E3 2015 Post-Mortem Part 2: The VR competition heats up

The big three

Oculus Rift

Specs

• ·         Two OLED screens (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display
• ·         2160 x 1200 Resolution
• ·         Refresh rate of 90 Hertz
• ·         110 degrees or greater field of view
• ·         1 HDMI port and 2 USB 3.0 connectors
• ·         6DOF (Six Degrees of Freedom) Head Tracking
• ·         Constellation tracking system (For precise, low latency movement)
• ·         External sensor (Plug into the back of your computer for easy setup)
• ·         Integrated 360 degree sound headphones (External headphones can also be used)
• ·         Ergonomic design for full adjustment of lens distance.
• ·         Also incorporates users with glasses. Wrapped in fabric for comfortable viewing

Just before E3 2015 began, the final iteration of the Oculus Rift headset was revealed to the world at the company’s own press conference. The company had a surprising amount of announcements to make including a partnership with Microsoft and Windows 10, support for Unreal Engine 4, as well as several new game announcements. Some of the more notable titles include sci-fi sim Eve: Valkyrie and a new title from Insomniac Games: Edge of Nowhere. But above all else we finally had a release date for the headset; the first quarter of 2016. From what we’ve seen, there’s plenty of evidence that the Oculus Rift is pushing along at a good pace and it appears to be ready for consumer consumption, not to mention having all the support and partnerships it needs to make a proper impact. This could be down to how the Oculus was the first on the modern virtual reality scene and with the support of countless backers on its kickstarter campaign, there’s proof that interest has grown larger than both Microsoft and Sony efforts put together.

I was lucky enough to try an earlier version of the Oculus Rift developer kit for myself down at Bournemouth University. The roller-coaster demo I saw through the headset was an incredibly surreal experience despite looking a bit rough around the edges. What you see when wearing the headset (and indeed for all of its competitors no doubt!) transmits signals to the rest of your body, creating the illusion that I was on that roller-coaster minus the g-force. The only real concern that has arisen for the Oculus Rift is its acquisition by Facebook last year; many gamers are concerned that Facebook will use the device in lacklustre ways, such as virtual Farmville and other “games” along those lines. Another small issue was the idea of streaming Xbox One games through the headset; the idea of making a screen through Oculus felt pretty pointless. Why do that when you can simply play on an Xbox console as normal?

Hololens

Specs: Not yet revealed by Microsoft

As a major component in Microsoft’s Windows Holographic programme, Hololens has already been generating a fair bit of excitement since its initial reveal at the Windows 10 event earlier this year. At E3 this year, Microsoft went a step further by showcasing how the headset would work with gaming. The game in question was Minecraft; in the demo, Mojang brand director Lydia Winters controlled the game using a tablet, while Saxs Perrson wore the hololens to view the game world projected onto a table. The team used a second hololens headset to display the augmented reality display to the audience. Having a screen projected onto a wall through the headset was impressive enough, but when the table transformed before our very eyes to a Minecraft world, a collective cheer went up in the crowd. Even I was dazzled by the seemingly magical presentation and wondered at the possibilities. Imagine playing a strategy game at a table with a fully interactive map and voice commands as opposed to a television screen. The massive potential for Hololens extends beyond gaming as well, with the initial reveal showing off applications for work, science and communication.

With great excitement also comes great scepticism however; for Microsoft, overzealous marketing and misrepresentation have met before. Despite selling incredibly well (which was most likely down to its marketing campaign), the Kinect was an utter failure in the eyes of legions of gamers who became more and more baffled that the corporation was endlessly shoving the device in everyone’s face when really the Xbox brand was perfectly fine without it. Does anyone remember the Project Natal trailer back in 2009? Before the Kinect turned into a laughing stock a year later, the device looked quite promising; it showcased features such as scanning gear to play and having family members take on different roles in a Formula One race. Yet when Kinect was finally ready for consumption, most of these features had completely disappeared, leaving us with a highly inaccurate, poor value product.

The Hololens demo for Minecraft drew massive cheers from the audience at E3 this year, but we weren’t the ones who were actually wearing the headset to properly prove that Microsoft is onto something big. If Microsoft makes the same mistakes with Hololens then their reputation in the eyes of consumers might not withstand another blow like that. Hololens may be the most ambitious product in terms of versatility, but I’ll wait until I try the device for myself before I believe the hype.

Project Morpheus

Specs

• ·         Refresh rate of 120 Hertz
• ·         Two OLED screens with a 1920 x 1080 display
• ·         6DOF Head Tracking
• ·         Stereoscopic 3D support
• ·         Unwarped output to a television screen

Sony’s headset looks the closest to an actual consumer product; the design looks really slick and has a strong consistency with the other products Sony has put out. Having been in development behind closed doors since the seventh console generation, Project Morpheus is being designed to work with both the PlayStation 4 and their main handheld, the PlayStation Vita. It’s still in the prototype stages at the moment and won’t be released until the first half of 2016. We saw a fair few titles at Sony’s E3 2015 press conference but nothing was really finalised. That’s the main issue with Morpheus right now; they seem to be lagging behind the competition in terms of hardware progression and development right now. We’re sure to see more information and demos over the coming months.

Other competitors

Valve and HTC’s Vive

Specs

• ·         Refresh rate of 90 Hertz
• ·         Over 70 sensors including a gyroscope, accelerometer and
• ·         Two screens with a display of 1080 X 1200
• ·         15 X 15 feet tracking space
• ·         Compatible with external headphones

The Vive is part of HTC’s RE product range and for the project, they have teamed up with renowned PC developer Valve Corporation, who in turn will use the headset for their SteamVR program. Like Oculus, Valve has been putting out software development kits and speculation suggests that they have set a tentative official release date for November this year. The headset will also be compatible with Unreal Engine 4 along with various HTC software packages.

StarVR

Specs

• ·         210 degree horizontal and 130 degree vertical field of view
• ·         Dual 5.5 inch quad HD panel with a definition of 5120 x 1440 pixels
• ·         Combination of gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers for position tracking
• ·         Real-time 6DOF head tracking
• ·         IMU and optical sensor fusion for low latency

Developed by Starbreeze Studios, StarVR looks like the most futuristic and complex of all the VR headsets and it seeks to challenge the Vive for the SteamVR program. The studio aims to combine its knowledge of game development with its own VR headset, which was first put into the concept stages in June 2011. StarVR was also shown off on the E3 show floor with demos for titles such as The Walking Dead from Overkill. In my view, the website appears rather bulky and this may degrade comfort while wearing the headset. Press kits are already available for StarVR, but the headset has no proper release date as of yet.

Final thoughts on VR

It’s been several decades since we last heard about the idea of virtual reality; back in the nineties it seemed like the way of the future. Unfortunately with limited tech and poor design philosophy efforts into VR back then were short-lived. The biggest case of this was the Virtual Boy from Nintendo; with a middling critical reception (especially the fact that the device caused eye-strain and headaches!) and poor developer support, the system only lasted around half a year before being discontinued.

Nowadays the technology is sufficient enough to provide a fully immersive experience and E3 2015 saw more information and news on VR than any other before it. Could it be the next major step for gaming? Quite possibly; if game design is slowly becoming more and more stagnant then the next logical step could be to boost the immersion of games with future iterations of popular franchises, particularly those which unfold from first-person perspectives. While many of the new IPs that make full use of virtual reality look fairly basic at the moment, we may start to see more unique ideas that stem from the technology in the future. The support for VR is both extensive and strong with Oculus investing ten million dollars into indie game development on the Oculus. I’m looking forward to seeing how VR develops in the future.

Keep an eye out for part 3 of my E3 2015 post-mortem; “The best of the rest”.

Click here for part 1 of the post-mortem: Ranking the press conferences

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