VR Matrix Disassociation from Real Life

Start thinking about whether you REALLY can take the Blue pill or life is force feeding us the red one. Hamlet is pointing to an article in Rock Paper Shotgun titled: A Matrix Moment With The Vive.

"Last night..."

“Last night…”

The article is about the disassociation a Vive (VR Headset) user, Philippa Warr, feels after taking the headset off. He obviously hasn’t heard the warning coming from several sources about possible negative side effects from using 3D anything. Continue reading

Second Life: LOTS of News

From the Third Party Dev Meeting 2016-16… Oz Linden starts off saying there isn’t a lot of new stuff. But, news-wise there was quite a bit and I found most of it interesting.

Fantasy Faire 2016

Fantasy Faire 2016 – Now Happening

Viewers

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.4.314012 – Oz describes this version as having lots of annoyances fixed. It hasn’t changed since my previous Tuesday update.  Continue reading

Oculus Rift Retail Pre-Order DELAY

Word is out that the Oculus Rift consumer version can be pre-ordered for a mere US$600. :/

What I find today is that if you order now, you MAY get your Rift by June… That is six months. If you have already ordered, you should see yours get shipped to you in the March 28th shipment, 3 months.

No one is saying how many were ordered. Lucky Palmer only said they sold in 10 minutes what he thought they would sell in hours… not very definitive. But, it does indicates sales were several orders of magnitude larger than expected.

We are told the online order system went down, it overloaded.

See: Oculus Rift Pre-Order ETA is Now June for New Orders. (Jan 8 – Road to VR)

At this point I am waiting for reviews of the Oculus Rift that compare its performance to other HMD’s. Is it really going to be worth $400 more than the competition’s HDM’s?

I’m almost due for a new phone. So, I may trade my S5 for a newer S7… and start with Cardboard.

CtrlAltStudio Oculus Update

CtrlAltStudio has released a new version of their Oculus Rift Viewer: SDK 0.6: 1.2.5.43397.

356 Into the light

Into the light

The announcement is here: CtrlAltStudio Viewer Updated to Oculus SDK 0.6: 1.2.5.43397.

You’ll find the viewer works in Direct and Extended Rift modes. There are lots more little details discussed in the announcement.

I find this interesting, quoting David Rowe:

I can achieve a pretty smooth 75 FPS experience on the Rift if the scene’s not too complex, though only if I have my main monitor set to 120Hz. If I set it to 60Hz I only get a somewhat juddery 65 FPS on the Rift. I haven’t looked into this yet and am keen to hear how other people get on. Note: You can use Ctrl+Shift+1 to display a statistics window in Riftlook.

At 75 FPS it would be close enough to 90 FPS to be usable for extended periods.

Oculus Connect 2 Conference

Miriam Pia writes about the recent Oculus conference on Hypergrid Business: Oculus confab features Gear VR, Minecraft, Netflix. The consumer version of the Oculus Rift was there.

Big news is Samsung is going to be cutting the cost of the Gear VR headset to US$99. The headset will work with all of Samsung’s 2015 flagship smartphones. They released the system requirements for computers driving the headsets. Click over to Hypergrid to see the video detailing the requirements.

There is also a video showing the Touch Controllers being developed.

Miriam writes about Medium calling it a virtual reality painting program. I would call it a sculpting program. Whatever, check out the article and videos.

Specs: Minimum i5 CPU, 8gb ram, NVIDIA 970… So, most users are being left behind. That doesn’t mean you can’t use VR on older rigs. It does mean you likely won’t be happy with it, if you do.

There are 4 or 5 generations of i5 CPU’s. I didn’t dig in to see which i5 will work or if all will. I expect 3rd or 4th gen CPU’s will be needed.

CtrlAltStudio Viewer 2015 to 2016 Plan

There are some dates for Rift delivery, a SDK 1.0 December 2015. Don’t confuse the DK1 and 2 with the SDK’s that have been coming out. The consumer CV1 Rift will finally be delivered, sometime in Q1 2016.

My avatar has Oculus Rift before I do!

My avatar has Oculus Rift before I do!

David Rowe believes the Lab will finalize their Rift Viewer when the consumer Rift has a release date. When that happens he plans to stop development of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer. Until then he says; Continue reading