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Oculus Rift Development on OS X 'Paused' to Focus on Strong Windows Launch
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Been trying to play games on Mac since 2005. Only the most simple games work. Forget about doing any online multiplayer.... Limbo plays great though!
Might want to check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Oculus_Rift_support
And no, expanding into this area _in addition_ to mobile will only help Facebook; they're going to be "afloat" for quite some time.
Starcraft and Diablo plays great. What multiplayer games you trying to play that won't work? And as others have mentioned, Steam is available, so there's a wealth of games available.
Wonderfully if you boot into Windows. Steam is avaialbel but its not as good on the Mac side as on the M$ side. By that I mean that you can get a Mac version of a Win title but you have to fart around with controller mapping apps and such like and its much harder to work out if your Mac supports a specific title. Whereas in the Windows version you can say, it just works.
What they can't copy is the branding. VR is virtually (hah!) synonymous with Rift these days.
Likewise - a pleasant surprise. That being said, as a gamer, if I had an interest in 3D (and I don't, at least not currently), I'd still probably want to get a Wintel box for this sort of thing - the choice of video cards for Macs is just too limited and non-upgradable.
I had a manager who would spend hours every day trying to convince me the general public will be in love with VR. He tried so hard to get a job at Facebook that I could only laugh when I found out he ended up at Second Life.
I don't think VR has an audience outside niche products, mostly training (write once, view often) or supervisory roles (like long-distance medical operations and pre-planning security escort details). It will falter like 3D tv, in that most families will balk at having to wear special glasses to enjoy a movie together in their own home.
If you focus on individuals, you're back in the realm of porn. While porn was great for deciding blu-ray vs hd dvd, betamax vs vhs, it's still not a "group" activity in general concept.
I don't think VR has an audience outside niche products, mostly training (write once, view often) or supervisory roles (like long-distance medical operations and pre-planning security escort details). It will falter like 3D tv, in that most families will balk at having to wear special glasses to enjoy a movie together in their own home.
If you focus on individuals, you're back in the realm of porn. While porn was great for deciding blu-ray vs hd dvd, betamax vs vhs, it's still not a "group" activity in general concept.
I'd be surprised if Windows 10 didn't end up with more installs than all versions of all non-Windows OSs running on computers within 3 months of its release. It sounds like a pretty solid upgrade over both 7 and 8, plus it's a free upgrade from 7 or 8.
Within 3 years of the release of Windows 10, I'd expect it to be installed on 70% of all computers (and for some small percentage to be running 7 and 8.) OS X may be growing every year, but going from Windows 7 or 8 to 10 is going to be a pretty easy transition (download and install, for free) compared to moving to OS X (buy an expensive computer, then figure out how to transfer all your old stuff). So I'd expect Windows 10 will grow far faster than OS X.
Having said that, I'm surprised Oculus Rift thinks that OS X is such a small market as to not be worth targeting. I can't find any numbers on the matter, but I'd expect a large number of people in game development (less than half, but more than you see for general computer usage) using OS X. So they're shooting themselves in the foot.
To me OR is synonymous with VR vaporware.
The first 3D headset I personally demoed was in the '90s. I don't need to tell you how that worked out.
And supposing it makes it to market will it actually be good enough to be anything more than a gimmick?
It's beyond obvious that we could use something more than a fixed-size 2D rectangle into computing devices. So I know that eventually the technology, software, and business models will come together to make some kind of stereo viewing device a practical reality.
But what reason is there to think OR is that device?
Hopefully I can clear some stuff up. I've had the Oculus Rift DK1, and DK2, and have been actively following and researching VR for the past few years on a daily basis. You could say I am somewhat obsessed..
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Facebook bought Oculus because they want to build a social computing platform. VR has the capacity to be the most social platform. They are playing a long game here, they are not really interested in what Oculus do or achieve in the short term, but rather 5 or 10 years down the line. When VR is ubiquitous, cheap, and the size of a pair of glasses. They want everyone to socialize in VR through Facebook, whether that be through mobile devices or a PC.
On the contrary, the Oculus Rift is focused at infinity and causes very little eye strain. In the near future, eye tracking will allow games to render with accurate DOF effects to allow the eyes to focus even more naturally.
DK2 used a pentile screen. While the Rift CV1 is only a little higher in resolution, it's believed to be a striped RGB display resulting in significantly higher perceived resolution. Advanced double layer fresnel lenses and high fill rate screens also practically eliminate the ugly screen door effect that's observable in the DK2.
Every version of Windows after Windows 7 has, indirectly, better support for VR. I don't think there is a deliberate effort by Microsoft to support VR at this point, but due to API and software additions Windows 8 is far easier to get VR headsets to work with than Windows 7. Windows 10 even more so than Windows 8. Windows 10 is also going to be a free upgrade to a lot of people, so uptake will be rapid. With the re-addition of the start menu, it'll go down well with corporate and a lot of Win8 haters too.
Where did you get this statistic from ? either way it is irrelevent, the Rift CV1 is primarily a gaming device. While there are going to undoubtedly be some cool entertainment experiences (Oculus have hired several ex Pixar and Disney employees to make VR short films), the majority of content created and consumed will be gaming. The PC gaming market is far, far bigger than Mac.
Quite possibly. It releases earlier and has specs that are at least as good. So long as they nail ergonomics + software/content and the price isn't too prohibitive, it could be a big success for HTC.
This is possible. Though I wouldn't expect many big tech companies to throw too much money at it right now. Remember, the market doesn't even exist yet. It's VERY risky to throw hundreds of millions at a VR device that only people with top end gaming PC's can use.
Mobile is definitely the end game. It'll take a while, but mobile performance is improveing rapidly, it won't be long until very good experiences can be had on a mobile VR devices. The current issues are getting inside out head tracking working, and working within the thermal limits of a smartphone. At full pelt, most smartphones overheat and shutdown in a matter of minutes. VR is very, very demanding. We'll get there, but for now mobile VR will be relegated to 'easy' to run experiences like watching films in VR and playing very basic games.
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Facebook bought Oculus because they want to build a social computing platform. VR has the capacity to be the most social platform. They are playing a long game here, they are not really interested in what Oculus do or achieve in the short term, but rather 5 or 10 years down the line. When VR is ubiquitous, cheap, and the size of a pair of glasses. They want everyone to socialize in VR through Facebook, whether that be through mobile devices or a PC.
On the contrary, the Oculus Rift is focused at infinity and causes very little eye strain. In the near future, eye tracking will allow games to render with accurate DOF effects to allow the eyes to focus even more naturally.
DK2 used a pentile screen. While the Rift CV1 is only a little higher in resolution, it's believed to be a striped RGB display resulting in significantly higher perceived resolution. Advanced double layer fresnel lenses and high fill rate screens also practically eliminate the ugly screen door effect that's observable in the DK2.
Every version of Windows after Windows 7 has, indirectly, better support for VR. I don't think there is a deliberate effort by Microsoft to support VR at this point, but due to API and software additions Windows 8 is far easier to get VR headsets to work with than Windows 7. Windows 10 even more so than Windows 8. Windows 10 is also going to be a free upgrade to a lot of people, so uptake will be rapid. With the re-addition of the start menu, it'll go down well with corporate and a lot of Win8 haters too.
Where did you get this statistic from ? either way it is irrelevent, the Rift CV1 is primarily a gaming device. While there are going to undoubtedly be some cool entertainment experiences (Oculus have hired several ex Pixar and Disney employees to make VR short films), the majority of content created and consumed will be gaming. The PC gaming market is far, far bigger than Mac.
Quite possibly. It releases earlier and has specs that are at least as good. So long as they nail ergonomics + software/content and the price isn't too prohibitive, it could be a big success for HTC.
This is possible. Though I wouldn't expect many big tech companies to throw too much money at it right now. Remember, the market doesn't even exist yet. It's VERY risky to throw hundreds of millions at a VR device that only people with top end gaming PC's can use.
Mobile is definitely the end game. It'll take a while, but mobile performance is improveing rapidly, it won't be long until very good experiences can be had on a mobile VR devices. The current issues are getting inside out head tracking working, and working within the thermal limits of a smartphone. At full pelt, most smartphones overheat and shutdown in a matter of minutes. VR is very, very demanding. We'll get there, but for now mobile VR will be relegated to 'easy' to run experiences like watching films in VR and playing very basic games.
A 2013 quad core D300 Mac Pro dual booted into Windows should make a good machine for this.
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No it won't. This technology is how you will do just about everything someday.
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No it won't. This technology is how you will do just about everything someday.
$USD 24.95
http://www.dodocase.com/products/google-cardboard-vr-goggle-toolkit
Just saying
And no, I don't work for Dodocase. Before anyone asks
http://www.dodocase.com/products/google-cardboard-vr-goggle-toolkit
Just saying
And no, I don't work for Dodocase. Before anyone asks
No.. this is not comparable to 3D TV what so ever. 3D TV was bad, and had all sorts of issues. The effect was at best questionable, and never particularly realistic. It requires you to lock your head straight forwards from a central position, as anything else resulted in an incorrect 3D image.
VR produces perfect, FOV filling, stereoscopic viewing. A table looks the size of a table in real life. A tower looks the size of a tower in real life. The implications for a lot of industries are huge. Imagine walking around a 3D model of ancient rome in a history lesson rather than looking at a picture in a book.
It's not really something you can explain to people. You just need to try it.
I'm not surprised about the OSX pause, but im shocked over the linux pause. With steam machines coming out later this year, along with steam and htc's vive headset, and vulkan in the mix. I would imagine you would be missing a big boat by not concentrating on windows and linux for a VR product at the moment.
Vulkan for graphics in the next OS X?
I hope Apple includes Vulkan support in the next release of OS X. It would be nice if the same game could perform as good in OS X as it does in Windows, but that isn't currently the case. Not even for Blizzard games which are developed in parallel with the Windows version.
I hope Apple includes Vulkan support in the next release of OS X. It would be nice if the same game could perform as good in OS X as it does in Windows, but that isn't currently the case. Not even for Blizzard games which are developed in parallel with the Windows version.
Of course it is.
If Second Life taught us anything, people don't want to live in a virtual world. They want to live in the real world with bits of the digital world around them at their convenience. Living with the virtual in your primary field of vision will not fly.
Fad.
Ditto Google Glass.
Oculus is too far behind now anyway. I don't know how they messed up the enormous lead they initially had and after all the wait only release a PC product.
Besides that point, there are too many VR hardware sets these days and no good content for them. Thats the void that needs filled, not another company with a viewer.
Besides that point, there are too many VR hardware sets these days and no good content for them. Thats the void that needs filled, not another company with a viewer.