Following my habit for evaluating VR-infrastructure projects: Ctrl+F, "latency". No mention of what the latency is.
There's a big difference between how Google and Oculus approach VR. Oculus' position is that it's bad to show people VR experiences that are likely to make them sick; they refer to it as "poisoning the well". They're very cautious in how they label things, and they've invested a lot of effort and talked a lot publicly about how to get things exactly right.
Google's approach is, instead, to keep expectations down; they call it "cardboard". And, well, what's going on in the Cardboard world kind of freaks me out, because Cardboard's documentation never seems to mention the problems, Google never talks about the work that needs to be done or the problems Cardboard has, they just sort of pretend that VR is VR is VR. It's like they're really trying to poison the well (though I don't think they'd actually do that intentionally).
Cardboard's motion-to-photon latency is significantly worse than the GearVR. This Swift hack is worse than Cardboard. This is true for a number of both software and hardware reasons.
Of course, comparing Cardboard to the Vive and Rift is hardly to apples-to-apples.
Your concerns re: poisoning the well are valid. This seems to be a common divide among people working in VR: should we be making low quality (whatever that means) experiences? For example, VR devs often remark that 360 video content isn't "true VR." I don't know that I agree.
Purely as a matter of opinion, I don't see a reason not to experiment in VR, even if it's far from perfect. It's-not-VR complaints strike me a little bit like the "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy.
It's great that Oculus and Google have different approaches to the problem, and, as I'm sure you can guess, I don't believe there's a real risk of poisoning the well.
Then again, like Dennis Miller used to say: that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
(In which case we'll all have to wait another 15+ years for another turn on the carousel.) :)
"Poisoning the well" presumes users can't tell the difference between a cardboard box and purpose built hardware. I know it's fun to laugh at "lusers", but people really aren't that dumb and deserve to be treated with a little bit more respect than that.
I agree with this. Every product category in existence has a range of good and bad versions. I think people are smart enough to not lump all VR experiences together just like watching a bad movie or eating a bad pizza doesn't put you off them for life.
Also, you can't stop people releasing whatever VR products they want so even if poisoning the well was real you can't do anything about it.
In the context of VR, latency refers to the amount of time between when your head rotates and when the light coming out of the display reflects that rotation ("motion-to-photon"). Too much latency means that whenever you rotate your head, the world you're looking at seems to shake. Wearing a headset with high latency conditions people to hold their head still (they get negative reinforcement from looking around, but don't realize what's happening).
Sort of, the viewport can't change more than the displays refresh rate. So the refresh rate is a hard cap on the latency between head movements and the view moving. This is probably why we are begining to hear talks about 120hz smart phone screen, since this would drastically improve them. I believe most high end VR helms have 75hz screens.
Cardboard has very low latency. I believe its far lower than the Oculus is. Its of course not doing very much. But thats the point its simple entry level VR for the masses. Most people aren't going to spend 400$ for the headset + 2000$ for the computer to get an Occulus working. They might after they see the wonders of carboard however. I think they are doing the exact opposite of "poisoning the well", they are letting a whole demographic of people that would never experience VR get a chance to see whats its all about.
I heard Apple is selling the Mattel View-Master device on their own site and will soon have it in their stores. The build quality of it looks very good and the price is not bad.
I like the Wearality Sky, but not the price. It's going to be ridiculously expensive. I think it gives the best smartphone experience without additional IMU hardware like the GearVR, but not $100-125 dollars more than a regular cardboard better.
The Homido Mini is very cool. It folds up and fits in your pocket. It doesn't encompass the phone, it only clips on. Looks like opera glasses, almost. And for "Google Cardboard", it might actually be ideal because you're never going to try to use it for an extended period of time, but it fulfills that role of "cheap thing to give people an idea". It's so easy to just whip out at parties or whatnot.
If you want the literal cardboard box, I suggest the Unofficial Cardboard 2.0+. It modifies the Google design slightly to make it more comfortable and durable.
The point was the person I was replying to was saying it was the lenses preventing immersion. No, it's a fundamental limitation of the type of tech he is using. A better lens setup isn't going to help.
I own four different passive viewers, one of which I built myself. I know what they are and are not good for. Two of them I carry with me everywhere. I just think we should be clear about their limitations, too.
Well while I'm not going to be running Battlefront in 3D 4k with the insane textures mod, that's not what I meant by immersion - what I meant is not being able to discern the edges of the screen, which is an unfortunate consequence of this headset since it puts the phone just a tad bit further from the lenses than a traditional Google Cardboard.
There's a big difference between how Google and Oculus approach VR. Oculus' position is that it's bad to show people VR experiences that are likely to make them sick; they refer to it as "poisoning the well". They're very cautious in how they label things, and they've invested a lot of effort and talked a lot publicly about how to get things exactly right.
Google's approach is, instead, to keep expectations down; they call it "cardboard". And, well, what's going on in the Cardboard world kind of freaks me out, because Cardboard's documentation never seems to mention the problems, Google never talks about the work that needs to be done or the problems Cardboard has, they just sort of pretend that VR is VR is VR. It's like they're really trying to poison the well (though I don't think they'd actually do that intentionally).