Turning all the way around isn’t a requirement, you can always sit in your office chair/couch and play just like you normally would. The headtracking still adds a lot to the realism by allowing you to visually explore the way you would IRL. That’s exactly how I filmed the Black Mesa video above.
I would love to have positional tracking as well so I can do more controlled incremental leaning.
Q and E ain’t doing it.
I had an idea for positional tracking too, but it seems a bit unwieldy. It involves having extra trackers for a collar and a belt. the pivot point for the head tracker’s rotation would be calibrated to the collar area, and the pivot point of the collar tracker’s rotation would be calibrated to be at the belt tracker. This would act as a sort of forward kinematic bone rig that could control the “spine” of the camera, and might be able to approximate decent enough motion.
idk though, I don’t have the know how, time, or gear to test the theory out.
I’m not normally one for jumping on board for a new technology, but this one appears, at least at first glance, to be highly different. Even just the difference between a 35 degree vision scope which is roughly that of the average computer monitor and a 180 degree scope is exciting. But it is one of those things that you’ll just have to try for yourself - which is why I find the journalist reaction videos so dependable.
I’m also intrigued by its future possibilities. They said that very soon it’s likely that they can track head movement on X,Y and Z axes - so if you wanted to look at a computer monitor or read a newspaper model in-game you could do. It’s just that extra level of immersion.
One thing I don’t quite understand is how they’d use the mouse - it would have to be used to shoot but also to aim, since you can’t be expected to aim a gun with your head. This raises questions about the compatibility of both head movement and mouse movement working together, but again it’s just something you’ll have to try. I’d imagine on something like Dear Esther it would be perfect.
It’s likely to only appeal to gaming markets, though I’d be interested to see it applied to specific CGI films where the user is able to look around from the sole perspective of the camera. I hate 3D in films but in something like this is has the potential to be much better.
This thing looks awesome, anyone who disagrees is a huge faggot.
^ this
Yeah, since I’ve always worked on the IMU side of things (vs optical tracking) I was tempted to do this with a single additional tracker somewhere on the upper body to use for a hip/neck model in addition to the head/neck model that’s already there. The trackers are just too expensive to expect people to have several and it was annoying putting it on and killed the “pick up and play” aspect of the mod.
As a side-effect this would work great though for body relative movement where forward is forward to your body rather than your head, although whether one or the other is better is subjective. I have the code as of this weekend for the game to handle either.
sweet. Good to know my idea wasn’t that stupid.
I know they are, my statement was just to point out the recent trend of making games (independently of its quality, usually low) just for the sake of making the new toy/device work & sell: that is what mostly happened with the Wiimote/Kinect, and what overshadowed these pieces of technology.
I’m not against peripheral advancements, just grown skeptical for their need: call me precautious, that’s it. Not all that glitters is gold.
But brought the focus on “same [hopefully good] game, augmented perception”, I recognize your point. 
Let’s see when I try that, who knows…
I fucking know, that’s who.
This is going to be amazing full stop.
we must evolve!
This is by far the most exciting thing happening in games hardware right now. Hopefully someone makes Quest World (including the shitty graphics).
Incremental leaning would be a nice feature. It would be a lot easier to “slice the pie” on corners in a tactical shooter.
^The Jenny flashbacks in The Darkness II + occulus rift
lol I am imaging VR goggle + Dead Space theme FPS would be fucking awesome
That actually sounds pretty neat. Like, instead of just pressing RMB to rotate the plasma cutter, you could actually turn it to get a better angle for cutting off limbs. And it could be first-person, but with the same 3D hologram menus that you have to actually look at.
I bet they’re already making hentai games for this.
OH BOY!
I actually think they are planning on implementing that, but I’m not totally sure. They plan on putting cameras on the front and I could see using motion tracking on an object in-front of you as a point of reference. Then using that for a z and x axis movement.
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