Preparations for Oculus Rift (Virtual Reality) support
Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 2:45 pm
Hi,
First, I'd like to apologize if this is not the right forum section for my post.
I'm a long-time stereo-3D gamer, and I can honestly say that URU and Myst V are some of the best 3D experiences I've had (they were some of my favorite games since before I started playing everything in 3D - around the end of 2008). That's why these would be some of the first worlds I'd like to explore in Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift HMD/headset/visor. (If you're curious, other world's I'd like to explore in VR are these created by Valve, as well as Dear Esther, Mirror's Edge, Fallout 3, Skyrim, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ... and many others.)
It's great that MOULa is still being maintained, by talented fans.
I saw this thread about the Rift, but not many specifics has been discussed there.
So I'd like to propose the implementation of few small changes/additions to the Gehn shard client, to make it Oculus Rift-friendly.
1. Support for 4:5 aspect-ratio resolutions/modes, starting from 640x800, and including 960x1200 and 1280x1600. /The dev kit features 1280x800 display, 640x800 per eye/
2. In these 4:5 modes, set horizontal FOV (hFOV) to 90 degrees. Or include a FOV slider in the options menu. /the HMD's optics offer 90 deg hFOV/
3. In first-person view, currently there's a limitation to head pitch - you can't look straight up or straight down, so please, remove that limitation and make it possible to pitch the view the whole 180 degrees.
4. In first-person view, during a jump (in mid-air), you can only change the pitch of the view, not the rotation (yaw), and this would be very distracting in VR. The player should be able to control both pitch and yaw during jump, but only for viewing, the movement of the character should remain in the same direction as when the jump was initiated.
The first three points (or even just 1. and 2.) would be sufficient for a decent initial support. There are solutions for stereoscopic rendering and image distortion (although through 3rd party middleware).
And once the Oculus SDK becomes available, some of the features may be integrated in the game as well.
Starting from most important to less important features:
5. Head tracking support with full pitch/yaw/roll representation.
6. Image warping/distortion.
7. Stereoscopic rendering.
I hope you are as eager to experience the world of MOUL(a) in VR as I am. And hopefully it won't take long to make it possible.
I really would like to hear your thoughts on this!
First, I'd like to apologize if this is not the right forum section for my post.
I'm a long-time stereo-3D gamer, and I can honestly say that URU and Myst V are some of the best 3D experiences I've had (they were some of my favorite games since before I started playing everything in 3D - around the end of 2008). That's why these would be some of the first worlds I'd like to explore in Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift HMD/headset/visor. (If you're curious, other world's I'd like to explore in VR are these created by Valve, as well as Dear Esther, Mirror's Edge, Fallout 3, Skyrim, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ... and many others.)
It's great that MOULa is still being maintained, by talented fans.
I saw this thread about the Rift, but not many specifics has been discussed there.
So I'd like to propose the implementation of few small changes/additions to the Gehn shard client, to make it Oculus Rift-friendly.
1. Support for 4:5 aspect-ratio resolutions/modes, starting from 640x800, and including 960x1200 and 1280x1600. /The dev kit features 1280x800 display, 640x800 per eye/
2. In these 4:5 modes, set horizontal FOV (hFOV) to 90 degrees. Or include a FOV slider in the options menu. /the HMD's optics offer 90 deg hFOV/
3. In first-person view, currently there's a limitation to head pitch - you can't look straight up or straight down, so please, remove that limitation and make it possible to pitch the view the whole 180 degrees.
4. In first-person view, during a jump (in mid-air), you can only change the pitch of the view, not the rotation (yaw), and this would be very distracting in VR. The player should be able to control both pitch and yaw during jump, but only for viewing, the movement of the character should remain in the same direction as when the jump was initiated.
The first three points (or even just 1. and 2.) would be sufficient for a decent initial support. There are solutions for stereoscopic rendering and image distortion (although through 3rd party middleware).
And once the Oculus SDK becomes available, some of the features may be integrated in the game as well.
Starting from most important to less important features:
5. Head tracking support with full pitch/yaw/roll representation.
6. Image warping/distortion.
7. Stereoscopic rendering.
I hope you are as eager to experience the world of MOUL(a) in VR as I am. And hopefully it won't take long to make it possible.
I really would like to hear your thoughts on this!