What is currently happening Programs, welcome to the Grid VR.
Where I'll be bringing you this weeks news in Virtual Reality.
Its Sunday 30th September 2018 and all I can say this week is: Did anyone actually guess
Quest?
We've got Oculus Quest setting the scale, Lone Echo 2 continues the tale, Star Wars
Vader Immortal unveiled, Pimax reviews, ASW 2, Defector and much more.
Today I�m going to cover off the main events to keep you in the loop.
So stay locked, enjoy, and welcome, to the Grid VR.
First off the ranks is the obvious big play from Oculus, the Oculus Quest headset, formerly
known as the Santa Cruz prototype.
This HMD is completely standalone, meaning no wires and no PC required at all.
It has 6 degrees of freedom, ultra wide angle, self-contained inside out markerless tracking
that can extend to a theoretical infinite scale, courtesy of 4 camera sensors on the
headset and Oculus's new Insight tracking.
Insight tracking can also provide a re-callable play space and guardian boundaries, as well
as co-location multiplayer, which is where a load of programs with Oculus Quest headsets
can all play against each other in the same game, in the same space.
Completely wireless.
Like you are seeing on screen now.
And yes, the headsets are tracking each other through assymetrical co-location support thanks
to a master spatial map of the arena that each headset recognises and shares, check
the description for more info on that one.
And that master spatial map also lets you view through a window in to VR on something
like an iPad.
John Carmack even mentioned the headset can provide low latency pass through and mixed
reality functionality, as well as native hand tracking like you would see with the leap
motion, though that last one is unlikely to ship with Quest.
The headset will come with touch controllers that have the same inputs as Rift touch controllers,
and launch with over 50 titles including Robo Recall, Moss, The Climb, Superhot, and a 3
part Star Wars series from Oculus and ILMxLab called Vader Immortal.
And if you already own a game on Rift, you may be able to get that game free on Quest
depending on the developer of the game.
The Quest has best in class optics courtesy of the same lenses as an Oculus GO, and 2
x 1600 x 1440 OLED displays with a PenTile sub-pixel layout, viewable through a 95 degree
field of view.
This means it will look sharper than a Vive Pro, and even sharper than the Pimax 5k headset
at max fov.
The Quest will have OLED panels meaning that blacks will look blacker than what you would
see from headsets using LCD panels like the Oculus GO or most WMR headsets, which is a
very good thing.
The headset is locked at 72hz, which is less than the Rift and Vives 90hz, but more than
the Oculus GO's variable 60-72hz refresh rate, depending on the app you are using at the
time.
And all this is powered by a Qualcomm 835 snap dragon SOC, which may surprise those
of you who expected an 845 for sure.
Especially as you now may be wondering how the hell can Quest run Rift quality games
on a lowly 835 SOC.
Well reduced textures and depth information, as well as the 72hz refresh rate are a couple
of reasons, as well as chromatic abberation correction which will remove artifacts and
give devs more head room at no extra cost to performance, and the Oculus GO will also
soon feature this same correction technology, and that will also fix that rainbow sparkle
artefact you see on the edge of the GO's field of view.
Quest has built in audio, hardware IPD adjustment, and provide around the same battery life as
an Oculus GO at around 2-3 hours.
It will ship in Spring 2019, so about 6 months away, and land at $399 for the 64GB model,
which is insaaanely cheap for what it is.
I've literally got no idea how they got it to that price point actually.
Now trust me when I say I've just scratched the surface on this headset, the software
that comes with it, and why it is so important for VR, but it just not possible to cram all
that info in to this one episode.
So stay locked here for a more definitive Oculus Quest video next week where'll I'll
go in to more detail and explain why this is all such a big deal.
Until then, meet me in the comments section of this video and lets discuss.
On a final note for Oculus Connect HMD announcements, it does look like the half dome stuff we saw
in Feb on this episode of the Grid VR won't be ready for release for another 4 to 5 years,
but if you're still watching this show at that point, then stay locked here for updates.
ASW, or Asyncronous Space Warp is a technology developed by Oculus for Rift owners that provides
you with the 90 frames per second required for a smooth PC VR experience, when your PC
is struggling.
It does this by halving your frame rate, therefore halving the load on your PC, and then filling
in the blanks with predicted fake frames so you still see 90 frames per second.
The trade off?
Artefacts.
To combat those artefacts, Oculus is introducing ASW 2.0 which now not only uses the image
and headset data to guess the fake frames, but also uses depth information.
The end result?
A much more accurately guessed, artefact free VR experience.
This is a big deal for Rift owners and I would love to see Valve come to the table with something
as good as ASW so those who prefer the Vive can also reap these kinds of benefits.
Until then though, if you have a low to mid spec PC and like heavy hitting PC VR games
then a Rift really is the way to go right now.
And briefly, Oculus Core 2.0 has come out of beta bringing with it the full release
of Home and Dash, along with a string of performance improvements, user interface changes, and
new features.
Rift users can expect to see this rolling out straight away.
The new Oculus Rift Platform Beta which begins rolling out shortly will feature cross platform
and expressive avatars, meaning that your avatar will not only have better simulated
facial animations and eye movement, but you'll also be able to use you're Oculus Home avatar
in different games instead of having to remake it for each game.
So you can be the same you all the time in VR.
On that note, codec avatars will likely be a thing in the future thanks to Oculus tech,
and while that may just sound like a standard sentence, one of these is a real capture,
one is a real time digital copy of that capture, and the other is the architect of the wildest
dreams you haven't even had yet.
Also teased at connect was a prediction from that same man, Michael Abrash, the cheif scientist
at Oculus, called a Waveguide headset.
This is a concept drawing which illustrates the use of a waveguide display that allows
extremely small glasses like form factors.
And while that's quite a way off, it's quite exciting too think about.
What isn't so far off is pancake lenses.
Not a new concept but only now becomming practical, pancake lenses allow much sharper images that
could reach retinal resolution, and up to 200 degree field of view, or provide a very
compact form factor, like you would have seen on Ready Player One, but not both field of
view and compact design at the same time.
GO and Quest users will soon be able to cast what they see in VR to a nearby TV or smart
phone so you can not only record your gameplay with sound, but others in the same room will
be able to see what you see.
A fucking underutilized option in my opinion, I mean, who wants to share their VR gameplay
anyways?..
A trailer for Lone Echo 2 was shown in the middle of the OC5 keynote on day 1 and while
it doesn't really let on much, it looks to pick up from where the first game left off.
You view the trailer through the eyes of Jack as the other major character from the first
game, Liv, puts Jack back together again, and in secret too it seems.
Not a lot more to say at this point but there's an immersive 360 trailer that you can watch
right now which is pretty tight and I've put a link for that one in the description below.
Defector, the Oculus exclusive VR spy game from Twisted Pixel games which I covered in
this episode of The Grid VR, also has a new trailer and the game is now set to arrive
in 2019.
Again, not much more on this one but you do go to India and the link is in the description.
Vox Machinae has hit the Oculus store this week and is a fully fledged Mech battle game
that rolls through a more realistic road with weighty machines and more realistic physics
than what you would see from something like Archangel Hellfire, or Code 51 Mecha Arena.
Join up to 15 other players, in 5 customizable mechs and strategise your victory in this
highly praised tactical mech simulator.
A program called ZNixiian has released an implememtation of SteamVR's API, OpenVR called
OpenComposite for Rift owners.
And what it does is lets you play SteamVR based games on a Rift without running SteamVR,
which results in a much smoother experience for Rift users on some games when using SteamVR.
It's not perfect, and it's not confirmed working on all titles, but there is a link in the
description if you have the issues I described and want to give this one a go.
In saying that, if you do see the Oculus mode available, use that instead.
Pimax reviews are up from Sweviver, MRTV and VoodooDE.
Essentially it looks like the 5k headset is the one to watch out for, though that could
change with a decent software update from Pimax.
The 170 degree field of view mode is generally the most acceptable setting, you will need
a monster card like a 2080Ti to run these headsets properly, and they really are for
enthusiasts at this stage due to the amount of software support and tweaking required
to run them smoothly, though again, that could change with something as minimal as a decent
software update from Pimax.
Still, the headsets are legit, and Pimax backers should have these headsets in their hands
by the end of the year.
Also, Valves Knuckles controllers have been updated to version EV3 and sent out to developers,
with slight upgrades to input feel, strap design, battery life and a few other tweaks.
Still no word on the release date of these bad boys though we can't be too far off now.
Stage 9, the Start Trek TNG fan built experience for flat and VR users alike was shut down
last week and we now know that it's due to a take down order from CBS, which means the
project is now completely dead.
Which is just *rrrrrrgh*.
Buuuuuut someone has uploaded the last stable release of stage 9 to mega upload, link in
the description *cough*.
And Mozilla have released Firefox reality, a VR web browser for the Oculus GO, Mirage
Solo and Vive Focus standalone VR headsets.
It's not a fully fledged VR browser just yet but it is a continued sign that VR web browsing
is a legitimate consideration by the big names in the web browser space.
As always, all the links are in the description.
And finally, Jeremy Horowitz, a writer for Venture Beat has gone on Twitter and said
that we are about 1 week away from having a redefining VR moment akin to what flat gaming
experienced with Super Mario 64.
Love to hear your guesses in the comments below but if it's porn related, then mate,
we've all been vigorously redefining VR for years now
And that�s this week on the Grid VR.
You can help support this channel by grabbing exclusive rewards on Patreon, and if you liked
this video then crush that like button, have your say in the comments below, and hit the
XO logo to subscribe if you wanna.
I�ll see you in the next one.
Peace!!
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