VR Adventures

There's a guy in our area who has a big 4v4 XBone set up and brings it around to rec centers to do esports leagues. I thought it was pretty neat, other than the peasantry. So a mobile thing seems doable, especially since if you do it as a party rental thing, it can share space with your comedy business.
 
Yeah, there are some big names getting involved with the building of arcades now, specifically branding VR machines into existing places. Because of various market pressures I've had to completely revamp my plan. Looking to do mobile gaming setups. Going to try and have something set up to demo at the College World Series.
Good luck with the CWS! You are very brave, I try to avoid being anywhere near CWS, it's crazy with all the people and traffic.
 

Dave

Staff member
Good luck with the CWS! You are very brave, I try to avoid being anywhere near CWS, it's crazy with all the people and traffic.
We went for the first time last year when Doc parachuted in. That was the night after he and my wife had a drinking contest that the wife flat out lost.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
That's pretty damn impressive. For there to be so little latency as to allow real-time juggling, I suspect there's gotta be some really fancy motion interpolation going on.
 
That is amazing. There's a lot of muscle memory involved (some jugglers can close their eyes while juggling) but this is getting really close to "real life".

Now we just need video cards that can perform full ray tracing at 144 frames per second and "retina" VR that is better than our eye resolution...
 

Dave

Staff member
So this afternoon (right at noon, actually) I took the Vive in to my mentee's class. (I'm a Teammates mentor to a 5th grade kid - think Big Brother/Big Sister.) To say it was an unqualified success would be an understatement. We "played" TheBlu, Job Simulator, Cloudlands Mini-Golf, Holoball, and Tilt Brush until the bell rang at 3:15. In fact, the kids were all done playing and the Principal was playing actual golf when the bell rang. He did not want to leave.

We talked about VR and how it could be used in the future for entertainment, jobs, or education. Some of their ideas were really, really interesting. They are very lucky to be living in this time when all of this will be possible. Truly that's the only thing that sucks about getting old is knowing I'm going to miss out on a lot of cool tech shit I've always dreamed of.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So this afternoon (right at noon, actually) I took the Vive in to my mentee's class. (I'm a Teammates mentor to a 5th grade kid - think Big Brother/Big Sister.) To say it was an unqualified success would be an understatement. We "played" TheBlu, Job Simulator, Cloudlands Mini-Golf, Holoball, and Tilt Brush until the bell rang at 3:15. In fact, the kids were all done playing and the Principal was playing actual golf when the bell rang. He did not want to leave.

We talked about VR and how it could be used in the future for entertainment, jobs, or education. Some of their ideas were really, really interesting. They are very lucky to be living in this time when all of this will be possible. Truly that's the only thing that sucks about getting old is knowing I'm going to miss out on a lot of cool tech shit I've always dreamed of.
The singularity might happen before then, you never know. Then you'll be around forever.
 
Damn it, japan! Stop making me want to go there!

See, stuff like that is really cool for people with some level of physical fitness... But just like I dislike some types of games for relying on my skills rather than my character's, this will not be all that fun for someone unfit and overweight and big, seems to me.... I still want to give it a try, though.
 
See, stuff like that is really cool for people with some level of physical fitness... But just like I dislike some types of games for relying on my skills rather than my character's, this will not be all that fun for someone unfit and overweight and big, seems to me.... I still want to give it a try, though.
As someone that is unfit and overweight, I can testify that it's not that bad. If you can stand and walk, these type of VR games aren't hard to do, and can actually be a decent workout.
 
The oculus rift bundle - headset, two touch controllers - is on an extended 6 week sale for $399.

That's 33% off the normal $599 price for the rift/controller bundle.

There are many reviews comparing the vive to the rift, but the biggest difference is that while people experiment with room scale VR in rift, it's really only designed for and supports seated use. But the games are designed for that, and you don't have to worry about running into things, so I don't know that it's really as big a hurdle as everyone is making it out to be. This is hugely offset by the sheer number of titles available for the rift vs the vive.

In any case, it's a long sale, so it's probably worth waiting a few weeks to see if and how vive responds.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/10/15943984/oculus-rift-touch-summer-sale-price-cut-vr-bundle
https://www.oculus.com/rift/
 

Dave

Staff member
Vive can run Oculus games by using a program called ReVive. So the games don't make a difference. The difference is in room scale. Yeah, if you don't have room the Vive doesn't make sense. But if you HAVE the room...nothing but the Vive makes sense.
 
Vive can run Oculus games by using a program called ReVive. So the games don't make a difference. The difference is in room scale. Yeah, if you don't have room the Vive doesn't make sense. But if you HAVE the room...nothing but the Vive makes sense.
I don't know if I would say it is that simple. If the Rift's price tag changed permanently to what it's going for on sale now, it would be really hard to turn down for someone wanting to get into VR. I also personally prefer the touch controls over the vive controls, but it's a very minor preference.

All things being equal, the vive can do everything the rift does and more. But a price cut would make them very competitive
 
Vive can run Oculus games by using a program called ReVive. So the games don't make a difference. The difference is in room scale. Yeah, if you don't have room the Vive doesn't make sense. But if you HAVE the room...nothing but the Vive makes sense.
We don't have space for room scale right now, but the Vive also has 'standing', which gives you a 1 meter circle. I have no problem with games that require moving around, anything I can't do in 1 meter I can just teleport my circle to where I need to be.

Valve vs. Facebook was a factor in deciding which system to go with. Made the choice easy for us, since Facebook can go die in a fire. :D
 
Valve vs. Facebook was a factor in deciding which system to go with.
I suspect that has factored into a lot of hardcore gamer's preference, but at the end of the day price factors in very heavily so this might tip the scale significantly.

Further, if they do manage to build their user base by several thousand, that will work in their favor in a lot of ways.
 
I suspect that has factored into a lot of hardcore gamer's preference, but at the end of the day price factors in very heavily so this might tip the scale significantly.
Further, if they do manage to build their user base by several thousand, that will work in their favor in a lot of ways.
The battle for the de facto standard rages on.

--Patrick
 
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