Topico Geral sobre Realidade Virtual (RV)

[Jorge-Vieira]

Oculus founder says 'VR will become something everyone wants'

With Oculus all-hands-on-deck for the launch of the Rift VR headset, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey took to Twitter on Christmas Eve saying some huge things about VR and its future.

Luckey said in his tweet "Reminder of something I have talked about before: VR will become something everyone wants before it becomes something everyone can afford". Luckey's tweet would be a way of talking about the price concerns around the Rift, with Luckey tweeting afterwards "there are a lot of people who expect to spend a couple hundred bucks and use their existing low-end laptops" to play VR content.

Luckey continued his tweet rampage, adding "we are taking some big steps to make sure people know what they are getting into - we don't want to sell to people who don't".

Personally, I think VR will be big enough that people will spend money on it. It's like buying a console, right? People don't just buy an Xbox One or PS4 and get to gaming - they forget that they have to already own a TV, which can cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. On top of that, you need a lounge - and something to put your TV on. VR will be the same. A few hundred for the VR headset, and Oculus expects you to have the other hardware to get it working.

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/49226/...nts/index.html

[Enzo]

Eu quero é o hololens. RV é para meninos!!

[Jorge-Vieira]

Futuremark's VRMark: First Look

Futuremark, creators of the famous 3DMark graphics benchmarking utility, is hard at work developing a new benchmarking tool designed to measure your system's ability to handle virtual reality head-mounted displays (HMDs). It will also be used by reviewers to measure latency of HMDs. VRMark is still very much under development, but Tom’s Hardware was recently invited to take part in the press preview and was provided some experimental hardware to try out the upcoming benchmark.
Step By Step

Futuremark’s VRMark utility is being developed for release in 2016, but not all of it will be released to the public. You can break VRMark down into several different parts, and your access to the various levels will depend very much on what you do for a living. The reason for this is that much of the testing for VR is actually done with extra equipment.
Take latency for example. In a virtual reality situation, there are a number of different actions that would have latency. Futuremark said VRMark is able to measure four different latency events:

• Time from physical event to API event (Step 1 to Step 2)
• Time from API event to draw call (Step 2 to Step 3)
• Time from draw call to image on display (Step 3 to Step 4)
• Total latency (time from Step 1 to Step 4)

The first step, the physical movement, can’t be measured accurately without a device that can consistently perform the same action and do it on command. This sort of test will therefore be limited to hardware manufacturers and other groups that have access to this kind of specialized equipment and a laboratory environment. Step 2, the time from API event to draw call, is measured by software as part of the latency test. It does not require extra hardware.
3DMark11 - VRMarkThe test that Tom’s Hardware has been privy to is the third step: time from draw call to image on display. Futuremark said this test won’t be available to the general public either, because it also requires some specialized equipment to perform. It will be accessible to members of the press for VR headset reviews, though.
We’ve been asked to not show the hardware that was sent to us and to avoid describing it in detail because it is still subject to changes, but what I can tell you is that it involves an external sensor that takes tens of thousands of samples per second to detect when the display draws the image. It then compares that result against when the benchmark initiated the draw call. This test gives us three results measured in milliseconds: Photon Latency, Photon Persistence and Total Latency.
Photon Latency is the time it takes for the screen to react to a draw call. Photon Persistence, also known as ghosting, is the time it takes for the screen to transition from light to dark. VRMark also measures the total latency, which is the time from the physical event to when the image displays on screen.
Although Futuremark supplied the experimental hardware and early VRMark build, we were on our own to get a headset for testing. For this reason, we are currently limited to one headset for the benchmark: an Oculus Rift DK2.
3DMark Fight Scene - VRMark
Testing Display Latency

The Display Latency test (Photon Latency and Photon Persistence) is definitely meant to be measuring the VR HMD and not so much the hardware in the computer, but for curiosity's sake we ran the test on a small selection of VR-ready graphics cards to see what, if any, effect different GPUs have on these metrics.
From Nvidia, we tested a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 SC Windforce, Asus GeForce GTX 980 Matrix Platinum and a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming. We ran the tests using Nvidia GeForce Driver 359.06.
From AMD, we had only two cards on hand to test, Sapphire’s Radeon R9 390 Nitro and Power Color’s Radeon R9 390X Devil. As much as we’d love to test a Fiji-based card in VRMark, we don’t currently have one at this lab. We used AMD’s latest Radeon Software Crimson release, version 15.12.
The test system that we used for VRMark is the same test system use for GPU reviews. The CPU is Intel’s Core i7-5930K overclocked to 4.2 GHz. The system has 16 GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR4 and two 500 GB M200 SSDs, and everything is plugged into an MSI X99S Xpower motherboard. Power is delivered from a be quiet! 850 W Dark Power Pro 10 platinum-rated power supply.
The way the sensor works, it can measure only one eye at a time, so we ran the test for each graphics card on both eyes for comparison. This revealed an interesting trait that should have been obvious, but at first left us with some concerns for the hardware: The left eye was consistently around seven milliseconds slower than the right. It turns out this should happen. The screen in the Rift DK2 draws from right to left, so the left side of the screen will, naturally, have slightly more latency. Presumably, a headset with two screens would be able to have matched latency in each eye, but we’ll have to wait for one to be made available to verify that theory.
The performance level of the graphics card really doesn’t have any effect on the display latency, but the architecture of the GPU may potentially have some effect, albeit extremely minor. This aligns with our expectations; we didn’t expect to see any dramatic differences between the various graphics cards, as photon latency and persistence are largely dependent on the screen's performance, but there did appear to be some slight differences in the photon persistence results.
The variance was slight, to put it mildly, but it appears as though AMD’s drivers and hardware have a slight advantage. AMD’s R9 390 and R9 390X were able to fade back to black nearly a full millisecond quicker than comparably-priced Nvidia cards. (The 980Ti was even better, but for more than twice the price.) Keep in mind that these results are just a small run of tests. We would have to do far more sampling to definitively say AMD’s photon persistence performance is better.

The report that VRMark spits out isn't built into the software yet, so we have to create our own graphs with the data that the benchmark records. The graph data is supposed to indicate where the events took place, though in the current build it doesn't record these events for you. We've been told the next build will incorporate that into the reporting system, but for now this is how the graph looks with the data provided.

A Preview And A Promise

Futuremark has only released the latency test to us, but we’ve been told the next phase is coming soon. There is a VR performance test being developed that you will be able to use at home to gauge the ability of your own system to render VR scenes. Just days before Christmas, the company released a preview that allows you to view an interactive demo of the upcoming benchmark.
VRMark MuseumThe preview will work with or without a VR HMD connected to your PC. It places you inside a museum lobby between four glass displays. Inside the displays are recreations of past 3DMark environments. The blizzard scene from 3DMark06, the jungle scene and submarine scenes from 3DMark11, and the fight scene from 3DMark Firestrike are all present. The fight sequence plays out in miniature in front of you, and one of the floating bug machine things from the demo actually flies around outside of the display cabinet. It’s a clever way to create a VR benchmark, and I look forward to running it as a test rather than a demo.
It’s great to see a company like Futuremark take on VR so seriously. In the coming months, interest in VR will likely accelerate, and many people will want to know how their current hardware will handle virtual reality. A benchmark like VRMark has the potential to be very popular, very soon. We’ll be doing much more testing with Futuremark’s new benchmark as further builds are released to us and the public.

Noticia:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/vrm...iew,30820.html

[Enzo]

Qualquer dia vamos abrir esse bench aqui no forum tambem

[Jorge-Vieira]

Valve's Chet Faliszek says VR will resurge high-end PC sales in 2016

Valve writer Chet Faliszek has stated on Twitter that virtual reality (VR) means a sales boom for high-end computers in 2016.

"Thanks to VR," he says, "In this coming year we will see a resurgence of high-end PCs in the home."

This comes just after NVIDIA stated VR requires seven times more powerful computers.

Faliszek then asks, "What's the side-effect? What are the opportunities?" Lewdness aside, we'd say decreased console sales, increased 4K adoption, and lower hardware prices all seem plausible.

Noticia:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/49333/...016/index.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

A Third Type Of Processor For VR/AR: Movidius' Myriad 2 VPU

There is a whole new market that is a sea of lava, gurgling to the surface, about to blow the top off of a mountain. It’s virtual and augmented reality, and it’s not just marquee HMDs like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and Microsoft HoloLens. It’s dozens of VR/AR headsets and glasses, hundreds of apps and experiences, and new technologies that are being developed to enable and support all of it.
Earlier this year at Microsoft Build, I got a chance to try out the Microsoft HoloLens. My time with it was woefully short, and even after getting a chance to see how the thing works, no one is especially privy to what’s inside it, what makes it tick.
Then, as now, there’s so much we don’t know. But what we do know is that there is an additional, new type of processor in the HoloLens. This, and other VR/AR devices, make heavy use of sensors, and something has to handle all that data.
More Processing, Please

CPUs and GPUs have served us all well, in everything from desktop computers to smartphones and beyond, but Movidius contends that the new computing paradigms presented by VR/AR, drones, smart robots and even the Internet of Things require a third type of processor to work alongside them.
Where Microsoft calls its extra processor an “HPU” (holographic processing unit), Movidius is building a “VPU” (vision processing unit).
Movidius is a “vision sensing” company, and it does not intend to miss the VR/AR bus. It wants to be inside of VR/AR, figuratively and literally. Its next big product is the Myriad 2, a dedicated VPU package (hardware and software) designed to bring “visual intelligence to our machines.”
The Myriad 2 seems destined primarily for mobile devices, which, if you think about it, is more or less the “killer” application -- smart glasses, VR HMDs (which in many cases are designed to be untethered and portable), and even mobile AR solutions like Project Tango. (For that matter, high-end smartphones could benefit from a VPU, especially those designed to work with VR HMDs.)
To boil it down, Movidius explained the point of the VPU by noting that it’s no longer sufficient to render a complex scene as a GPU does; the device must understand it. That’s just a different beast. Company representatives told Tom’s Hardware in a briefing that cramming that much performance into a low-power SoC was not previously possible and required offloading complex processing to servers in the cloud. The continuing advance of technology, coupled with specialized processors like the Myriad 2 VPU, are allowing these calculations to be done on device, eliminating network latency and enabling new experiences.

The Myriad 2

The Myriad 2 vision processor is designed to handle very specific tasks such as eye and gesture tracking, object classification and tracking, and environment mapping. It can process input from up to six HD cameras, which paves the way for stereo depth sensing or multi-directional viewing.

As with other SoCs, the Myriad 2 bundles several different components into one piece of silicon. One of the blocks that's crucial for reducing power consumption includes about 20 fixed-function hardware accelerators for common image processing algorithms that handle noise filtering, sharpening, and so on with an ASIC-style design.
The twelve homegrown (that is to say, proprietary) SHAVE 128-bit SIMD vector units are what provide the processing power at the heart of this VPU. For comparison, a low-power, general purpose CPU such as an ARM Cortex-A57 or -A72 contains two NEON 128-bit SIMD vector units. GPUs also excel at processing highly parallel tasks and are used for many of the same visual processing applications targeted by the Myriad 2. According to Movidius, though, its VPU offers better performance than competing GPUs like Nvidia's Tegra K1 at vision-specific tasks, because its SHAVE vector units support predicated instructions that handle code branches more efficiently. Visual processing is inherently unpredictable, and many algorithms, like those used for edge detection, have interdependencies with surrounding pixels, creating branch-heavy code streams.
The Myriad 2 also contains two different RISC CPUs. Both appear to be SPARC Leon cores, with the smaller of the two dedicated to scheduling within the SoC and the larger core dedicated to running user code within a real-time operating system (RTOS). There's technically no L3 cache for the CPUs, but there is 2 MB of on-chip memory that functions like a hybrid L3 cache, shared between the CPUs, SHAVE vector units, and fixed-function accelerators. This shared memory design avoids the power penalty of moving data between processor islands. The VPU also supports up to 1 GB of additional off-chip DRAM.

I/O support includes SD, USB 3.0 and gigabit Ethernet, as well as UART (x2), SPI (x3), and I2C (x3) and I2S (x3). The Myriad 2 uses a MIPI interface with twelve lanes. A Movidius rep said that this way, data can enter sit in main memory while it’s operated on. This, he said, is in contrast to traditional SoC architectures, where each port tends to have its own buffer, which he said wastes a lot of power moving data between buffers and memory.
The clock speed will be between 300-600 MHz with a power envelope of less than 2 W (at 500 MHz it should draw just 1.5 W). The total package size is 5 x 5 x 0.35 mm. It weighs less than a gram and will cost under $10.
Movidius claimed that the Myriad 2 can hit up to 1,000 GFLOPS per watt handling vision workloads, besting FPGAs (around 200 GFLOPS/W) or application processors (between 400-600 GFLOPS/W), while maintaining a lower cost.
There will be a dev kit coming that Movidius claimed will enable relatively rapid prototyping.
Although it can’t presently share details, Movidius told us to expect the Myriad 2 inside of shipping products in the near future.

Noticia:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mov...-vr,30850.html

[Enzo]

Possivelmente o motivo pelo qual o Hololens ainda não saiu. O que vai de encontro com o que a Nvidia disse há pouco tempo, que precisamos de 7x mais poder de processamento que o actual.
Há muitos anos atrás, passamos do poder simples de processamento para cpu+gpu, algo mais especifico e dedicado, porque só um não chegava para fazer o trabalho. Agora, pelos visto chegou a hora de adicionar algo novo à equação novamente, pelos mesmos motivos.

[Jorge-Vieira]

Virtual Reality might kick-start the PC market

Current PC’s don't have the spec
Before Christmas we were saying that the reason the PC market is in the dole-drums is because there is nothing around which would lead you to need to upgrade, but now it appears that there might be – virtual reality.

According to a report by Ericsson, Virtual Reality will be a hot sale in 2016 but it might spark a resurgence in the consumer PC. This because VR requires a spec which only one per cent of current PCs can handle.
According Nvidia only 13 million PCs worldwide are powerful enough to support virtual reality software. That's fewer than 1 per cent of the 1.43 billion PCs in the world right now.
Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst for researcher IHS, told Bloomberg that while VR technology has significant potential, its technology demands might stop wide-scale adoption in the short term.
Multiple manufacturers, including Samsung and HTC, are investing in virtual reality. More than 40 exhibitions at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will be dedicated to the new technology.
What this could mean is that those who want to use the technology will have to upgrade their 4 year-old PCs. This will have to happen if Nvidia’s figures of more than 100 million virtual reality headsets will be in use by 2020.
But this sort of higher spec will have to come down in cost. You are unlikely to see a VR consumer boost when the sort of spec required is a PC over a thousand dollars. This will mean a new opportunity for PC makers to come up with a low cost high spec machine. If they manage it then AI could take off to the sort of level Nvidia is predicting.
Over on venture beat there is a bloke who is building a PC just so he can use Occulus Rift.

I’ll get a GTX 970 graphics card (the minimum recommended one) and an Intel Skylake Core i5 chip. I want a fast solid-state drive to store the operating system elements and start games quickly, and I want a hard disk drive for storing pretty much everything else. I have my memory, motherboard, power supply, case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Wi-Fi adapter picked out too. And I know I’ll get Windows 10 Home (64 bit).

We dont think he will be the last.

Noticia:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/wearabl...-the-pc-market


Mais uma opinião sobre o que o VR poderá fazer pelo PC, eu cá espero que isto seja o impiulso que tem faltado ao longo da ultima decada!!!

[Jorge-Vieira]

Nvidia announces ‘VR Ready’ program for new PCs and GPUs

We have officially entered 2016, which is set to be the biggest year for virtual reality yet. With the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive just on the horizon, Nvidia has implemented a new ‘VR Ready’ program, which will help those looking to get a new rig ensure that it is capable of pushing the frame rates required for a smooth virtual reality experience.
The scheme is a little similar to Nvidia’s 4K Battlebox program, which saw the company work with PC and notebook makers in order to approve systems capable of providing the best experience. According to Nvidia, driving VR requires seven times the graphics processing power of traditional games, this is largely down to the fact that you need to be driving frame rates above 90 frames per second for two images (one per eye).

Jason Paul, GM of emerging technologies at Nvidia explained that “for customers, navigating an emerging technology like VR can be daunting. We’re working with trusted partners worldwide to simplify the buying process with a GeForce GTX VR Ready badge that will let customers quickly identify PCs or add-in cards that are capable of handling the demands of VR.”
This way, those looking to buy a pre-built system for virtual reality gaming will know if it is up to the task beforehand. Additionally, it sounds like those looking to build their own rig will be able to look for ‘VR Ready’ GPUs, which will include the GTX 970 and above.

Noticia:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...-pcs-and-gpus/

[Jorge-Vieira]

HumanEyes' Consumer-Grade 'Vuze' 360-Degree VR Camera Package, Under $1,000

HumanEyes Technologies has announced that it will be releasing a 360-degree VR camera later this year targeted at the consumer market. The VUZE camera will be available for less than $1,000 and includes software and accessories.
I recently had a chance to chat with HumanEyes’s CEO, Shahar Bin-Nun, about the VUZE camera, the software solution his company is creating to go with it, and why the company decided to branch out from its software roots and into hardware design.
360-Video Under $1,000

HumanEyes Technologies is a well-established company in the field of 3D computer vision. The company’s business has primarily been focused on software solutions for photographic 3D, animated content and lenticular graphic arts and has amassed a collection of over 70 patents in these disciplines over its 15-year history. The company has now shifted gears to focus its efforts towards the VR market and has designed a 360-degree VR camera solution designed to be affordable for consumers and easy to use.
Bin-Nun told me that when HumanEyes first started looking at the VR market, it realized it could use many of the company’s existing technologies to create a “really good software solution” for VR cameras. Two years ago, while working on the VUZE Studio software package, the company realized that it would have to create its own camera to work with the software if this was going to be a consumer product, and thus development on the VUZE camera began.
Affordable 360-degree video cameras aren’t a new concept. There are a number of available products that record 360-degree video that are attainable for consumers. 3D cameras are also available for relatively affordable prices, and there’s even a smartphone coming with an integrated VR camera. Bin-Nun said the VUZE camera is different from those, as its “core competency” is in 3D 360-degree recording.
Cameras that record stereoscopic 3D in all directions are also not a new concept, but cameras with those capabilities are generally not attainable by average consumers. Jaunt has 360-degree VR cameras, but its setup is designed for professionals with sizeable budgets. Nokia will be selling the OZO camera in the near future, but one of those will set you back $60,000. Even Google’s JUMP project, which uses an array of off-the-shelf GoPro cameras, costs thousands of dollars, and you have to send the video files to Google for stitching. HumanEyes is targeting the sub-thousand-dollar market for its VUZE camera and is offering a full software solution to go with it.
The VUZE camera features eight full-HD cameras, two on each side, that simultaneously capture images and video while recording audio tracks for each one. The eight cameras feature lenses that capture 120-degrees horizontal and 180-degrees vertical, which produce 4K 3D video files when you stitch it all together.
HumanEyes said the VUZE camera will come in several vibrant colors and has been engineered be light and portable. The company also designed a special selfie stick pole that attaches to the bottom of the camera to make it easy to carry around. The selfie stick also doubles as a tripod, so you don’t always have to be carrying it.
I asked if there were any other attachments designed for the VUZE, and Bin-Nun told me it features the standard threading for camera tripods. He expects that almost any accessory with that attachment should work. When queried about the camera’s ability to handle sports use, he admitted the eight lenses make it less rugged than a compact GoPro, but it has been designed to be durable. He noted that an accessory such as a case to make it stronger is a possibility.
The Software

Bin-Nun told me the VUZE camera is controlled by a mobile phone application. The app lets you preview and delete your recordings, and it will even let you see the view from each camera independently. The app also allows you to switch between 3D 360-degree and 2D 360-degree recording.
HumanEyes said the VUZE camera includes an internal processor that handles all the processing and compression, and it spits out an H.264 HD video file, which is saved to a removable SD Card. The files can then be edited on a PC or Mac using the company’s VUZE Studio video editing software.
Bin-Nun said the VUZE Studio software is where HumanEyes put its 15 years of experience designing intelligent software. The company developed a technique that it calls Adaptive Blending to help seamlessly stitch together all the camera views with as little distortion as possible.
HumanEyes said that traditional stitching methods “merge images together at regular linear points,” which often distort the image where they intersect. Adaptive Blending, on the other hand, intelligently identifies objects that are prone to draw your eye’s attention, such as straight edges created by walls or doorways, light contrasts from shadows, and complex objects like a person’s face. Rather than a straight stitch from top to bottom, Adaptive Blending works around these objects to ensure they remain undistorted when viewing the final video.
I expected this process to have an impact on rendering times, but Bin-Nun said that VUZE Studio is able to process the video nearly in real time. He said one minute of footage should take one minute to process on the average computer.
HumanEyes said the VUZE Studio software includes a variety of other tools to edit your videos, including white balance and exposure correction, 3D 360-degree video stabilization, perspective correction, and the ability to insert 3D objects and text into your production.
Bundling With An HMD

HumanEyes Technologies said that it takes an agnostic approach to the content produced by the VUZE camera. What this means is it can be viewed from anything that can display 3D content. The company said VUZE content will play in any VR headset or 3D device, including on 3D TVs.
Though the content can be viewed on any VR viewer, HumanEyes Technologies said it will be bundling a VR HMD with the VUZE camera. The company partnered with Homido to provide VUZE-branded Homido headsets in the package.
The VUZE camera is scheduled to be available in August 2016. HumanEyes said the package will include the VUZE camera, custom selfie stick, VR HMD and access to VUZE Studio software, all for a price of -- well, the price is vague. In our initial conversation with HumanEyes, we were told that the price would be $899. The press release issued subsequently said that it will be "under $1,000," and a PR rep told us that the total package would cost $800.

Noticia:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hum...era,30849.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Full Body Haptic Feedback VR Suit

How many of you would be interested in a full body haptic feedback VR suit? Be honest, would any of you even wear something like this?

Noticia:
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2016/01/...t#.Vo1WrVJv4vc

[Jorge-Vieira]

How foveated rendering could lower VR’s minimum specs

In-case you weren’t aware already, running a virtual reality headset is not something many PCs can do. In-fact, based on the recommended specifications, it’s something only a few per cent of PCs can do. That won’t always be the case though, with incoming software tweaks making it so VR could actually be the cheapest, entry level gaming solution in the future.

That sounds ridiculous of course. How can VR go from having one of the highest minimum specifications for hardware to having one of the least? It’s all to do with the fact that while VR lets you see more than ever before, it doesn’t need to. With a 2D screen display, everything on it needs to be in high-focus, high-resolution and high-fidelity at all times. That’s not actually the case with VR.
It is right now, because without some way to track where the user is looking we need to make sure everything looks great, which is why the current specs for the Oculus Rift are so high – there’s two high-resolution displays to power in there. But in the future, when eye tracking and foveated rendering come into play, that won’t be necessary anymore.





What foveated rendering does is track where the user is looking and then render the scene appropriate to their eye placement. Like traditional optimisations that mean you don’t need to render what’s behind a gamer, or behind the next corner, foveated rendering means you only need to show the user’s focal point in highest clarity. Everything else can be reduced, saving massively on system resources.
Although eye tracking isn’t the easiest, it is doable and at CES this year SensorMotoricInstruments showed it working at 250Hz too, all integrated into a VR headset (as per RoadtoVR).
As VR headsets grow in detail and complexity over the next few generations, the effect of this technique on reducing performance overhead will only increase. One day soon, when we’re all running 8K monitors, the headset, with eye tracking and foveated rendering could well require much less graphical overhead than that 2D display which needs everything in focus at once.

Noticia:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/vr...minimum-specs/

[Enzo]

Ora aí está. Enquanto os gigantes vão explorar o hi-cost desta novidade, os pequeninos vão ficar gigantes, ao darem a conhecer a mesmíssima tecnologia à malta das Gt630 e afins (eu)

[Jorge-Vieira]

Alton Towers to augment roller coaster with virtual reality

3D and "virtual reality" has been used at theme parks for years as a standalone attraction but now that we're at the dawn of true virtual reality, we can expect theme parks of the future to look vastly different.
British theme park Alton Towers has announced plans to open a virtual reality-based roller coaster called Galactica. Rather than replace a coaster entirely, Galactica will have riders wear Gear VR headsets during their face-down thrill ride.
The three-minute ride will take passengers on a visual trip through space, timed perfectly with the dips, twists and turns of the actual coaster. Galactica will employ three sets of coaster carts at a time, each carrying 28 passengers. The track measures 2,775 feet with the highest drop measuring 66 feet. The coaster itself, which is a modified version of the park's Air roller coaster, will hit a maximum speed of 47 mph.





Obviously, the ride will only be as good as the VR experience. A custom tethering system is said to ensure the headset won't fall off during the ride while shoulder restraints that limit head movement are designed to minimize motion sickness.
Alton Towers is no doubt hoping the attraction will help boost attendance following a horrific roller coaster accident in June in which two women had legs amputated after their coaster cart collided with an empty cart on the tracks.
The Galactica attraction is slated to open in April.

Noticia:
http://www.techspot.com/news/63444-a...l-reality.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Picking Minimum Specs For VR Is “More Challenging”, Says Elite: Dangerous Producer

With the Oculus VR, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR headsets, among others, launching this year, it seems like 2016 will be the year of Virtual Reality. Picking specs for VR, however, has become a real challenge for developers, due to the nature of VR, and picking minimum specs is apparently quite tricky, according to the Elite: Dangerous producer Michael Brookes.

Talking with Eurogamer about VR and required hardware specifications, Mr. Brookes pointed out that picking system specs has been made more complicated by VR. The team has been working with VR since the hardware was available and they have found that what is comfortable or not varies from player to player, making picking minimum specs for virtual reality more challenging. Not surprising, considering that bad performance can lead to a very uncomfortable experience. Mr. Brookes added that Frontier Productions is recommending the specs they feel match their standards, but as they are optimizing the game all the time, there’s also a degree of “wiggle room”.
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“System specs are always a question for PC gaming, and it’s made more complicated by VR. We’ve been working with VR since the hardware was available, and we’ve found what is and isn’t comfortable varies from player to player. That makes picking a ‘minimum’ spec for virtual reality more challenging. We’re recommending the spec we feel will offer an experience matching our standards. We’re optimising and adding to Elite Dangerous all the time, so there’s always a degree of ‘wiggle room,’ even on our rigs.”

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the upcoming headsets and several developers are thinking about adding VR support to their games, like Escape From Tarkov and others. Huge support has also been confirmed yesterday by the GameStop CEO Paul Raines, who stated that support will be big for VR in general, with the PlayStation VR getting the strongest games line-up. Over 100 games are currently in development for this specific headest, according to Sony President and CEO Kazuo Hirai.

Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/picking-minimum-...#ixzz3xJzoKL5D