Oculus Rift: John Carmack discusses latency problems

In a lengthy and involved blog post, legendary engineer John Carmack has gone into detail on the problems he and the Oculus Rift team face trying to achieve the virtual reality dream. The headset-tech requires a maximum latency of about 20 milliseconds to feel like genuine head movement, Carmack said, but current systems only achieve average response times of 100 milliseconds. Carmack’s discussion of how he’s tackling this issue is technical but fascinating. Valve’s Michael Abrash has shared similar thoughts in the past.

[BullyMangler]

fascinating indeed

[Letros]

Occulus Rift is the future of gaming for myself, I hope they get a lot of devs on board.

[LOL_WUT]

Looks promising but, I don't know about it being the future. I wouldn't mind trying it out for myself though. ;)

[raytraceme]

Occulus Rift is the evolution that we need in gaming. Imagine gaming in a theater like environment where you have a massive field of view in 3d and head tracking.

This combined with the move or a similar device would be a massive evolution towards gameplay immersion and a great one at that.

Occulus Rift has a one up against most hmd's in that they will support people who, like myself, wear glasses.

[AznGaara]

I agree, yeah it looks awesome but I can only see it working for a game in first person.

[Freak of Nature]

@raytraceme

It is very exciting indeed. I agree, and share your passion. I cannot wait to experience this first hand at home. Go deep within Worlds that otherwise would take light years to get to, the depth and escape of this is staggering.

Go into dark evil Worlds, and then into toonish whimsical colorful ones in seconds....

[nirwanda]

@raytraceme i will be ok my glasses are for shortsightedness,
The biggest problem must be orientation of the person using it, if something made you jump for instance you may not be lucky enough to fall on the couch.
In fact it could end up being the new wii remote problem but with peoples heads inbeded in the tv instead of the wii remote.

[EbeneezerGoode]

Not only is OR MY future, I will also be making games for it. Have waited years for something like this to make total immersion viable.

As for 'theatre like', that's not quite accurate and does the OR no justice. you are *IN* the game, pure and simple. No "X sized screen at X feet away" BS. IN the game. In fact you are so in the game that they will need a new word other than "game" to use, because game will be too lightweight for the feeling you'll get when PROPER software is made for this thing (that isn't just about shooting etc as in current games).

Just walking through a psuedo photo realistic environment wearing this would be such a thrill, add in some ambience, atmospherics, believability.. then add in the gaming elements.. it's gonna be awesome.

[Letros]

Exactly, I firmly believe OR is the next step in gaming for new types of gameplay. Also, I cannot wait to fire up Project Cars with OR, it's going to blow my mind.

[Freak of Nature]

My feelings to a tee...I totally agree.

[rl_pearson]

No one gives a damn about this guy and his horrible games.

[Qrphe]

I can at least kinda tell when you were born.

[Perjoss]

Every single comment you have made so far is negative and kind of hateful, would be cool if you just vanished from around here.

[Count]

He's actually right for this kind of website.

[EbeneezerGoode]

WRONG!

[Allsystemgamer]

Guess ur obviously about 12 years old and a dude bro

[Perjoss]

This is why I love John Carmack, he's telling about the limitations of his project before it even comes out.

[steve30x]

I want this Ocolus Rift. I wonder will it work on the consoles too.

[EbeneezerGoode]

It needs to have software coded for it, and needs 60fps per eye - Oculus have been coy about the consoles leaving it open to Sony/MS to approach but I can't see them having the power to drive it just yet.

Not only that but as said you can't just slap it on any game (like you can with 3D glasses) as it needs to be properly coded for VR and 'warped' properly to map to the display (which then unwarps it again). This would need to be done by each game dev not in a universal driver/solution (just yet)

[Freak of Nature]

Bubble up, thanks for the insight...

[hesido]

I hope at least some games on PS4 can support this, just wishful thinking. But I think Sony has a 3d glass of its own although without VR capabilities (no head tracking etc.) so I don't know how they feel like it.

[H3ADWOUND81]

Hmmm.. Interesting, so in a few years I might be playing skyrim online with such devices.. That'd be awesome..

[Veni Vidi Vici]

This is really the only thing that gets me excited at the moment in gaming- technologically speaking. I don't really care about shiny new graphics. I'd much rather have more immersion than slightly better graphics and that's exactly what this provides. Hopefully they figure things out and it's a success.