Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Second Life Viewer Development

[GreyMornes]

my suggestion is dont worry too much about the Ui stuffs aside from the chat window. at first at least. if there was a way to have a minimul UI at full screen but be able to have a readiable chat/im window i think that would be great..  that way we can use sl and have a conversaton while still feeling "in the world" :-).  since the chat window can be moved around :-)

[Bronxcheer]

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GreyMornes wrote:

my suggestion is dont worry too much about the Ui stuffs aside from the chat window. at first at least. if there was a way to have a minimul UI at full screen but be able to have a readiable chat/im window i think that would be great..  that way we can use sl and have a conversaton while still feeling "in the world" :-).  since the chat window can be moved around :-)

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I wouldn't even bother with a chat window, the OR's resolution is so terrible you wouldn't be able to read any chat unless you gave it a whole load of screen estate.  Until they refine the screen door display a lot of people are going to be very disappointed at the graphics quality, which in realistic use is less than 640x800 per eye.  And here's the clincher as far as SL and its users are concerned, if you can't run SL or any game at over 60 fps then the whole experience degrades drastically.

[ChrisAlex Sands]

Hi Cracker,
great to see you are working to open SL for the Rift!
Since i will have to wait quite a while to receive my Rift (#5xxxx...) i want to prepare my environment as good as i can before it finally arrives.
I am currently using some setup similar to the FOV2GO thingy & some tracking (freetrack & Hydra).
It would be great trying to get those to work in SL / opensim too!
I used to be a programmer "back in the days" too but i dont have a working environment to compile the SL viewer set up atm.
Hmm... maybe i should give it another try?
Meanwhile i would be glad to help you test things on my current setup if i could receive a copy of your viewer or become involved in further developing the code.
best regards,
Chris

[Cracker Hax]

 

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ChrisAlex Sands wrote:

I used to be a programmer "back in the days" too but i dont have a working environment to compile the SL viewer set up atm.

Hmm... maybe i should give it another try?

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MSVC++ 2010 express works fine for me, and it is free. You are right though, it is a pain in the ass to get everything set up for SL.

[Cracker Hax]

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Bronxcheer wrote:

I wouldn't even bother with a chat window, the OR's resolution is so terrible you wouldn't be able to read any chat unless you gave it a whole load of screen estate.  Until they refine the screen door display a lot of people are going to be very disappointed at the graphics quality, which in realistic use is less than 640x800 per eye.  And here's the clincher as far as SL and its users are concerned, if you can't run SL or any game at over 60 fps then the whole experience degrades drastically.

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Yeah you won't be able to read chat unless it is really big, but by then it will be taking up your entire view. Voice chat is the only option really. Also correct on the fps, any less than 60fps will hurt it a lot and you still need vsync on so everything doesnt rip apart. Even with these problems it will still be an interesting way to experiance SL. VR is still in its infancy but it will get a lot better eventually. Somewhere down the line it will look just as real as reality.

 

I am not going to bother with the UI at all. We can wait for SL Viewer 4.0 for that. Linden Labs says they are redesigning the UI to work with Oculus Rift.

[ChrisAlex Sands]

CrackerHax wrote: "I am not going to bother with the UI at all. We can wait for SL Viewer 4.0 for that. Linden Labs says they are redesigning the UI to work with Oculus Rift."

I can only partially agree with you in this matter. For sure one or two independant developers wont be able to redesign the SL UI experience the way it has to be done. This will take some serious amount of time and money.

But: if we can make a start and show how things might be done, e.g. by implementing one feature at a time. I think modifying the chat window so it can be used inside the rift shouldnt be that hard.

From what i have found so far there are many people interested but only very few are actually working on implementing things. I think we should try to gather all available ressources and start working on this together. Some things i am aware of is the prior work of Dale Glass and Kirsten Lee who both had some anaglyphic  viewer implementations running. Recently i also discovered someone working to implement Razer Hydra controls into SL. And then there is someone writing a webGL based viewer that also already has dual rendering support.

And of course there are those wonderful groups of people developing the third party viewers. Did you already try to contact e.g. the firestorm developers?

 

Currently i am trying to gather some overview of available ressources (web sites, forum discussions, blogs, developers..) that are interested in bringing the immersive metaverse to life ;-)

I think for a project like this we need some kind of central point to collect info about and coordinate collaboration across all the different groups that have to work together to make it become true.

Does anybody know of an existing site that we could / should use as a "focus point"? If we wont be able to use some established site for this i will try to set up some wiki to be used.

Lets get the metaverse started!

Chris

 

[Bronxcheer]

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Cracker Hax wrote:

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Bronxcheer wrote:

I wouldn't even bother with a chat window, the OR's resolution is so terrible you wouldn't be able to read any chat unless you gave it a whole load of screen estate.  Until they refine the screen door display a lot of people are going to be very disappointed at the graphics quality, which in realistic use is less than 640x800 per eye.  And here's the clincher as far as SL and its users are concerned, if you can't run SL or any game at over 60 fps then the whole experience degrades drastically.

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Yeah you won't be able to read chat unless it is really big, but by then it will be taking up your entire view. Voice chat is the only option really. Also correct on the fps, any less than 60fps will hurt it a lot and you still need vsync on so everything doesnt rip apart. Even with these problems it will still be an interesting way to experiance SL. VR is still in its infancy but it will get a lot better eventually. Somewhere down the line it will look just as real as reality.

 

I am not going to bother with the UI at all. We can wait for SL Viewer 4.0 for that. Linden Labs says they are redesigning the UI to work with Oculus Rift.

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In retrospect it may have sounded like I was putting a damper on your project.  I applaud your efforts, somebody has to do the groundwork for this while we wait for the product to be refined, so well done.

[Cracker Hax]

 

No, you are right on all counts. These are just things we know we have to work around for now.

[Cracker Hax]

I am still waiting on my Dev Kit. It was in a batch that got stuck in US customs so it was held up for almost a month. They are saying they will go out next week.

[GreyMornes]

hope you get your rift soon! cant wait to see a test build or something!

[Jo Yardley]

Rod Humble says Oculus Rift going public in Second Life late summer!
http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/oculus-rift-in-second-life-goes-public-late-summer/

[GreyMornes]

so any word on any update mr haxx? would love to see some early version of this soon. dont stop working on it just cuz LL is working on theirs. they "say" it may be out by end of the summer but given how LL does things it may be longer then that.

and the more viewer options we have for the Oculus Rift i think the better :-)

[Cracker Hax]

I now have my Rift! Development can commence.

[Jo Yardley]

The Oculus team want the Rift to become as cheap as possible, ideally they would want it to be FREE!
They speak of one company "subsidizing consoles because there’s enough money to be made on software and other areas".
Imagine if Linden Lab became that company...
"Become a premium member of SL and get the Rift for free"...
SL will get more premium members then ever before.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/oculus-vr-wants-to-release-its-headset-for-free/

[Cracker Hax]

Sounds like they want to make it a console.

[Griff Golding]

I have had mine for a couple of days now too! I have been giving demos to all my friends, gotten it to work with Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2. Have not carefully calibrated it for me or tried using it for more than a few minutes at a time yet.

I'm looking forward to merging in your patches to Firestorm and getting up to speed on development!

[Jo Yardley]

Rod Humble (CEO of Linden Lab) playing with the Oculus Rift in Second Life:
http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/rod-humble-playing-with-the-oculus-rift/

[GreyMornes]

glad to hear you got your rift and development is on track.  I cant wait.  personally i think it will be awesome for "naughty fun" in second life.  i mean thats the biggest thing about the Rift...things in it look like its RIGHT THERE...charecters look life size its awesome!  cant wait to see your progress hope you release something soon!

[SheenaFire]

so now that you have your rift any word on a progress update? any chance for a early test demo version soon?

[Jaquaw]

I think it's a brilliant idea based on what I've seen on youtube, it would be a no-brainer for SL, especially with all the content, grids, regions and places in second life, making it more immersive would only make it a lot better, although you may get a little flack for creating yet another viewer to relearn, but once folks see what the Oculus can do.  It will be a moot point over all

So please, by all means, do your thang, and help the metaverse evolve to the next level:manvery-happy:

[Jack Digeridoo]

c'mon put out a test or beta or something even if we have to compile it ourselves.  SL is a pefectly suited for a VR headset.  My neck hurts from trying to play Team Fortress 2.

[Quince Farber]

I'm curious about the oculus development. I know there was the 'Stereosopic viewer patch from the univeristy of michigan." Was this used as the foundation for Rift Development? if so has it progressed past the orginal patch? if so in what ways?

I just ask because i'm curious if there been any progress in modifying FOV, and adding distortion to modify the image to 'wrap' with the diffrent types of  oculus lenses, using the oculus rift input for mouse look,. predictive rendering, and any thing else that may need to be done to keep the frame rate up.

[CaliffJayToten]

You gotta do this ill be getting the devoloper kit soon a first person outlook on SL would be a breath taking experience. Like mouse look but with you bieng able to actually see your Avi and move the head sao other people can see your head gestures. I guess thats more a dream than anything though it would be increddible if you can do that.

[Cracker Hax]

That patch didn't help me at all. I had to do everything without any reference really.

 

 And for an update: I have been really busy on another project, so it looks like I won't be able to work on it for a while. The SL Oculus Rift viewer upgrade should be ready by the end of the summer anyway.

[ChrisAlex Sands]

Hi Cracker!

i know you dont want to throw any half made stuff out at the community.

I am working on implementing side-by-side stereo into Firestorm myself, usinge Strachan Ofarrel's CtrlAltStudio viewer as a starting point.

He already has a working stereo viewer, but "only" for shutter glasses and 3d TV's.

So far i have come to a point where i can choose what kind of stereo output i want to use. Now i am implementing the viewports and later i want to look into the head tracking too.

I know this all doesnt really make much sense, considering Linden Lab has already a working version in their own viewer and we for sure should use that code base for further development.

Nevertheless i feel that throwing out at least a version where people owning an HMD might have a look inside SL as soon as possible might be a good idea.

Is there any chance that you might have me take a look at your sources so i could use some of the work you have put into it already and try to put together at least some basic working version for really early adoptors to have a look at?

best regards,

Chris