Oculus and Unity

I hope this leads to something good
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/20/oculus-announces-partnership-with-unity

From IGN.com
Oculus and the Rift will now be fully supported by the Unity engine. The partnership was announced earlier today during the Oculus Connect 2014 conference, along with various details about how the two will work together to improve the development process for VR in Unity.
Through an add-on in Unity, developers will have a wide range of tools at their disposal to hone the more VR-specific elements of a Rift game, including stereo imaging optimization and 3D audio support.
Oculus' hardware will be supported in both the Free and Pro versions of the Unity engine....

 

If I am not mistake it will be with Unity 4, which Shrouds is using Unity 3. Please mistake me if I'm wrong, if I am please let me know!

 

The current dev kit is for Unity 4, but that's the latest version of Unity. SotA is using version 4.5 of Unity so the deva lit would be compatible. But I can't see them spending time to get it to work with Sota, at least anytime in the future. I doubt that it would be simply slap in the API and have it working correctly.

 

Well, if the game is 3D (except of HUD), then it should not be problem imho (to make it work without glitches, not to make it look good). If the game is cheating to save performance, then there could be issues that would have to be resolved.

It is likely that they would need to spend some time on it and just support Oculus is not enough, they should add body to the first person view, they would have to rework HUD... I doubt they will spend time on that before Episode 1, I just hope that they will keep in mind that devices such as Oculus Rift exists and will support them in later Episode.

 

I believe hey already said that it was not a priority, but hopefully it means that it may be a possibility sooner than previously thought.

 

I think people are underestimating the amount of work that needs to be done to truly support VR. Tacking it on can easily be done now with a flip of a switch, but it would be an extremely poor experience. Needs a true first person mode where you can see your body. Needs to solve the display interface problem. Most critically, needs to solve the user input problem (i.e. keyboard). And needs to make tailor-made experiences that fully takes advantage of VR presence. None of those are easy or even remotely free.

Asking for VR support for Ep1 is not just wishful thinking but premature, given the Oculus Rift CV1 specs and hardware isn't even finalized and won't be until sometime in 2015. Heck, most everyone thought DK2 was going to be the final iteration before CV1 and what do you know, they announce Crescent Bay, which is leaps and bounds technically above DK2, just as DK2 was leaps and bounds above DK1. And they've admitted Crescent Bay isn't anywhere near final specs to CV1 (but getting closer).

Give it time folks, let Oculus do their thing with the hardware and engine developers. They've got a long way to go, just as SotA does for its core game.

Plus, how many of you have hardware that can render 2560 x 1440 at 90hz locked (rumored specs of Crescent Bay)? Not only on the user hardware end, but the SotA client needs to be optimized to run at that speed locked. Any drops in frames will result in severe lag on the Rift. I have the DK2 and if a game couldn't render at 75 hz locked, the visuals went haywire. I can't stress that enough...the fps must be locked and consistent. And DK2 was only a 1920 x 1080 panel @ 75hz.

I would not be surprised if the final specs for CV1 are even higher than Crescent Bay and demand even more performance from the user's hardware and the game.

 

Smack, I don't think anyone here was expecting it anytime soon.

 

Yeah, but I'd actually be surprised if it even made it in for Ep2, and here's why:

Even if CV1 releases in late 2015 as expected, I'm guessing there simply won't be that many people here that can afford it or have the hardware requirements to effectively utilize it. It will remain a high end market for early adopters until prices come down for the projected hardware needs on both the device itself and the user's machine. That's really my point of my post above, in terms of asking SotA to support it even post Ep1.

Chris has all the hardware metrics on the backend via Game Analytics, so they'd know if the majority of the SotA players have capable hardware to render 1440p (likely greater) at 90hz. There's no point in spending all that effort into real Rift support if only a fraction of your players can make use of it. I could see them simply flipping the switch and enabling basic support but let those who can use it deal with the clunky user interface issues mentioned above since likely no work will be done on those areas for the real VR support.

I don't expect until around Ep3 (2017) that the hardware on both fronts will catch up and be at a mainstream price point and/or a majority of the SotA players will be capable of it. But hey, if they wanna go for Ep2, I'l be first in line to support it

 

I love the rift but it's only part of the puzzle until there can be controls to go with it I don't think it'll be that great. I'm hoping things like the Omni for running and Myo armbands for other controls will be cheap enough "normal" people can get it and enjoy full blown VR but at this point nothing is even in stores or shipping to consumers so it's best to wait until it's all out and in people's hands.

 

I think once Oculas is released modders will do all the work to integrate it into their fave games, Modded support will be common i think.
But my question is, Does Oculas really work with 3rd person games?, Perhaps someone who has tried it could tell us how it would work!.

 

Good point about the controls. Oculus are being very secretive about this, but Palmer has publicly stated that traditional gamepads or keyboard/mouse combos do not work for VR. They are very likely building their own input mechanism. After all, they did buy Carbon Design, the company behind the XBox 360 controller. I have a feeling we will see some modified controller or even dual wielding type device. Being able to control your hands and see them move around in VR is part of the problem they're trying to solve.

Oculus + 3rd person games = fail.

The Rift team have been talking up "presence" for as long as I can remember, and even from Abrash while at Valve. In third person view, you break presence completely. I can see someone doing this for artistic expression (disembodied experiences?), but not as the norm for VR experiences.

 

If you guys haven't seen these two they are amazing. http://www.virtuix.com/ and https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/