Oculus Connect 3 Recap: What You May Have Missed

[scolaner]

A hallmark of a great industry event is how much discussion it generates, and if the amount of chatter in our comments section and editorial room alike are any indication, that means OC3 was a good one. Here's a recap and some additional thoughts.

Oculus Connect 3 Recap: What You May Have Missed : Read more

 

[Zapin]

So putting Facebook front and center at Oculus events is a better PR move than Palmer Luckey? Not sure either is a good option.

 

[Jim90]

For high end rendering we'll need a connected PC for some time, or rather, the next significant iterations from either of the green or red camps for full screen rendering and that seems a long way off. Alternatively, accurate foveated rendering might be put to good use a lot sooner.

 

[computerguy72]

Iterating sooner rather than later might be a good thing for Oculus. They should call their first attempt "pioneering" - this time producing a large quantity in advance to ship on or near the day it's announced. This isn't like other tech in that you can get away with sitting on your hands. Intel Tick-Tock worked fine with only AMD competing. VR has everybody and their brother. It's a smartphone type race that is easy to lose. So many other innovators are invested in this and this strategy seems to be yet another Oculus silly mistake.

 

[scolaner]

For high end rendering we'll need a connected PC for some time, or rather, the next significant iterations from either of the green or red camps for full screen rendering and that seems a long way off. Alternatively, accurate foveated rendering might be put to good use a lot sooner.

Well that's one of the big questions, isn't it? In a nutshell: Do you get to the next level of VR by throwing more horsepower at it or by being clever? That's the fundamental question, IMHO, facing the VR industry right now.

I think most of the bigger VR hardware companies are pursing both avenues at present, and the answer to the question is probably "a little of both."

 

[bit_user]

Given all of the above, though, we’d be surprised to see the second generation of HMD hardware any time soon.

I guarantee there'll be a next gen within 1 year. It'll be an incremental improvement, with a similar resolution. Perhaps it'll support 120 Hz, maybe it'll be a bit lighter, cheaper, have integrated cameras for inside-out tracking, wireless, etc. But this field is evolving so fast, I'm sure they already started working on the next gen before Rift even started shipping.

I think most of the bigger VR hardware companies are pursing both avenues at present, and the answer to the question is probably "a little of both."

It's going to be "both", for the foreseeable future. PC graphics lead smartphones by 5-10 years, due to power & thermal constraints. There's no amount of "clever" that can make up for that, because any clever thing you can do on a smartphone, you can do on the PC & unlock the next level of realism.

The PC just needs wireless HMDs. Once it has that, mobile will have no advantages, other than cost. But due to cost, mobile will always be the platform for the masses. I see it as sort of like console vs. PC gaming. Consoles have the volume, but PC is where the cutting edge lies.