Any interest in building Oculus Rift experiences?

EMcNeill

I'm a pretty big believer in the Oculus Rift. I have a dev kit, and I just finished doing the 3-week VR Jam. My game was pretty simple, but it's getting some great feedback, so here's hoping it does well in the competition. Also, as you can tell, I'm not an artist.

Anyway, after trying out a bunch of demos, I suspect that there will be a healthy market for non-game experiences. The Rift does wonders for immersion, but a lot of the things that define popular hardcore games aren't a great fit for VR. I think that things like "virtual vacations", museum walkthroughs, or just fascinating 3D environments will find a lot of success. Stuff like the [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20c_uCFoWTo"]Iceland[/ame] or [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKoSALEaV28"]Tuscany[/ame] or [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcJyRrskT0"]Blue Marble[/ame] demos, for example.

One thing that differentiates such experiences from most games is that they require a ton of 3D art, but not much programming or design. So now I'm thinking that maybe it would be a good opportunity to team up with some artists, where they put together some awesome environmental art and I wrap that art up into a decent and consistent set of Rift experiences. I already have some experience in "best practices" of VR, like how to avoid nausea.

Oculus is already setting up an app store, so there will be a marketplace for this sort of thing. Would anyone be interested in making this kind of experience? Am I crazy?

NickGW

The Blue Marble demo is the kind of thing that excites me the most about the rift. It does an incredible job of placing you inside a suit in space and just letting you be within that space. Stuff like that can be an incredibly profound experience if done well. I've been thinking a lot about the rift lately while working on my current project and after playing Gone Home. I'm really interested to see what comes of it after the final hardware comes out.

Btw what engine did you use for your demo? I know source, Unreal and Unity all have support for it. If you used any of those engines would you say it'd be easy for anyone to get up and running if they didn't already have the technical knowledge needed to work with the hardware?

Snefer

I would absolutely love to make something for the Oculus rift, too bad i dont have a devkit ^^ Waiting for the next version of the devkit. Would love to convert some of my environments to interactive rift-demos, would be so badass : D

SHEPEIRO

Struggling to hold off buying a dev kit. But promised myself I'm waiting for at least the hd if not the consumer version

I think there's alot of potential for art lead "experiences" using it.

chrisradsby

I'd love making this kind of stuff. It'd be awesome. Would love to have a dev-kit at home and hook it up to UDK and show my portfolio stuff with it. Could be a really cool experience

Kwramm

I wish they had it at work. But personally I'd also rather have a hd/consumer version. Still, I really like the idea. I grew up watching STNG after school, so if this brings us closer to a holo deck experience then I'm all for it I'm only worried about motion sickness and how it works for people wearing glasses.

monster

We've got a few dev kits at work. I can't say much about what we are doing, but it's fun. Dustin I have the same concerns as you and we are trying to figure out the best mix of physical input and device input. I'm more like you and would rather not flail about. The newer HD units (not pictured) are all around more comfortable. I can't give specifics why.

Kwarm, the units come with replaceable lenses for regular, near, and farsighted people.

It's very easy to get started building VR content in Unity. After installing the Rift SDK just use their camera prefab instead of the regular cameras, and that's it. I literally had a level working in about 3 minutes never having used it before. The only issue is that Unity's game editor doesn't allow fullscreen playback. So you have to make a build.

NickGW

It's great to hear how easy it is to get things up and running in unity. Like Kwramm I'd be interested in picking up one of the 1920x1080 versions. Seems like the current hardware resolution is too low to the point that you easily notice that everything is made of pixels, which kinda breaks the point of VR.

EMcNeill

Well, I'm pretty well convinced that the Rift is going to be a success.

Would anyone out there be interested in partnering with me to make some casual Rift experiences (akin, perhaps, to the Iceland demo in the video above)? Where you could do the environment art, and I could put it into a game engine and do the particles / player movement / menus / marketing (and you'd get the lion's share of whatever revenue it generates)? With the Oculus marketplace coming soon, and the consumer version launching next year, I figure that it would be a good opportunity.

SHEPEIRO

yeah i am aswell... its one of those things that people are sceptical until they try it... then generally are buzzing off the excitment for a bit...

im just getting mine to play space combat games... its a perfect marriage i expect to see a fair few more things like that due to how well they could work

littleclaude

Yay, horror games on the Oculus Rift's should be banned, way to scary!

You can download all the demo games here.
https://share.oculusvr.com/category/all

THIS IS HOW MY HEAD FEELS!


Alone in the Rift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSzA6hWCcvo

Stinger88

Had a go of the roller coaster demo on it at work the other day. I have to say it made me feel terrible. The motion sickness was almost the worst i've ever had, (second only to extreme fairground rides) if i'd gone around on the ride again i'd have probably thrown up, btw I love real roller coasters and have no problem riding them.

I think its to do with the fact your eyes are telling your mind that you should be moving but your other senses are getting none (g-force). They also had Halflife 2 running on it, which I didn't get go of, but that might be a better experience as its probably better for the viewer if your in control of the movement.

Also, As someone who wears glasses I was disappointed with the clarity of the image as I couldn't wear glasses with it on. But then I spose it should be blurry for me without glasses. So, if you need glasses and are thinking of getting this, get some contact lenses.

Verdict = Very weird

*** Warning to anyone using this. Sit down before putting it on! You will fall over otherwise.