Valve, the great hope of VR

In the beginning it was Oculus. And it was Oculus who started it all, particularly a young boy, Palmer Luckey, whose enthusiasm for VR eventually infected an entire group of entrepreneurs to form their company, and even spreaded to one of the greatest legends in the creation of videogames, John Carmack.

So far the story was perfect. Oculus marveled the world each semester with new iterations of its products, and VR do not stopped on everyone’s lips thanks to them. Oculus lavished in fairs and events and fever spread like wildfire, creating a huge community of fans, enthusiasts and developers, especially indies.

Then came the devacle. In March 2014 reddit enters in rage, people ripping their clothes, and even some people closing the doors to a future Minecraft in VR. What happened? Facebook bought Oculus for 2 billion.

From there Oculus’ needs changed. From being a dynamic company that don’t stop making new things in a hurry, especially instigated by its investors with the need to release a commercial product it becomed a sleepy company satisfied with its achievements, and aware of being the unique in the space of VR. Sony had also entered the space, but the niche of priority for Sony was different. Sony was only interested in its console. That still left a huge VR business solely in the hands of Oculus, or well, Facebook.

Valve’s headset

And that’s when Valve says: «What the f*!?», and decides to take action on the matter. They wanted to enter in some competition with Oculus, to reawaken the sleeping lion. Valve during that time was the best mentor of Oculus. It had been researching in VR and AR for some years, and saw it as a promising technology, but in the long distance. Oculus had radically changed that vision within Valve. Valve now felt VR as an emergency. It was something present.

Instead of continuing helping Oculus with great ideas, like the idea for low persistence in OLED displays, Valve decided it also had to enter the industry. For Valve Oculus was, due to the poor relationships of Facebook, compromising the future of VR.

Facebook is a company that has few friends among the industry giants. Valve, however, is essentially a software company that is very focused on its business and has very good relations with the whole sector. It is not easy to understand the interest Facebook have on VR, when its flagship product is no more than a social web, a widely worldwide used one, no doubt, but merely a social web as many swarming there. Valve, however, had prepared an entire ecosystem for VR. They have Steam, the largest online digital distribution service for games and apps, and was developing Big Picture, a system to use Steam as a videoconsole in the living room. It was also creating their own consoles, the Steam Machines, which are beginning to become a reality, and also was supporting the computer graphics industry creating SteamOS, a new free OS based on Linux, and Vulkan, a new-gen graphics library based on AMD’s Mantle with the mission to make DirectX look as something from prehistory.

Thus, Valve, like Sony, has prepared the entire ecosystem. Console, OS, user interface, online store, good contacts in the industry… All it needed was to have its own VR device. And after a year of silence, Valve surprised all and sundry launching in collaboration with HTC the Vive device, which again raised the bar for VR one step further.

Oculus had spent a year saying that in the early times VR would be a «sitting experience». It was clear that they were resting on their laurels, and they hadn’t ready a tracking technology in order to capture the movements of the user in a larger space. But it was clear that this technology was possible. There were a hundred ways to do it. They had to find a way that worked and can go commercial, and Oculus had risk everything to one card, tracking by the use of cameras and LEDs.

Valve finally had to give a good lesson to Oculus and released Lighthouse, a technology that allows tracking with excellent accuracy, and more importantly, without exclusives, as an open technology for any manufacturer to be use. At start they partnered with HTC to manufacture it, but nothing excludes that others may follow the HTC footsteps. It is not a perfect technology, because currently it requires placing big sensors on all the objects to be tracked, but has the advantage that it is a technology that does not require processing on the PC, and being disconnected from PC it allows tracking very large volumes with high accuracy without having to increase the power of the PC. Quite an achievement, and that could become perfect if it would be combined with other optical technologies such as those expected from Oculus and still to come to track hand fingers.

The Lighthouse emitters (no sensors here)

Valve has finally nailed its system: the headset is identical to Oculus in all, with the same specs, lenses and any other features. We can see here some industrial espionage, but then they has released those extraordinary hand controllers months before Oculus even have a prototype of something similar, and more important a system for tracking which is perfect for VR, and certainly in the future will change but right now it’s the best available.

This is how Lighthouse works. You have a space to move and the system shows you a virtual wall when you are in the edge

And if all this is not enough, Valve did not want to poison the well of VR pulling a new phone holder like Cardboard or GearVR, even though I am sure that HTC would have had no objection to help them to release one. Oculus meanwhile persists releasing a device with Samsung definitely to early for the tech, a GearVR that after 15 minutes of use launches an alert of overheating on the phone. I’ve talked in other posts of GearVR and I’m not going to come back here about it.

The Valve’s hand controllers

This just makes me think one thing: the great hope of VR is Valve. Its commitment to VR as a whole is more than evident, and not like Sony, that is clear is only interested in VR for games, or Facebook, which is not yet clear what intends to do with it when his current business is just a social web. The genius of Valve engineers is which has brought the greatest innovations to VR devices in recent years, and its openness and commitment to standards and the open source world is also commendable.

So what if finally, after being relaunching all this interest in VR, Oculus is not going to be the company that leads VR to its full potential?

I just conclude by saying one thing: what a pity Valve didn’t acquire Oculus before Facebook!

Edit: This post shows an opinion on the state of VR at the end of 2015. At that time Oculus seemed to go too slowly after two years releasing dev kits and not seeing materialized its commercial version, opposite to how quickly Valve and HTC were trying to launch a commercial device, which made me consider whether perhaps the future of VR would be Valve. My opinion over the next five months, in the first half of 2016, has changed dramatically. Oculus has finally launched its commercial product, which has resulted in a spectacular quality, and bring Oculus back as a reference in VR. Read next posts to notice the change of opinion.

The amazing GearVR software

In previous posts I mentioned the disappointment has been that Oculus and Samsung have opted in mobile VR for a system that requires connecting a phone to a headset, instead of the much more versatile way of using a small portable mini-console in the style of an iPod that does not have to be housed in the headset, to lighten the weight in the head and get many other advantages.

However, these days I’m testing in GearVR Innovator’s Edition 1 the latest versions of many of the apps that Oculus is releasing in their store, and I must say I’m super impressed.

The GearVR, as you all know, has had two development kits, one that came out in November 2014 under the name Innovator’s Edition 1, and required the use of a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. In mid-2015 came the Innovator’s Edition 2 with some improvements over its predecessor, which used the Galaxy S6, and now in November has been released the device that Samsung already consider the first commercial version, which many call the GearVR 3, to be clear about what device we mean about.

The final product, as I said earlier, still has some important gaps for VR, as absolute positioning, and others derived from the fact of using a mobile. But what shines dramatically and shows clearly that VR is going to become a social phenomenon, are the apps.

Beyond games, many of which will have in this new immersive media means to become a magnet by themselves, what caught my attention is the new introduction of social features in many apps from Oculus.

Yesterday I had my first «virtual chat» using Social Oculus, an app developed by Oculus, in alpha version right now, but that already shows how powerful it will be in the near future.

Social Oculus allows a virtual meeting using the GearVR. When you start the app, you have the ability to select an avatar, a virtual doll to represent you within the environment. Then you can select a room, whether public or private, where entering. If public anyone can access if there is space available. For now, the rooms are small stages with a different setting, from a comfortable living room to a fantasy place in a forest to a few seats in the middle of the desolate landscape of the moon. Here we can see up to four companions, each with their selected avatar, seated next to us, and we can talk to them, with the added bonus that we will have the feeling of their presence due to the fact that avatars mimic the movements of user’s head.

For now it is only a first step of Oculus in these type of apps, but I must say that works amazingly well even though used in the limited GearVR. I had a fluent conversation with my partner, who was in San Francisco while I’m in Spain, nine time zones away. Communication was so fluid or more than if you were using Skype, and also with others who came and went in the room and chatted with us in turn. Audio, moreover, was reinforced by the fact that the sound of the speaker’s voice has spatial position, so that you feel it coming from the correct side.

Not only is the fact of audio impressive, perhaps at this point no one can feel this as something remarkable, but also the fact of the head movements. When someone nods to the words of another, this movement is transmitted in real time, so that within minutes you forget you’re talking to a doll and begin to see the avatar as the natural representation of the other person you are speaking to. It’s amazing, and let you have a glimpse of what will be this technology and this app when we have absolute positioning in the head and two controls for hands at the same time, which will occur within three or four months when Oculus release Oculus Social version for the Rift, the PC system. I cannot imagine how impressive and powerful is going to be to make gestures with hands, move the head freely and have a conversation in an environment like this with more realistic avatars.

But if this were not enough, Oculus Social is still more. Along with the option for talking, Oculus has not missed the opportunity to introduce other functionality that is also showing how promising is VR: sharing online videos. At the moment it is limited to Twitch and Vimeo, but, once again, amazing. One of the partners, the first to enter the room, I suppose, has control over a virtual screen that is in the room, and can select, as if a remote control, a video or channel to reproduce, and thus everyone can watch and comment. Works supoer fluidly and goes smoothly as silk. I imagine that this kind of interaction will end up coming to Netflix and other apps that content dealers are creating right now, and I imagine, because I had no chance to try it, that you can also share local user content, such as photos, videos or documents. This opens the door for Oculus Social to become a full collaborative experience.

There are other products now in development as Oculus Social, most notably AltspaceVR, which certainly have their place in this field of telepresence. It’s spectacular, something out of a sci-fi film, and it is here and now, it can be used not only as mere entertainment, but for a real and professional use, as I did yesterday. The future is here and it is a dreamed future.

Why they call it mobile VR when they mean…

Why in many media and even in VR companies as Oculus they talk about a mobile Virtual Reality when they mean «Virtual Reality for mobile phones»? Is GearVR really a pair of Virtual Reality goggles?

In my opinion, a headset is for Virtual Reality when at least virtualize the way our heads interact with the virtual world, so it has to have full head movement tracking, video, and audio. The GearVR and all the similar devices that are «phone holders», a housing for inserting a mobile phone, do not have absolute positioning, only relative. Of course they feature image and audio, but is it enough functionality to categorize the GearVR as Virtual Reality? Many say yes; I personally have not it so clear.

Not having absolute positioning of the head causes discomfort with great ease. This is the reason that Oculus quickly release a DK2 after releasing the DK1. They saw early on that absolute positioning of the head was key to the experience. However, after two GearVR devices (equivalent to DK1 and DK2), the product that Samsung and Oculus are going to release as first commercial version lacks this positioning, greatly limiting the type of experiences you can have.

There seems to be consensus to apply the term «mobile» to a Virtual Reality system that is based on the use of a mobile phone. There’s a very strong desire in society that mobile phones serves for almost any purpose. The number of new applications being introduced on mobile phones seem to justify the think that VR will be one more thing to add to phones. I personally do not think so. Mobile phones are devices with a single screen, limited resolution, limited processor power, limited battery, and exaggerated heat when used in VR, apart from a lot of other disadvantages I have mention in other posts. Therefore, it seems to me that the term «mobile» that applies to VR is equivalent to say «VR devices using mobile phones». One thing is mobility offered by mobile phones and other very different the mobility required by a VR system. And if the use of the same term lead us to mistake it would be better to apply a different word.

To summarize and conclude, as I see it now it is as if we have three VR system categories:

– Phone VR (Virtual Reality for phones): these are systems that can hardly be called VR devices (eg Cardboard), as they lack a feature that should be minimal to be listed as VR: absolute positioning. However, they may be interesting as 3D viewers.

– Wired VR (Desktop Wired Virtual Reality): we talk about the current generation 1 of Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. Absolute positioning, but limited freedom of movement by a cable.

– Mobile VR (Desktop Wireless Virtual Reality): «mobile» term is usually applied only to mobile phones, when a mini-PC that can be housed in a cartridge or in a backpack provides the same or greater degree of mobility. The clearest example of this type of VR is The Void, in my opinion the only VR system that can properly be called «mobile» in the sense that it offers all the mobility experience. A homemade way to create a device like The Void would use «necessarily» a HTC Vive connected to a portable PC in a backpack. I say «necessarily» because Valve’s Lighthouse technology, right now only included in HTC vive product, is the only one capable of offering absolute positioning without cables. Optical systems of Oculus and Sony require a cable to the PC or console.

I hope and desire that VR goes beyond what current industries are dictating now. Perhaps a Steam Machine packed inside a backpack specially designed to wear a high-end PC hardware with minimum weight, and directly connected to a high-end VR goggles and a pair of haptic and tracked gloves? Why thinking like this is thinking about an impossible product? Right now a Rift or a Vive involves three different devices connected to a PC (headset, camera o sensors, and hand controllers). And lot of users have wheels, or joysticks. So why isn’t VR going a step forward creating a totally new way of using a PC?

Meanwhile, I will wait for The Void with great expectation…

The Void. True mobile VR.

Concept artists of ancient Rome

Recently I have received a gift that I have made myself, the book The Rome of the Caesars from Gilles Chaillet and other book he has in a collection of illustrated books The voyages of Alix . I must say that the drawings of Rome from this author are second to none, and have given me a breath of fresh air to conceptualize Discovr Rome.

It’s amazing the skills of these conceptual artists to display something that is 3D and that today are just ruins with nothing to imagine the rest.

The work of these artists began with Rodolfo Lanciani (1845-1929), an eminent Italian archaeologist who left a very detailed map of the topography and ruin elements of ancient Rome, Forma Urbis Romae, in which he tried to rebuild the famous ancient stone map of Septimius Severus, Forma Urbis, which has survived unfortunately only a small portion.

Fragment of Lanciani map

Following the commendable effort of Lanciani, the artist Giuseppe Gatteschi (1866- 1935) recreated with mastery dozens of photographic drawings almost of every corner of monumental Rome in his book «Restoration of Imperial Rome».

Extract of Gatteschi drawing

Gatteschi pictures, black and white, were the source of inspiration for other artists who come later, as one of my favorites, the remarkable Peter Connolly (1935-2012), whose illustrations are shown in many books of ancient history, and show a high degree of detail and incredible vividness.

Forum drawing by Connolly

My latest acquisition, Dans le Rome des Césars, and the book Rome from collection of Alix, created by Gilles Chaillet, have been a remarkable surprise. The colorful drawings of Gilles contrasts with the monotone of drawings Connolly, noting that the Romans loved to splash paints on all buildings, decorating until the end with the brush what they couldn’t decorate with the chisel, and creating depth in false ceilings and walls, as now a game designer creates depth and detail in assets by using normal maps.

Extract of Chaillet drawing

It is spectacular the monumental map of Rome that comes with the book, approximately 2 x 1 meters, and now adorns a wall in my house. The madness that it had to be for Chaillet to draw every neighborhood, block, and house, every field, every monumental building, I find hard to imagine. It causes humbly seeing what a tiny part of the whole map of ancient Rome matches the current project extension of Discovr Rome. It would be impressive to have a DiscovrRome of all Rome, but I guess we would require ten lifes for this, or much much more investing support, but certainly it would be a worthy project in Virtual Reality.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2015

The last edition TechCrunch Disrupt, 21 to 23 September, has been a new important point in Discovr Labs roadmap. There was Josh Maldonado bringing back all his strength and enthusiasm to seek funding for Education in Virtual Reality.

Josh Maldonado talking in the auditorium of TechCrunch Disrupt 2015

During the event, as part of the Battlefield, a sort of competition between different companies to see who is more convincing with his idea, Josh and other colleagues from Discovr presented our Triage training product using VR, a system that is completely pioneer in this matter. Triage is a technique of emergency and disaster medicine that assesses the severity of patients in the most efficient way so the sickest patients receive healthcare as soon as possible. A specialist in Triage must receive complex training, typically through simulations and simulacrums, which are costly to develop, so VR can help a lot in these cases, creating simulations on demand at minimal fraction cost that scenarios and simulations with real actors usually cost.

Although Discovr Labs has not won the Battlefield, being at TechCrunch in front of such a selected audience of investors, showing our products and ideas, has been a triumph in itself. The field of Education and Professional Training using VR is something that sounds like science fiction today, but in a few years will become as common as it is now having a phone calls walking down the street. It may take a while, because Education is usually slower and less responsive to receive technological advances, but surely will be something that we all will see coming. And from Discovr Labs we do not want to wait for that to happen. We want to make it happen now.

Still waiting for true mobile VR

During these days in the Oculus Connect 2 there have been major announcements for the future of what is known as mobile VR, that portable systems that let you enjoy RV experiences without take with you expensive and heavy equipment.

However, in my opinion, the focus of mobile VR is too limited by the fact that it wants to develop the product with the same vision as that of mobile phones. During all these years we have been seeing how mobile phones have been engulfing other common devices in our lives, such as alarm clocks, cameras, camcorders, portable music players, or GPS for the car. All these devices required before a specific product for them, and today, unless we have large specific needs, their functions are largely covered by a mobile phone.

This huge binder goodness of mobile phones has been one of the determining factors in the success of smartphones. And Oculus and other manufacturers seem to want to continue in that line with mobile VR. Which I think is a mistake.

Virtual Reality can not be put inside a mobile phone. It’s like pretending that the mobile phone also serves as a refrigerator. There are things that can be put into a phone, and things that do not. Here is an important obstacle, which many refuse to see. An alarm clock, a camera, or GPS make much sense on a mobile phone because the format is similar or identical. But virtual reality is not simply a viewer placed on the head. We need positioning, need autonomy, and above all, we need a good input system. All this involve the use of some additional technology to the headset that needs to lay outside the headset. And this is where mobile phones are an inappropriate format.

The first limitation the use of a mobile phone for VR involves is the screen. A phone has only one screen. But human beings we have two eyes, and it is becoming clear in recent desktop VR devices will bring all dual displays. A mobile phone with two slightly separate displays has no sense. In addition, VR requires a completely useless screen formats for a phone. It has no sense a 5 inch mobile phone with 4K no matter how much mobile manufacturers insist saying the contrary. From 3K+, at the distance displaying a mobile, no more clarity is gained and no more pixels are seen. However, 4K makes all the sense in the world when it comes to a VR headset.

The second limitation is absolute positioning. The inside-out systems, ie, a pair of cameras pointing from the headset towards the outside world, still do not work very well, and it is to be seen if they will work correctly in any possible scenario or if they will work well only if they are indoors and surrounded by identifiable objects to calculate depth. This persistent search for using an inside-out system is not necessary for good mobile VR. It is possible to develop a mobile VR system using external sensors that work outside-in. Having to place a camera or a emitter near us is not uncomfortable as long as it can later be fold and store. The insistence on inside-out systems are imposed by manufacturers like Oculus because they want mobile VR to involve only a phone and a case. But why not consider other mobile solutions even at the expense of adding a second external device?

The third major limitation is heating. Mobile phones are designed to be very small devices. Users are not willing to carry large heavy devices, and also it must be able to be used in the ear to talk and user must be able to grasp them with one hand. This implies very compact components, the absence of cooling systems, and very rapid overheating when CPUs are stressed to the usual intensive VR tasks. However, there is no need for having to place a phone in a case to be mobile VR. A possible alternative would be to put all components internally in the case without having to click a smartphone. And thus, placing the components in a less compact form, the better the cooling of the device.

A fourth limitation also critical is input. Oculus GearVR has a touch pad on the side, which I think is extremely uncomfortable to use because it requires having the arm permanently lifted. The alternative, a traditional gamepad, it’s a very poor alternative for what VR allows. Input requires us to see our virtual hands, which are the essential element of our body for tasks such as communication and social interaction with real world objects. Today, the issue of input using cameras to detect our hands is at a very early stage, and it is very difficult to solve using only cameras placed in the phone. When our hands out of sight, they are lost in the virtual world, even though you may be gesturing or moving objects, like we do in the real world. VR input would always require some sort of external device apart from the headset, and a pad in the headset or a gamepad will never be enough.

There are many other limitations imposed by the fictional need to use a mobile for mobile RV: available memory space too small for the requirements of VR apps, which is usually high, as in the case of video 3D-360; high weight of almost half kilo in the Gear, which is annoying in the head; not being able to connect to both power and the headset, because that would imply two connectors that today’s phones do not have; not being able to download the apps connecting to a PC while using, avoiding Wifi speeds; annoying phone notifications or noises while using VR; lack of compatibility between different phones (what about for those with iPhones and Nexus, aren’t those phones enough powerful ones?); difficulty developing and testing applications, which have to be transferred to the phone whenever a change occurs, and so on.

In the end, to have a good experience of mobile VR is necessary to go to a system of several interconnected devices (display + positioning + input). So why insist in mobile VR always using a mobile phone?

These limitations wouldn’t exist if mobile VR be designed forgetting phones.

In the novel Ready Player One a mobile VR system called Oasis consists of three minimum elements: the headset, the console and the haptic gloves. These three elements form a portable, lightweight, wearable system. And you can expand it connecting other elements and turning the portable system into a full VR system, using for example a system for full body motion capture or a haptic suit.

Ready Player One is science fiction, but we are seeing is not so crazy sci-fi. It is the vision of a writer for whom VR doesn’t arise from the perspective of a phone industry, but from the perspective of what is best for a new industry, the VR itself. What if instead of a mobile phone we had a very light console with enough power of a good PC, in which we remove unneeded elements of a mobile phone as the screen, the cameras, and other sensors? A console that you could carry in your pocket, like a phone, but connected by a cable to the headset, which would have inside the screen to avoid dirtiness on top of it. Furthermore, the system could be supplemented by an external outside-in positioning device as the efficient Lighthouse Valve system, which allows positioning the sensors in the headset and in controllers, avoiding the need for a cable from the emitters to the headset (very different aproach than Oculus cameras). It would be like the console of Read Player One, a portable system, mobile, for taking VR everywhere with us but without the constraints of a phone.

A concept of a more advanced mobile VR system than current ones. A) Headset that do not require buying a phone; B) micro-console (phone size) in the pocket to alleviate weight in the head; C) wireless gloves with tracking sensors; D) Tracker system like Valve Lighthouse, that do not require cables.

However, it seems that the entire VR industry is being conditioned by the mobile industry. Oculus has reached an agreement with Samsung, and its VR mobile systems, the Gear, require now exclusively the purchase of some specific models of Samsung mobile phones. Valve, which has refused to enter the mobile VR ecosystem, however is entering the desktop VR with HTC, another manufacturer of phones. Sony, maker of the future Playstation VR is in turn another phone giant, and has already announced a 4K Xperia Z5 oriented to VR. Google, another great mobile phone giant, has created Cardboard, a low-cost headset only oriented to be used with mobile phones. Finally Apple, no less great than previous in sales of mobile phones, is known to be secretly preparing some kind of VR-oriented product.

This leaves mobile RV in the hands of the most important manufacturers of phones, conditioning all mobile VR industry, and largely also to the desktop VR industry.

The mobile industry is providing many beneficial things to Virtual Reality, but remember that none of these companies such as Samsung, HTC, Google and Apple have never been interested in Virtual Reality. For years there has already been enough technology to create these commercial devices, and none of those companies has never made any effort to create a real commercial product, relegating VR to a task of making patents.

In the hands of these companies, mobile VR never reach its best, that is when someone create a similar product to the Oasis system from Ready Player One novel. These companies are only interested today in selling mobile phones, a business that handles billions each year. Mobile VR, for them, is nothing more than a peripheral, an accessory for their main product range, which is mobile phones. It is not the disruptive tech that will change human communication. It is simply a more fashionable technology, such as 3D TVs or smartwatches. They come here just to put a similar competitive product in its catalog, but they don’t want to explore the immense possibilities that VR offers in general and in particular mobile VR.

It has been a profound disappointment for me to see that in a year of development in two companies filled with geniuses such as Samsung and Oculus there hasn’t been an attempt to develop a novel product for mobile VR. I bought the first GearVR to see first hand what it could deliver. I firmly believe that mobile VR will be a revolutionary technology. But the first GearVR was a disappointment for me when announced and when I had it in my hands. The third GearVR that has been presented in Oculus Connect 2 follows the same line as versions 1 and 2, and will be the first commercial product from Oculus that I won’t buy. Meanwhile, I’ll continue looking forward to a good and true mobile Virtual Reality.

The final medium

«We are at a point in the history of technology that for the first time we have invented a device equivalent to a Virtual Reality press, the HMD or headset, but we are still waiting for the novel to be invented, so say, the content to fill the press».

Ivan Sutherland, Godfather of VR, in Proto Awards 2015

How this uniqueness has occurred is easy to explain. Virtual Reality creates a human communication medium so different from what we have ever seen that it will take years until we fill it properly.

Everything has its origin in the creativity of human beings. Our imagination is the source of stories, scenes, feelings we imagine and dream with our mind, this prodigious body that allows us to escape from the constraints of reality around us. We have always dreamed of a technological future that would allow us to capture those ideas and scenes, the images of our mind, in something tangible, something real, something we could share with our loved ones.

The novel was a first step. Write stories, putting words that evoke places and emotions is a first step. But the reader always lost a lot in the process of rebuilding the writer’s imagination. The evocation of words alone is not enough. It takes more. We needed to see and hear.

Thus the theater was born, and with it films and television, and painting, and with it comics. We needed to see these stories in images, those emotions, those faces. We needed to feel that there was something real and tangible across the words of a novel.

Videogames have taken the stories still a step beyond when they have made the valiant effort of being more than vitiating entertainments. Stories in which the reader may feel as a participant in them, and can even influence the flow of them, even making different endings. Who has not dreamed of being a part of these stories, these stories of the novels? Log into the story, and as a protagonist, take the skin of a character and live them rather than read them.

That is what Virtual Reality brings. It is a giant step in human communication. It is the giant step that technology takes to become definitive, the step behind which there is nothing more, The Final Medium. Because in Virtual Reality we see no more a story flowing outside of us, we do not see the scene occur on a screen or drawing. We are part of the scene, coming within that fictional and fantasy world of our favorite stories. We can go wherever we want, we can see who we want, at all times and everywhere, as if we were ACTUALLY there. We no longer have to dream more, we no longer have to evoke anymore. We do not have to fight with words or with the intent of the writer. That story will not be lapsing in our mind, imperfectly reconstructed from bits and pieces of our reading, but the story will be happening in A REAL WAY before us, and we shall live and feel it as real. Is there something beyond this? Could you experience a story or an account in a more vivid way? I really doubt it. The only thing more vivid is no longer a story or a tale, it is real life.

Henry is the first the animated short film that will be released next year with Oculus headset that has no animation script so action is in real time depending on player actions.

We wanted to communicate all kinds of recollections, emotions, ideas. We needed something to bring all that to others as it had developed in our creative mind. We have explored dozens of media and have eagerly sought for decades and millennia, and now finally we have it. It is Virtual Reality. We must not wait any longer.

Inmersed Europe 2015

During September 3rd and 4th I have been lucky to be able to attend the Inmersed event, which this year’s edition has been hosted in Europe and surprisingly in Murcia, Spain. It was too good to let escape this opportunity, and it has fully been worth.

I would like brief the event with a sentence, and is this: «Virtual Reality is felt in the ambience, it is here and has come to stay». It is the perception that I have had trying the demos from the exhibitors, listening the presentations of the panelists, and verifiying the enormous excitement of the assistants, who have fulfilled so much both the conference room as well as the exhibition space.

This excitement sensation was palpable in the energy that many of the participants transmited. Every demo was better than previous, overcoming many of the experiences that I personally have tried last months at home in the DK2. I have to mention the following:

– The demo of Castle Ruin VR, of David Finsterwalder, helped by tireless Dominic Eskofier, where I have tried Valve/HTC Vive for the first time and its impressive tracking system, running a demo that is also of my maximum interest because it is a recreation in VR of an ancient castle using photogrammetry, a skill in which David is a super pioneer and that in years (if not months!) is going to be something super common to be seeing.
http://vrjam.devpost.com/submissions/36384-castle-vruin

David Finsterwalder giving explanations about his demo to one of the atendants

– The demo of the Archena Spa from estudiofuture.com, that impressed me with its Leap Motion support to simulate actions on the water using both hands. It was the first time that I tried Leap Motion, and although it is clear that this hardware has serious limitations, it let us figure out how incredible is going to be to be able to see our hands and to feel them inside the virtual world.

– StarVR, from Starbreeze. In spite of all the imperfections of the product, the HMD from the creators of The Walking Dead videogame is worth to be mention due to its 210º FOV. It was the first time I tried a headset with such a FOV and the experience was incredible. Almost there wasn’t a way to see the end of the screen even moving the eyes to the limit, creating the inpressive sensation of being realy immersed in the world of the game. StarVR is the first vision of what will be the future of VR HMDs in not a far time.
http://www.starvr.com/

The Starbreeze booth with the StarVR demo

– The people from Nucleus VR, who have an application that works online integrating several different devices, like castAR, Durovis Dive, Oculus DK2 and Project Tango, all integrated inside the same virtual world. It is an impressive product that if evolve at a good path is already announcing the future of collaborative business systems. It was the first time I give CastAR a try, and finally I have understood the enormous kindness of this product, which competes in an area similar to Microsoft HoloLens, but overcoming this last one in FOV and with a much more economic solution. It seems to me like a very interesting AR solution.
http://nucleusvr.net/en

– The demo with sensation of smells from InMediaStudio. Although it can be seen just as a curiosity, it is something incredible that someone is already doing something like this: a cabin in which to see scenes within a headset and at the same time experiencing the smells that matches the images we see. It was working really well considering the difficulties of the thing, up to the point that I was about to think that something was going wrong with the demo when I could smell as if something was burning while I was driving a motorboat, and I was near to take off the helmet by myself. Also this company was presenting a small attraction promoting the last Impossible Mission movie from Tom Cruise, and thatdemonstrates that VR has a lot to contribute in the field of funfairs.
http://www.inmediastudio.com/

To conclude, the sensation that it was describing above is more than patent. Companies are starting to move, people is nervous and excited, talking about every new experience with increasing emotion. It is noticeable that we are on the verge of something big, something that is going to flood with job offers in not a lot of time. Virtual Reality is here, is tangible, it can be felt. Don’t you feel it?

My private Ancient Rome in VR

When I started this project I was just trying to learn game-engines to create historical reconstructions in VR. I was convinced that soon many products would appear to transport us to ancient Rome, Athens, Alexandria … But the truth is that I waited in vain for six months and noticed that there was very little movement in this area. So encouraged by a strong desire to experience what could be to feel transported to another ancient site, I jumped to the task.

Too ambitious for just one person, the problem arose at every turn. Rebuild a historic place is not like creating a video game. There are some restrictions imposed by the historical accuracy, which means to research dimensions, proportions, materials, ruins… All this takes time and imposes artistic conditions that are not easy to avoid. This implies that the final 3D model becomes heavy, complex, difficult to move, and when you put on a pair of VR glasses, it’s difficult to make it smoothly.

It has been a year-long journey but it was worth it. Without stop learning something each week, and by far with more ahead to learn, it is a pleasure when you start to see the result.

It was curious that the other day, making a last test before sending my demo in Unreal to SVVR, I took a long walk in VR inside the ancient Rome I have created so far. I did not notice a detail that I thought about later: from being a fan of VR and game-engines, I have become probably the first person in the world who can enjoy a walk through ancient Rome in a consumer HMD for VR. No doubt that in big universities and some companies focused on VR already have created a simulation of ancient Rome in VR better than mine, but never this product have been available to everybody, and I am amazed to think that after all, without noticing it, I’m being a participant in this to become a reality.

Discovr Rome for DK2 is now a preview demo of the product and is still far from complete, but it shows something of what is going to become in next months. It’s really spectacular to move around (currently with the gamepad and with a little motion sickness) among the huge temples and basilicas of the Roman Forum. Every time I marvel more with how great everything is displayed in VR, the powerful sense of enormity that the whole scenario has. I can comment, anecdotally, that when editing the landscape object that is the floor of the level, I made a mistake in an area sinking too much the ground. On the computer screen, with the perspective that we have watching everything from above, it is difficult to see the failure. But when I put DK2 on, and walk along the road, immediately jumped to me that bump as a huge gap that I was surprised not being able to see it in the screen. So powerful is the new vision that conveys VR. It’s like we’re right there, and the scale and proportions are a force that never before have been able to glimpse in the narrow view of the computer screen.

Still way ahead, but at least I am starting to enjoy these little walks in my own private Imperial Rome. Can’t wait to release the beta of the product and be able to share it with everyone.

 

Temple of Vesta, at foreground, and the Forum seen from the portico of the House of Vestals. It is difficult to perceive the scale with this snapshot, but when you’re in VR aren’t taller than half the podium of the temple at the left, that of Castor and Pollux.

Interior of Basilica Aemilia

A view of the Forum from Basilica Aemilia portico

Forum from door of Curia Iulia

A view of temple of Saturn and Basilica Iulia from the top of the podium in temple of Vespasian

VR cheaper than ever

Recently Oculus has published the specs and requirements the Rift will have when released early next year. They are very restrained requirements that will ultimately achieve the cherished dream of an affordable VR for everyone, something that has been the main focus in Oculus since they began their work, and many others are following now. Support for MacOS and Linux will be delayed to focus on Windows version, and once everything is working perfectly in Windows, Oculus then will support MacOS and Linux, as they have been doing.

Some media, the least, have seen in the Oculus specs very high requirements and therefore still an expensive VR only for a few. These uninformed newspapers simply are unaware of what has been the proce of these VR systems until recently, only available to labs at NASA, Defense departments, or large corporations.

VR has become cheaper x10 in the last two years creating a new market that did not exist until now, home consumer VR. But maybe instead my words, it is best to take a look at the prices of products and compare. Below I leave a list of what could be four levels of VR systems. I have made estimates for those products that haven’t known prices. Below my comments.

Mobile VR	Samsung GearVR Samsung Galaxy Note4 ($549) + Samsung GearVR ($199) Total $748 (Source: www.samsung.com)
Videoconsole VR	Sony Morpheus PS4 ($400) + PS4 Eye + 2 Move controllers ($47 + $33 = $80) + PS4 Morpheus ? ($300) Total $780 (Source: www.amazon.com)
PC VR	Oculus Rift CV1 GTX970 – $305 / R9 290X – $300i5 4590 ($199) + Cryorig H5 ($47) + MSI Z97-Gaming 7 ($170) + 8GB ($54) + 1TB HD ($49) + 250GB SSD ($100) + SeaSonic M12II 620 ($90) + Rosewill Thor V2 ($134) + Oculus Rift CV1 ? ($400) Total $1548 (Source: www.logicalincrements.com/)
Traditional VR	Sensics Z-Sight PC ** ($1143) + Sensics Z-Sight ($12995) Total $14138 (Source: sensics.com/head-mounted-displays/zsight-integrated-sxga-hmd/)***

** PC needed to run the Z-Sight can be considered the same as for running Oculus Rift. In fact, Z-Sight has less pixels than Oculus CV1, so even a less powerful PC would also work. Adding a cheaper PC do not alter much the comparison because the difference is in the exorbitant prices that professional HMDs have had.

*** An interesting alternative source is to read Palmer Luckey commentary in MTBS about a «price drop» of Sensics product:
<a href=»http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=120&amp;t=14362″ target=»_blank»>http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=120&amp;t=14362</a&gt;. No doubt these crazy prices of VR products were who encouraged Palmer to start the revolution that we are witnessing now.

It is clear that prices of professional products were exorbitant, only possible due to the limited competition there was in such products. The emergence of Oculus and his idea of ​​reuse technologies from mobile industry for HMDs has drop down prices a lot. The continuous evolution in PC industry have allowed users to afford high performance PCs costing just $1,000, something available to anyone who wants to buy a PC today.

It is clear that the requirements of VR are higher of those for any other application or PC game, but Oculus has managed to balance everything and create a version 1 of its product as good as expected and with a very affordable price. And its success will be assured. Let time say it.