[spdebbarma]

I am so glad I invested in an Oculus Quest 2 recently. So far, I've been having so much fun just exploring the various things to do in VR.

I initially bought this to explore UI/UX for VR, but with AR, it opens up the technology and my personal research to a whole slew of challenges.

[tluyben2]

I haven't been following Oculus since I bought the first one on Kickstarter (which I had a lot of fun with); the Quest 2 has cameras to support AR or is that an add on? It looks like it on pictures, but there is little mention of it on most pages about it (at least at a quick look).

[timdorr]

Yes, the Quest 1/2 and Rift S do "inside out" tracking. They have 4 cameras (5 on the Rift S) on each corner of the front face plate that tracks the headset and controller positions in 3D space (in addition to internal accelerometers and gyroscopes).

This is, for the most part, what enables the Quest to be fully wireless. Because there is no base station or fixed position camera, you're not limited to where you can use it, nor how big your play area can be. If you're in a new space, you just draw a guardian border around your play area and you're good to go.

The "passthru" feature mentioned above lets you see the camera feeds composited together in the headset display. It's very helpful for things like moving a chair out of the way or finding your controllers if you put on the headset without grabbing them. This new API allows developers access to this camera feed and to interact with its display for AR applications.

[Duralias]

The first oculus headsets used camera base stations to track the headset and controllers, all of the recent ones have used cameras on the headsets itself to track everything, these can be used to see the real world, however since they are infrared cameras meant for tracking there is no colour and the resolution isn't as high as it should be for AR to be useful.

[cortesoft]

I had the first oculus, and it didn't have any base stations. It didn't track anything at all, in fact... it only detected rotational motion of your head, it didn't detect any other motion at all. There also were not any controllers.

[andybak]

Yes but those were developer kits not retail devices.

[cortesoft]

Sure, but they were still called an Oculus Rift.

[tluyben2]

Even that I forgot: mine was the dev kit indeed.

[baby]

It sounds like you’re talking about Oculus Go, which isn’t the first oculus.

[Zetaphor]

The original DK1 was 3DoF, and the CV1 launched with a single sensor and an Xbox controller. The CV1 didn't get proper 6DoF until after launch.

[mintplant]

DK2 had a separate camera for outside-in tracking. I have one in a box in my closet.

[baby]

The first oculus is the rift though

[taneq]

Once upon a time the original Rift only had 3DOF tracking. This was back in the "Palmer Luckey just met John Carmack" days.

[cortesoft]

No, I had the Dev Kit 1. It was called Oculus Rift.

[baby]

The Oculus Rift definitely had more than what you’re talking about, and it was the first oculus

[laumars]

AR has been in the consumer space a lot longer than VR. In fact I’m more surprised that AR had never taken off in a big way than I was about VR. Sure we’ve seen some games like Pokemon Go take advantage of it. But AR should have been a game changer.

[Closi]

> But AR should have been a game changer.

VR turned out to be the easier of the two to turn into a viable consumer product - mainly because you can get away with a big bulky headset for gaming around the house, but you can't wear it outside for a walk.

The hardware that you could wear outside for a walk (e.g. google glass) hasn't actually been AR, and has just been like a tiny heads-up display in the corner of your eye.

[laumars]

I disagree. AR mobile games have been around for a few years and VR first hit the market 2 decades before AR. If anything, VR has been a harder technology to break through. Which, in my personal opinion, is because it’s more likely to make people feel sick plus is less of a social tech.

[Closi]

It depends what you mean by AR - As this term is used to describe showing an overlay on video on a phone, a heads up display in the corner of your eye in a pair of glasses, or technology like hololens where you can make objects appear to float or overlay the real world.

These things have all been referred to as AR, and are all very different, but I’m specifically talking about the latter personally (which is the one the article is talking about).

It’s kind of the same with VR by the way - you used to be able to watch 360 videos on your phone and the viewport would change as you moved it, but it’s obviously very primitive compared to something like the VR oculus offers. These two things obviously are very different technologies, which is the same as in-phone AR and the AR described in the article.

[laumars]

All of the AR examples are legitimately AR. It’s a massive field.

VR, on the other hand, isn’t such a broad field. Take your 360 videos for example, there’s no interaction with the content.

Even 90s era VR was very specifically referring to interactive worlds. Whereas Augmented Reality has always just meant having our real world senses enhanced with digital technology. That means phone apps are legitimate examples. Google Glass is a legitimate example. The barrier for entry is much lower yet the possible utilities for AR are much higher than with VR. Which is why I’m surprised it hasn’t taken off in a much bigger way with all the hype that VR has.

[Closi]

The technology stack to support Google Glass is almost entirely distinct from the technology stack which supports in-phone AR. Maybe both are AR, but then all that means is it's not a particularly useful term, because it can mean things that are entirely different from both a technology and user perspective.

So I think we need to define terms - Otherwise if we are comparing overlaying a tape-measure on the camera on your mobile phone to being able to plug on a headset and playing beat-saber, it's not a particularly useful comparison and I'm not surprised that VR has bigger hype!

(But moving about a bit of furniture through the camera view on your mobile phone is very different to something like magic leap, or oculus passthrough).

[Mandelmus]

AR will become a game changer once the hardware is there, i.e. glasses than can be worn comfortably and anywhere. Everything before that is just practice for the software and UI.

[enos_feedler]

I agree with the idea but not that we need comfortable glasses that we can wear anywhere. AR will be a game changer on my bicycle if my helmet can integrate it. AR will be a game changer when I'm bombing down a mountain on my snowboard, if my helmet can accommodate it. My belief is that we will get deep market adoption in these verticals before any practical general purpose AR is possible

[laumars]

The hardware has been there for a decade already. You might have AR tools already in your pocket (eg Google Translate)

[cwe]

AR has been a game changer, via face filters. More stuff is possible with it everyday, but it’s already getting a lot of usage

[moron4hire]

Well, it doesn't help that nobody actively releasing apps seems to understand that AR is a lot more than just drawing things on top of a camera feed.

Almost every social video platform has some firm of AR filters. Snap probably has the most pervasive use of AR, with tools available to develop new filters (Lens Studio).

As of right now, these are the only examples of apps that do something with the tech that can't be done without the tech, and probably done better.

You can see why in the games market and Pokémon Go is a good example of why. The AR camera feature distracts, not adds, to the gameplay. Everyone I knew playing the game turned the camera feature off because it drained battery fast and limited play time.

Now, I would still call Pokémon Go an AR game, even without the camera feed, because I count the map overlay tracking your real work location a form of AR. It is a feature that augments your reality. And that feature adds to the gameplay. People enjoy traveling to play the game.

I think AR games will never be a big thing because AR design is fundamentally at odds with game design. With AR, you have to design an app the works in a context that the user brings in. In contrast, with VR, you're designing an app that provides a context to the user. Game design--especially as done by most game studios--is usually focused on providing a wholly contained experience for the user.

And that AR design challenge is just fundamentally more challenging. First of all, we can't get a lot of the interesting information about a user's personal context. The most we can get right now is geographic location, rough estimations of surfaces in their area, and maybe some very rough object classification. We don't know things like whether or not the user has a TV, or where that TV is located. Even if we did, we'll probably never be able to know what brand of TV they have, so now you have a problem of none of the stakeholders caring to ever fund a "TV classifying" project, because they'd never be able to sell the branding tie-in.

And I think that's the real problem with both the AR and VR industries. There's little incentive to create a product that users will care about, outside of games, which work better in VR. Any funding your going to find for any use case outside of games will want it 100% married to their brand, but brands have all gotten so indistinguishable from one another that there's nothing to really do.

[billconan]

How long can you use it before feeling dizzy?

[cmiles74]

I don't really get dizzy or disoriented unless it's a game where you move with the joystick control or something. Games where you move around a table or teleport from place to place haven't bothered me at all.

[psyc]

I’ve only used 2 headsets. The first PSVR made me queasy quickly. I’ve used the Quest 2 a ton without feeling dizzy or sick for even one moment.

[amerkhalid]

I get motion sick easily. So I was worried about that but most popular games are designed in a way that there is no movement that would cause me motion sickness. Also they list games’ comfort levels and I avoid anything that is intense.

The biggest issue for me is videos where there is no rating and one slow camera pan or zoom will make me almost throw up.

[chaostheory]

I can use it for 2 hours or more. The only games where I get dizzy within 15 minutes are the roller coaster and driving games that spin you upside down where it feels like you have no control over movement.

[fruityrudy]

Same. Best purchase in a long time. Can’t believe I was wondering if it would be worth it.

The VR UI paradigms are really nice.