the-final-htc-vive-will-be-revealed-this-october-1299053"]Final Vive reveal planned for mid-October[/URL]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
