YM's Vive adventures

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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So I have one of these exciting toys now. It's pretty neat.

You can ask me questions about it in this thread and I'll post the videos I'm sharing here too so you can see what I'm getting up to.



Recommend watching:
 

Kube

Not the correct way to make lasagna
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Aug 31, 2014
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Oh, you're the person behind those Sliders and Dials! Neat!

Having tried the Vive myself this weekend, I was wondering about the differences between the short demo length and prolonged Viving sessions. Is there a distinct "feeling" Vive has when compared to traditional gaming, similar to the difference between TV and cinema?

Also, what are some of the design challenges you've faced when developing for this new interactive platform?
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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One unusual take away I've had from all the VR demos on steam and all the things I've made myself is they have a physicality to the memory. I might remember the epic scale of a vista in something like skyrim, but I don't really. I remember the flat image about the size of a piece of paper. With the Vive, I remember how those jenga blocks are about 60cm long. I remember how the cans I made are a hefty size, the robot Atlas is taller than I am. That blue whale in the Blu demo is 30 fucking meters long, the manta ray that swims past was over a meter long. The minnows that swim around the deck are shorter than my finger.

These are all memories I have, those things exist as physical objects in my memory. It's a difference that I can't really express and have you understand. It'd be like trying to explain what watching The Lord Of The Rings was like, to a person who had never seen a film or any TV or any moving images before.

Also, what are some of the design challenges you've faced when developing for this new interactive platform?
Really? The most generic, cookie cutter question ever. Ask it again when I've had it for more than a week.

@Cole Slaw The kits are shipped for free to devs, I didn't pay anything for it. Presumably htc are happy stumping up the cost of a few hundred devkits so that when their product launches it can actually have some products. Makes great business sense to me!
In seriousness though, hoodoo stamps and eotl keys are what allowed me to quit my job the other day and go full time into indie life. I want to finish pl_YM2K15 then I'll be focusing 100% on making Vive games.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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the sensors are all on the headset and wands, see how they have loads of little dots on the end thing (they call it a puck)
CQOSxCrWwAA9Uz4.jpg


Then there's two of these things called lighthouses that do a laser sweep and a flash across the room. You put them in opposite corners and they have a sync cable so they're perfectly synchronised, but they're not connected to the computer, they're totally separate.
CQOSxyRXAAAqWBh.jpg


There's a room setup application (which is changing near daily currently) that has you walk around the room with a controller to setup the play area as well as (importantly) calibrating the height of the floor. Once that's all done the headset knows where to show the blue grid to remind you that there's a wall nearby.



As for flexibility, you could put the sensors on either side of a desk and have a seated session, and it scales anywhere up to a recommended max of 5m between lighthouses (so a 4x5m room). They theoretically work further apart but tracking quality diminishes with distance so Valve and htc recommend 5m max.
The consumer version (or maybe a later iteration) is set to support more than two lighthouses, so you could theoretically create a playspace the size of an industrial warehouse with enough of them.
There was a setup at EGX that had four computers to demo a game (using xbox controllers not the wands) and they had four Vive headsets for those four computers. Two lighthouses powered the whole lot. Because all the sensing is done by the headset there's no limit to the number you can put in a single area.

For ease of setup, it's pretty simple, plug everything in, install SteamVR and then it shhoooulllldd all work. I spent a while fiddling with things that won't be necessary in the consumer version (like I had to switch to the SteamVR beta rather than the stable build).
 

Zed

Certified Most Crunk™
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Aug 7, 2014
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You have nice, grandmother-like hands.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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I played some Fantastic Contraption today and recorded one level. Sorry for the terrible audio, I only realised I should have used my headset mic instead of phone's audio after finishing
 

Lain

lobotomy success story
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Jan 8, 2015
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Do you get any motion sickness using the Vive? Also it's pretty amusing seeing you annotate things with your arms like a human would. Its weird to see that happening in a game.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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As I understand it, motion sickness is not inherently caused by the Vive headset, thanks to its design. Motion sickness is therefore something the software developer can implement purposefully, or just neglect to prevent. If I recall correctly, Valve's Chet Faliszek talked about it in this video.
 

Kube

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What are some of the design challenges you've faced when developing for this new interactive platform?
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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What are some of the design challenges you've faced when developing for this new interactive platform?

It's been more than a week YM.

I expect a nice, well written and thought out response. Minimum of 500 words. You will be graded on this.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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And the section where they kinda deal with my question by saying "we're not really using the vive's potential"

:(

What are some of the design challenges you've faced when developing for this new interactive platform?
1) Time. I have been dividing it between my final few shifts at the cinema, TF2 and Vive
2) Time, every time you want to test something you've got to grab the headset, seat it right on your head, roll your chair out of the way (may only be applicable to me) as well as grabbing the controllers (which may or may not have been off while I was working or may have lost tracking and need to be rebooted)
4) One idea I thought was pretty interesting and I want to pursue is actually a really shit use of the controllers, so I feel like I should explore a more creative use rather than the simpler option
5) It's hard to show/tell people what it's like with videos and such.
6) Seriously this is the worst question ever, ask better (read: more specific) questions.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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I cracked up laughing at you casually throwing things off the map in that last video. You've basically sold me on one.

That got me too.

I'm still interested in ways to increasing mobility outside of the safety cube, without actually moveing outside the cube.
 

Kube

Not the correct way to make lasagna
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Aug 31, 2014
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I cracked up laughing at you casually throwing things off the map in that last video. You've basically sold me on one.

Reminded me of chucking a flower in the Job Simulator demo when I tried the Vive in Philadelphia. It FLEW across the room. I cracked up.
 
Sep 7, 2012
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Does it seem real enough that your subconscious finds it disappointing when you can't actually hold and touch the things with your hands instead of using the controllers as the interface? Alternatively, do the games/demos you've played on Vive seem related to you by nature of their common controller? (For me, FPS games feel VERY different from each other because they are distinguished primarily for me by the movement physics rather than the common mouse/keybindings they all share - I expect a similar experience from Vive, but prove me wrong!)