Oculus Rift Support

[GrixM]

I uh, doesn't the support need to be built into the actuall game? I highly doubt you can smack it on and it'll just work with anything?

No it does not. There is work to be done, yes, but there are ways to get it to work, without frictional doing anything.

It's very hard though, and I haven't heard of anyone currently working on getting any FG games supported. I think out best shot at getting it to work decently is to convince FG to implement it themselves.

If Frictional gonna implement this in some other game (NOT AAMFP, it's almost done!), they have to consider the price. There should be a setting where you can enable/disable Oculus.

Obviously, I'm not saying that everyone should be forced to buy a rift to play the game. (But I think that everyone would want to if they tried it )


If anyone from FG/TCR happens to be reading this, here's some recommended reading material:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve...VR_GDC.pdf
It is a presentation by Valve on what they learned while porting TF2 to the rift.


Also, another video showing the enormous potential of the rift in combination with the hydra. The HPL way of interacting with object, but on steroids!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svY8Wz2GjQ0

[yomer]

From what I have seen (I have not tried it) oculus seems awesome. I definately think that it would be fitting for Amnesia.

I do not think we will see oculus support for "A machine for pigs" officially/unofficially. It's possible that it will be included in HPL3 - the next engine frictional games are working on. I believe frictional games are looking forward, spending their energy on creating their next engine. I do not believe they want to go back into something they are "stepping away from" to add support for oculus rift. Is there an economic profit to be made from that?

Unofficially creating support for it wouldn't work well, as the "oculus view" would be working in coordination with the mouse movement; you are forced to look in the direction of interaction (running, spinning a valve etc). To get the maximum enjoyability you need the "player view" to be a "separate camera" tied to the occulus rift - ergo you have the possibility to look over your shoulder as you run away.

Given the popularity of the game, it would be a marketing investment to be known as the first company which virtually(VR reference) scared the crap out of us.

I think it should be at least evaluated. It really isn't that difficult, considering they know the engine entirely and should have the ability to manipulate the rendering process to achieve it. Unless, the engine was developed without structure and with inefficient fixes. Maybe even by trying to include support for the Rift in HPL2, they can detect rendering flaws which could potentially be fixed during the HPL3 development cycle; which will later permit development for the Rift and other VR solutions.

[Adrianis]

Spoiler below!

From what I have seen (I have not tried it) oculus seems awesome. I definately think that it would be fitting for Amnesia.

I do not think we will see oculus support for "A machine for pigs" officially/unofficially. It's possible that it will be included in HPL3 - the next engine frictional games are working on. I believe frictional games are looking forward, spending their energy on creating their next engine. I do not believe they want to go back into something they are "stepping away from" to add support for oculus rift. Is there an economic profit to be made from that?

Unofficially creating support for it wouldn't work well, as the "oculus view" would be working in coordination with the mouse movement; you are forced to look in the direction of interaction (running, spinning a valve etc). To get the maximum enjoyability you need the "player view" to be a "separate camera" tied to the occulus rift - ergo you have the possibility to look over your shoulder as you run away.

Given the popularity of the game, it would be a marketing investment to be known as the first company which virtually(VR reference) scared the crap out of us.

I think it should be at least evaluated. It really isn't that difficult, considering they know the engine entirely and should have the ability to manipulate the rendering process to achieve it. Unless, the engine was developed without structure and with inefficient fixes. Maybe even by trying to include support for the Rift in HPL2, they can detect rendering flaws which could potentially be fixed during the HPL3 development cycle; which will later permit development for the Rift and other VR solutions.

Ability to manipulate rendering process != not difficult to implement
See Valve's GDC talks on VR for details

[yomer]

I'm not expecting a perfect implementation, but at least that they try. I prefer to hear them say:"You know, we tried and got this(example included), it would take n amount of man hours to get it right and we need to focus entirely on HPL3. We'll look into adding support later on to HPL3." That would give a good impression to their current and future product owners.

Take Carmack for example, He was trying to get Doom BFG to work with the Rift. He almost got it but decided against releasing it because of some irregularities. Tell me that you don't appreciate his efforts?

It's funny. Probably someone could come out with an OpenGL wrapper sooner or later to enable Rift support.

[GrixM]

If there are any sceptics left, here is a video of the one and only Dear Esther using the Oculus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfsejvCDrY

[Veraxus]

Take Carmack for example, He was trying to get Doom BFG to work with the Rift. He almost got it but decided against releasing it because of some irregularities.

Doom 3 BFG was already working on the first Rift prototypes... but the specs of the Rift Dev Kit changed so much that the prior implementation was no longer compatible with the new hardware.

I'm not sure if we'll eventually get a version of Doom 3 that uses the formal SDK or not. I hope we do, but all's silent on that front at the moment.

That said, I really, really, really hope Frictional adds Oculus Support to AMFP. The immersiveness would be unprecedented. I don't generally get creeped out by games (even Amnesia)... but I can imagine that seriously changing with VR. It's no longer a game on a little computer screen... it's not even a game on a big computer screen... it's you... being there. That cannot be underestimated.

[PutraenusAlivius]

Frictional Games WILL NOT make AAMFP compatible with Oculus Rift because it's about to release and the process of adding this will make them to delay it again.

[eliasfrost]

Why not let someone else do it? Like an injector, shouldn't be too hard for those who knows how.

[PutraenusAlivius]

Why not let someone else do it? Like an injector, shouldn't be too hard for those who knows how.

Oculus Rift is complicated and it's maybe not even supported on the HPL Engine. If someone else does it, he/she will need permission from FG and TCR and he/she have to replace some things that will take months, or even years. And we don't even know if FG/TCR will even approve or not.

[yomer]

Why not let someone else do it? Like an injector, shouldn't be too hard for those who knows how.

Oculus Rift is complicated and it's maybe not even supported on the HPL Engine. If someone else does it, he/she will need permission from FG and TCR and he/she have to replace some things that will take months, or even years. And we don't even know if FG/TCR will even approve or not.
[/quote]


If a dedicated developer did try to make an injector/wrapper, they wouldn't need approval from FG. An injector intercepts OpenGL calls and alters the rendering process. All this happens on the video drivers, not the game. One would need approval if they were to modify the engine itself, but not an OpenGL injector/wrapper.

And actually, the process doesn't really take years. Based on other wrappers being made for DirectX, I'd probably say 3-6 months at most.