Oculus announces new prototype: Crescent Bay

[DrAviator]

Brendan Iribe has announced a new prototype which is "A large leap from DK2".

Among the new features are:

- 360 degree tracking with rear facing LEDs
- High-quality Integrated audio
- Real Space 3D Audio Specialisation
- Expanded positional tracking volume
- Dramatically improved weight and ergonomics
- Improved optics:
? Higher Refresh Rate
? Higher resolution
? Higher FOV

He has announced that they are now getting "closer to a consumer rift".

Does this mean a new DK3 before CV1?

http://www.oculus.com/blog/oculus-connect-2014/

[Robert]

"gonk" wrote:
@Robert... So no motion sickness ? Was this because you were physically rotating your body yourself to change direction in YAW , instead of sitting there on a keyboard ?

Yawing while not moving makes most people ill. I see this in real flight simulators, just slew around a bit and you and anyone else with you, starts to feel a little green.

anyway thanks for the info.

more first hand...

http://www.roadtovr.com/hands-on-oculus-rift-crescent-bay-prototype/

Now they just need to convince apple/microsoft/linux to make a VR compatible desktop.

....and I wear my headphones for comfort over that of fidelity/3d audio. Every person likes a little customisation in their gear....

I think it was just done right. There was no acceleration stage for the forward movement and no fast movements along my peripheral vision. I could completely turn around and look backwards while moving forward and it all felt natural.

[MrMonkeybat]

"frankzappa" wrote:

"mrmonkeybat" wrote:


3d binaureal sound works with any pair of stereo headphones. I have listened to binaurel recordings before with closed headphones, it works.

The CB phones can be folded away or detached so audiophiles can relax in the knowledge they can use there magic headphones. I am sure carbon design will make them prettier also.

Yes it works but a low end in ear will work better than an ultra high end closed type. The reason why 3D binaural works is because you put microphones in a virtual head with virtual ears. It sounds a certain way when the sound bounces around in the cavity of the ear. The problem with closed type headphones is that the sound bounces around in another cavity before it enters your ear.

It will work somewhat but the best thing would be an in ear headphone.

Being on the side of your head all headphones have a pretty good line down your ear canal. And as your ears get no cross talk on closed headphones the differences in the stereo sound are heard by your brain.

[kojack]

"GameOutLoud" wrote:
I'm more interested in the audio capabilities they're working on. If anyone remembers EAX sound in games like Thief and System Shock 2 (and Doom 3, I believe), we really haven't had any 3D audio of that quality since.

EAX back then was pretty primitive. Thief and System Shock 2 both supported A3D, the api for the Aureal Vortex audio chip. It had hardware audio wave tracing to calculate echoes and occlusion. Awesome chipset.
Unfortunately Creative sued them into bankruptcy, bought them out and shut them down.

[Gizmotweak]

Did anyone who tried the new prototype notice or was there any mention of an adjustable IPD solution?




Also did anyone try cleaning the lenses to see if they scratched? :lol:




furthermore, I really hope they dont cover the ir leds with a shroud again...i love the look with them exposed.

[ThreeEyes]

"LSDetroit" wrote:
THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT! I've been waiting months to get my hands on something to work with and it will be obsolete before it even arrives? Is this all just a pyramid scheme?

So? Cancel your order and wait for the new one to be available. It's not a hard concept.

Do you throw these tantrums when car dealers announce a new model? Do you not understand that companies can sell various flavors of devices with different price points and features?

Should Oculus just sit back and wait for you to give them the go ahead to build the next big thing?

Why do you want this field to stagnate instead of progress?

Cancel your order. Do it today. You will feel much better and more powerful in your life.

[ThreeEyes]

"Sharpfish" wrote:
You are supposed to be developers developing with a development kit not a bunch of entitled kids free to piss and moan each time tech evolves with much needed improvements. You just can't be pleased, one week it's "DK2 isn't good enough I hope they improve X,Y,Z" the next it's "waah they improved Z,Y,X now my kit is out of date"

please, for the sake of VR and this forum can you all finally grow the fuck up.

Cyber > warn/mod me if you like but this is getting ridiculous now, so much negativity from 'enthusiasts' while developers are pretty much fine with things as they are going (inc the costs of buying and rebuying future versions).

I agree 100%. The attitude by these so-called enthusiasts is way over the line. They were told not to buy DK2 if they weren't developers, bought it anyway, and now they come here and pollute the boards.

If anyone needs warning it's the people with posts about how OVR showing a prototype is "FUCKING BULLSHIT".

[RonsonPL]

edit: It became a long post. :roll:
Feel free to scroll through it, unless you though I was moaning, then read it all to see you were wrong.
There is no ranting/flame war/blind hate towards Oculus, so don't do it for that reason, but "I've got no time for this", on the other hand, is a reason good enough. 🙂
(You can also just read what's addressed directly to you - that's better than skipping a whole thing.)



Sharpfish

I specifically asked to not mix me with trolls/haters/moaners. Especially not with the ones that moan about Crescent Bay showed at OC. If you'd read my previous posts, I tend to be... well... enthusiastic about everything connected with VR. So please stop whining about the whining, OK? 😉

As for the Carmack talk about samsung screens, he was talking about the GEAR VR NOTE 4 screens and trying to get them to do stuff with it the hardware guys weren't happy with. THAT was in no way in connection with possible custom screens for CV1 - CV1

That was something I wanted to believe too. But after my "high" from listening to Abrash and Carmack worn out, I started to think about it again, calmly this time.
He said:
- he's willing to hear from ANY display manufacturer. Why would he say that if it was for Samsung Gear?
- he said Samsung won't create a production line. If Samsung have a production line for CV1 in the future, why wouldn't he just use that?
- If Samsung is planning non-PenTile screen, 120Hz screen (progressive scan), then why would Carmack not say something like "we can't hope for the same quality as we'll get in our Rift"?

That's what makes me think the deal with Samsung didn't gave Oculus the only thing it was supposed to, in my eyes at least. It seems to me (and I WANT to be wrong) that all they got is help to popularize VR for casual masses via mobile market.

Once again I ask you - please don't mix me with such stupid guys as those who are angry because Oculus showed Crescent Bay and/or with immature people. I knew how allergic WE (forum users here) became and I knew any criticism or fears will probably be thrown to the same bag as trolls. I really wanted to avoid that. I'm on your side, remember.I almost had an orgasm when I saw they presented Crescent Bay. 😉 I'm really glad they did.
But that doesn't mean I should be an apostle blindly thinking that Oculus is here to save the world. I was thinking it's the only company in the industry that won't piss on PC gamers-enthusiasts. I might have had too optimistic view on that matter, maybe I was fooling myself into believing the ways of todays business can change thanx to the power of VR potential. Nothing more than that. No moaning. Just disappointment and posting my thoughts in a hope that someone proves me wrong. That's what forum is for, isn't it? To discuss.


kojack

(Part of my answer to you is in the text above, so I won't repeat that.)
No, I didn't assume they've spent zero of it since the sale. I read/watch/listen to everything, everyday, I try to get as much info as I can, so no, I didn't assume that. I know what they said. But even with $400m and shares, they could manage to secure a separate production line. It wasn't important enough for them to do so. With money/discount they could get from the deal with Samsung - even more so. They could. We might only guess why that happened and in my previous post I wrote my idea.

Dreamwriter

Overreact much? 😛

Of course I did. VR is the most important thing to me, and great VR quickly is my greatest dream, since I don't know if I'll be alive in 10 years from now, and I certainly won't in 20 years. I loose my health quickly. If something could be done in 2018, then I want it in 2018, since with 5-10 years delay it might be too late for me. Besides, I've waited over 20 years - that's enough. 😉

Next part about only talking about Samsung Gear devices - I surely hope you're right, and I'm not. But see my concerns above. Besides - why would anyone use interlaced 120Hz instead of 120 progressive, in the Rift? I hated CRT 100/120Hz, I hated LCDs, finally we got to displays that are good in motion, and AGAIN we'll see sacrificing it for something? NO. No, no, no and NO! Maybe at 2880p and 240Hz (120 full frames) it won't be noticeable, but I'm really afraid that at 1440p-2160p and 120i we'll see a serious quality degradation in fast movement. I know most people won't find it to be a big problem, but that's just because they lack some knowledge, and I don't mean technical one. It's a tricky matter, that's what I know after spending hundreds of hours doing my private research over the last 15 years. In regards of motion quality, I consider myself quite competent and yes, I'm allergic to anything below "perfect". And by the way - another thing that scared me was the matter of black smearing. Carmack didn't say "we won't have that problem in CV1". That doesn't sound good. I'm not so happy with working around the problem instead of dealing with it (no bright side elements for 60Hz for example - that will make a constraint, since most of Rift games will be designed with mobile VR in mind, which will cripple them just like focusing on consoles cripples PC games now, or avoiding deep blacks. Seriously - we had crappy LCD technology for so long, now we finally get rid of them, advance to OLEDs and we plan to throw away great blacks and motion quality? Isn't it infuriating? To me, it is.

The next Display Port (which is unavailable to manufacturers) has the bandwidth for it, but those framerates are not part of the standard (and no modern graphics card has the new Display Port, let alone the two year old cards Oculus will need to support).

Bummer 😞
You're sure about that? That would be bad. But I hope that even so, every PC card from 2015 will have DP 1.3 perfectly capable of running 2160p120.
If not - HDMI 2.0 can be used to achieve 2160p120, although with damage it image quality. See here:
http://www.blurbusters.com/4k-120hz-possible-over-hdmi2/

Palmer Lucky has always said 90hz was the minimum needed for presence, and that CV1 would be at least 90hz.

90Hz is still within boundaries of "at least 90Hz".

Wilkin

Wow, that was quite a rant - but most of it completely naive (sorry to say so) (...)

Ahhh... my favorite argument. "You are naive, you don't understand how business works".
No I'm not. And I understand. I watched Commodore bankrupt and everything afterwards. I understand, trust me.

But what Oculus seems to not understand is this:
- this is VR, it cannot be treated as any other business.

Oculus should make a super-quality VR. Enthusiasts will talk about it every time, with every person they meet. They would spread the word. Non-enthusiast could be converted to enthusiasts with a blink of an eye, like in no other business.
And I'm not saying Oculus should ignore mass market, far from it. But it's offering to this market should be low priority and should be based on what already is available for enthusiasts market. For example lower FOV, lower resolution, and so on, but Oculus and devs should concentrate on the high quality VR, because it WOULD BE strong enough to secure sales big enough to sustain Oculus economically.
Oculus could become the synonim of many things. Not just VR. Look at its Kickstarter, look at the image it had before FB came in. LOOK AT IT. Don't you see? People were loving the OTHER WAY OF BUSINESS, the opposite to the crap we get from all big corporations today, and yes, I know how I sound now - and no, I'm not "one of those kids fighting with the system/corporations" 😉
I just think Oculus could do perfectly well focusing on what it promised to focus on. (I hope that's proper in english, sorry if not).

You underestimate how much people are POTENTIAL enthusiasts. What Steam userbase have to do with it? Look at 1999-2004 to see what I mean, not on today PC enthusiast base, that is shrank to 5% of normal, because of steps that big companies made - we, PC gamers, get ignored, games are convertions from 9-years old consoles (see GRID:Autosport for example, a good game, but created with x360 in mind, not PC), we are constantly cheated by marketing schemes (you really have to know something about GPUs to buy a card and not fall for any trap placed by AMD/Intel/Nvidia)
Microsoft is not innocent either (DX versions vs. new OSes, totally non-game friendly way of using threads, APIs etc.)
We are asked to pay 3x the money for cards that should be 3x cheaper and why? Because AMD/Nvidia thinks that for example GTX980 is a niche market, not so much people would buy it, so why give lower price?
And that's a vicious circle - cards are overpriced, because there is not so much people willing to buy them. Developers don't create games for high-end cards, because not many gamers have those. Gamers don't buy those cards, because they see nothing in return - the same crappy console ports.
THIS mechanism. THIS is a trap Oculus shouldn't fell into, but it seems not to see it.
Oculus high quality VR could increase PC enthusiasts gamer market by 100x, easily. It could help Nvidia, it could help AMD, it could help intel. It could help developers, it could help gamers, it could finally help VR.
ALL OF THIS WAS POSSIBLE, but Oculus said "nahh...."

I for my part am thrilled about the new prototype and that things are moving forward.

Me too, but wasn't that a given? We wanted at least that. Personally I hoped for CV1 specs, but new prototype made me scream "fu.. yeah!" (really, I did that). Of course I'm thrilled about it. That's a whole different matter to the future of VR and whole PC gaming market.

treytech
You speak about "us vs. them" and yet you are doing the same. Oh the irony! 😄
But let's get to more important things:

It was one of the first ones, the submarine scene. Sometimes simpler is better. It's when I really noticed how I couldn't detect any latency at all in the headset. Tap it, shake it, do anything. It will keep up. The DK2 fails quickly at this.

I don't think DK2 fails quickly at this. Not in Demo Scene from Config Utility it doesn't. Other demos have too much latency, but I don't think it's DK2's fault.
Is CB better in shown demos than DK2 in test scene with desktop?
That would be great news! (Although I don't know if I would be able to notice the difference. I'm still amazed how "grounded" everything is in that demo scene on DK2, when moving your head)

crespo80

On a side and lighter note, matte black is nice for a developer unit, but glossy white is definitely the way to go with the consumer version, it will look much more futuristic and appealing, and in line with the most recent style trends.

That's what I was talking about. I think this will happen and I'm afraid it will be taking away some functionality for ascthetics. Diodes could be harder to track on white surface, although I know nothing about IR light and sensors, so I hope I'm wrong. But if not, even 0,00001% to functionality in a trade for more appealing look, is something that I wouldn't want to see. Make it bulky, for better FOV, make it require installing some markers in a room for better tracking, make it look ridiculous, but make it as awesome as it can be! - that's my point of view.

FengShuiEngine

Oculus are perfectionists, and I love that. They're always trying to improve, always trying to give the best possible experience, and they're not going to settle for "good enough".

If a the guy from TheVerge didn't lie, Oculus is not like you see them. Look at this:

My biggest remaining quibble is something Oculus isn't actually worried about: field of view. Crescent Bay feels about the same as the DK2, which is to say that while you can see just fine, there's still a bit of a window around the edges of your vision. Mitchell says that the consumer version of the Rift could have a slightly larger or smaller field of view than the current prototype, and expanding it significantly isn't worth the stress it would put on computers to render good graphics at an acceptable framerate.

source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/20/6661525/oculus-crescent-bay-prototype-headset-hands-on

FOV really HAS to be significantly larger than DK2. Especially for people wearing glasses (short sighted). They can throw it away for people with crappy CPUs/GPUs. That's not "giving the best experience". That's maximizing profits.
CV1 with the same FOV as DK2 would (and probably will be) a great disappointment. It will still be awesome, but also would not deliver anything close to what it could with a wider FOV. The small FOV is the biggest immersion braking thing in DK2 for me. My favorite VR use would be games like Test Drive Unlimited and just cruising while looking around and admiring the scenery. DK2's FOV ruins it (I tested Project Cars and one nice track reminding me TD:U). FOV is of great importance. But it also costs much, so I'm afraid we might be waiting for 140 degree FOV for many, many years 😞
I hope I'm wrong though 🙂

Robert

The UE developers mentioned that the Crescent Bay demo had a render target of 90 fps. I would assume that the display in the CB prototype uses the same refresh rate of 90Hz. I didn't see any screen-door effect and it was difficult to even make out the pixels that in my impression were also non-rectangular. The resolution was obviously high enough in order to not think about resolution anymore.

Thank you for that! You greatly improved my mood there 😄

[ThreeEyes]

"treytech" wrote:
Some of these posts in this thread seem like angry middle schoolers. When did this forum get so full of negativity and entitlement? Half a year ago this forum was full of people on the same journey. Now it's an us vs them mentality.

I think that happened around July 1st. DK2 brought a huge influx of kids who claim to be enthusiasts but have no concept of how this process works, how unique and unprecedented it is to get access to hardware AT COST, and how unique and unprecedented it is to even get access to such early hardware to use, experiment with, and start building content for.

Instead, they throw every little thing in Oculus' face, bitch, complain, demand, and act like the spoiled kids they are.

If there is a DK3, if we don't get access to it it will be because of behaviors seen here ever since the DK2 was about to ship. Even in interviews you can see the exasperation by Palmer and Nate when they mention it doesn't matter what they do, people will bitch.

And if CV1 is next and if Oculus follows the traditional model of building stock for months instead of opening preorders, it will again most likely be because of these "enthusiasts" and "developers" who come here and act like crying babies with a full diaper.

One thing Oculus could do to cut them out is instead of selling a DK3 at cost, if there is a DK3, sell it at a premium. People are already buying video cards just for DK2 at near twice the cost of DK2. I did and so did a lot of others. Make DK3 cost $700. Real developers for the most part won't flinch, but maybe enough kids will be knocked out that these boards clean up. Or only sell DK3 to real developers. I say that knowing at least right now that would cut me out. But giving these kids a foot in the door to pollute the boards needs to end.

Just a thought. I hate it that these kids come here and rant and I hate feeling compelled to respond.

[mrcrisp]

I'm loving the new prototype from Oculus- the headphones, meh- but overall from the experiences I am reading it is yet another big step forward from DK2.

The thing I like about Crescent Bay is it is a non-nonsense VR still- no extra gimmicky stuff that would probably hinder a great VR experience rather than add to it.

I'm liking the bigger fov, clearly the lenses look bigger, the higher resolution, the on-board audio, rear led tracking and the fact it is LIGHTER.

Ticks all my boxes, even as a prototype. Adjustable IPD and lens focus and I think we have a CV1 winner on our hands.

I am assuming the rumour of an April? Beta test to strictly limited numbers is true- then we can expect the unexpected once again from Oculus come CV1 time. Damn- i'm excited- now I'm defo buying a GTX980...

[Gigantoad]

"ThreeEyes" wrote:

One thing Oculus could do to cut them out is instead of selling a DK3 at cost, if there is a DK3, sell it at a premium. People are already buying video cards just for DK2 at near twice the cost of DK2. I did and so did a lot of others. Make DK3 cost $700. Real developers for the most part won't flinch, but maybe enough kids will be knocked out that these boards clean up. Or only sell DK3 to real developers. I say that knowing at least right now that would cut me out. But giving these kids a foot in the door to pollute the boards needs to end.

Just a thought. I hate it that these kids come here and rant and I hate feeling compelled to respond.

Great Idea. Then we'll have just the rich whiners and the rich developers. Then the rich whiners will probably whine twice as loud because they've paid more and feel even more entitled.

Look, I feel your pain and I'm bothered myself by all these complainers, but making a product less accessible by increasing the price would be misguided, starting with the myth that "real" developers have more money to spend than enthusiasts.