When the first generation of a technology looks this good, and John Carmack is going to help make the future versions (as CTO), holy crap does it make you excited.
In a certain sense this isn't first-generation. This is really a long-delayed second generation. Most of the gotchas of VR were examined over a decade ago, and this new kick at the can has come out of cellphone technology making the old systems viable.
Right time, right place. To me that seems like a pretty standard way (some) tech breaks into the mainstream. Tablets also existed at the beginning of the last decade (maybe even earlier in some form, I don’t know) but they never broke out of their niche.
It took the right technology (low-power SoCs that are nevertheless fast enough for desktop PC level UI performance, better batteries, compact capacitive touch screens, SSDs – and all that together at the price of a budget PC) plus the right software (not just a desktop OS) to make it work.
It seems and I hope we are at a similar point with VR. The tech is finally good and cheap enough, plus the software mature enough to allow developers easy integration.
Hopefully it will work out.
(Also relevant: The Hype Cycle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle But I’m never sure how much confirmation bias is in that way of seeing the world – but it seems to apply to a great many things.)
I remember a guy around '97-'98 who was trying to get me involved in his research around giving the impression of movement in VR systems. Electrodes would be applied to the base of your skull and they'd be used to stimulate your cerebellum (or somesuch, I can't recall) which would give you a sense of movement. This was amplified by standing on a gel mat.
Talking with other people, they said that a side effect of this process was that the electrodes kind've hurt, and none of them would do it again.
I've had my doubts about the Rift, but most of those were centered around problems I see with using the Rift in games like FPSes. The author of the article has totally sold me on the Rift for simulator games though. I want one.
I can't understand how are you going to reach for the controls though. In all simulators you need use the keyboard extensively - power up the engines, flaps, landing gear. Then you need to remember weird hotkeys for radios, autopilot or rarely used functions. You need to type in a lot of numbers when doing routes or changing frequencies. I don't know how can you type with this thing on your head. And then you will need to find you mouse/stick to resume flying normally. Something is still missing here.
Realistically serious full-sims are going to be facing a lot of problems. Light-sims that can play on an XBox gamepad and thus won't require the full keyboard should fare much better, and likewise sims that fit nicely onto a standard flightstick+throttle controller.
Some of the current generation of sims (FSX, DCS) focus on "clickable cockpits" where you can operate basically the entire thing via a HOTAS and your mouse, flipping switches and turning knobs. While playing DCS I actually rarely touch the keyboard and move it completely out of the way.
The current head tracking solutions like TrackIR actually make it pretty hard to flip switches on the sides of the cockpit because they drastically exaggerate your head movements.
So I could see Oculus Rift working pretty okay for these. For the ones where I'd still need a keyboard, I could probably hit the right key most of the time without looking, or so I'd like to think.
Check out the Rift game/demo called Crashland. It uses the Sixense Hydra controllers for 1-to-1 aiming and works surprisingly well. You turn the reference orientation of your body/view but otherwise you are looking around and aiming with your arms. I really hope all FPS games for the Rift make this an available control scheme. Also helps that the game mechanics are fun and giant spiders are nasty.
I've seen demos with the controller that straps across your chest so you can move with your torso, and those look pretty cool, but you're still left with the problem of wanting to walk around but not being able to (because you'd step on your cat 'in meatspace'). There are solutions to that too, but they aren't great, take up space, are expensive, etc.
In a game where you are strapped into a seat, you don't have that problem. You remain seated in your chair at home and remain seated in game, so everything works great. The Sixense Hydra controllers, or similar, could probably be great for manipulating switches and leavers in your cockpit.
Well there are more than a few distressing music videos done with this device in mind, essentially porn paradise, if not shuts in fun. While it can have some great gaming,if not medical benefits, people tend to their darker impulses first.
Tame video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bytIGCeGxo but I would not call it SFW. Search youtube for Hydradeck oculus rift for a large collection of vids, most are very safe for work.
We've got one in the office. The tech is obviously really solid, but the resolution of the dev model is abysmal and no one has really figured out a great control scheme for "on foot" first-person shooters. For first-person driving/flying games, where the direction you move and the direction you are looking are orthogonal, the experience is seamless.