Oculus Rift: Future of WoT?

Thanks to Branwen_lj (from world-of-ru) for posting this video and to others for linking me the story earlier.

Is the Oculus Rift (VR goggles) the future of tank simulation? The Norewegian army certainly thinks so. They built a vehicle, that can be driven “buttoned up” using only relatively cheap cameras, PC and Oculus Rift, giving the driver a 180 or so degree field of view, composed from the images of the cameras. The price for this solution is the driver getting tired quicker due to the artificial nature of the images, which I assume will be a problem in gaming as well. Personally, I can’t imagine using Oculus Rift on regular basis (even if I had it and the rig to support it), because I actually do get headaches even from watching 3D movies in cinema. I assume the strain on the eyes won’t be much different.

 

 

As for Wargaming and World of Tanks, as far as I recall, the official stance, confirmed by Big Boss Viktor Kislyi during the WGL finals in Poland is that this technology is viable for World of Tanks only when it gets mass-produced and spread (hundreds of thousands to millions of pieces). I guess we’ll just have to wait.

23 thoughts on “Oculus Rift: Future of WoT?

  1. I have a Rift and suffer from the same problem as you regarding 3D movies SS. Suprisingly, because the Rift covers the entire field of view, I get no problems at all when using it, apart from the shock of coming back to the ‘Real World’ after an extended session using it!

    • yea, the whole challenge was to make it extremely soft on the eyes just like “real” light that fall on your retina… it’s just physics

    • It isn’t because the field of view. It is because you have a divided image for each eye, just like in real life. The technology for the cine use different wave frequencies that could produce headache in some persons. The people who have headache with the prototype is because of the high latency and the response time of the panel.

  2. Oculus Rift and other VR Tech as well as those that improve upon the experience is the future for gaming, however some games won’t work (even with the support) with Oculus such as Tetris and Minesweeper (OK I’m just kidding, but there are games out there that just wouldn’t work with Oculus).

  3. I don’t know if the Oculus will be a success or not. Recent controversies concerning the Rift’s acquisition by facebook and the its issues with Zenimax have made the future of the device uncertain.

  4. So… I belive I am unable to see the 3D effect (Can’t see it in my TV. In case you are wondering, I WAS using the glasses and a 3D video). Would that render me unable to use the Oculus Rift?
    If that is the future of gaming, I’m going to be so very pissed off. :/.

    • I don’t think that not being able to see 3D will stop you from experiencing VR, but perhaps it might be a good idea to try out a demo in a store before investing in an Oculus Rift.

      • if he isn’t able to see 3D then we won’t have the whole image nor a proper experience.

        anyone with amblyopia or strabismus won’t be able to use oculus, nor watch 3d movies or anything like that, since the brain ain’t able to properly combine the 2 images to make 1, giving the person quite the headache if he tries to force it.

    • You will be able to see 3D with Oculus Rift. My friend got the same issue, all I had to do is set up a higher separation of channels (think of it as and equivalent to the distance between the eyes) and it worked out perfectly :)

      Though keep in mind that we didn’t try to use it for hours. Just a 15 minutes session or so. It might be possible that using Oculus in a long sessions will cause headache and make you feel very tired (sadly that’s something you can’t really test in a store).

  5. Well 3D Cinema works (completely) different. At Cinema you have different polarization filters for each eye. The film consists of 2 types of images, one horizontal, one vertical which appear in turns (h,v,h,v,…). Each eye can only see the one that fits its filter but you still get a) a flickering effect and b) some of the light for the other eye (because of refraction, reflection and such). Thats what makes your headaches i guess (especially the flickering).
    Oculus shows each eye a different image – so there cannot be any of these effects.
    I would be damn surprised if you get a headache from the Rift VR.

    • no, the headache has nothing to do with lights, the headache is related to the brain receiving a double vision, if you force the brain to acknowledge both eyes and try to merge the double vision into one image that makes any sense you will get quite a headache. That’s why as self defense the brain suppresses one of the images and you can only use one eye consciously.

  6. Very understandable, and a rather good move I’ll say, that they are moving to a virtual reality solution on their vehicles.

    I served in the Norwegian army as a driver on a Leopard ARV some years ago, and visibility was always a huge worry and a problem, especially when driving buttoned up.
    No matter how good your commander is at spotting, you can never truly eliminate the possibility of a particulary stupid infantryman ending up as track-grease.

    As for gaming, yes gladly, but not in a competitive a game as WoT untill the technology gets better. Here the visibility and envriomental awareness is allready excellent, and the akwardness of Oculus Rift would probably put you at a serious disadvantage, at least initially.

    • Take a look at these:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU9EzJbuK7Y

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-d-0–mQs

      Only problems were:
      - The resolution (I played Panther specifically for its sniping role – zooming in on targets was the only way to identify them on greater distanecs – DK1 has terrible resolution)
      - The fact the every little head movemet is translated to your aim, so you’re not as accurate.
      - Oh yeah and pretty much all HUD besides aim reticle is outside your FOV, so you don’t see map, player lists, tank status, etc. :D

      But the first one is likely to be solved with HD Oculus, the others are a matter of proper implementation in game. (This obviously ain’t native support.)

  7. I dont see reason why should WOt have oculus support, graphics looks shit anyway so there is no reason to see it all around, when wot strarts looking at least like WT then they should start thinking about oculus.

  8. Having to render the second point of view for Oculus is going to lower the already poor framerate. Since 9.0 I had to reduce all visual settings to minimum and I still can’t get the steady 60 fps I had before the patch. It’s like every step forward leads Wargaming two steps backwards. I might switch to War Thunder not because of different game mechanics or better graphics but because WT actually works smoothly on my computer.

    Another thing is that it would be difficult to implement Oculus Rift in WoT. From what I read it’s very easy to get nauseated while using Oculus Rift with games utilising third person perspective.

    • Actually World of Tanks was the least nauseating game I’ve played with Rift DK1. 3rd person ain’t really a problem imo.

  9. Meanwhile in “the other camp” Rift support is already ingame….
    “we’ll implement it when they sell millions”….. what do you expect, WG is the #1 champion of not implementing ANY new technology(even when they’re already obsolete), and screwing up royally when they do:
    terrible game engine, obsolete DX9 renderer, no havok(pushed back, and back and baaaack), no multithreading, etc

    • You know… russian discipline… “only apply it when it works… but then use it in big numbers!”

      • yeah but “the other camp” is russian as well and what do you knwo?, insanely better engine even at DX9.
        then they came out with DX11, even better performance at BETTER GRAPHICS (in fact, the DX11 “low” setting has higher quality than the old dx9 “max”) and oculus, even before it’s sold comercially..

        so it’s not Russian devs, it’s WG that is lazy as fuck and extremely inept on their development / patch strategy.

        • graphics and eyecandy (which even the Rift is) aren’t the reasons why WoT is played…

          and, contrary to the popular belief, it raises no money… the gameplay does

  10. Went on a 3D movie once, Avatar, had to take the glasses of mid-movie. No problems with Rift when it comes to eyestrain. Rift nausea comes from movement discrepancies and movement blur. (Which shouldn’t be a problem from DK2 onwadrs, we’ll see about that.)

  11. Good to see our military spending more money on hardware to make it easier to wage war, how fitting to spend our fucking OIL money.

    However this is relative old technology, from what I know the Soviets and the Japanese experimented with Head-mounted display and helmet mounted displays for use in combat vehicles to enable greater field of view with the use of television cameras, this was in the 70s and 80s, the Americans and Chinese are doing it now too. Only difference is that they use one television camera that moves according to the direction of your head is rotating

  12. Majority of WOT players are still using Windows XP and single core computers, and we are talking about WOT and Oculus. Lol.

    Not a single chance.