Post AWUVpxTEx7cktNuirg by ludovic@chabant.social
 (DIR) More posts by ludovic@chabant.social
 (DIR) Post #AWUIlENbMJWwTzgy2q by ludovic@chabant.social
       2023-06-08T16:15:40Z
       
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       I have no interest in owning a VR headset, including the VisionPro, but Apple’s approach here is so much better than the rest (apart from a couple of nightmare-fuel features). I can’t wait to see these used in arcade rooms, because it solves a LOT of game-design problems.
       
 (DIR) Post #AWUIlFXD44oI45C9ey by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
       2023-06-08T17:01:32.145Z
       
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       @ludovic@chabant.social why'd you think so? Honestly I didn't see it being very revolutionary besides trying to fit a fairly powerful system inside the headset.
       
 (DIR) Post #AWUVpxTEx7cktNuirg by ludovic@chabant.social
       2023-06-08T18:50:37Z
       
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       @ignaloidas the mixed reality concept at the heart of it makes it possible to do stuff in your living room without a large empty space. Plus: natural locomotion and better props and environments — think “laser tag but with zombies and dinosaurs”. It’s extremely hard and limited to do in classic VR headsets
       
 (DIR) Post #AWUVpy6wZVNosWUQka by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
       2023-06-08T19:28:03.988Z
       
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       @ludovic@chabant.social eh, it's still a classic VR headset at heart, there's no transparency or such - you're always looking at the screen, just that the screen usually shows what the cameras see, instead of the approach taken by others (usually you see a virtual environment, except when you explicitly want to see what the cameras see). That said, Apple has put a lot more effort to make this approach nicer, getting some higher resolution color cameras to get nice views, while the cameras used by other headsets are primarily designed for inside-out tracking, and as such, there is a legitimate improvement there, but I'm not sure if it really matters much for games? I feel like one of the purposes of games is to essentially transport you somewhere else, and you're not doing that with transparency, are you. Unless you're thinking something pokemon go like, in which case, IDK, I don't think that walking with full VR headsets will be any good any time soon.But, natural locomotion and better props+environments are definitely already possible today - some VR arcades already offer things like that, there's a company here who's some 3v3 games in a 400m2 space, only flat floor atm, but I'm fairly certain that both the size and the number of players could be scaled up with some work.
       
 (DIR) Post #AWVUA2GqoGisoyWalE by ludovic@chabant.social
       2023-06-09T05:56:32Z
       
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       @ignaloidas but that's my point -- right now VR arcades need either flat floors (I played one a couple months ago), or simple real props synchronized with in game props.With Apple going much more seriously into eye tracking and outward cameras, it's suddenly a lot more viable to simply have a real environment and real props, and you interact with virtual actors and monsters. And that's a lot more compelling to me. Laser-tag venues might even be able to become mixed-reality arcades
       
 (DIR) Post #AWVUA3AVTLF5baZ2Vk by ignaloidas@not.acu.lt
       2023-06-09T06:44:00.096Z
       
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       @ludovic@chabant.social eh, honestly, I'm not sure how well will Apple will solve more complicated tracking for games, or whether they are even interested in solving that. I kinda feel like tracking in more complex environments could be done with today's hardware, if only the headset manufacturers focused on the usecase more, or exposed raw camera data to developers to do it themselves. I suspect that you wouldn't need much more than slapping a bunch of AprilTags on the environment and just figuring out most of the position from that, but for that you'd need to process the raw feed from the tracking cameras, and AFAIK, right now all SDKs don't give you enough to do that. But I'm kinda hopeful that something utilizing existing hardware will come up soon, because 3500$ is a massive investment, and one that is mostly spent on features that aren't really useful for games, you could get literally a whole squad of quests for that price.