Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, they're and welcome to text stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren And today we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about something that, uh technology that really made a
Speaker 1: big splash in late two thousand twelves and really in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, something that got a lot of people excited.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say it kicks started the virtual
Speaker 1: reality craze again in the US. Oh my goodness, the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift. So yes, and as of June they announced
Speaker 1: that they had just raised sixteen million in private funding
Speaker 1: steen million dollars, which isn't shabby for a company run
Speaker 1: by a twenty year old guy. Okay, let's not focus
Speaker 1: on how young this guy is. Now, that's amazing, that's
Speaker 1: that's This is a tinkerer, who is who is of
Speaker 1: the people and uh eighteen years younger than I am. Oi. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he really is. Though. He's one of those guys who
Speaker 1: worked out of his garage messing with stuff that interested
Speaker 1: him and was able to leverage that into something that
Speaker 1: is really taking at least one section of the gaming
Speaker 1: world by storm. So we were will be talking a
Speaker 1: lot about video games but in this case, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a peripheral for video games. So all of you
Speaker 1: people out there who hate video game topics, this is
Speaker 1: still cool. It's virtual reality. Now, before we get into
Speaker 1: a discussion about Oculus Rift and particularly, I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention just sort of a history of virtual reality. Uh,
Speaker 1: kind of Jonathan's history of virtual reality. So this isn't
Speaker 1: in our notes or anything. This is from my own
Speaker 1: personal experimpletely unofficial. He is making it up as he
Speaker 1: goes along. Dinosaurs will be involved. Okay, well actually yes,
Speaker 1: well technically it's not a dinosaur. Pterodactyl is not a dinosaur,
Speaker 1: but it's close. Um, so virtual reality. For those of
Speaker 1: you who were alive in the nineties and remember this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that it started to really kind of
Speaker 1: get buzz in the early to mid nineties. This was
Speaker 1: one of those terms that was promising to turn computing
Speaker 1: on its head. It was changing the way we thought
Speaker 1: about computers. It was gonna be immersive. You were going
Speaker 1: to be surrounded by the computer data. You would be
Speaker 1: part of this experience. It would no longer be this
Speaker 1: separation that was created by a screen and a keyboard
Speaker 1: and a mouse and this was partially due to science fiction.
Speaker 1: It was largely due to science fiction. Yeah, because because
Speaker 1: the actual technology at the time was not not up
Speaker 1: to part none note up to the expectations that were
Speaker 1: generated as a result of both science fiction. Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously Hollywood had a big deal with how this was
Speaker 1: portrayed and and it was never really realistic in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood version. Also, if you watch any of those movies
Speaker 1: that had a lot of virtual reality elements to them,
Speaker 1: they look awful by today's standards when you talk about
Speaker 1: the ethics quality, Well, there were showcases of that early
Speaker 1: computer generated right, but it was still even though they
Speaker 1: look horrible by today's standards, they still looked amazing compared
Speaker 1: to what was what we were capable of doing with
Speaker 1: virtual reality at that time. Also, it was really expensive
Speaker 1: because this was all a technology that had to be
Speaker 1: built from the ground up, specifically for the purpose of
Speaker 1: virtual reality. Now here's a hard, cold fact about technology.
Speaker 1: If you're designing something that is brand new, as in
Speaker 1: no one has built this kind of stuff before, there's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money that goes into that to
Speaker 1: to build development enormous amount of money, and virtual reality
Speaker 1: did not you know, it generated a lot of buzz
Speaker 1: which was good in the early days, but then the
Speaker 1: reaction to what was actually possible was such that a
Speaker 1: lot of that interest and a lot of the support
Speaker 1: drained away very very quickly. So you're left with these
Speaker 1: people who were doing valuable work in the field of
Speaker 1: virtual reality, but because there was this bubble that burst
Speaker 1: early on in the development of the technology itself and
Speaker 1: the industry, they were left with very little to work
Speaker 1: with once that bubble went away. So also, I feel
Speaker 1: like at the time, people we were focused on the
Speaker 1: entertainment issues of it and weren't really thinking forward to
Speaker 1: um um, to the possible medical purposing and and therapy purposing.
Speaker 1: At least anyone outside the actual industry was not seeing
Speaker 1: those that. You know, there were people who are working
Speaker 1: in the industry who's actually saw some really cool applications,
Speaker 1: some of which we have actually seen happen over the
Speaker 1: course of the several years that have in between when
Speaker 1: virtual reality was a buzzword and today. But people who
Speaker 1: were looking at it from the outside the general consumer,
Speaker 1: they were looking at it as video games or sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, I think it got pigeonholed, is all I'm saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were there was a smaller, smaller segment who were
Speaker 1: thinking virtual sex, and but I mean those were like
Speaker 1: the those were like the two applications. It was either
Speaker 1: you were playing a game or you were having some
Speaker 1: sort of weird virtual romantic internal Yeah. Yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: scene in Demolition Man happened. Yeah that was a thing. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it was a thing. Uh if you if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen that, I don't necessarily recommend it for for a
Speaker 1: snipe standard book picture. You know, it's it's it's fun,
Speaker 1: it's a fun film. I'm not anyway. So anyway, getting
Speaker 1: getting back into virtual reality so to speak. Uh, So,
Speaker 1: as time went on, the virtual reality community began to
Speaker 1: really like the people who are really working on trying
Speaker 1: to develop things like sophisticated head tracking technology, sophisticated display technology,
Speaker 1: and input various user interfaces. Uh. What they began to
Speaker 1: do was they began to appropriate stuff from other industries,
Speaker 1: mostly the video game industry, because video games were progressing
Speaker 1: and they were starting to introduce new types of controllers. So,
Speaker 1: for example, when the Nintendo WE launched and they had
Speaker 1: the WE control with the multiple access gyroscopes in it
Speaker 1: that allowed for very specific kinds of interaction with the console,
Speaker 1: the video, or the virtual environment. By now it's called
Speaker 1: virtual environment's not virtual reality. Because virtual reality had sort
Speaker 1: of a stigma attached to it. The virtual environment, people
Speaker 1: were thinking, why don't we take that, like literally, we'll
Speaker 1: go out and buy a Nintendo We and take apart
Speaker 1: the controller and use the technology in the controller to
Speaker 1: help develop our stuff, because it's less expensive than developing
Speaker 1: one on our own or buying one of these very
Speaker 1: specific types of parts that are only made for virtual reality.
Speaker 1: So that kind of sets the scene for what happens
Speaker 1: with the Oculus Rift. So let's go and first we'll
Speaker 1: just talk about what the Oculus Rift is. It is
Speaker 1: a headset that has two screens in the headset, one
Speaker 1: screen for each eye. The two screens both render a
Speaker 1: very similar image from a from a game. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: casual glance, you would think that it's the same picture,
Speaker 1: but but they're from very very slightly different angles, just
Speaker 1: like your eyes are to right right to to give
Speaker 1: the illusion of depth when your brain puts the two
Speaker 1: inches together. Yeah, and we'll talk more about what's actually
Speaker 1: going on there a little bit later in the podcast.
Speaker 1: So it's this headset and it has motion tracking. Uh,
Speaker 1: so essentially your head's motions are interpreted by by hardware
Speaker 1: in this headset, sent to a computer that is taking
Speaker 1: that as input and then processing it within a game
Speaker 1: engine of some sort and sending back the response, so
Speaker 1: that the images you see are based upon the movements
Speaker 1: you're making, right, I mean that's basic head tracking technology.
Speaker 1: But it was and it's this is this is what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me. This is not new, Like I said this,
Speaker 1: this started way back in the nineties, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the software side was very primitive, and so the
Speaker 1: pictures you would get would be very very basic. Like
Speaker 1: and when I said that whole pterodactyl thing, one of
Speaker 1: the early games was your this blocky figure moving around
Speaker 1: a blocky landscape being chased by a blocky pterodactyl and
Speaker 1: you had to just kind of run around and try
Speaker 1: and shoot other people using a blocky gun that fired
Speaker 1: get ready for it blocks. Uh, it was not it
Speaker 1: was not that immersive. I mean, it was interesting that
Speaker 1: your head could move, you know, it did track your motions,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't immersive in the sense that you felt
Speaker 1: anything was realistic. And there was a latency issue and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about latency later. To latency is like the
Speaker 1: death sentence for virtual reality systems. So, uh, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a new idea, but this was a new way of
Speaker 1: of approaching it, and it was all made possible by
Speaker 1: other industries. It wasn't the fact at the virtual reality
Speaker 1: industry had advanced to a huge degree. It was because
Speaker 1: of things like smartphones and tablets. So let's talk about um,
Speaker 1: kind of one of the most famous failures in virtual
Speaker 1: reality first, because because this is one that uh, the
Speaker 1: founder of Oculus, Palmer Lucky has mentioned before, which is
Speaker 1: also from Nintendo. Yeah, the Virtual Boy back in nine.
Speaker 1: This was one that the little headset would display red
Speaker 1: vector graphics. I think maybe not the first, but one
Speaker 1: of the first games to feature Warrio was on the
Speaker 1: Virtual Boy. Uh. So he was able to survive the
Speaker 1: Virtual Boy, even if the product itself did not survive
Speaker 1: very long. Time magazine gave it a review that was
Speaker 1: not positive. They actually said that, uh, that it was
Speaker 1: migrain inducing and uh. And so there was a lot
Speaker 1: of bad press about the Virtual Boy and it didn't
Speaker 1: sell terribly well. It was one of the tech's biggest flops.
Speaker 1: I remember it being a blip on on on my
Speaker 1: radar and then almost immediately disappearing right up there with
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Power Glove. Oh yeah, if you had the
Speaker 1: power Glove and a virtual boy, you are a huge
Speaker 1: Nintendo fan. You look like a cyborg, but you're probably
Speaker 1: throwing up a lot, and you maybe had two games
Speaker 1: to play. Yeah, it's also true. So Palmer Lucky, he
Speaker 1: looks back on this history of virtual reality and he
Speaker 1: is absolutely fascinated by it and wants to get involved
Speaker 1: in it. But let's learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: who he is. First, Like you said, Lauren, he's twenty
Speaker 1: years old right as of right this very moment. Um.
Speaker 1: He's uh, he's he's from Irvine, California. Um, he self
Speaker 1: identifies as a hacker maker both both at the same time. Probably. Um,
Speaker 1: he was homeschooled. His dad's a car salesman. I believe. Okay,
Speaker 1: he went to as you know, he for school for
Speaker 1: for college. He was actually studying journalism. He in fact
Speaker 1: said that one of the things he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: He was always interested in taking things apart and learning
Speaker 1: how they worked and then trying to put them back together.
Speaker 1: And you know, he had kind of typical smart kids
Speaker 1: success rate at things still working when they were put
Speaker 1: back together after he had taken him apart. But he um.
Speaker 1: He said that he wanted to go to journalism school
Speaker 1: to learn to become a writer, so that he could
Speaker 1: tell people he could write articles, like really good articles
Speaker 1: to explain how stuff works. He wanted my job, Palmer
Speaker 1: Lucky wanted my job. Well, I'm really glad that he
Speaker 1: took his own job instead of ours. Yeah, because we'd
Speaker 1: be all of a job and neither of us would
Speaker 1: have in been a the Oculus rift. Fact. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he his plan b ended up ended up being a
Speaker 1: lot more successful. Being pretty okay, Um, but yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was. He was into some some interesting pursuits as
Speaker 1: a child. Originally it was all about blowing stuff up,
Speaker 1: shocking stuff or setting it on fire, like like like
Speaker 1: Tesla coil guns. I read about some where oil guns.
Speaker 1: He built coil guns as a kid. He actually said
Speaker 1: at one in one interviews, it's a miracle I am
Speaker 1: still alive because he was building stuff like anything that
Speaker 1: would involve destruction through electronics was really fascinating to him.
Speaker 1: Typical kids can't can't blame him, you know, like probably
Speaker 1: like some little I don't want to be an armchair psychologist,
Speaker 1: but in general I notice that kids and I do not.
Speaker 1: I don't separate myself from here, have occasionally power fantasies
Speaker 1: because so much of their life is held determined by
Speaker 1: other people exactly. So this is sort of a self determination,
Speaker 1: self empowerment kind of things. Some of us focus on
Speaker 1: dinosaurs because dinosaurs are bigger than our parents and therefore
Speaker 1: are more powerful. Some of us focus on tesla coil
Speaker 1: guns that can melt our parents faces off if we
Speaker 1: ever had that desire, which, by the way, he did not.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, he was not. He was not planning
Speaker 1: on on zapping people. He just wanted to build stuff
Speaker 1: hold us anyway, well as far as we know, but
Speaker 1: he did. He did wind up doing something constructive as well.
Speaker 1: He uh, he started up an iPhone repair business, didn't he. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sure did. As a teenager. He began to when
Speaker 1: the iPhone came out. He was fascinated with that. Immediately
Speaker 1: he took one apart and learned really what made it work.
Speaker 1: And so he because of his his practical knowledge of
Speaker 1: electronics that was you know, largely self taught, he ended
Speaker 1: up having a successful iPhone repair business. He also would
Speaker 1: jailbreak people's iPhones so if they wanted to have an
Speaker 1: iPhone that could run other types of stuff on it
Speaker 1: that rather than just what Apple would allow you to
Speaker 1: run with whatever. Yeah, he would actually do that for
Speaker 1: a fee, and apparently it was pretty successful, so so
Speaker 1: successful that he might have made a round thirty six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in a single year like this, Wow, which
Speaker 1: you know, as a teenager, it's a pretty good salary
Speaker 1: consider many humans, that's a pretty good salary for for
Speaker 1: for something like this is this is his version of
Speaker 1: a lemonade stand. That's a pretty successful lemonade stand. Yes,
Speaker 1: as of two thousand nine, when he was sixteen, I
Speaker 1: believe that was when he began looking into purchasing virtual
Speaker 1: reality equipment. That's when he kind of had had had
Speaker 1: been online and had seen some stuff and was getting
Speaker 1: interested in the subject, right, And and that was also
Speaker 1: he's done interviews where he's talked about how the industry
Speaker 1: changed dramatically, like back in the early days. Besides things
Speaker 1: like Nintendo's Virtual Boy, which were really the exception, those
Speaker 1: were the few. There were only a few things that
Speaker 1: were ever consumer based technologies that the average person was
Speaker 1: would be expected to purchase right right, even today a
Speaker 1: few years later, the very low end virtual reality equipment
Speaker 1: runs around a thousand bucks of pop I think um
Speaker 1: and and a lot of it um. A lot of
Speaker 1: the more professional gear was running up near a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand bucks. In fact, one of the things he found,
Speaker 1: he found a piece of virtual reality equipment that was
Speaker 1: pretty rare and at the time it was first produced
Speaker 1: cost ninety seven thousand dollars. He bought it for eighty
Speaker 1: seven bucks because again, the VR industry just kind of
Speaker 1: peter out. Yeah, so he was really interested to seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, in seeing how these things worked, how did
Speaker 1: they track head head motion, how did they feed video
Speaker 1: in and a lot of these early early VR equipment
Speaker 1: pieces are enormous, right, They require things like some kind
Speaker 1: of rig Exactly, they require a rig so that their
Speaker 1: support because if you were to just wear it yourself,
Speaker 1: it would be so heavy as to be uncomfortable. Some
Speaker 1: of them would be too heavy for you to even
Speaker 1: effectively move your head. So a lot of them would
Speaker 1: have these rigs that would allow you to have suspension
Speaker 1: from from like uh uh, not the ceiling, but it
Speaker 1: would the rig itself would extend beyond where you would stand,
Speaker 1: and there'd be cords that would help support the weight
Speaker 1: of the helmet, so you wouldn't have full three hundred
Speaker 1: sixty degree motion either. If you were to try and
Speaker 1: turn all the way around, eventually those those chords start
Speaker 1: to wrap up. Yeah, and you'd have to turn back
Speaker 1: the other way. So he was interested in purchasing as
Speaker 1: many of these as possible to learn what made him tick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was thinking about creating more immersive game
Speaker 1: interfaces and uh and inexperiences and but but none of
Speaker 1: this stuff was really what he was looking for. He
Speaker 1: was he was kind of hoping to salvage something together
Speaker 1: for himself, honestly, and um, and none of it was
Speaker 1: working right, So, but he learned a lot during this period, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um. In As of twenty eleven, he was working
Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies,
Speaker 1: which I believe is in military associated facility at the
Speaker 1: stuff they did was for the military. Specifically, he was
Speaker 1: working in the Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy Program UM sometimes
Speaker 1: called Virtual IRAQ, which helps veterans who have PTSD use
Speaker 1: VR therapy to to get over their post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is one of the most fascinating uses
Speaker 1: for virtual reality. And I've I've actually talked to there
Speaker 1: was Um, there are people over at Emery, and there
Speaker 1: are people over at Duke who run labs that use
Speaker 1: this kind of approach, and I've talked about it for
Speaker 1: use with PTSD. Have also talked about it for use
Speaker 1: with things like phobias, and the idea is it's this
Speaker 1: immersion therapy where you immerse a person into certain situations
Speaker 1: that might trigger anxiety or stress, but they are they
Speaker 1: know that they are in a safe environment. They know
Speaker 1: ultimately deep down that they are perfectly safe, that they
Speaker 1: are not really in that. But it's immersive enough for
Speaker 1: people who have a severe fear of flying. I've heard
Speaker 1: that it's extremely successful. Something something along the lines of
Speaker 1: you could do a virtual visit to an airport. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is that the scientists have discovered
Speaker 1: that the graphics do not have to be photo realistic
Speaker 1: at all. They don't have to be you know, to
Speaker 1: the point where you would look at something and things
Speaker 1: that's identifiable as Dullest International Airport, for example, you might
Speaker 1: look at and just say there's a building and there's
Speaker 1: the representation of a plane next to it. That's the airport.
Speaker 1: And once you get into the immersive environment, which usually
Speaker 1: takes around half a minute to a minute long for
Speaker 1: you to really get acclimated, assuming that everything is working
Speaker 1: properly on the technical end, then you start to have
Speaker 1: the actual physical reactions you would if you were in
Speaker 1: the real situation. So, for example, one about a fear
Speaker 1: of heights. I remember specifically reading about this, actually talking
Speaker 1: about this to some of the people at Duke and
Speaker 1: Emory Um. You might have a simulation where you're on
Speaker 1: the top of a tall building. The building does not
Speaker 1: necessarily look like a real building. I mean, it might
Speaker 1: look like almost a cartoonish example, but the person would
Speaker 1: start to have that same physiological response as if they
Speaker 1: were in the real situation. And it was part of
Speaker 1: this this uh this therapy to expose oneself to these
Speaker 1: situations in a safe environment to get acclimated. It's the
Speaker 1: psychological principle of facing fears. Essentially, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: more technical terminology and there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of other elements to this therapy. Obviously that you don't
Speaker 1: want it to just be cruel and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I heard you're scared of spiders. Here's a big Harry spider.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not therapy, that's cruelty. It's it's extremely
Speaker 1: guided therapy. And and there are many parts of it
Speaker 1: and uh, but but it's excellent, really interesting work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Lucky was working on this. He was this
Speaker 1: was part of the stuff that that he was involved in.
Speaker 1: And he he will be the first to tell you,
Speaker 1: by the way, he's a hardware guy. He's not a
Speaker 1: software guy. And in fact, there's some great interviews that
Speaker 1: he's done with other members of the software community, of
Speaker 1: the video game community where he says the success of
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift, the early success that has had before,
Speaker 1: it's not even a consumer product yet as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. It there's developer kits that are
Speaker 1: out and that's about it. Yeah, you cannot, you cannot
Speaker 1: as a consumer by this and expect to use it.
Speaker 1: With a ton of games there right now, there are
Speaker 1: two games that are really I think I think three
Speaker 1: as as of this podcast. Okay, so the third one
Speaker 1: has has recently joined in the past week, but it's
Speaker 1: not like, you can't plug it into your console either.
Speaker 1: This is PC only right now, with the hope that
Speaker 1: maybe one day it'll it'll be available for multiple platforms
Speaker 1: at any rate. He he actually says, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: point blank, he says, the success of this would not
Speaker 1: exist without the software side. But that's not my world.
Speaker 1: I can't program, I can build this hardware, so uh
Speaker 1: he he really was using that expertise while working over
Speaker 1: at the Southern California's Institute for Creative Technology, right, and
Speaker 1: he threw I think and he was a member of
Speaker 1: a couple of forums, the names of which I am
Speaker 1: completely forgetting. So somebody right in and tell me correct
Speaker 1: my complete lack of a word to give you, Mr Lucky.
Speaker 1: First of all, I object to have to call you Mr.
Speaker 1: You're eighteen years younger than I am. But if you're listening,
Speaker 1: just to just right in and tell us what they were. Um.
Speaker 1: And he developed this plan um too. You know, he
Speaker 1: really wanted to build a kind of kind of a
Speaker 1: personal hobbyist kit of VR headsets and do it yourself. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so he planned a Kickstarter to just create a
Speaker 1: hundred enthusiast kits. Um. You know that that you know,
Speaker 1: contributors would would get the pieces of a virtual reality
Speaker 1: headset and put it together themselves and be able to
Speaker 1: play around with it. And um but but this got
Speaker 1: the attention of John Carmack. Yeah. And if you don't
Speaker 1: know that name, then you haven't been playing a lot
Speaker 1: of ID softwares games. Yes, he's the co founder of
Speaker 1: ID Software. He was the lead programmer on like Wolfenstein
Speaker 1: three D and quick game games. Okay it was the
Speaker 1: series was just the first one wasn't a very good
Speaker 1: Quake player. So like, once multiplayer got into introduced and
Speaker 1: I realized that, hey, people react very differently than computer
Speaker 1: controlled bad guys, my my kill death ratio was out
Speaker 1: the window. I'm not. What I'm saying is I'm not
Speaker 1: good at these games and what and what? And furthermore,
Speaker 1: that you don't like games that you can't be better
Speaker 1: than other people at Oh I hate that. That's just
Speaker 1: in general. By the way, if you ever have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to play a game with me, just turn it down.
Speaker 1: Just and I'm including like board games, card games, maybe
Speaker 1: a role playing game that I mean, if you're playing Clue,
Speaker 1: do you just flip the table at some point? Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm very good at clue. I am really good at clue.
Speaker 1: But so he got the attention of John Carmack, um
Speaker 1: and uh and and and Carmack was kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: so this is pretty cool. Can I buy one of
Speaker 1: these kids from you? And and Lucky was like, I
Speaker 1: can give you one of those, no problem. Um. So
Speaker 1: so Lucky sent him a prototype and Karmac just ran
Speaker 1: with it. He demoed it um with Doom three b
Speaker 1: F G at E three right, and that that made
Speaker 1: everybody think, Wow, I have never experienced Doom like this.
Speaker 1: This is a really immersive first person shooter experience. The
Speaker 1: VR is working. Uh, it is uh exciting. Where can
Speaker 1: I get one of these? Right? It exploded and I
Speaker 1: mean everyone was excited about it. Yeah. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: getting back to this idea of the developer Kit one units,
Speaker 1: what that reminds me of is Wozniak in Jobs, because
Speaker 1: the very first Apple computer was essentially the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, like we'll send you the parts, you build
Speaker 1: a case, and you've got yourself a computer. That was
Speaker 1: the Apple one. So that's exactly what palm Are Lucky was.
Speaker 1: He that was kind of like that was he was like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be like a little side hobby for me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this. And at this point where the
Speaker 1: press gets a chance to see it and Carmack he
Speaker 1: sees the potential for this, well beyond a hobbyist you know,
Speaker 1: tiny tiny project. He sees this has potential to be
Speaker 1: a legitimate video game peripheral. And this was a goofy prototype.
Speaker 1: I mean there, you know it's I'm I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that he was like duct taping straps to it so
Speaker 1: that people could demo it at e three. So right,
Speaker 1: this was a little jankie. I'd like to say, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the technical professional term. So what was Lucky's
Speaker 1: reaction to this sudden increase and interest and the possibility
Speaker 1: of actually having a feasible company as a result. Um, Basically,
Speaker 1: he dropped out of the journalism program at Cali State University.
Speaker 1: Not a surprise. That's following in the footsteps of so
Speaker 1: many giants in the technology in the street. By the way,
Speaker 1: stay in school kids, not all of us can be
Speaker 1: Palmer Lucky. Right right, you are Palmer Lucky, go ahead,
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you have a genuinely terrific idea
Speaker 1: that has gotten someone of the ilk of John krmack
Speaker 1: interested in you that by all means with life's responsibilities
Speaker 1: like I am. But but so from from this response
Speaker 1: at E three, UM, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the industry started getting into it and UM and
Speaker 1: as soon as they did, he started Lucky started taking
Speaker 1: prototypes to other folks like like the people at Valve, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Gabe Newell example, and uh and and got people like
Speaker 1: Gabe Newell to participate in this new Kickstarter project that
Speaker 1: he was putting together for what we know as the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift today. Yeah, so this is really the founding
Speaker 1: of Oculus as a company. So Oculus is the company
Speaker 1: that is creating the Oculus Rift. And in fact, you
Speaker 1: can think of the Oculus Rift as being their first
Speaker 1: product and um and so now the plan had changed.
Speaker 1: It was no longer going to be let's offer up
Speaker 1: one hundred dev kits that this one guy is personally
Speaker 1: putting all the pieces together, putting them in a box
Speaker 1: and shipping them off to the hundred or so people
Speaker 1: that have backed it. Now it's let's put together a
Speaker 1: plan to create a more um slightly not a consumer
Speaker 1: level product, because it's still like if you take a
Speaker 1: look at one of the Oculus rough headsets. It does
Speaker 1: not look like like a finished product. Yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not sleek and sexy. It's exciting to use, but
Speaker 1: when you look at your like, wow, it looks like
Speaker 1: a black box that you strapped to your face. It
Speaker 1: is because it is. Yeah, that's what it is. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not something that you would think, oh, this
Speaker 1: is something that you could easily market beyond this niche audience. Right.
Speaker 1: The Kickstart fund was for development kits. Right, So the
Speaker 1: goal of that Kickstart fund was about two was exactly
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty thousand dollars, two hundred fifty dollars. So, Lauren,
Speaker 1: tell me, did they make it? They made it times ten,
Speaker 1: approximately four hours. They had already made the gold and
Speaker 1: then went went on to raise precisely two million, four
Speaker 1: hundred thirty seven thousand, four hundred and nine dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of money that brought in. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, so's it makes it one of Kickstar's big
Speaker 1: success stories, right right up there with some the I
Speaker 1: mean clearly not on the level of say the pebble,
Speaker 1: but it's it's way up there. It's it's it's on
Speaker 1: the it's on the Holy Cow. Look at what's possible
Speaker 1: into the spectrum as opposed to the AH. So that's
Speaker 1: what really happens when you yes, yeah, they they wind
Speaker 1: up having um nine thousand two backers over seven thousand
Speaker 1: of those where development kit purchases. Right, So it was
Speaker 1: only at certain levels or above that you would actually
Speaker 1: get a developer Yeah. The first one hundred people to
Speaker 1: pledge at the two five level to understan five dollar
Speaker 1: level would receive a developer kit at at a discount,
Speaker 1: because the developer kits in general go at three pop. Right,
Speaker 1: that's how much they are currently selling for on their side.
Speaker 1: If you go to Occulcy, you can, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to, you can buy one of these anyone.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have some kind of paperwork. You
Speaker 1: don't need to know that the password is sword fish.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't need to know what recommend receiving
Speaker 1: a Rabies shot. Yeah, yeah, I'm kidding. No, No, Rabies
Speaker 1: is associated with Oculus raft so far. When we get
Speaker 1: that twenty eight days later video game, you know they'll
Speaker 1: be rage. But at any rate, you get some stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. In here, uh plug, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the three So you can actually buy one of these yourself.
Speaker 1: But if you do that, you do that knowing that
Speaker 1: your your actual use of it's going to be pretty
Speaker 1: limited if you're not a developer. If you are a
Speaker 1: developer and you want to practice, you know, try and
Speaker 1: create stuff that works with the Oculus Rift, clearly that's
Speaker 1: an investment that would make sense for you. If you're
Speaker 1: an average gamer, unless you are intending to play one
Speaker 1: of the three titles that is currently compatible with the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift, it doesn't make sense because it's not, like
Speaker 1: we said, it's not at consumer product level yet. This
Speaker 1: is this is on the way to becoming a consumer product. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so after after one people could back at the two level,
Speaker 1: that was it. It was sort of an early bird
Speaker 1: special and if you weren't part of that, then you
Speaker 1: had to go at three hundred dollars or higher to
Speaker 1: get at least one headset. At the higher levels you
Speaker 1: could actually get more than one headset at a discount.
Speaker 1: So the solution here to to creating a viable product
Speaker 1: is the partnership with developers, the partnership with game companies.
Speaker 1: Because this is kind of like a specialized video display
Speaker 1: that only works with stuff that's been built to work
Speaker 1: with it, So it's not again, it's not like you
Speaker 1: can just plug it in and run any kind of
Speaker 1: software and then you are in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: It has to be optimized for it, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about why when we get into how it's actually working.
Speaker 1: But always important to remind people because it is an
Speaker 1: exciting thing. But I don't want everyone running out and
Speaker 1: dropping three hundred dollars and then being disappointed that they
Speaker 1: can't play, you know, Super Mario and be running through
Speaker 1: and knocking the blocks. Although that would be awesome, That
Speaker 1: would be awesome. Uh So moving on, uh the Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign as a success, we could say that I think
Speaker 1: that's safe to say, it's safe to call it that
Speaker 1: and uh he Lucky would continue to show this off
Speaker 1: at various conferences and conventions. I first heard about this
Speaker 1: when they showed it off at C E S. I
Speaker 1: might have heard about it once or twice beforehand, but
Speaker 1: I I knew that it was present at the showroom
Speaker 1: floor at C Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: play with it. Then I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: play with it until three played the heck out of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that kickstarted campaign had run from August to September,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so so moving up to when um they
Speaker 1: were they were just going like, we have all the money,
Speaker 1: and we have all the support and and let us,
Speaker 1: let us and then they got then they ended up
Speaker 1: getting that the additional private support as well as more
Speaker 1: orders that came in after the kickstarter was um atteen
Speaker 1: they beat out both the PS four Xbox One for
Speaker 1: the Best Hardware Peripheral Game Critics Award. Not surprising, it's
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of potential, and beyond just the
Speaker 1: virtual reality realm, there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are interested in in appropriating some of the same sort
Speaker 1: of technologies that Lucky used to create augmented reality headsets.
Speaker 1: So this would be more like the what we hear
Speaker 1: about the potential for Google Glass or other various glasses
Speaker 1: that are supposed to incorporate augmented reality. At some point,
Speaker 1: they're talking about using something along the same lines as
Speaker 1: the technology used for the Oculus Rift. Not clearly the
Speaker 1: way the Oculus Rift is created with these these screens,
Speaker 1: these solid screens in front of your face. That's not
Speaker 1: ideal for augmented reality glasses. If you're gonna be moving
Speaker 1: around in the real world, because you're not gonna see
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a video representation of the real world
Speaker 1: directly in front of you. I think most people would
Speaker 1: imagine that the augmented reality version would include clear display,
Speaker 1: right that you could see stuff printed on I could.
Speaker 1: I could see a very similar set of technologies going
Speaker 1: towards that kind of display. Um. But but but we'll
Speaker 1: get into bactual technic stuff and just yeah, so some
Speaker 1: other interesting developments happened that one of them absolutely tragic.
Speaker 1: That happened just before E three June one. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: when Andrew Rice, who was one of the graphics engineers,
Speaker 1: one of the original team members that Oculus, was involved
Speaker 1: in a car accident. He was it was actually the
Speaker 1: car was fleeing a police chase when it collided with him,
Speaker 1: and uh, and he passed away as a result of
Speaker 1: that accident. And I mean that was obviously this was
Speaker 1: a very tight small development team, right right, It's it's still, um,
Speaker 1: I believe under thirty people. Yeah, that's that's that's tiny.
Speaker 1: Or when you're talking about something that has it's raising
Speaker 1: sixteen million dollars and has this kind of reach right exactly.
Speaker 1: So obviously that was felt deeply within their their own
Speaker 1: company and across the community. I mean, this was the
Speaker 1: other thing about Oculus was that, uh and and something
Speaker 1: they continued to do. They update regularly, they blog about
Speaker 1: the development process, they blog about the people involved. So
Speaker 1: there were backers who felt you know, personal connections. So
Speaker 1: that was that was a very tragic moment. Um. They
Speaker 1: also on August seven, so not too long before we
Speaker 1: record this podcast. We're recording this in on August fifteen.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, but on August seven, John Carmack stopped
Speaker 1: becoming just an evangelist for the company and started to
Speaker 1: work for the company as the chief technology officer in fact,
Speaker 1: yep CTO and uh he also is uh still continuing
Speaker 1: his work with other companies as well. It's not like
Speaker 1: he's quit everything just to work exclusively for Oculus, but
Speaker 1: now he is on the company payroll. And yeah, as
Speaker 1: of July, they had seventeen thousand developed are Kids out
Speaker 1: so they were actually delivering upon the backing. That's something
Speaker 1: else I should point out. Because their kickstarter kickster has
Speaker 1: a little bit of a I don't know if if
Speaker 1: you could say that Kickster has a tarnished reputation, but
Speaker 1: certain the idea of having a Kickstarter campaign has a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tarnished reputation only because there have
Speaker 1: been cases, particularly when it comes to something like promising
Speaker 1: a particular type of technology, where the delivery has either
Speaker 1: been delayed or even canceled, and it has caused uh
Speaker 1: people to kind of have a negative reaction to Kickstarter
Speaker 1: in general. So this is actually a positive story in
Speaker 1: the sense that here's a company that held the Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign unless than a year later according to their website,
Speaker 1: like yesterday. If if you buy a dev kit right now,
Speaker 1: it'll be shipping sometime in September. That's a pretty quick
Speaker 1: turnaround considering that this is still I'm sure this is
Speaker 1: still one of those things that doesn't have a truly
Speaker 1: seamless manufacturing process yet because it's still in the developers
Speaker 1: um and and they are set to open a Dallas
Speaker 1: office very soon. Yea, possibly right now. Yeah, go check
Speaker 1: you're in Dallas. Let's know if it's open yet. All right,
Speaker 1: So that sets us up. We're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about actually how this thing works, what it's
Speaker 1: doing to create the images you see, and and how
Speaker 1: it tracks your movements. But before we get into all
Speaker 1: those technical details, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So now let's talk about how this
Speaker 1: crazy thing works. We mentioned a little bit about it already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that you see in three D vision with
Speaker 1: your eyeballs is that is that you know they're they're
Speaker 1: slightly offset. They are not in the exact same place
Speaker 1: on your face, because we can't be a cyclops you
Speaker 1: could be if you really tried, yeah, or film misfortune
Speaker 1: befel you. Yes, uh, this this has happened to to
Speaker 1: to some people. There there are many medical conditions in
Speaker 1: which you only have the use of one eye, and
Speaker 1: and that is where you do not get stereoscopic stereo.
Speaker 1: You know, into you can duel yes, um and uh
Speaker 1: and yes so so so combining two images that are
Speaker 1: very slightly offset, your brain goes, I can I can
Speaker 1: see this in three dimensions? Right, So instead of us
Speaker 1: both getting two sets of images, that remain two sets
Speaker 1: of images in our brains, which would be kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting experience, I'm sure, But also maybe disorienting. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this two sets of data get combined into one set,
Speaker 1: and that's what we think of as the world around
Speaker 1: us as far as vision is concerned. So this helps
Speaker 1: us judge things like how close or far away an
Speaker 1: object is. There are other things that helped to like
Speaker 1: like just just comparing the size of something, like I
Speaker 1: know that that Josh Clark is taller than Lauren. So
Speaker 1: if I look and I see that Lauren appears to
Speaker 1: be taller than Josh, I know that Josh is approximately
Speaker 1: a mile away and Lawrence probably in front of me. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's just that's a science fact. Actually, you make old jokes,
Speaker 1: I make short jokes. Uh. Um and and this is
Speaker 1: also how how a lot of special effects end up
Speaker 1: working by by tricking your brain into into thinking of
Speaker 1: the force perspective. For perspective Lord of the rings in
Speaker 1: the Hobbit, Obviously, those are ones that you would think
Speaker 1: about where where because because the video itself is being
Speaker 1: shown to you on a two dimensional well until we
Speaker 1: get to the three D movies and on a two
Speaker 1: dimensional surface, you can trick people by having this force
Speaker 1: perspective thing, but in in an actual world situation, because
Speaker 1: you've got these converging lines of sight on objects, you
Speaker 1: can use what is called parallax. That's the idea of
Speaker 1: these two lines that eventually do converge onto something to
Speaker 1: give you an idea. Yeah, and and that's your focal
Speaker 1: point that gives you an idea of how how close
Speaker 1: or far away something is. The further away an object gets,
Speaker 1: the more parallel these two line have become, so that
Speaker 1: it becomes less of a useful um tool for things
Speaker 1: that are really far away. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: two buildings that are way off in the distance, you
Speaker 1: might not be able to tell which one is larger
Speaker 1: just based on that alone, without you know, previous knowledge
Speaker 1: of building A is twice the size of building B.
Speaker 1: But if it's closer to you, parallax comes into play.
Speaker 1: So that's the idea, right. Each screen gives a slightly
Speaker 1: different view of whatever it is you're looking at in
Speaker 1: the realm of the virtual environment, which in this case
Speaker 1: are games and uh, and that way, it gives you
Speaker 1: the illusion that it's that you are right there and
Speaker 1: that the world you are in actually has depth. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no eye tracking software here, but there is head
Speaker 1: tracking hardware, right, So it's not it's not keeping track
Speaker 1: of where your eye motions are so you can look around.
Speaker 1: It's not like if you're wearing just goggles. The goggles
Speaker 1: themselves aren't tracking your eyes, but they will move as
Speaker 1: you know, if you as you move the direction of
Speaker 1: your face, same sort of thing. So it's using sensors
Speaker 1: to detect that kind of motion, whether it's pitch, roll yaw, tilt,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. It's detecting all of that
Speaker 1: as as input for changing the way the display appears
Speaker 1: in front of you. This display being an LCD screen
Speaker 1: in a plastic mask. It's it's about an inch away
Speaker 1: from the user's eyes and um and right that that
Speaker 1: that screen is is divided by a small barriers. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty big screen. I think it's like a like
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten degrees diagonally. We'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. But it uses a few other tricks
Speaker 1: to create realism as well, Like it warps slightly the
Speaker 1: edges of the images and corrects that in the goggles
Speaker 1: a little bit. So, uh, you know, the digital rendering
Speaker 1: I'm saying is is warped a little bit at the edges,
Speaker 1: and then the goggles correct for it, which is basically
Speaker 1: how how your eyeballs work because they're curved, right. The
Speaker 1: idea here being that you don't want it to just
Speaker 1: look like you are, yeah, that you're looking at a
Speaker 1: flat world that has depth behind it, but there's nothing
Speaker 1: around you. It also packs the pixels more tightly directly
Speaker 1: in front of your eyeball than around the edges, which, again,
Speaker 1: because our eyeballs are curved, Um, it gives a human
Speaker 1: like roundness to an image. It also helps you know,
Speaker 1: it keeps keeps you motivated to focus directly straight ahead
Speaker 1: with your eyes as opposed to keeping your head still
Speaker 1: and moving your eyes around, because it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: mimicking that sense of when I look ahead, the whatever
Speaker 1: I'm clear whenever I'm looking at his fol is in focus,
Speaker 1: and then everything else is kind of in peripheral vision
Speaker 1: petering out a little bit. Sure, Um, there there are
Speaker 1: a few limitations that are currently being addressed. There's a
Speaker 1: certain screen door effect which in which right now users
Speaker 1: have been finding that they can see through the pixels
Speaker 1: of the LCD screen because they're not there's not enough
Speaker 1: of them. They need more needs higher resolution. Yes, um
Speaker 1: and uh, and I think that they're trying to add
Speaker 1: gays tracking, which would be really interesting. That would allow
Speaker 1: you to actually uh dynamically change these elements we talked
Speaker 1: about where you've got those pixels that are uh and
Speaker 1: the that are concentrated right in front of the eyes.
Speaker 1: If you could be able to move that dynamically so
Speaker 1: that the you would have this effect where if I'm
Speaker 1: I'm walking and I'm not turning my head, but I
Speaker 1: dart my eyes to the left, and it is able
Speaker 1: to move in real time with that uh. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about prediction software in a bit
Speaker 1: that kind of helps with that. Then that could make
Speaker 1: it even more immersive and more and feel closer to
Speaker 1: being natural in fact. And again, while it's hard to
Speaker 1: say that being in a virtual environment is ever kind
Speaker 1: of a natural thing, after that initial adjustment, you do
Speaker 1: start to feel, you start to move within that virtual environment.
Speaker 1: You don't really necessarily think about your real world surroundings
Speaker 1: as much unless you know something changes that that diverts
Speaker 1: your attention, or say that you have a anxious Jack
Speaker 1: Russell terrier who jumps on your lap. That might you know,
Speaker 1: unless that also has happened at the exact same time
Speaker 1: in the video game that could pull your attention away right,
Speaker 1: or let's say that you bang your knee into a
Speaker 1: table because you were walking forward as your character in
Speaker 1: the game walked forward. And by the way, there are
Speaker 1: people who are working on various setups that are not
Speaker 1: meant for consumer use either, but they were interested in
Speaker 1: combining the oculus rift with other things so that you
Speaker 1: would have even more immersive control in various games. Like
Speaker 1: there was the group that did the virtual paper Boy
Speaker 1: where they had it hooked up to a resistance bike
Speaker 1: training bike, where they by peddling the bike, they would
Speaker 1: propel the video game character forward. They had a first
Speaker 1: person perspective as if they were playing paper Boy, but
Speaker 1: from the paper boys point of view, and then they
Speaker 1: had a connect sensor protecting their arm motions to be
Speaker 1: when you flame newspaper. So what they did was they
Speaker 1: hooked up the Oculus Rift to a an exercise bike
Speaker 1: resistance training bike, and by peddling the resistance training bike,
Speaker 1: they propelled the virtual character forward. And then they had
Speaker 1: a connect sensor that would tech arm motions so that
Speaker 1: when you throw the papers, yeah, that would be the
Speaker 1: control that would be the indicator for the game. To
Speaker 1: throw the papers, and you're seeing it all from the
Speaker 1: paper boys perspective as opposed to that side view that
Speaker 1: you had in the original arcade game. So that's just
Speaker 1: one example. There are other people who have kind of
Speaker 1: developed the multidirectional treadmills so that you could walk on
Speaker 1: the treadmill and this would propel you forward within a
Speaker 1: virtual environment. So there's a lot of already, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of talk already about incorporating the oculus rift
Speaker 1: into other types of setups of this nature. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: that goes beyond what the average video game player would experience. Sure,
Speaker 1: so we don't recommend you get up on your feet
Speaker 1: and walk around while you're wearing one of these things,
Speaker 1: because you're not going to see your actual environment. You're
Speaker 1: seeing a virtual environment. I I've heard a few a few, um,
Speaker 1: you know, not sob stories, but but just stories of
Speaker 1: of of like caution, you can totally knock over wine
Speaker 1: glasses while you are flailing about with this thing. Kind
Speaker 1: of similar to the to the warnings you would hear
Speaker 1: from the original we Remote. People were flinging them into
Speaker 1: their television sets and you would see a picture of
Speaker 1: a WEE remote emerged from an old TV set and
Speaker 1: you think mistake. Yeah, wrist strap so um. But interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: you can still use the oculus rift even if you
Speaker 1: have poor or no vision in one eye. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the screen will still work. Sure, Sure you won't again,
Speaker 1: you won't get the stereoscopic three dimensional effect. Um. But
Speaker 1: Richard Eisenbey's writing for Kotaku recently described what it's like
Speaker 1: playing with a single eye because he had a bad
Speaker 1: lazic surgery experience. But um, yeah, the doctor's expectful recovery. Um.
Speaker 1: But he said that the three D effect was slightly
Speaker 1: flattened and that his depth perception was off like you
Speaker 1: do when you only have one eye working. Um, And
Speaker 1: that motion blur was increased, but that it was still
Speaker 1: very immersive and actually didn't cause any queaziness. Right. And
Speaker 1: one of the big causes of queaziness is this idea
Speaker 1: of latency, which I mentioned latency if if the name
Speaker 1: kind of gives it away, what latency is is it's
Speaker 1: a delay between when you take an action and when
Speaker 1: that action is displayed to you. Now, in the case
Speaker 1: of head tracking software, that would mean that if I
Speaker 1: turned my head to the right, the display would reflect
Speaker 1: that turn on the screen. But if there's a delay
Speaker 1: between when I turned my head and when it happens
Speaker 1: on the screen, my brain thinks, woe, something is messed
Speaker 1: up you, right, because it's it's actually better than instantaneous
Speaker 1: when you're seeing it in in real life because your
Speaker 1: your your your brain is filling in information that it
Speaker 1: doesn't already have yet. Um, it's there's some predictive stuff
Speaker 1: going on in your brain already, it's and it's handling
Speaker 1: a lot of input from a lot of different sources,
Speaker 1: everything from your inner ear to what's coming into your eyes,
Speaker 1: to what you're you're sensing, like by touch. So all
Speaker 1: of these things go into telling your brain what is
Speaker 1: going on around you. And when those things don't match up,
Speaker 1: your brain is like, something's not good. Let's trigger the
Speaker 1: stomach to empty all of its contents as rapidly as possible.
Speaker 1: Or at least that seems to be the case. It
Speaker 1: seems like a bad reflex. But but if you've ever been,
Speaker 1: say on a boat, and you have that sensation of
Speaker 1: you know, the ground you are on is moving, but
Speaker 1: because you're moving with the ground, your vision isn't reflecting that. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not, especially if you're on the inside of a
Speaker 1: boat and you can't see the outside at all. Your
Speaker 1: brain is just saying, this is weird because everything it
Speaker 1: looks still from my perspective, but I'm feeling like you're
Speaker 1: moving all over the place. Let's turn on the vacate
Speaker 1: the stomach flip switch and see maybe maybe that will
Speaker 1: make it better, right, somehow that will fix things. I
Speaker 1: don't understand the physiological part of this, but this is
Speaker 1: what seems to happen. So while we're shows, yeah, stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, listen to it. It's awesome. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the this idea of the mismatched data that comes into you,
Speaker 1: it often ends up making you feel a dizzy, nauseous,
Speaker 1: you know, there's or nauseated I should say, I mean
Speaker 1: you might be nauseous as well, but nauseated, um, then
Speaker 1: you you you know, it's it's unpleasant. And so latency
Speaker 1: is a big, big contributor to that. So getting latency
Speaker 1: down where there is as little delay as possible is
Speaker 1: a goal. Now. Oculus says that they developed UH reduced
Speaker 1: latency technology that got it down to two milliseconds to
Speaker 1: send the information from the headset to the software Now
Speaker 1: that's a one way trip there. Remember there's a round
Speaker 1: trip that we have to take into account here. It's
Speaker 1: not just the trip to the software. The software has
Speaker 1: to crunch the numbers from whatever data it's receiving and
Speaker 1: send back the appropriate response to the screen. So it
Speaker 1: takes longer than two milliseconds for all that to happen. Now,
Speaker 1: and humans can detect the latency of around fifty milliseconds,
Speaker 1: maybe even fewer than fifty milliseconds, that's no time at all.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking a fraction of a second. Now.
Speaker 1: According to Steve Lavelle, using the rift and playing a
Speaker 1: game at sixty frames per second, latency is right around
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty milliseconds, so just right below or at
Speaker 1: that threshold. So um, that includes the time it takes
Speaker 1: with the sensors to pick up the motion, send that
Speaker 1: motion out the port, go into the game engine as
Speaker 1: a command, and then come back. Yeah. So I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's the full trip, that's the whole round trip.
Speaker 1: And if it's able to do that reliably at that speed,
Speaker 1: that's good and we you know, I expect that that's
Speaker 1: something that they're going to work on improving to make
Speaker 1: sure that there's as little latency issue there as possible,
Speaker 1: especially as video games start to push that limit of
Speaker 1: sixty frame sixty frames per swond uh. If they are
Speaker 1: pushing to make it even more frames per second, then
Speaker 1: clearly you have to worry about that latency issue because
Speaker 1: that's more data that's going through these ports. Like we said,
Speaker 1: the sensors, the motion sensors detect jaw, pitch, and roll,
Speaker 1: and they use what is called sensor fusion, which is
Speaker 1: not a type of cuisine as I first thought, but
Speaker 1: it's actually a technique to combine all the data that's
Speaker 1: gathered from these various sensors into virtually actual actions within
Speaker 1: the context of the environment you're in, the game you
Speaker 1: are in UM and then Steve Level also wrote an
Speaker 1: incredible blog post that is really really technical if you
Speaker 1: are interested on the software side of this and about
Speaker 1: how to reduce latency to to the minimum levels. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it because it's it's fascinating, but it's way
Speaker 1: too technical for us to go into here. But this
Speaker 1: is where he was talking about predictive techniques. So prediction
Speaker 1: is exactly what it sounds like. The game engine starts
Speaker 1: to predict what you are going to do based upon
Speaker 1: what you are doing right now, oh wow, and and
Speaker 1: so so it starts to render out what you're going
Speaker 1: to need to see next before you actually need it.
Speaker 1: And and the goal of this is not to give
Speaker 1: you a vision of the future, but rather to remove
Speaker 1: that latency, to make it as as small as possible.
Speaker 1: So if the predictive techniques are good, then it means
Speaker 1: that you have a very smooth experience, very little motion, blur,
Speaker 1: no latency. If it's bad, it means that like if
Speaker 1: you suddenly turn left, but it starts to go right
Speaker 1: because it thought you were going to go right, then
Speaker 1: that's going to just exacerbate the problem. So predictive technology
Speaker 1: has to be really sophisticated for it to do more
Speaker 1: good than harm. His blog post goes into great detail
Speaker 1: about how they are using this to try and create
Speaker 1: a really immersive, comfortable experience with the Oculus Rift, and
Speaker 1: like I said, it's really really great. The Oculus blogs
Speaker 1: in general fantastic read, but they are very technical, so
Speaker 1: read at your own risk. So let's talk about what
Speaker 1: the actual hardware has. So the according to what's in
Speaker 1: the developer kit right now, keeping in mind the consumer
Speaker 1: version is going to be different from what is out
Speaker 1: there right now. It will very likely change indeed. Uh
Speaker 1: so um yeah, so so we've got we've got six
Speaker 1: degrees of freedom that yeah for for the head tracking.
Speaker 1: UM that hudd t degree diagonal screen that we were
Speaker 1: talking about, which is UM nine d degrees horizontal ninety
Speaker 1: degrees horizontal field of view. So you know those the
Speaker 1: screens are are Physically they're small, but because of their
Speaker 1: proximity to your eyeballs, they look pretty big. It builds
Speaker 1: your vision. Um. It's a d v I video input
Speaker 1: digital visual interface input. So this was that that input interface,
Speaker 1: by the way, was originally developed by the Display Working Group. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of interface that allows you to hook
Speaker 1: up a display to a computer. So a lot of
Speaker 1: computer monitors and displays have this. However, it does have
Speaker 1: hd m I adaptation. Yeah, you can get an HDMI
Speaker 1: adapter to convert from d v I to h d
Speaker 1: m I, but you do need to have that adapter.
Speaker 1: Does not have natively does not have an HDMI port
Speaker 1: to hook up, but you can. That's one thing I
Speaker 1: expect the consumer version would have, just because of the
Speaker 1: drive to move to hd M my, especially since a
Speaker 1: lot of video game consoles have that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I expect that we will see HDM MY native support
Speaker 1: in whatever the consumer version is. They haven't announced that,
Speaker 1: so don't take that as you know, gospel. That's just
Speaker 1: that's just my prediction. Um. Yeah, so you need to
Speaker 1: have either h g MY or d v I video
Speaker 1: out on your computer in order to run this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were like, but my computer only has FireWire,
Speaker 1: it is for PC only right now? Um that they
Speaker 1: are again hoping to roll it out to um consoles
Speaker 1: and mobile platforms. They're also talking, there's buzz anyway that
Speaker 1: they're talking about expanding it to watching movies, serving the web,
Speaker 1: doing programming. Yeah, which in the matrix. Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man. Uh yeah, we're just shows our own frames
Speaker 1: of reference for virtual environments, doesn't it. You say matrix,
Speaker 1: I say, lawnmore Man like, um, so yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder if watching movies because again, at that point, you're
Speaker 1: not really even talking about head tracking, right, there's no
Speaker 1: purpose for head tracking if you're watching a film because
Speaker 1: the film is captured from a single point of view.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless you're presenting only part of a movie. Screen,
Speaker 1: which I can't imagine being a satisfying experience. You're really
Speaker 1: just looking at something really close to your face. Unless
Speaker 1: you eventually get to a point where you are able
Speaker 1: to create a well, especially if if it's a three
Speaker 1: D animated movie, then this would be much easier to do.
Speaker 1: You could you could create a movie where you would
Speaker 1: be able to change your perspective as opposed to relying
Speaker 1: upon the camera to define what the perspective is. Sure,
Speaker 1: or just even even I think you know, if you've
Speaker 1: got one of the digital three D stereoscopic films that
Speaker 1: you just I mean, even without being able to move
Speaker 1: your head around, it would be Yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: that where you're talking about maybe watching movies that were
Speaker 1: designed to be in three D in the first place,
Speaker 1: maybe this would give a superior three D experience. I
Speaker 1: can see that. And also it reduces eyestrain from looking
Speaker 1: at a three D screen because the of the way
Speaker 1: that the way that these goggles work is um You're
Speaker 1: you're actually focusing on your You're relaxing your eyes to
Speaker 1: a to a distant point you're looking You're you're kind
Speaker 1: of looking through the screen, which is the default for
Speaker 1: your eyes looking it's it's any any kind of eyestrain
Speaker 1: that you get. You would think, you know, it's an
Speaker 1: inchway from your eye, that's going to lead to terrible eyestrain.
Speaker 1: But but actually looking at your computer screen foot away
Speaker 1: from you causes a lot more eyestrain than these idea
Speaker 1: being that this is like looking through a window as
Speaker 1: opposed to Yeah, but anyway, interesting, Um So the screen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um currently eighty eight hundred. But that's that's if
Speaker 1: you combine the two screens, right, right, Uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: what what what's at six forty? Yeah? Yeah, the up
Speaker 1: six forty by h brye, which is that's close to
Speaker 1: the resolution of seven which is twelve eighty by seven twenty. Okay,
Speaker 1: but but again this is the thing that could change
Speaker 1: for for consumers, right, And also I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously higher resolution means better picture as in general, but
Speaker 1: there's also something you need to consider that the closer
Speaker 1: you get to a screen, the less resolution matters. Right,
Speaker 1: So unless your screen is getting larger and larger and larger.
Speaker 1: So let's say you've got you stay with a let's
Speaker 1: say that's your tvous forty inches, right, depending upon how
Speaker 1: close you sit to that television. Seven and ten ADP
Speaker 1: might not be that distinguishable. Now if you sit, if
Speaker 1: you sit further closer and closer to it, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna notice. If you sit further away, you're those differences
Speaker 1: fade away into nothing. So if you could have a
Speaker 1: seven twenty P and a ten ADP set side by side,
Speaker 1: but if you're fifteen feet back, they look the same,
Speaker 1: assuming they've both been calibrated for that room and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about an eight inch screen, first
Speaker 1: of all, invite me over because I want to watch
Speaker 1: movies and play Halo. But then obviously will matter more.
Speaker 1: You've got more screen space, the resolution is spread out
Speaker 1: over a greater landscape area, so you've got to how
Speaker 1: higher resolution or else you will start to notice it
Speaker 1: at regular viewing distances. Was something that's one inch away
Speaker 1: from your eye. Uh. While they could probably increase the
Speaker 1: resolution and it would be maybe noticeable, I don't know
Speaker 1: that they have to stress it too much, all right,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think mostly the issue right now
Speaker 1: is that screen door effect that I was talking about. Um,
Speaker 1: the headset itself costs costs ways a little bit less
Speaker 1: than half a pound or a little bit less than
Speaker 1: a quarter of a kilogram. Nice, so it's not too
Speaker 1: terribly heavy. Another huge advance over older VR software hardware,
Speaker 1: anything that you're strapping to your head and nice to
Speaker 1: have it light. Yes, um, and the dev kits right
Speaker 1: now cost three hundred bucks of pop, I've heard. I've
Speaker 1: heard that they're trying to keep it with the final
Speaker 1: commercial product within the three to five dollar range, which
Speaker 1: you know, when you're considering that most consoles cost around
Speaker 1: that much, makes sense. They don't want it to go
Speaker 1: higher than the console that it would. Sure, Sure, and
Speaker 1: it's still a significant improvement over again, the the thousand
Speaker 1: bucks or so a pop that that current or the
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars if you're talking about the the specifically
Speaker 1: made for the VR industry, uh equipment that was back
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Yeah. So so it's not like it's
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be inexpensive. It's gonna be an expensive peripheral.
Speaker 1: Now if you're if you're used to either building or
Speaker 1: buying high end video game rigs, this is you know,
Speaker 1: just a small dispense compared to what your ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollar rig was. Um, so this kit is not just
Speaker 1: the hardware, there's the software developer Kit too, So this
Speaker 1: is the software site. And again remember Lucky is not
Speaker 1: a software guy, he's a hardware guy. Uh. The Software
Speaker 1: Developer Kit contains all the information you would need to
Speaker 1: be able to develop stuff specifically to display on an
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift and to work with this motion tracking hardware.
Speaker 1: And that contains all the libraries you need, the headers,
Speaker 1: the documentation, the samples for integrating the Rift with games,
Speaker 1: and also includes two different game engines, the Unreal Engine
Speaker 1: and the Unity Engines, and those are widely available game
Speaker 1: engines that a lot of companies use as the basis
Speaker 1: for the physics and uh and number crunching engine of
Speaker 1: whatever game they're running. So there are currently three titles
Speaker 1: that are compatible with the Oculus Rift. One of them
Speaker 1: is Team Fortress two, which is a squad based first
Speaker 1: person shooter game moves an incredibly frenetic pace. The other
Speaker 1: one that was originally announced as being compatible was Hawkin,
Speaker 1: which is a multiplayer mech combat video game by Adhesive Games.
Speaker 1: The third that they just rolled out, um, I think
Speaker 1: I think in August, right before we right before we
Speaker 1: recorded this podcast, was Half Life two Half life too,
Speaker 1: because I really want I do not at all want
Speaker 1: actually the experience of having a head crab jump at
Speaker 1: my face. Don't having it be more realistic? Don't you
Speaker 1: want the experience of watching a gravity gun work right
Speaker 1: in front of your face and launching things at high velocity? Also,
Speaker 1: I mean that gives me hope that the next title
Speaker 1: will be Portal. Can you imagine Portal first person? Like
Speaker 1: you are in the world of Portal. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: waiting on because those two, those two universes are connected
Speaker 1: Aperture science and and and Black Mason, Black Mesa. As
Speaker 1: we all know from the Jonathan Coulton song, they are connected,
Speaker 1: completely connected. So come on, guys, let's get our let's
Speaker 1: get our oculus riff version of Portal. I that sounds
Speaker 1: that sounds a little bit sickening, but wonderful. I would
Speaker 1: love it, can you. Yeah? I don't know what that
Speaker 1: would be like once you start moving at those in
Speaker 1: insane speeds where you do the vertical portals. I would
Speaker 1: need to get one of those psychologists to come to
Speaker 1: my house while I played so that I could turn
Speaker 1: it into a height therapy related I can. I can
Speaker 1: imagine that? Yeah, maybe that game wouldn't work out on
Speaker 1: the long run. I'd be willing to play it until
Speaker 1: I started. No, no, no, I want that. I want
Speaker 1: that right now, but I'm terrified. But those are the
Speaker 1: titles available right now, not Portal, but Half Life to
Speaker 1: Team Fortress too and Hawken. So we'll see those expand obviously,
Speaker 1: but even so, like again, just to stress yet again,
Speaker 1: this is of course the developers side. Once this becomes
Speaker 1: a consumer product, you I would expect there to be
Speaker 1: support for at least twenty titles, because if there's not,
Speaker 1: then you know, it's hard to justify the expense in
Speaker 1: the mind of the game, or like, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: pay three dollars on this piece of technology and I
Speaker 1: can play twenty games on it and that's it or not.
Speaker 1: If youwer than twenty, that would be if you can
Speaker 1: only do less than ten than that might be like
Speaker 1: why would I pay that much money for that thing?
Speaker 1: Although lots of people, lots of people have, lots of
Speaker 1: people are excited about it, um there there is no
Speaker 1: official release date. Yeah. Yeah. The company's stance is it
Speaker 1: will be ready when it's ready, which is I think
Speaker 1: the most responsible way to go about it, because otherwise
Speaker 1: what you'll do is you'll create a deadline that you
Speaker 1: know something will pop up that you could not have
Speaker 1: anticipated that will either cause you to miss the deadline,
Speaker 1: thus inviting the ire of all of the internets, or
Speaker 1: you will start to sacrifice things in order to make
Speaker 1: the original deadline, and the product will be less than
Speaker 1: what it could have been. So I think that taking
Speaker 1: this approach of we aren't announcing a date, we're getting
Speaker 1: it as soon as possible, but we want it to
Speaker 1: be good when it launches, I think that's the right choice,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about hardware, um, because I mean
Speaker 1: you can't it's it's harder to update that. I mean
Speaker 1: you can do firmware updates obviously, but but you want
Speaker 1: in place, Yeah, it's harder. Yeah, um and and yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like we said, there's no official price yet either. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously they want to they want to keep
Speaker 1: it affordable, and we might see it being used in well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll see it being used in virtual reality
Speaker 1: h fields beyond gaming it yeah, yeah, you know the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that they're talking about it being useful for,
Speaker 1: like like surgery training or um or or architecture and design,
Speaker 1: which is really kind of cool. That's this idea of
Speaker 1: being able to take a virtual tour of a building
Speaker 1: that hasn't even gone beyond the blueprint stage. That's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. And of course the medical uh techniques that
Speaker 1: we've talked about already, this exposure technique. UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: the VR industry still exists, although they call it virtual
Speaker 1: environments for the most part, it still exists. But they
Speaker 1: do go to the video game industry all the time
Speaker 1: for all the equipment. So I expect we'll see that continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exciting stuff. I got a chance to play with
Speaker 1: it in person at E three and I thought it
Speaker 1: was a really interesting experience. Um. I played an independently
Speaker 1: developed game that was not one of the ones we mentioned.
Speaker 1: It was something that was specifically kind of a thought
Speaker 1: experiment for three. Really, I think, yeah, it was great.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to have a chance to work with
Speaker 1: this when there are more titles that I can play.
Speaker 1: All right, So guys, that wraps up this discussion about
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift. If you have any suggestions for technology,
Speaker 1: we should cover companies that you want to hear more about,
Speaker 1: innovators that have always excited you we've done an episode
Speaker 1: coming up, or we're gonna actually turn back the clock
Speaker 1: and look at the technology that was installed in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two. Do you want to hear stuff like that?
Speaker 1: Let us know righte us. Tell us our address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. You can find us there.
Speaker 1: We have the handle tech stuff h s W and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: staff works dot com