Road to VR’s Ben Lang talks about some of the highlights from Oculus Connect including the new Crescent Bay prototype, the open sourcing of DK1, Gear VR, and other demos and things that stuck out for him. To see a wrap-up of all of Road to VR’s Oculus Connect coverage, then be sure to check out this post here.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:11.995] Ben Lang: My name's Ben Lang, I'm the founder and executive editor of roadtovr.com, and we're at the end of Kinect, and today we saw some pretty awesome talks from Brendan Reeb, Oculus' CEO, from John Carmack, their CTO, and from Michael Abrash, their Chief Scientist. And unfortunately I didn't actually have a chance to see Carmack's, which I will definitely watch as soon as it goes online, she's been so busy around here, but I got to see part of Abrash's, which was great, Brendan's was great, And for anybody at home who didn't catch those, I definitely recommend it. I mean, Michael Abrash and John Carmack are just... I love to hear them talk. I mean, even if this conference, like, nothing cool was revealed, like Crescent Bay was, even if it was just them, I think that would be worth my time. But Crescent Bay was revealed, new Oculus Rift prototype, and I got to check that out today, which was really quite awesome, and I've heard a lot of people say the same thing.
[00:01:05.313] Kent Bye: Nice, yeah. So, you know, they did a number of demos, maybe 12 to 16 different experiences. And so, what was it like for you to be in the Crescent Bay and to see this first preview of what the consumer version of the Oculus Rift might be?
[00:01:19.941] Ben Lang: Well, for me, the improvement in the resolution was huge. The jump from the DK1 to the DK2 was big. And I think in terms of resolution, this was probably as big. Because even if you say, I don't care about the resolution, it's good with the DK2, there's still a subconscious part of your brain that is distracted by a resolution that doesn't look exactly like it expects to see in real life. And that's not to say that Crescent Bay is there yet, but it's definitely better. And I've been talking with a lot of different people, interviewing them, asking them what they thought. And one of the resounding things that I hear is, compared to previous times I've asked people about other, you know, when the DK2 first came out, I'd ask a lot of people what they thought. Compared to that, and with the DK1, people are no longer talking so much about the hardware. They're not saying the tracking was great, the latency was low, the positional tracking was wonderful, the resolution was great. they're saying this demo is really neat. The way that this alien looked like it was speaking to me was really cool. So they're talking about the experience and not about the hardware. And I think that is a serious shift in tone and a very good shift in tone for Oculus that it's getting so good now that it's just you put it on and you're transported somewhere else. You know, when people used to put on the DK-1, when I used to demo that back when that was the first thing that was out, people would say, this is neat, but the resolution's low. You know, that was like the first comment every time. Now people just put it on and they say, you know, whatever experience they happen to be in, they say, they talk about the experience, they talk about, you know, if they did or didn't like it, but it's not really about the hardware anymore, which is awesome. So for me being in there, I haven't felt presence many times, which is this magical thing, which if you've never really experienced it, it's kind of... hard to describe. For me it tends to manifest itself in particular objects that feel very real and very present in the space and it only generally happens for kind of a few seconds at a time. But with the DK2 was the first system that was kind of good enough for me to get a hint of that and it's like for two seconds you just get this your brain just kind of changes modes and it's like wow you're like it's very uncanny it's hard to describe but it feels like what you're looking at is your brain is telling you it's real even though consciously you know it's not. So I've only had that experience a couple times in DK2 but in Crescent Bay I had that several times just in the 10 minute demo. So I thought that was a serious testament to how good the hardware is getting. My favorite experience in there, the one that stood out to me the most, that gave me the most presence was they had a demo where there was this little miniature town that was kind of made out of paper craft. And I leaned in really close, so close that I think the software was having, it didn't like that I was so close, the eyes I don't think are set up, the virtual eyes I don't think are set up for that. So it started to get blurry, the images weren't matching up. So I just closed one eye and kept getting in even closer to get closer to this little cardboard paper town. And I started to get so close and I just, these, the textures in the paper seemed so real. And I was just looking at this little doorway, this little miniature paper craft doorway, and my brain was like, this is a real, this is paper. This is physical paper that's in front of me and somebody built a model and I'm looking at it. And my brain just told me that for this like, until the demo was over and it was amazing. I knew it wasn't a real thing, but my brain was telling me all of the things that a real thing would tell me in that situation. And it's so funny because it wasn't like, you wouldn't call that high graphics, but it was just some subtle cues that really spoke to me. And I find the thing of presence interesting and I find it cool that they did so many different demos because I've talked to a lot of people and different experiences seem to trigger that for different people.
[00:04:54.814] Kent Bye: Yeah, it was a quite a wide spectrum of different things and yeah, I agree There's some moments where I really felt that I was really present But yet at the same time when I raised up my hands looking for my hands It was that same like oh not yet. Like I still don't have a body I don't still have my limbs and you know probably the deepest set of immersion that I've had was doing the sixth sense and stem demo with the guns where I was holding the two guns and then I Had these two stem controls in my hand had dropped one of the guns and then I was just thinking to myself Oh, I just need to put down this other gun and then take off this headset not realizing that. Oh, wait I still had these two things in my hand And being tricked like that is one of the things that is really cool and surreal, being part of that presence where your subconscious mind is like, oh, I'm in another place. And then you're like, oh, wait, but no, I just totally got fooled. And so I definitely felt that a few times in the Crescent Bay demos. But what do you think about the VR input? Because I know that there was some rumors on TechCrunch saying, oh, there's going to be something announced. It feels like in order for ZV-1 to really get out there that we really need to have some sort of standardized VR input.
[00:06:05.483] Ben Lang: Well, so there's a couple interesting things that I'm seeing as somebody who's watching this space closely. One is that, from what I've seen, Crescent Bay does not have a USB port on it, which I thought was extremely interesting because, to the best of my predictions, the reason that a USB port was put on the DK2 was not just for developers to plug in stuff and hack around with it. I thought pretty surely we would be seeing Oculus knew coming down the road would be a peripheral that would be plugged into that port. So I'm kind of surprised to not see that port on Crescent Bay. It might have been underneath, maybe I missed it. But as far as I know, it's not on there. So I don't know if that's a shift in the direction, or maybe they just really did put that USB port on the DK2 just for developers to play with it. Though I didn't really think the demand was there to warrant. Adding that but I guess we'll see but you're very right the the need I think as the hardware improves the experience becomes better The need to start to want to interact with that environment calls more strongly on you as you're in there the demo Where you kind of we're looking at like a microscopic flea or something and there are these little I don't know proteins or bits of dust floating around they kind of look like pills little capsules and floating around you and they were like a foot long and they just wanted to be grabbed or pushed. They were floating, you know, and it just seemed like you could just shove them and see what they would do. And I had that desire, but I didn't have the capacity. It's really interesting because it almost feels like they're setting up for a DK3. And I say that only because I agree with you in that I think that the input is an important piece of the puzzle. But if they're going to launch, I don't think that they can launch the CV1 at the same time as they first show developers the input. The content needs to be ready. If they think that having your hands in the VR world is important to the product, they can't say, here's the CV1, and developers, you haven't had any time to play with this yet, but we're launching that also. So that makes me think that they're setting up for a DK3, which will have some form of input, because the developers need to get their hands on it to start making serious content before a consumer launch. It's very possible that Oculus feels that the CV1 can just be a mastery of the visual piece. I think that there's a lot of pressure on them now with Morpheus having that built-in input functionality to make sure that there's input in the CV1. I think that they're very much pressured to do that now.
[00:08:29.545] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that it's possible to use DK2 and maybe have a supplemental, like if it's just camera-based or, you know, maybe it's something that plugs into that USB port where it's something that they could send out as an additional supplement to DK2 and still have all of the limb tracking.
[00:08:45.691] Ben Lang: Yeah, you're right. It is definitely possible that, I mean, so Crescent Bay is just a prototype. And what it really represents is not major changes to the DK2. So it's really just an iteration. It's basically all the same things we have in the DK2, just better. So there is an argument there where you could say they're not going to do a DK3, they are going to go straight from DK2 to CV1. But they still, because they have that USB port on the DK2, they could still send out the input device, let people develop for it on the DK2, because there's fundamentally, there's not a lot different between the DK1 and Crest Bay. It's just better of what's there. So, you know, developers could very much use that as a platform to work on CD1 experiences.
[00:09:25.933] Kent Bye: And what has been some of the big news that you've seen coming out of this?
[00:09:30.616] Ben Lang: One of the biggest things, and I think something that's been very much understated so far, was Oculus Open Sourced, is the term that they used, basically all of the plans that make the DK1. So they put out the schematics for the circuitry and the boards that power it. They put out literally the CAD models of the case. They put out the firmware. They put out the tracker. And they licensed it with an open source license so that, I mean, Nirav Patel, who was on the panel where they announced this, literally said somebody could take the plans for the tracker, for instance, have it made in bulk, and sell it. Like, the license is that open, and they just said, take it. This is the work that we've done up to that point. And we're happy to let people do something with it. And I think it speaks a lot to a number of things. One, their culture is such that they're really interested in seeing VR grow. And they're climbing up this ladder. And they may be on rung two now. And DK1 may have been rung one. But they're saying, anybody who wants to come along with us, we're not going to give you the rung two stuff. But if you want to start on rung one, we're not going to leave you all the way down there on the ground floor. So I find that to be really kind of a refreshing approach to what we see in many other very competitive spaces. And I think post-Facebook acquisition, it helps the community see that Oculus still has good control of their vision. You could see a world where Facebook wouldn't want that stuff to go out there, but I imagine that Oculus said, this is something we want to do for these reasons, and it was important to them, clearly. And so at this point, you know, if somebody, I mean, Brendan Arieb joked and kind of said, you know, we're looking forward to seeing all the Chinese knockoffs. But really what it means is somebody can start from, they can get a springboard thanks to Oculus and continue to iterate on that. And I think that's, I think it's really respectable.
[00:11:27.205] Kent Bye: Yeah, when they released the latency tester, they did release a lot of the hardware and do a similar sort of open hardware push. And I remember at the time they said, we very much believe in open software, open hardware. And I think there was some hesitation of that, you know, sometimes they didn't always have the final say in terms of what they could or could not do based upon the partnerships that they have. Yeah, I think it's great that they are able to be in the position actually follow through on that promise and you know it makes me think of John Carmack and his whole talk that he did at SMU just talking about the process of when you're getting into gated development you just start cloning things and you sort of take what's there and modify it and then all the open source stuff that he's contributed over the years with his work and Just points to the possibility of creating this open source ecosystem for innovation and really having Virtual reality grow. So yeah, I agree.
[00:12:20.394] Ben Lang: It's a super exciting and yeah, and if you had any other thoughts on that I'm just thoroughly impressed that oculus I think what they've this sounds ridiculous now because what they've shown us is so much better than the DK one and But I think as far back as the DK1, they could have packaged that up in a fancy package and sent it to Best Buy and put it on Amazon, and I think they could have made a good amount of money. But even though that opportunity was there, and I think many other people would have just jumped at it, and maybe other situations they would have had, a lot a great experience, a comfortable experience, and they're solving a lot of the really hard problems. It's great that they have managed to put together this really incredible team now that's working on this stuff, and it just seems like they're the right people for the job. And that's not to discount, you know, other people in the industry working on it, but if someone's saying Oculus was not kind of the keystone to revitalizing this era of VR, then they'd just be lying, really. I mean, that's the truth of it and it's great and it's great that we're seeing so many other people part of it and it's great that we have a company that is willing to drive it but still be as open as they can.
[00:13:51.540] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had the pretty surreal experience of going through the Crescent Bay demo experience, which was amazing, and then going straight into doing a series of Gear VR demos, which was, you know, a little bit underwhelming compared to the experience I had just come from. And so, I think it's a little bit of an interesting dynamic that's happening in that the Gear VR is set up to be launching here a lot sooner than the Consumer version of the oculus rift and so what do you how do you see that playing out in terms of these first VR? Experiences that are out there are not actually the best possible VR experience that the public could have
[00:14:26.747] Ben Lang: It's interesting, and I think a little bit scary almost, because you're right, it's not the best that's out there yet. I mean, what we're seeing on Gear VR is basically the DK1 with better resolution and better latency, and that's not a bad experience by any means, but as enthusiasts and developers, we understand that there are limitations to not having positional tracking, and what the addition of positional tracking means for the experience. You can't necessarily put a product out for the mass market and make sure that everybody understands that stuff. And Samsung is in this very interesting position where this is, to my knowledge, really the first time that a big company has put out basically what they're calling a beta product. Samsung is officially calling Gear VR the Innovator Edition, and they've specified that this is aimed at developers, enthusiasts, and, you know, early adopters, bleeding-edge people. And usually when that happens, they call it a developer kit. This time, they're taking one step closer to the mainstream without going all the way there, and I don't think that's necessarily a problem, because like I said, me, you, developers, enthusiasts, we understand the limitations, we understand it's not gonna be perfect, But if that thing goes up for sale in an AT&T store and you have a rep who's gonna be selling it and answering questions to somebody and they don't really know what they're talking about, the person buying it doesn't really know what they're talking about, they're not gonna have that proper expectation set. So if Samsung isn't on message every time that they're talking about Gear VR and making it abundantly clear every time that this is not meant for your everyday, you know, your mom or your dad to buy, It could lend itself to a situation where you have a lot of people buying it and just saying, wow, VR is here. I remember reading about it in the news, and now they're selling it. This must have been that Oculus thing. Because it says Oculus on the side. It says powered by Oculus. So I'm going to go buy it. Oh, but I read that it was amazing, and this isn't as amazing as I thought it was going to be. So I don't know. I don't want to get into too much of a segue into the marketing aspect of it, but it's certainly interesting because it's this huge company. Samsung is massive and they're putting out this product. I mean, that's not to say it's not good. The latency on there is crazy good. They've set an excellent bar for what mobile VR can and should be. They're just missing the positional tracking piece. And hopefully we'll see that solved at some point. It's just a really tough problem. It's certainly not that they haven't thought about it. It's certainly not that they don't know about it. But it's not solved yet.
[00:16:59.622] Kent Bye: Was there any other discoveries or demos or things that you saw at the Oculus Connect that really stick out?
[00:17:07.068] Ben Lang: You know, this was a really developer-focused event, so as far as you're just straight-up headline news, it wasn't the biggest event for that kind of stuff, but it was really all about getting the developers together, and it did a great job at that. Every other person that I see or talk to is like, somebody that I've seen it a bunch of other conferences and you know the camaraderie among the developers is really incredible is this is not The same as many other industries that have come up recently, especially if you look at the smartphone world, you know smartphones were launched by you know big companies had them out for a while. Apple came in and stepped up and kind of changed that game. But the developers kind of came later. The App Store launched a while after the first iPhone came out. It didn't even launch on it. And it was kind of a big company saying to developers, like, here's what you can and can't do. It's a different dynamic, whereas with Oculus, the whole reason that they even got started was because you had a couple thousand individual people saying, we believe in this just like you guys do, and we're going to give you $300 each to see it happen. And so it's got this really amazing dynamic where you have a company that's very involved with their developers, but the developers are so key to what they're doing and have a lot of influence. And so it's really cool to see the Oculus throwing this and it comes through that where it came from, the roots really come through in events like this because everybody seems to know each other. Everybody's excited about what's happening and everybody's excited for the future.
[00:18:45.503] Kent Bye: And finally, I don't know if you had a chance to sort of see things beyond just gaming or even the games that really stuck out. But to me, I feel like there's still a lot of potential of going beyond just what video games can provide and doing educational experiences, other types of experiences. And I'm just curious if you saw anything here that kind of stuck out in that realm or other even games that you saw that you were really excited about.
[00:19:09.529] Ben Lang: Yeah, well, in Crescent Bay there was a demo where there was a big T-Rex came running at you. You start in this dimly lit museum and you hear some thumping on the ground. You're like, what's that? And then you go, oh, I know what that is. And then this huge T-Rex comes around the corner. And that didn't scare me so much as I just thought, like, this is really cool. It's really well animated. I can see the anatomy. I can see how it's moving. And it's such a more memorable experience than looking at bones or looking at a picture. And so for me, my mind immediately went to, wow, this is going to be awesome for education. because you're going to be able to get kids really excited to... I mean, let's just take the easy approach and say you want to teach somebody about computer animation. It's like, you just got to see this thing that looked real. Now you can be excited about learning how to make that yourself. Let's go the less obvious route and say instead of taking kids to a museum, let's make them feel like they're actually back in a time when dinosaurs roamed. and have them be excited to learn about dinosaurs because they're experiencing it in an immersive way. Not only do I think being excited about any topic kind of opens up your ability to learn about it more so than just being, you know, it's not something you're interested in. I think also that experiencing things in immersive ways sticks with you more. It's a better way to learn because it's not like you're just reading about a T-Rex and what they did out of a book, for instance. You're actually seeing it and seeing what it might be like to be in the shoes of somebody who is in its path.
[00:20:45.247] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thank you so much.
[00:20:46.949] Ben Lang: Thanks. It was a lot of fun talking with you.
