Visionary Palmer Luckey’s dream is about to become reality
SETTING THE STAGE
Over the past 60 years, dating back to the first United States Air Force visual flight simulator, innovators and enthusiasts have been attempting to make immersive multimedia a reality. It took a 19-year-old who put it upon himself to fix the medium’s failures before people began to believe that virtual reality was viable.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey built his first prototypes in his parents’ garage leading up to development of what became the most direct predecessor to the Rift. A year later, after id Software co-founder John Carmack received one of the units, it was introduced to the world at E3 2012 running a version of Doom 3.
Just two months later, the Kickstarter campaign launched with endorsements from several gaming luminaries. While previous attempts laid the groundwork for today’s technology, massive leaps in hardware engineering set the stage. According to Luckey, VR’s feasibility today is due in large part to PC gamers’ appetite for power.
“We have game engines that run at high frame rate. We have game engines that are made to render tons of 3D objects that are very photorealistic as fast as possible,” Luckey explains. “If we didn’t have those things and if we didn’t have the game industry, VR would never be able to work remotely as well as it does.”
Prior to the current wave of head-mounted displays, virtual reality was relegated to academic and military applications. The hardware and software designed for these purposes were narrow in focus, with access limited to a relatively small segment of the population. This cloistered approach meant that the broader development community, those who have been driving experimentation in the medium for the past few years, simply didn’t have access.
Luckey believes that the Oculus Kickstarter bridged the gap between expensive, specificuse VR and the masses. Putting affordable headsets in the hands of developers was the missing piece, giving software programmers a way to build applications without the need for a deep understanding of the hardware engineering.
“We got rid of most of the technical challenges,” Luckey says. “Our goal was to make it so that any game developer – really any software developer – could make a VR application and not need to understand the really deep technical side on the VR side.”
Pairing Oculus’ hardware and software kit with powerful engines, like Unity and Unreal, means that developers have the same types of tools they do in two-dimensional development. The affordable price of developer kits (just $300) meant that almost anyone could purchase one and tinker.
Beginning with Oculus’ Kickstarter success, the world woke up to the realization that this time might really be it. Other contenders began popping up with their takes on head-mounted displays and virtual-reality specific peripherals. At the time, Oculus was concerned someone rushing to market just to be first would poison the well. That has since given way to a spirit of collaboration driving forward the entire sector.
The measured approach and self-imposed demand to get virtual reality right before coming to market has been a magnet for luminaries across the game development world. In addition to hiring John Carmack, who left id Software to work full time on virtual reality as chief technical officer, Oculus has attracted former Valve developer Michael Abrash as chief scientist, creator of Valve’s VR Room demo Atman Binstock as chief architect, former Steam boss Jason Holtman to develop and lead a software storefront, and Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin to head up worldwide studios and first-party content. This all-star squad of hardware and software experts have one not-so-modest goal: to create an entirely new entertainment ecosystem.
PUTTING ON THE RIFT
Oculus is setting up for a two-tiered launch later in 2016. When the Rift launches, the package will include the head-mounted display, a sensor cam era, integrated audio that can be re moved and replaced with any headset or ear-buds, and an Xbox One controller.
The single camera, a feature it shares with Sony’s PlayStation VR, can be placed on a desktop easily. This is in contrast to the product of Valve’s partnership with HTC, the Vive, which ships with two sensor units that must be placed at specific distances and angles in opposite corners of the space. These are designed to be mounted, placed atop bookshelves, or if necessary, on tripods.
The decision to package in a familiar gamepad was made to give developers a guaranteed install base for the input format. Oculus decided to partner with Microsoft because of its fondness for the Xbox One controller.
All of the software that is available at the Rift’s launch will support a gamepad, unifying experiences. The head-mounted display will be tethered to the PC via a data cable, but since the Rift will also include the Xbox One wireless controller adapter, there won’t be multiple cords to tangle.
Oculus is looking to create a breadth of content for launch that spans genres. CCP’s EVE Valkyrie continues to be one of the best-looking experiences available on the Rift. We’ve demoed it a number of times, but with each new experience, the space-scape becomes more vibrant and the action more intense.
Valkyrie is an example of how far virtual reality comfort has come in the past few years. In older demos, players locked missiles onto enemies using head-tracking; looking at an enemy ship led to target acquisition. This helped mitigate potential simulation sickness, by giving players a fixed point on which to focus while looping and rolling.
The latest demo eschews that convenience, moving Valkyrie’s targeting system onto a button, making it a more traditional dogfighting simulator. I felt great twisting and turning through space, with no discomfort whatsoever. Motions that would make me nauseous in real life felt natural and exhilarating. I’m not a roller coaster fan, but I think I could fl y in the cockpit of a Valkyrie starfighter for hours.
Developers are also already conquering the challenge of locomotion in first person. In just 60 days of development, Epic Games pulled together one of the most compelling VR demos we saw on Rift. Bullet Train uses a teleporting mechanic to move around the map, giving players the opportunity to stay mobile without having to run and jump through the environment as they would in a traditional first-person game.
The result is impressively smooth and not the least bit jarring. Granted, it’s clear that there was no way to “lose” the short experience, but as proof of concept for what a first-person shooter can be, it’s a winner. The studio has managed to retain agency without the type of movement we find in traditional shooters, which would likely be a recipe for nausea in VR.
Bullet Train works, in part, because it takes advantage of the motion tracking Touch controllers designed for immersive experiences. Together, the pair of devices resemble a traditional gamepad split in half. Each has a palm grip button, index finger trigger, thumbstick, and two face buttons. By adding a second camera identical to the one that ships with the Rift itself, software tracks hands in three dimensions as well as thumb and index finger position.
The Touch is Oculus’ solution to one of the biggest hurdles in virtual reality development. Players expect to see their hands. Doing so creates a deeper connection to the simulated world that is further enhanced by haptic feedback that gives the player tactile response when touching a virtual object.
Touch is only the beginning, though. “As we evolve Touch, we're going to add stronger and stronger hand presence,” Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe says. “This is going to get closer and closer to the real thing.” The goal is improved tracking that directly mirrors individual finger movement in real-time. That, in turn, will open the doors for developers to create new gameplay experiences we’ve yet to see in any format.
These motion tracking controllers won’t be available for the Rift at launch. But when they do release later in the year, Oculus plans to inject a new flood of content to take advantage of the new input devices. This could eliminate the post-release slump we typically see with a hardware launch.
SELLING THE ILLUSION
The critical mass of hardware entrants has opened the door for conversations with an ever-growing roster of developers. Many of those discussions are being led by Jason Rubin, who co-founded Uncharted and The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog. Rubin’s job at Oculus as head of worldwide studios is to create a compelling slate of first-party content, managing relationships with studios, and building the crucial launch lineup.
Rubin’s experience as a developer and studio head gives weight to his enthusiasm for the medium. He sees VR as a massive leap forward for the interactive entertainment industry.
“I have been in the game industry for 30 years, and at various times, we’ve gotten new platforms. This one is the most different from any previous platform that I’ve ever seen,” Rubin says. “So when you were going from arcade to Apple II or Apple II to early console or early consoles to later consoles or later consoles to 3D – that was a big shift, that was a big one – 3D to high-end 3D and to touch – that was a big one, too, going to mobile platforms. This is the biggest jump ever. Any game maker would know the minute you see this thing that this is going to be huge. It’s going to change the way games are played and viewed and change the types of games that are out there.”
Rubin says software innovation in the VR space is currently outpacing development cycles, such that new techniques are emerging before studios are even able to complete a single game.
“There’s already been three generations of displayed improvement,” Rubin says. “The first was shooting as a turret, standing in place. That was Damaged Core at E3. The second iteration, we had Touch controllers shooting at things. You could think of Arizona Sunshine, which is coming out on both of our platforms, where you’re standing in place and zombies are coming at you, but now the guns are in your hands. That was a second generation first-person shooter. The third generation of firstperson shooter is Bullet Train, which we showed at Oculus Connect. You are now moving, but you’re moving in warps. I’ve seen the fourth generation of first-person shooter that allows you to control yourself a lot more like current-generation first-person shooters. All of that has happened in a year, and we haven’t even released the hardware.”
On day one, users will have a breadth of genres and intensities from which to choose. The launch lineup will check some of the boxes that we expect from console launches, but Oculus isn’t ready to commit to a specific set of titles. We do know that Three One Zero’s Adr1ft and Sanzaru’s VR Sports Challenge will be among them, though.
Rubin sees the launch lineup as the beginning of a dialogue with consumers. Developers and platform holders are listening and learning what gamers take to in order to better understand what works and what doesn’t in this new media format.
“For our launch lineup, I look to create a wide variety of experiences and test out all of the things we can think of in a reasonable amount of time that might make people really excited in VR,” Rubin says. “That way we can see what people take to and what people don’t take to, but give enough of a variety that something will be exciting. It would have been easy to say, ‘Here are three genres. Let’s hit ‘em really hard. Let’s put all our effort in these three genres.’ We would have been giving up on a lot of things that might have been interesting.”
Much of what we’re seeing early on are relatively short games when compared to their console counterparts, but Rubin expects it won’t be terribly long before we start seeing the huge experiences to which gamers are accustomed. He tells us that we’ll see the equivalents of Skyrim and World of Warcraft before we know it.
“They’re coming. There’s absolutely no question that they’re coming,” Rubin says. “When they come, they’ll be that much more immersive and that much more involving than the Skyrims and the WoWs, because those are looking into another world through a window. Now you’re going to be stepping into that world yourself.”
They won’t be exact translations of the 2D immersive experiences; some elements simply don’t translate well. For instance, one of the first experiences many people have in Skyrim is an attack by a pack of wolves. That kind of intimate violence won’t work in virtual reality.
“The language of VR is being built. There will be things that we don’t do,” Rubin says. “We won’t have you whip around and get thrashed, because that’s an uncomfortable feeling. However, there will be very good ways of showing you’ve been attacked by a wolf. The same way that when you’re sniped in Battlefield, you get the red in the corner. What the hell is the red? In real life, what is the red? It makes no sense, but you never think about that. It just is the way you represent it in a game like that. We will have ways to represent the wolf that don’t make you uncomfortable but are accepted as being eaten by a wolf.”
For those that prefer to test out tech demos and unproven ideas, Oculus will continue to operate its experimental Share platform. It will exist under a new name, though: Oculus Concepts. This breeding ground for innovation will continue to play host to in-development games, tech demos, and concept pieces.
It will continue to be a resource for the development community and a playground for end-users. However, Rubin doesn’t believe anyone will feel compelled to go there because of a lack of curated, complete content.
“My goal is that you won’t go to Concepts unless that’s what you’re in for and that’s your thing. There should be enough top-line content in our store to keep you interested and busy. Having said that, if you’re the kind of person that likes experimenting on the edges and going beyond ‘I like to see all types of games,’ but really want to get out there and see what’s being worked on even if it’s not fully polished and a little rough around the edges because you’re curious about game making, that’s where Concepts come in.”
FULFILLING THE PROMISE
In just a few months, Oculus will bring its carefully cultivated vision to the masses. A number of signifi cant questions still remain, including the price.
We know that those looking to purchase a new computer with an Oculus Rift will be able to spend less than $1,500. Oculus plans to release bundles, but Iribe assures us that those who would prefer to build their own PC can do so for significantly less than that price point. Oculus recommends a system using a Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290 video card or better, Intel i5-4590 processor equivalent or better, 8GB+ of RAM, compatible HDMI 1.3 video output, two USB 3.0 ports, and Windows 7 SP1 or newer.
The unknown of the standalone cost is a major factor keeping the technology at arm’s length from even early adopters, but Oculus isn’t alone in remaining quiet about that crucial detail. The company also has to make the case for virtual reality to those that have never experienced it or even understand why it’s something they might want to bring into their homes.
“I think a lot of people will get it at friends’ houses who are early adopters,” says Iribe. “It’s like where you get 4K TV for the first time. You get it at a friend’s house who is an enthusiast.”
Likewise, retailers are going to be a big part of giving people their first virtual reality experiences, but that means going through the expense of training in-store associates on how to best demo the technology and eventually the Touch controllers, carving out retail space for the products, and ensuring a level of comfort for customers. Iribe says that short, stationary demos (like those that premiered with the Crescent Bay prototype at Oculus Connect in 2014) are a good way to introduce people to immersive media.
The fact that there are three major competitors entering the market within months, possibly weeks, doesn’t concern Oculus. Whether someone tries PlayStation VR, Rift, or Vive first doesn’t matter as much as that person coming away wanting more.
“There is a very small audience of people that are already going to buy VR, that are already totally convinced. We are really only competing amongst each other for those people,” Luckey says. “The bigger battle is this huge, vast community of people that don’t know what VR is, have never heard of it, or they’ve heard of it but don’t know why they’d want to use it. Those are the people that we’re trying to get to understand VR.”
While Oculus isn’t planning to directly compete in earnest in the early days, it might be because it has major competitive advantages. The ability to innovate and iterate quickly because of being based on PC means it’s more nimble than Sony. The flexible room requirements that are enabled by a single camera rather than Valve’s two sensors requiring mounting or intrusive tripods makes Rift less daunting for consumers.
The biggest challenge is getting as many people into a VR demo as possible. Figuring out how best to do that is the key for the medium, and one all three major competitors are working together to solve.
PORTABLE VR YOU CAN BUY NOW
While Rift is the crown jewel of Oculus’ current portfolio, the company has already struck first thanks to a partnership with Samsung. The mobile phone maker released its portable Gear VR headset to retail in November.
Priced at $99, Gear VR supports all of Samsung’s 2015 flagship phones, regardless of size. For those that already own one, this is an affordable foray into virtual reality. It won’t match the experience that Rift offers, though.
The key difference? Gear VR has no positional tracking, because there is no external camera to interpret movement in real three-dimensional space. This means you can’t lean into the world and you won’t see a change in elevation translated onto the display.
You can play games with the built in trackpad, though some require a Bluetooth controller. Samsung also offers virtual tourism apps, 360-degree photos, and immersive video options. For those who like what they see, Gear VR may pave the way for Oculus to convert customers to Rift.
Gear VR is just the first portable solution. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey believes we’ll eventually untether as mobile and home virtual reality converge.
“The best VR devices are going to be the ones that were designed specifically for VR from the start,” he says. “I think [Google] Cardboard, Gear VR, or any of these other solutions work really well. But until you’re building displays that are VR-specific, optics that are VR-specific, and even system-on-a-chip with render that is VR-specific, you’re not going to get to that sunglasses form factor. You’re going to end up with things that are always a series of compromises. In the long-run, I think that this is all going to converge on a single type of device that’s either something you wear all the time or something you carry all the time like we carry our phones.”
XBOX ONE INTEGRATION
In addition to a partnership with Microsoft that packages an Xbox One controller and wireless adapter with every Rift, the duo have teamed up for virtual console gaming. You can already stream Xbox One to Windows 10. When you add a Rift to the mix, you can bring the experience into a virtual theater.
Don’t expect to wander Fallout 4’s wasteland in 360-degree space or climb the mountains of Siberia alongside Lara Croft, though. Instead, you are seated in a simulated auditorium, with the Xbox One image projected on a virtual two-dimensional surface.
The advantage of doing this in virtual reality is the ability to customize your play space. You can adjust the screen size to huge proportions, and even pick your seat in the auditorium.
Sitting in the back of the virtual theater while playing Call of Duty could give you a better perspective on the action and prevent you from getting surprised. Getting closer for a racing game may allow the windshield to fill your field of view. And for strategy fans, being able to see the subtle animations and gruesome deaths as you execute tactical brilliance may make sitting in the front row worthwhile.
The potential for these experiences come into focus when you con sider social and multiplayer experiences. Down the road, you might be able to sit next to the avatar of a distant friend on a virtual couch. Each of you might see your own screen in full view, bringing together the best of split-screen gaming with a buddy without sacrificing television real estate. This won’t happen right away, but the possibility for enhanced social gaming experiences are immense.
BIG PUBLISHERS: MOVE NOW OR WAIT?
Virtual reality is likely to be driven primarily by small developers willing to take the risk on a commercially untested medium. Publishers like Activision, EA, and Take-Two are holding off on announcing virtual reality projects to see how consumers take to the hardware.
Even those that aren’t diving in right now have let analysts know that they’re watching the market closely. EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated in October he is personally very bullish on the technology. Take-Two is in the research and development phase, suggesting that should the market develop, it will be ready to participate.
Others have decided to strike early in hopes of planting a flag in the space and establishing profitable franchises early. Ubisoft has already shared its concepts with the media and committed to a PlayStation VR project, with a compatible version of this year’s Trackmania Turbo.
Capcom has confirmed that its core Resident Evil team is focusing on virtual reality projects, and Square Enix plans to explore the medium. The Final Fantasy publisher appeared on a list of partners at Oculus’ E3 2015 press conference.
Unity CEO John Riccitiello urges developers to temper their expectations. “All of you that are content creators, you should creatively experiment a lot and don’t rush,” he said at a recent VR event in San Francisco. “It’s not a consumer market. You’re not going to make any money in 2016 on dollars per unit or units per dollar. It’s going to be slow next year. Take your time to build something so cool that it has a chance to be the beginning of something when you iterate a second or third time.”
Analysts disagree over the potential of virtual reality at retail. Superdata research predicts the segment will be worth $5.1 billion by the end of 2016, with software representing $6.1 billion of a total $8.9 billion for the virtual reality market the following year. Investment bank Piper Jaffray is significantly more conservative, expecting VR content to be a much slower burn. The firm believes gaming, film, live event viewership, and other content will reach $5.8 billion in 2025.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter sees Hollywood as the future for the format, not gaming. Speaking at the Cloud Gaming Summit, he suggested that $500 or $1,000 headsets will languish on retail shelves. He believes a significantly lower price point is necessary for adoption.
BUILDING THE METAVERSE
In addition to game content, virtual travel, and educational opportunities, virtual reality has the capacity to revolutionize how we communicate. Luckey believes virtual reality marks a significant divergence from the trend in human interaction.
“VR is the first communication technology in a long time that wasn’t designed to make communication more convenient or cheaper. It’s designed to make it better,” he says. “I really think that VR is going to make for the most human digital communication that we can possibly have. I believe we’re going to get to the point where it’s as real as real life in many scenarios. Clearly that’s going to be a better form of communication than even the best of what we have today.”
In order for us to get there though, VR pioneers are going to need to first envision and then build a space for people to congregate. Right now, no one knows what shape that will take. The science-fiction envisioning of the metaverse is a glorious concept, but may not be what we’ll actually want to use for practical communication.
“I don’t think anyone has a cohesive vision for how the metaverse is going to play out,” Luckey says. “It would be like someone in the ‘80s trying to predict the modern Internet. It truly was inconceivable, a lot of these things. We get bits and pieces of it that we know are going to happen, like we know we’re going to have collaborative, shared spaces. We know we’re going to be jumping from experience to experience. We know that eventually there’s going to be things that merge the real world with the virtual world seamlessly. We don’t know exactly how we’re going to use those capabilities, though.”
One of the big challenges for reaching a point in which VR communication becomes commonplace is in how people will be represented digitally. The uncanny valley, roboticist Masahiro Mori’s explanation for why close-but-not-perfect human faces are disquieting for humans, remains a hurdle for programmers, but one potentially close to a solution.
Nvidia debuted its Face Works demo nearly three years ago, marking massive advancements in rendering human faces. The challenge right now is having computing power that allows high fidelity facial representations to exist alongside other assets. Luckey tells us it’s a matter of resource allocation, and developers have to balance realistic avatars with gameplay, environment, effects, and everything else that requires computational power.
When we do reach the point at which computers are up to the task, Luckey believes many will not choose realistic representations. As people often do in contemporary character creators, users will embrace the fantasy.
“People want to play as something better. They want to be better than they are in real life,” he says. “In VR, you’re going to see an extension of that. People will represent themselves as who they want to be or who they think themselves as rather than how they are physically.”