Gadgetory

hey everyone this is steve from gamers nexus dotnet and today we're looking at the revolution of virtual reality technologies including a are technologies which after decades of advancement they are finally starting to break into the consumer market and this video serves as a roundup of the emergent technologies on the consumer end right now including the head mounted display oculus rift physical input device the omni treadmill and one-to-one motion tracking device the stem system I'll also briefly cover the other side of the coin augmented reality in the form of cast AR for a history of virtual reality and Industry Analysis hit the article link in the description below where I talking great depth about the history of VR and AR up until now let's start with introducing different devices that are out right now and as shown on the screen you can see the major three technologies being combined to create a more immersive gaming experience what you're looking at here is the fusion of the Omni that'd be the the treadmill component the rift which is the head mounted display or hmd and the stem system which is the motion tracking technology attached to the demonstrators peripherals his legs his arms and so forth let's talk about each of these systems at work starting with the Omni the Omni or omnidirectional treadmill was kick-started at 1.1 million dollars and is being developed by virtuix and the Omni uses custom shoes on a low friction grooved surface to track the user's physical movement as input the device can be tuned for individual games so you can set the input speed and it's in game translation if you wanted to do a one-to-one conversion of physical movement to effectively WASD why is the movement that could be set up the idea here is to replace the tried-and-true WASD with physical movement so it's not exactly ideal for competitive play and if you're the type of gamer who wants to come home and sit down and relax it might not work for you either but it makes for excellent immersion opportunities and exercise opportunities the Omni is equipped with a support bar and harness to keep the user in place when fully head mounted and can be easily dismantled and stowed away it costs around five hundred dollars far cheaper than a traditional treadmill if you're making that compares and is natively supported by any game at sports traditional keyboard input when speaking to a mere Reuben of six cents the company that's developing the stem system he stated that quote the Omni has potential to revolutionize the home exercise equipment market and I think he's got a point my question to him was you know is this kind of expensive it's 500 bucks and personally yes it's it's a fair price in terms of what you're getting it is actually fair but it's about half the cost of a high-end gaming machine and so relatively speaking of this it is fairly expensive the problem with this line of thinking Rubin said is that I'm making the comparison to strictly gaming devices when I should be comparing it to other more equivalent examples like a treadmill the Omni uses software to convert physical steps into keystrokes but is also an open development platform so game developers can work more closely with the Omni team virtuix on a software level if they wanted to the Omni consists of shoes special shoes the octagonal platform itself and a support harness and moving to the stem system now the stem system is a it's being developed by six ends first of all and it's a series of motion tracking modules that produce a one to one real world to virtual world input conversion if you move one degree up and one millimeter to the side with this device in your hand it'll track and convert that to in-game movement the system is comprised of a base which handles all the logic and processing and signals the wireless tracking modules it also includes up to five individual stems which are modules that can be equipped to peripherals the users legs arms waist head all of which serve as points for more accurate in game movement the stem modules am stem system support full six degrees of freedom tracking so it is six axis tracking the stem module contains a battery and wireless transmitter and can be connected to custom peripherals so if you've got a 3d printed plastic gun with a slot for a stem the stem can be inserted and the gun will now be movement tracked and and relayed to the game so when you move your gun up and down it will move appropriately in game six senses the original supplier behind razors Hydra interface so they've got some experience the Hydra was wired but the new stem system will be fully wireless and modular which is a pretty big deal when you're looking at combining it with other tech like the Omni and finally oculus rift I'll talk briefly about cast they are after this the rift is likely already known by most of you it's a modern head mounted display or hmd that allows full immersion and a wider field of view the rift has a diagonal fov of 110 degrees pretty close to our full human fov of around 180 degrees and will ship with a 1080 display in the full consumer version special lenses are used to help create the wide fov effect and give the appearance that the game world sort of wraps around the consumers peripheral vision providing better overall immersion and player presence within the game this is in contrast to old HMDs from more than a decade ago in some cases back to the 60s which I used a more square for the three type aspect ratio or similar and it was kind of a the display was off in the distance so it was really sort of isolating and oculus rift has arguably champions the resurgence of VR technology in modern times given it's almost too perfect feature set and expansion on hmd technology which has sort of been a dead space for about a decade now and HMDs of course being the head mounted display with the actual visual component are naturally a bit more popular because that's kind of what science fiction has popularized so that is now going to be available it looks like about next year sometime it's already available for developers as with the stem and omni the rift is an open development platform and the oculus VR team is working closely with game developers to properly integrate their VR solution there are several development obstacles with VR including nausea and UI design complexities but these are discussed in more depth in the featured article below one of the hurdles though is that the rift much like most of VR is very isolating that's ideal for gamers who want immersion and don't want to be interrupted but poses issues for gamers who prefer same room local gaming with friends or land events or something like that this is where AR technology kind of signs or augmented reality technology for its preference of augmenting what already exists rather than immersing in a virtual world alone effectively I our tech has been used in psychiatry and medical fields for a number of years now helping stroke victims and those who are paralyzed by phobias but kast'ar is really the first bit of gamer focused AR tech to hit the market at an affordable price so it's it's very consumer-oriented rather than medical oriented and being developed by X valve employees kast'ar is basically a pair of glasses that uses holography techniques to produce a 3d holographic op a special reflective cloth surface the glasses use tiny projectors above each eye to project the image onto the retro reflective surface that ships with the device kast'ar is also networked which is pretty cool so if you're playing D&D on a tabletop with friends and building a dungeon for the players to explore as a DM someone in a remote location could network in and view the same dungeon on their own cast AR cloth and system from another location and as for VR it's very impressive right now very promising technology and I really do think that oculus especially oculus rift has some promise in the gaming industry and will be fairly globally adopted as for prices they are all very affordable given what they offer so the prices are fair it is about a thousand dollars to buy the entire kit if you wanted the Omni oculus and stem system if you just wanted to oculus in the stem system it'd be much cheaper by be somewhere in the five to six hundred dollar range somewhere in there go hit the link that description below if you are more information on this it has links to all the technologies as well on page two of the article so you can check out each individual technology and we'll try to follow these technologies as they begin to hit the market next year maybe get some hands-on videos with them and that's all for now guys I'll see you all next time p