I first tried the Oculus DK1 when I worked at NVIDIA playing UDK Game (a FPS) for about an hour or so attempting to make myself vomit. Let me back up a minute and note that the first time I tried a serious 3D gaming session was also at NVIDIA years earlier playing Team Fortress 2 with the devtech team using a 3D monitor. Being a 3D nube I did what anyone who normally plays about a foot away from an HDTV would do. I played with my face as close to the screen as possible with the separation set to some extreme setting to compensate. The next morning I woke up and experienced vertigo for the first time. Fast forwarding back to the DK1, instead of filling a bucket, I felt nothing. Playing an FPS in Oculus had no effect on me.
At Epic I've tried a few of the Epic Oculus demos, first the Roller Coaster demo on a DK1. To my surprise I actually felt a little presence off the initial drop. Also on a DK1 tried the Elemental demo where the particle effects, also to my surprise, felt real. Eyes tracking the fast moving particles momentarily removed the sense of giant pixels, convinced my mind that I was somewhere else. Later I tried demos on the DK2: the Board Game and the Couch Knight demo. It is striking how much better the DK2 experience is. Beyond that, there was this realization that something as simple as playing an avatar (the Knight) from a 3rd person perspective (the Couch) is amazingly fun in VR.
Fast forward to this E3. The 3rd person game is going to have a major comeback with VR. Developers are starting to unearth the formulas which work really well for the next generation of gaming, the first major consumer VR generation.
Finally a Great Use for Dual GPUs
The common case for Dual GPUs for Oculus won't be to render separate stereo frames. Rather it will be to have two Oculus's plugged into one machine. Want local 2 player: have a two GPU box. Want local 3 player: have a three-way GPU box. The next Neo Geo console of gaming is a multi-high-end-GPU Oculus machine. 3rd person local multi-player is going to be awesome!
At Epic I've tried a few of the Epic Oculus demos, first the Roller Coaster demo on a DK1. To my surprise I actually felt a little presence off the initial drop. Also on a DK1 tried the Elemental demo where the particle effects, also to my surprise, felt real. Eyes tracking the fast moving particles momentarily removed the sense of giant pixels, convinced my mind that I was somewhere else. Later I tried demos on the DK2: the Board Game and the Couch Knight demo. It is striking how much better the DK2 experience is. Beyond that, there was this realization that something as simple as playing an avatar (the Knight) from a 3rd person perspective (the Couch) is amazingly fun in VR.
Fast forward to this E3. The 3rd person game is going to have a major comeback with VR. Developers are starting to unearth the formulas which work really well for the next generation of gaming, the first major consumer VR generation.
Finally a Great Use for Dual GPUs
The common case for Dual GPUs for Oculus won't be to render separate stereo frames. Rather it will be to have two Oculus's plugged into one machine. Want local 2 player: have a two GPU box. Want local 3 player: have a three-way GPU box. The next Neo Geo console of gaming is a multi-high-end-GPU Oculus machine. 3rd person local multi-player is going to be awesome!