Monday, 6 April, 2020 UTC
Summary
a.k.a. 101 Reasons Why VR Matters to You
(Not sure what an Oculus Quest is, or where to buy it? Check out the Quest here. WARNING: As of 12/16 Quest is out of stock, you “may” still be able to purchase in various online locations).
IGN ImageFirst things first, here’s a minute video explanation of the Oculus Quest:
https://medium.com/media/b3c03d50632ab1b25a2856c82c5b092b/hrefNow into the details:
- Gaming:
Ok, lets get this one out of the way. Everyone knows that in terms of gaming, Virtual Reality kicks ass.
These games are a good start: The First 10 Games You Should Consider Buying on Quest
One essential not listed in above article: The Climb
Onto the next point.
(Note: For more See #14 Multiplier Games)
2. Social:
Alt-Space- Have you ever heard of the movie Grease? Yeah, well the the director of Grease casually popped into Virtual Reality to give movie buffs and blossoming directors a chance at a 1-hour Q&A session. You can literally go and stand next to the guy and whisper a question in his ear (if you want to be a total creep).
Social events like that are a plenty in Alt-Space; musical concerts, comedy shows, play “Cards Against Humanity”, hang out with friends, go to open mic’s so you can show off your horrendous guitar skills to a live audience or drop the mic after you tell a joke that landed as poorly as a single propeller airplane.
All these can be done in real life, but how easy is that really? We all know you go home and just watch Netflix after work. Do something with you life on the week day.
VRChat- Have talent with 3D Modeling? In this social experience, with endless worlds created by users, you can create your own 3D model in CAD programs like Blender and import it directly into VRChat to use as your Avatar. Don’t know what an Avatar is? Remember that movie Avatar? Yeah…basically that.
Oh, and then there’s the Oculus Home. Where you can build your own custom living space, and invite friends over (IF you have any).
And of course, Facebook Spaces AND the upcoming Facebook Horizon:
https://medium.com/media/ad843633e035ab655995f860bcb16f6c/href3. Business:
If you’re looking to have a job in 5 years, you should probably start learning how to “ride the bike” now. Collaboration is key and as the workforce becomes more remote Virtual Reality will take center stage in connecting employees. “In 2018, 60 percent of the immersive rooms we equipped with TechViz software included Collaborative and up to 90 percent for VR headsets.” — TechViz’s Thomas Serrurier
This is a well covered subject. If you don’t trust me, read to your ever doubting delight here: 21 Industries already using Virtual Reality.
4. Haptic Technology (Touch):
Oculus Quest ImageIf you haven’t reached into your computer screen and picked up that cute kitten, felt it purr in your hands as you pet its back, then put it back in the computer screen so you don’t have to clean up its litterbox full of shit…then you probably have no idea what is an Oculus Touch Haptic Feedback controller.
(And you definitely don’t know what Konrad The Kitten is, which actually uses plush toys to replicate digital kittens. Its genius actually.)
But back to Haptic feedback. If you want to dive real deep into what this technology can do, read here.
In Short- Oculus Quest integrates Touch controllers that vibrate (like your phone from a text) in order to give your hands the impression they’re interacting with physical objects.
The haptic feedback is in perfect unison with visual and audio cues, making for an experience that literally tricks your brain into thinking its the real deal. Want more than just to use your hands? There is already full body suits for sale (just like ReadyPlayerOne). Its called the TeslaSuit. For commercial enterprise, this tech is revolutionary.
And no, I do not know know if Elon Musk owns TeslaSuit.
4.5 EVEN BETTER — USE YOUR HANDS
Oculus Quest just released (ahead of all its competitors), a BETA version of its Hand Tracking. This allows you to get rid of the Haptic Controllers and user your hands to interact with 3D space. Go ahead, try to GRASP reality after you’ve demo’d their beta hand tracking.
VR Guru, Oasis, is a champ at giving the breakdown and capabilities of this new tech here.
5. One Million weekend vacations for the price of One:
Skip that round trip flight for your exhausting 3-day weekend vacation to New York, and get the Oculus Quest instead. For limitless vacation-esk experiences whenever you want. Check out some of Oculus’s offerings for starters, here.
6. Infinite Creative Possibility:
Don’t you ever feel like your soul is being sucked out by sitting in a cubicle all day, only to realize you don’t have the time, resources, or energy to express the creativity you’ve harbored dormant for years. Don’t you feel like throwing paint on the wall like a kid again, but know that would be insane at your age?
Not in VR. Quest provides limitless means of expression, in ways that don’t cost you or cause you to re-paint your living room walls.
To barely touch the surface, here are a few: Tilt Brush, BlocksVR, Quill
In artsy words: The Last Oasis (Quill)
7. In 2-Years everyone will have one (Remember having friends?):
You might as well get it before all your friends do. Because they will have it. And eventually so will you. How early you adopt VR just determines if you’ll be the follower or the innovator.
Need to try it first? On request, I’ll bring it to you. Just pay for the gas money.
8. Empathy:
Walk in someone’s shoes. The potential for building empathy in VR is glowing and yet immensely complicated, so we’ll just apathetically leave it as an afterthought for now. But Chris Milk explains the idea of it pretty well.
9. Revisiting Memories:
Engaget ImageFacebook has built an AI product that will stitch your old home videos (remember VCR?) into a 3D virtual space that you can revisit, called Photo Memories.
10. International Friends:
Feel like US isn’t enough? Expand your horizons and connect with people from all over the world. It doesn’t take a 6-month semester of travel, just an afternoon with the Oculus Quest.
11. Spatial Potential (a.k.a Mixed Reality):
In existing Virtual Reality experiences, you can import a model of something you currently own, so that you can interact with it with your headset on. Scanning in your coffee cup, seeing it populate in your virtual environment, and then having it spatially tracked accurately enough for you to pick it up, and drink out of it, without ever actually seeing the “real” coffee mug. Now expand that to a model of the world, virtual reality can have reality imported into it, in order to make your reality, virtual. See example here.
UPDATE (12/10): Mixed Reality has been fully expanded on the Oculus Quest. Now when you put on the Quest, you can still see and interact with reality while simultaneously seeing the 3D world. Its kind of like reverse-AR. See how the Quest utilizes Mixed Reality:
https://medium.com/media/63c1f0ac565a715d8e1a3ee8c0da469c/href12. Re-watch the Matrix (a.k.a Michael Abrash’s Keynote Speech)
AV Club Image“VR is about experiencing a virtual world as real. An experience is real to the extent it convinces your perceptual system and brain because experiences are nothing more or less than whatever your mind infers from the data it receives. Virtual Reality truly is reality as far as the observer is concerned.”- Michael Abrash
In other words:
“Some rules can be bent, others can be broken.” -Morpheus
Do you just want to know what VR is on a superficial level? See the Complete Guide to Virtual Reality.
- If you’d like to see any other items added to the list, just message me. Goal is to get to one-hundred and one.
13. It’ll Save The Environment:
Stop printing out paper to create storyboard while generating ideas at work. No more printed 64-pager powerpoints. Hold all these materials in your hands, digitally. Save the environment.
14. Multiplayer Games:
We all know a big part of Virtual Reality is its ability to replicate the societal structure of the Oasis (from Ready Player One). Not many want to play games alone, so here is the good news, these games are optimal for multiplayer. It’ll never be difficult find people to play with or against as there are already more than 171M VR users worldwide:
⦁ Dead and Buried
⦁ Echo VR — Combat
https://medium.com/media/0e784b5576967e3c6d5edc0bbeb6c1e3/href⦁ Standout: VR Battle Royale
⦁ SkyFront VR
⦁ OrbusVR — basically World of Warcraft on Virtual Reality steroids
⦁ Hockey Player
15. Battery Life (Better than Your I-Phone, duh):
Oculus Quest shines bright like a diamond when it comes to battery life. How long will this bad boy play? 3 whole fucking hours. If this seems short, here are some battery life comparisons for tech that plays high FPS games on continuous stream:
A. iPhone 6S (Brand New): ~1 hour
B. Nintendo Switch: 2.5 Hours
16. The Graphics:
72 FPS, Qualcomm 835 chipset, Foveated Rendering, 6DOF!
Do I need to say more? Probably, as that likely means nothing to you. Here’s the breakdown-
FPS — Frames Per Second: Most games only needing 60 FPS and if you need further comparison, get this — the human eye only needs 24 FPS to detect motion.
Qualcomm 835 Chipset: A combination of CPU, graphics processor, Wi-Fi and 4G modems, sound hardware and sensor hubs. If you want to get geeky about it check out this video.
Foveated Rendering: In short this technology tracks your eye movement, and renders less detail in the places your not looking so that the “computer chip” doesn’t have to work so hard, while still making what you’re directly looking at crystal clear.
Trending AR VR Articles:
Oculus Go, the Nintendo Switch of VR
Expert View: 3 ways VR is transforming Learning & Development
Ready Player One : How Close Are We?
Augmented Reality — with React-Native
6DOF (6 Degrees of Freedom) — Simply means your position is precisely tracked so you can move around within the virtual space.
Need the FULL PICTURE? Fine.
Here’s the comparison of Oculus Rift Graphics (using a $3k Computer) & the Oculus Quest (Game: Apex) -
Can you tell which is which? Yeah that’s why I thought. Probably not.
For other good comparison shots, UploadVR is the best source of truth you can find. But seeing is believing. Want the final say? Try it out for yourself.
18. Stream Experiences Anywhere:
Possibly the Oculus Quest’s greatest adantage over any VR product to date is its high end experience coupled with its ability to be experienced ANYWHERE (with Wifi). Previously, the Oculus Rift (& Rift S), HTC Vive, PSVR, all have to be connected to a high end computing device with exterior sensors surrounding you. This was not an easy setup (despite being well worth it). With the Quest, per its name, you can simply take the headset out of your backpack, and enter the meta-verse immediately. CNET covers this fact well here.
While the Quest “takes up some pretty hefty BACKPACK space,” you’re literally hefting the infinite universe in a 1 pound ‘plastic visor’, so all things considering, that’s a minimal price to pay.
19. Stream SteamVR:
For those already immersed in the VR universe who are looking for a solution to streaming SteamVR on your Oculus Quest, see the full guide to doing so here.
20. Become a VR Creator:
So much to come on this subject, but in short the most common tools are:
Unity, Blender, Unreal Engine 4, Maya, but the list is endless.
For a short explanation of VR setup for Unity, you’ll need these tools:
- Oculus Integration — imports the Oculus Avatar, hand tracking, and basic hand functionalities like grab, throw, etc.
- Open VR (SteamVR Only)
- Android’s SDK (Oculus Quest only) — for this you’ll want to download Android 4.4 (SDK 19) and Android 7.1 (SDK 25)
- Access to Unity Documentation
- In Unity, make sure you go to “Edit”>“Project Settings”>“XR Settings”> under “Virtual Reality SDKs” enable “Oculus” & “OpenVR”
Once you’re setup with those tools, you’ll be good to start developing. Simple as that. But, for more knowledge on learning these programs, read “How-To: Develop for Virtual Reality”
21. 2–3 Years till the “Next Big Thing”:
[Note: Obviously I’m no Palmer Lucky, so this is a guess. An educated guess.]
How long will the Quest last before the “newest” product is released, making the Quest “sorta” obsolete?
Historically, new versions are released every 2–3 years, as compared to iPhone’s seemingly every 6 months. As VR will actually be making some marked improvements, it’ll need tech upgrades, like graphics chips, processors, sensors, etc that don’t currently exist yet. Basically that’s been the whole VR journey since the 90's; the need to wait for unique components to be invented. That technology is being watched very carefully in the industry, so these progressions are predictable, not some big bang theory.
22. Netflix and Chill (from a distance):
Yes, Netflix is already accessible on the Quest. So if you’re looking to get some close-ish proximity time with a significant other to watch a movie, and actually want it to be just that, you’re in luck. Hold virtual hands while watching re-runs of the Office, with no worries of any undesired advances.
Big Screen:
https://medium.com/media/fa54b8098dea6e191c055899e001719d/href23. Never be stuck with a cloudy day:
Day not going well? Leave it.
Let life be limitless. There was a book/movie on this concept:
https://medium.com/media/b116d78f1bf2fadceeff3dd9163c9bcb/href24. To see how far VR has come since 1968:
In Progress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Damocles_(virtual_reality)
25. Prototype Large Scale Projects:
Attempting to grasp another individuals concept ideas is no easy task. Various mediums have tried to elevate collaboration on the intangible, but not Virtual Reality makes those mind-maps readily tangible, physical in form, and solidified. Enter NODA:
https://medium.com/media/34e314d33dee027e8c592518f31e86cf/href26. To Learn Stuff:
https://medium.com/media/7eabbff5592d435944047fade6628ba2/href27. Port your VR experience to your TV:
What you see can be seen by people who aren’t wearing the headset, if you want to share the experience with them. This guy is kind awkward and funny, but this sums up the details of how to do so:
https://medium.com/media/6e6fa008e63f30d8bada7e8c2e94d884/href28. COVID-19
101. Unlimited Lives:
Have you ever wanted to try skydiving, bungee jumping, cliff diving, skyscraper jumping, basically anything that might kill you if you’re not careful? The irony of those activities is that you have to be careful, so you don’t die, but the whole point of adrenaline rushes is to let go and be overwhelmed by the experience. How can you do that if you’re focusing on making sure the straps are tight enough, or wondering if your shoot will actually release on time? In VR, you don’t need to think about the logistics, just jump.
If things don’t work out, you can always re-spawn and try again.
For a definition of the generic gaming term “re-spawn,” read here.
For all those creating Virtual Reality out there, keep you head up (read this).
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !
https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefWhy The Hell You Should “Buy” Into Virtual Reality With An Oculus Quest was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.