VENI, VIDI, VIVE-Y
A quick heads-up for the latest developments in VR
VR is taking us places - the movement is real - and those of us who have dropped the clams on the first premium products of its new era, HTC’s Vive and Oculus’ Rift, are certainly inhabiting worlds on the bleeding edge of new technology. But now after the familiarity has set in and the awe has been consumed, the anticipation for the next step is growing.
As a HTC Vive owner, I experience VR in a room-scale setting with motion controllers. I paid about $1200 for one of the units in April 2016 and waited excitedly for it to ship, reading post after post on VR forums by early adopters exclaiming, “Oh my god this is amazing”, while counting the days until I could experience that myself.
My prior experience with VR was with an Oculus Rift DK2, the second development kit from the company now owned by Facebook. That was seated VR, you strap on the headset and sit at your computer while a little infrared webcam tracks the orientation of your head.
Vive users will know set up for their device is a little different.
One of the first tasks one must undertake to experience the joy of room-scale VR is figure out how and where to mount the Vive base stations, the two laser-projecting cubes that track the headset and controllers in real space. I initially got mine up with a couple of clamps and two plasterboard extension poles from Bunnings, giving my apartment this great ‘perpetual renovation’ kind of vibe. In my latest apartment I’ve mounted them straight into the walls, drill and everything - fortune favours the bold my friends. A Vive user also needs to mark out their playspace using one of the motion controllers under the guise of the base stations. I’m always re-marking out the edges of my virtual playspace to find that sweet spot to get the maximum possible area while minimising the risk of unforeseen wall collisions or stair dismounts.
The experience is indeed unlike anything I’ve tried before. Slapping the headset on and using room scale VR is as close to standing on the Holodeck as you can get (you can even download a Holodeck environment from the Steam workshop to serve as a replacement for the default white ‘construct’ menu environment). Out of the box, Valve’s The Lab offers a great set of demos that let you test the potential of room-scale VR and motion controllers.
Walking around my real space while inside the Robot Repair demo, checking out a damaged Atlas bot from various angles, was really quite astounding, and using the Vive controllers to wield a bow and arrow in Longbow or blast training drones with lasers in Space Pirate Trainer provided hours of fun and many, “Oh my god this is amazing” moments for the friends I demoed the Vive to. Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator and, more recently, Rick and Morty VR pack in so much interactivity that using the motion controllers as surrogates for your hands feels natural and intuitive. Swinging a lightsaber in a very short but good-looking Star Wars demo is a dream come true, and painting with your hands in 3D with Google’s Tilt Brush is an all-new experience.
Just as compelling as picking up a game can be some of the free experiences or tech demos around. 4thFlrStudio, by US artist Brendon Coyle, is a photorealistic 3D scan of a small studio apartment you can walk around in. The pairing of photogrammetry for realism and room-scale movement delivers a surreal and exciting experience. Cosmic Sugar, available for free on Steam, is a particle system demonstration that lets you use your hands to apply forces to a cloud of colourful dots in black void that makes for some cool flail-your-arms-around moments. Destinations, another Valve title, lets you walk around dozens of photoscanned environments for some pretty impressive virtual tourism. I’ve had the most mileage out of Arizona Sunshine, by Vertigo Games and Jaywalkers Interactive. Stretching out your arm and looking down the sights of a zombie-trained pistol doesn’t get old fast. Pulling the trigger and feeling the rumble of the haptics is very satisfying.
Nowadays, the SteamVR library is growing strong, though in honesty the number of quality experiences at fair prices still leaves me wanting. Many of the titles I mentioned above have been out for a while, with the most promising new titles trickling out slowly.
The SteamVR platform is very accessible to budding developers and VR enthusiasts, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great to open the possibilities of content creation to all, but for every premium quality, professionally produced game there are dozens of crappy, half-cooked Unity projects that somehow make it onto Steam, making the search for content a laborious endeavour.
Many of the games are expensive relative to their length or scope as well; be prepared to occasionally shell out $50 for a title that may not last long before the novelty has
I got mine up with a couple of clamps and plasterboard poles from Bunnings
worn off. Sampling the broad spectrum of experiences stacks cash on top of a pretty hefty price barrier to entry already.
Comfort for the Vive is also bit of an issue. I would love to spend a lot longer globe-hopping from across Google Earth VR, but after a while, because I’m standing, the weight of the front heavy device is either causing some neck strain or burying the three-cord over-head cable into the top of your skull.
Sweat is another factor, and no wonder: your face has two monitors attached to it beaming light and heat through onto the area the size of a ski-mask; after a while of physical gameplay it starts to cook in there.
HTC has this month released the Vive Deluxe Comfort strap, which features a more padded, head-clasping design with built-in headphones (similar to Oculus’ more baseball-cap-like consumer edition design). It will be interesting to see how comfort improves with this new peripheral and we’ll keep you posted.
The resolution and field of view are the other major issues I have. I know, it sounds indulgent; the tech is so new, ‘ What do you expect?’. I get it. I am very impressed. But I’m also excited for the next step, when I’m not looking a blurry images bordered by the edges of a screen I wish weren’t there, while moving comfortably and untethered by a hefty cord as I go.
The challenge of a simple room-scale setup is there as well, with companies like Microsoft, Intel and Lenovo experimenting with computer vision to perform insideout tracking, and to chart real world boundaries for you.
The revolution has arrived, we look forward now for its evolution.