Oculus Rift and DCS World Discussion

[blksolo]

Inter Pupilary Distance I believe

[Abburo]

While the Oculus Rift seems to be the prommised future, I will just stay still until this technology might get its maturity.

Regarding the immersion into DCS I strongly believe that classic sim-pits are by far much more effective than OR. I can assume also that the fatigue given by OR tracking is higher than the TrackIR or Headtracker... also unwanted. For me, TrackIR is moving quite naturaly compensating side FOV by exponential/custom curves flawlesly.

I just tested another technological wonder, the Leap Motion, which gives me such headaces so I was extremly happy finding a buyer for it. It is a complete nonsense to move your arms in thin air hoping that you might touch something, and having abnormal gestures to achieve tasks.

From my point of view, a touch panel cockpit together with a wide resolution monitor or monitors will remain the most immersive adventure and the least sanity affecting (eyes and brain also). Hardware touching feeling cannot be ever replaced.

Some optimisations regarding monitors configuration, let's say more like FSX style, I think it will be very welcomed if they will come directly from ED.

[Suchacz]

Inter Pupilary Distance I believe

Oh, thanks. So between the centers of those two images on the display must be the same distance as between your pupils? Sounds logical. What about the distance between lenses in front of your eyes? Those must be somehow tweaked too?

 

And what about the corrections for the people who have some eye defect? I have myopia too, same as somebody wrote earlier as well as many many others. Maybe it will work as built-in-eye aditional anti-aliasing :D:doh:

Edited October 29, 2013 by Suchacz

[mhe]

Excuse me, but what does the IPD stands for? :huh:

 

Anyway, thanx for your notices ;)

 

IPD = Inter - Pupillary Distance

 

The distance of the display panel is not as much of a factor, you don't have to adjust for that, but you lose a bit of horizontal FOV if you move the panel away from the lenses.

 

Eye defects can be corrected in some cases, but it often needs custom lenses for the particular eye, so you can't just make that a software tweak.

Edited October 29, 2013 by mhe

[Mnemonic]

Oh, thanks. So between the centers of those two images on the display must be the same distance as between your pupils?

Distance between virtual cameras ideally should be the same as between your pupils in real life. This setting is not about center of images.

[Flim]

I assume you have no experience with the rift?

 

Since I have had most setups including :touchscreen, full pit, single screen , triple screen, 5 projector cube, and any other setup... I will disagree 100%. The rift is like a portal that really brings a person to a different world, as if the you are really there... No other setup has that effect.

 

The more time you have in the rift, the better it gets.... The motion vr issues go away with a short period of use. I can do a full f1 race with zero issues.

 

 

While the Oculus Rift seems to be the prommised future, I will just stay still until this technology might get its maturity.

Regarding the immersion into DCS I strongly believe that classic sim-pits are by far much more effective than OR. I can assume also that the fatigue given by OR tracking is higher than the TrackIR or Headtracker... also unwanted. For me, TrackIR is moving quite naturaly compensating side FOV by exponential/custom curves flawlesly.

I just tested another technological wonder, the Leap Motion, which gives me such headaces so I was extremly happy finding a buyer for it. It is a complete nonsense to move your arms in thin air hoping that you might touch something, and having abnormal gestures to achieve tasks.

From my point of view, a touch panel cockpit together with a wide resolution monitor or monitors will remain the most immersive adventure and the least sanity affecting (eyes and brain also). Hardware touching feeling cannot be ever replaced.

Some optimisations regarding monitors configuration, let's say more like FSX style, I think it will be very welcomed if they will come directly from ED.

[SkateZilla]

So same problems as in F-35 HMD :D

 

The same Problems as Nintendo Virtual Boy.. Cept that thing weighed alot more.

 

The Main issue is that the 1280x800 Screen, when divided between 2 eyes is 640x800.

 

Some Small text is very hard to make out in DCS, (HUDs, mainly etc).

 

In iRacing, you can drive just fine, view distance is hindered a lil due to the low res, but for the most part, it's a VERY enjoyable experience. (Mainly because iRacing doesnt depend on 6DoF, and 3DoF works fine in iRacing.) or a HUD.

 

The 3 Key things Oculus VR are working on now is:

- Higher Resolution Display

- Decreased Motion latency.

- Enhanced SDK

 

DevKit v2 is supposed to be 1080p, if that's not enough they'll look into 1440p. In an interview earlier this month, they mentioned 4K being very possible.

[howie87]

The problem with a custom built pit is that you have to build one for everyone sim you fly, at a cost of thousands of dollars. Also, unless you have a wrap around screen, you can't look over your shoulder to check your six.

 

The fact that head movement in TrackIR is restricted to such a narrow band is one of the things I hate most about it. It feels completely unnatural having to turn your head one way and look the other way with your eyes... Then your view starts jerking all over the place when you reach the edge of the sensors limits.

 

When the consumer rift comes out with reduced latency and higher resolution it will improve situational awareness and immersiveness massively. I absolutely can't wait and am thrilled that Matt is getting hands on time with the development version.

 

The beautiful, interactive cockpits in DCS seem almost like they were made with this kind of technology in mind.

 

I can't imagine a better product to showcase the finished 6DoF, HD rift than DCS F/A-18C.

 

I challenge you to imagine that without getting excited.

[phant]

 

...I think I will be using this quite a lot

Wags, do you think that DCS World is already ok to properly work with OF or need some grafical fixs/tunes?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Bye

Phant

[Suchacz]

The Main issue is that the 1280x800 Screen, when divided between 2 eyes is 640x800.

I'm affraid, that even 1920x1080 of the customer version won't be sufficient for reading little numbers and text on the hud, radio etc... :cry:

Edited October 29, 2013 by Suchacz

[SkateZilla]

which is why they are looking at 1440p and 4K resolutions

[cichlidfan]

which is why they are looking at 1440p and 4K resolutions

 

Which shouldn't be much of a problem since the latest 8.9" Kindle is 2560x1600.

[Suchacz]

Which shouldn't be much of a problem since the latest 8.9" Kindle is 2560x1600.

The question is its max usable size which is imho in horizontal direction little more than 2x IPD, and of course some reasonable price :smilewink:

[Wags]

Early implementation of stereo view. Once the team in Moscow gets their SDK, progress should move forward enabling OR.

[cichlidfan]

Early implementation of stereo view. Once the team in Moscow gets their SDK, progress should move forward enabling OR.

 

Nice. Thanks.

[Mnemonic]

Early implementation of stereo view. Once the team in Moscow gets their SDK, progress should move forward enabling OR.

Could we expect to have OR SDK support in DCS? I mean Devkit version for those of us who have one?

[KaspeR32]

 

John Carmack says "..We expect the next Dev kit will have higher resolution and position tracking..."

[mhe]

Nice one Wags! The IPD on that stereo view seems a bit high, I was trying to view it crosseyed, but it is somewhat painful. But definitely appreciate the effort, it is great to see how quickly you guys make progress on this!

[hannibal]

Early implementation of stereo view. Once the team in Moscow gets their SDK, progress should move forward enabling OR.

 

you sir, are putting the building blocks of making my dreams come true.

 

my dream is oculus rift + DCS AH-1G Cobra (with pilot/gunner multiplayer capable) + E.D.G.E. terrain + 64-bit DCS engine ( plus my heli-pit)

 

i want to put my pits to use!

:)

 

thank you Matt

[howie87]

Early implementation of stereo view. Once the team in Moscow gets their SDK, progress should move forward enabling OR.

 

Looks awesome. The way the HUD works will need to be changed to work in stereoscopic 3D though. Peter P wrote a load of stuff about it somewhere.

[PeterP]

Looks awesome. The way the HUD works will need to be changed to work in stereoscopic 3D though. Peter P wrote a load of stuff about it somewhere.

No, you won't ,

as long the DCS engine creates the stereoscopic image by it self via a seconded lateral shifted view-port.

 

You only need to ad the missing depth info when using a third-party plug-in.

 

Sorry, ...Whatever I wrote, you did not understand the true meaning and why the hud needs modification for stereoscopic plug-ins.

 

Edit:

But whatever may comes down the road , solving the stereoscopic problem in the DCS engine via a second Viewport py ED themselves gives me high hopes that they will start to fix a lot of the problems that Multi-Monitor user are facing right now since a long time (http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=88996).

Because adding a second view-port is technically the same as adding a second monitor.

I wish ED good luck that this wont be half-baked as it is right now.

Edited October 30, 2013 by PeterP

[howie87]

I stand corrected! It might have been the thread about creating a HUD for a cockpit build that I read.

Edited October 30, 2013 by howie87

[DwoaC]

I think howie87's point was the hud needs to be placed at infinity and that I think we all agree on.

 

This is fantastic news Matt. I wonder in your hack if you are seeing the frame rate drop by half as I do with tridef.

 

Thanks again.

[PeterP]

I think howie87's point was the HUD needs to be placed at infinity and that I think we all agree on.

.

Yes sure, and I did fully understand howie87.

 

The HUD right now has no depth info and it won't need it for the "second view-port method".

Please let me explain:

 

When using a stereoscopic plug-in that modifies shaders/draw instructions for the GPU , the HUD will be drawn at the level of your screen. And the HUD is blurred/unusable for aiming when looking far out , as it carry no depth information.

Markers and aiming reticles will not point to the correct places.

(This method can be very FPS friendly, as many things can be calculated directly by the GPU via shaders and it lets a lot of room for optimisations. But every object needs a definition where in space it has to be placed - up to now the HUD is handled like a GUI element and drawn at the level of the screen/projection surface. I made some resarch and showed what has to be done to fix this and lefuneste01 finally took the time to make a mod for the A-10C and Ka-50 >>> http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=96477)

 

But when it's done directly by the engine , by shifting the view-port, there is no need to add depth via shaders - the HUD will be drawn at infinity and always sharp when looking far out.

This method of shifting the image will let the HUD appear always at infinity without the need of changing the currently used drawing method.

(Well , it's up to the developer how to reduce the workload for the engine and not simply double it.)

 

You can easily simulate it yourself right now:

Take a screenshot of the cockpit , than take another one, that has a moved camera. It has to be about 3inches (7,5cm) lateral (the distance of your eyes)

-> [RCtrl - RShift -Num4 or Num6] .

Place both sreenshots side by side and look at them

.

You will see that everything will fit without the need of edited shaders or adding a depth info to the HUD.

Markers and aiming reticles will point to the correct places.

EDIT:

 

The pity is that we only can rotate the view in the X/Y axis via the "monitorsetup.lua" for another view-port ( viewDx / viewDy ).

There is up to now no command for shifting the view lateral , right now all the view-ports share the same origin ( same pin hole camera). This can be used for simulating the view of a chameleon , but isn't usable for a stereoscopic simulation.

 

Attached image is made with above explained method.

Edited October 30, 2013 by PeterP

[DwoaC]

Tl dr; the HUD needs to be rendered at infinity :smilewink: