Oculus boss: True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away

Fans of William Gibson who want their own pair of virtual reality sunglasses will have to wait a lot longer to realize their dreams, according to Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe. Iribe said that his company only reached the first level of acceptable virtual reality around eight months ago using their well-known skiing-goggle headset …

[Zmodem]

you already can....

you make a custom shaped flexible LED screen http://www.avledscreen.com/qydtInfo.asp?Articleid=720

you get a single lens pair of sports glasses with padding so all you can see if the lens for road racing on bikes etc/screen

http://www.simcooutdoors.com/resources/10397-BIG.JPG

you can carmack to make the pixel render filter and fov to match the curved screen and shape which will stop people having motion sickness

the nose will just be black on the rendered image and not visible on screen because there are no pixels for it to be shown

[Anonymous Coward]

Till it can play with my junk

I'm really not interested.

[Zmodem]

Re: Till it can play with my junk

quake 4.........

a pair of sports sun glasses would be better for flight simulations and military simulations and the whole corporate world of VR, and the headset would weigh as much as a smart phone

[Anonymous Coward]

"True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away"

...Cos Zuck said we've got to do 'Ads' first! ... But seriously, if the industry put more effort into VR than curved, smart, 8k, 3D TV's and endless 'AD-Slinging', we'd be there by now!...But no, the world is drab, and the best minds of our generation are working solely on how to get us to click on more ads...

[Ian Yates]

Re: "True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away"

I don't see this as an either-or situation; those working on ad-slinging are not the same people working on useful technology.

Also, most of the tech you mentioned is an important part of future VR solutions - curved TVs are a by-product of breakthroughs in thinner, flexible displays, 8k is purely a push for higher ppi in a cheaper manufacturing process, and (active) 3D is just a higher framerate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away"

"I don't see this as an either-or situation; those working on ad-slinging are not the same people working on useful technology."

You're missing the point. Ad-Slinging is draining the best minds!

[Ian Yates]

Re: "True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away"

Rubbish. The "best" minds aren't interested in such trivial things

[Sampler]

really?

In a 'couple of decades' I'd like to think the need for VR goggles will be redundant as we can all slip on a headband and have the images directly transferred to our brains, sort of like a lucid dream.

I'd've thought the advertising giants would be investing heavily into having direct access to peoples heads too..

..hmm, time for my own ipo...

[dan1980]

Until then at least I have my current method of altering reality to one I find more appealing.

[Zmodem]

calling up the ugly chicks on babestation

[dan1980]

@Zmodem

You or me? I was talking about the consumption of unhealthy volumes of alcohol.

[Zmodem]

not me, i get all the fine chicks shaking their bootie wearing rave gear in the real world, and its just another 1 night stand casual thing

[Eddy Ito]

OMG, he's saying that soon we're going to have real virtual reality!! No wait, that can't be right.

I need to slip out to the pub to think about this a bit more.

[Rattus Rattus]

A couple decades for just an improved pair of glasses? Pssh, not trying remotely hard enough. I won't be satisfied until we have a full-sensorium direct neural interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In order to get there, the glasses will need eyeball monitoring to fit the virtual scene into the mind properly, and graphics are likely to come from ray-tracing, he said, rather than polygons."

I still can't believe how many people are ignorant for retina scanning display tech - even the experts it seems. Nothing less would satisfy me and not VR just HUD is fine. BTW, f### Facebook ;)

[RISC OS]

"...the glasses will need eyeball monitoring..."

Does this requirement come from the NSA? ...I'm sure they would like to store everyone's eyeball prints

[sabroni]

Does this requirement come from the NSA?

No, I believe it comes from the requirement to simulate focal depth. You can't focus your eyes on things in the "distance" with current stereoscopic 3d and to simulate that they need to know where your eyes are pointing.

[Zmodem]

Re: Does this requirement come from the NSA?

everything is the same focus if you have 20/20 vision, you just have to look at the object you want to actually look at

i can see a house roof as clear as trees on the hills 2 miles away, 20/20 is not short or long sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

20 years from now

VR has been 20 years away ever since it was first described.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: 20 years from now

That's true, but it's probably more accurate now that the technology for it is getting closer. Or more accurately, the technology for a reasonable experience is getting closer. The more research and effort put into it, the more fine details there are that need to be resolved.

The eyeball tracking for the small point of focus and depth perception (generally regarded as only truly accurate within roughly arms reach, beyond that it's a guess involving visual clues in the environment).

The "lean problem" e.g. navigate through a VR environment, approach a wall and lean closer to get a better look at it - what happens when you lean further and effectively pass through the surface?

[Tony Paulazzo]

The end result would be a more important technological leap than the invention of the computer itself

WAW! What A Wanker!

See, saying 'better than sliced bread' is ok, because we'd still have unsliced bread, but saying a piece of tech is a more important tech leap than the piece of tech it relies on for its very existence is a logical loop hole / singularity - or, what a wanker.

Go and spend your two billion dollars muppet - in fact, I now hope Zenimax wins!

[Tom 7]

True virtual reality is 'a decade or two' away

not read any newspapers for a while then?

[John Smith 19]

Gibson decks don't use screen..

They are referred to as a " 'trode set" implying direct neural stimulation, as does the ability of some nodes in the matrix to deploy "Black ICE" which appears to trigger something like a massive epileptic fit in any unauthorized user connected to them.

Mines the one with the Kindle loaded with Neuromancer, Burning Chrome etc.

Eyeball tracking by sensing the mucle currents is an existing technique. Decoding the optic nerve signals is in its infancy.

[detritus]

Frankly, I'm fine with virtual Virtual Reality — the idea of a fully-immersive, comprehensive experience frightens the bejeesus out of me.

I'd go in and never come back...

[phil dude]

BTL...

nuff said.

P.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's true that wasn't true before?

The old VR machines had unrealistic graphics and blurry LCD screens. But they were VR.