Anyone use Oculus Rift or HTC Vive for general tasks?

[fuzzybabybunny]

How do you like it? I'm thinking about getting one, not necessarily for playing games, but for watching movies, TV shows, and maybe even just general browsing on the internet and possibly programming. The image that I have in my head is that it will be like sitting in a huge IMAX theatre, and more.

I've actually used an older Oculus before and was very impressed by the immersion and head tracking abilities.

 

[EightySix Four]

My understanding is that there is not enough resolution for text heavy applications without significant eye strain.

 

[pj-]

My understanding is that there is not enough resolution for text heavy applications without significant eye strain.

Yeah, the resolution is not even close enough to being good enough for general computing.

If you are sitting in front of a virtual desk, a virtual 23" monitor on that desk would have an effective resolution of 640x480 or less.

What you want will be possible with rift 2 or 3

 

[Despoiler]

Yeah, the resolution is not even close enough to being good enough for general computing.

If you are sitting in front of a virtual desk, a virtual 23" monitor on that desk would have an effective resolution of 640x480 or less.

What you want will be possible with rift 2 or 3

Nah they can do it right now. Warning, this is tied as coolest thing I've seen all year next to the Sulon Q's augmented reality demo.

Virtual Desktop
http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110

 

[poofyhairguy]

If you are sitting in front of a virtual desk, a virtual 23" monitor on that desk would have an effective resolution of 640x480 or less.

Why would I have such a small monitor in virtual reality? The whole point is wish fulfillment, I would have that 30 inch I can't afford today.

 

[pj-]

Nah they can do it right now. Warning, this is tied as coolest thing I've seen all year next to the Sulon Q's augmented reality demo.

Virtual Desktop
http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110

Yeah I've seen that. I have used the vive, the resolution is not good enough desktop productivity and I probably won't be using mine even for movie watching. The experience is great but a regular screen is far better for this kind of stuff with gen 1 headsets.

Why would I have such a small monitor in virtual reality? The whole point is wish fulfillment, I would have that 30 inch I can't afford today.

It was an example to demonstrate how low res the experience will be. That 30" monitor in VR will be lower resolution than a 720p tv

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Ah, I see. At what kind of resolution would it start to look ok? Past 4K on both of the internal panels? So whatever video card is handing it would need to drive two 4K+ video streams?

 

[DarkKnightDude]

I've used DK2 for Virtual desktop. Really really cool. You can watch 360 videos as if you're there and set up windows everywhere. Kinda got to lean in for text though.

 

[cytg111]

Nah they can do it right now. Warning, this is tied as coolest thing I've seen all year next to the Sulon Q's augmented reality demo.

Virtual Desktop
http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110

Whooly scrap .. I will eat a random old hat if VR is not taking off.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Nah they can do it right now. Warning, this is tied as coolest thing I've seen all year next to the Sulon Q's augmented reality demo.

Virtual Desktop
http://store.steampowered.com/app/382110

Interesting. So even with being able to zoom in/out of the desktop at will, would it still be bad for things like reading websites, coding, etc?

Another huge issue seems to be the wired interface. Oculus Rift needs FOUR USB ports and a minimum of 970GTX (not M) and a desktop-level Core i5? I'm going to be running this on a laptop with a mobile GPU, a mobile CPU, three USB ports MAX, and an HDMI port.

How is the video sent to the Oculus? It doesn't seem to be sent via HDMI but rather USB, so that tells me that it's akin to DisplayLink technology - the software uses CPU to try and compress two 90Hz 1080p video streams for sending via USB 3.0 over to the Oculus. This means it'll certainly need a powerful CPU and they're be a little bit of lag?

 

[pj-]

Ah, I see. At what kind of resolution would it start to look ok? Past 4K on both of the internal panels? So whatever video card is handing it would need to drive two 4K+ video streams?

Yeah I think 4k per eye is where that becomes more practical, but that is probably a couple years off. Foveated rendering will lower the GPU load significantly. The larger problem with that many pixels is that I believe no current display output/connector can handle 4k * 2 * 90 hz. There may be some possible shortcuts if foveated rendering is used, such as sending a low resolution image which is scaled up to 4k by the headset and then sending a separate frame with the full resolution area of focus, then having the headset combine them.

Interesting. So even with being able to zoom in/out of the desktop at will, would it still be bad for things like reading websites, coding, etc?

Another huge issue seems to be the wired interface. Oculus Rift needs FOUR USB ports and a minimum of 970GTX (not M) and a desktop-level Core i5? I'm going to be running this on a laptop with a mobile GPU, a mobile CPU, three USB ports MAX, and an HDMI port.

How is the video sent to the Oculus? It doesn't seem to be sent via HDMI but rather USB, so that tells me that it's akin to DisplayLink technology - the software uses CPU to try and compress two 90Hz 1080p video streams for sending via USB 3.0 over to the Oculus. This means it'll certainly need a powerful CPU and they're be a little bit of lag?

Oculus rift's USB requirements are:
1x USB 3.0 for the headset
1x USB 3.0 for the tracking camera

1x USB 2.0 for the xbox one controller adapter
or
1x USB 3.0 for the second tracking camera when the Touch controllers ship

It will not require 4 USB ports unless there is a game that uses both the touch controllers and the xbox controller for some reason.

The rift gets its video signal from standard HDMI plugged into your video card.

Don't try to do VR on something below the minimum specification. It won't be pleasant for you