Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive

Patches appear to support all Unity and Unreal releases, still require Oculus runtimes.

Read the whole story

 

[daggar]

If they wanted a closed platform, Oculus should have teamed up with a console manufacturer.

 

[Uncanny Valley]

One of the platforms just got a whole lot more interesting...

 

[orangpelupa]

For some reason this makes me have bright feeling for Psvr to be quickly hacked to work on pc.


Edit: to be clear, I mean Psvr headset. Not Psvr games.

Read a comment by "zarakon" for better explanation in better English.

 

[zarakon]

Zeph3r[/url]":3tvlfcfb]

orangpelupa[/url]":3tvlfcfb]For some reason this makes me have bright feeling for Psvr to be quickly hacked to work on pc

Just like how all previous PS4 games were hacked to run on PC.

I don't think he means PSVR games, but rather a hack to allow PC VR games to make use of the PSVR hardware as a Vive/Rift alternative

That would make it a rather attractive option, if it's able to work on both platforms. Almost like Sony would be smart to sell it that way...

 

[Causality]

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that "we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,"

Oh yeah, being owned by Facebook totally didn't change the culture of Oculus and result in Palmer lying right to our god damned faces. Here's hoping a Vive+ headset with superior, Rift-like ergonomics is on the way.

 

[noanoxan]

I doubt this will work for long. Sucker berg (autocorrect win) didn't put money into Oculus, only for HTC to capitalize on their product.

I still won't use it, regardless. The government spies on me enough as it is—I won't stand for it from a display manufacturer.

 

[siliconaddict]

DRM slapped on Oculus games in 5....4...3...2....1 I want to be wrong and that ends up being just a joke but....

 

[JayKaySan]

My god, Oculus is behaving in such a shifty, opaque, closed kind of way.

My theory is that Facebook bought them so that they could try and create a VR monopoly, where everyone would have to come to them for the VR experience. But they were foiled by Valve/HTC developing the Vive, which, today, is objectively a better and more complete product (roomscale and controllers don't exist, at least yet, for the Oculus Rift).

Despite being 100% biased as a very happy owner of a Vive, I think the way Facebook/Oculus is behaving is not good for competition or the VR ecosystem as a whole.

 

[qchronod]

Causality[/url]":2sw8sl4a]

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that "we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,"

Oh yeah, being owned by Facebook totally didn't change the culture of Oculus and result in Palmer lying right to our god damned faces. Here's hoping a Vive+ headset with superior, Rift-like ergonomics is on the way.

How did he lie? This wasn't extending the Oculus SDK. This was writing a wrapper for OpenVR...and that still means you can't access ATW. Not all their games work with this wrapper either. From what I gather from Reddit, the only games they've gotten to work were the ones written in Unity.

Also, why the hell wouldn't Palmer/Oculus want to sell games in the Oculus store? He's breaking even on the hardware and were only planning on making money from software. If anyone, Valve would be the one fuming over this since Oculus is now officially competition to Steam..

Think of it this way, Vive users are now giving Oculus/Evil Facebook money. Isn't that some sort of betrayal in the VR Fanboy Wars kingdom? Even better is that this is automatically an "at your own risk" proposition, which means Oculus can make money without having to provide official support.

This all sort of works out in Oculus's favor.

If it's really that simple to make a game "written" for the Oculus work with the Vive (at least those using Unity or Unreal), then I would think that's going to make a lot of people start asking when those games are going to be coming to Steam natively. Many people aren't going to want to have to run some 3rd party "crack" just to be able to play a game, if it should take the developers on a few days of work to bring it to the #1 PC gaming platform.

 

[trs8]

oxHanoverxo[/url]":2mkgip0m]This all sort of works out in Oculus's favor.

I see your point but I'm not sure if it helps Oculus. Game exclusivity is a big factor when choosing a console, and while neither VR platform has a killer franchise/game/app yet, I'm sure they want to maintain the ability to have them.

Oculus is going for the walled-garden approach and having a ladder up against your wall ruins that model.

 

[Sphynx]

TotalBiscuit summed it up nicely. VR headsets are more akin to monitors than consoles. They are not an enclosed ecosystem like consoles. They should therefore confrom to universal standards like monitors and and thus be interchangable as such. Of course the likes of Oculus et al would rather this not happen for obvious business reasons, so once again the age old battle of consumer and technological progress vs business interests begins anew.

I for one still see VR as in its infancy and will wait a good 3-5 years before I seriously look at purchasing a headset. However I will never buy one if its a locked down hobbled experience in a walled garden like a console is.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Here is a crazy idea, how about not giving oculus and by consequence Facebook any money until they stop that "exclusive/lock down" crap?

 

[Abhi Beckert]

NeoMorpheus[/url]":2oqdae23]Here is a crazy idea, how about not giving oculus and by consequence Facebook any money until they stop that "exclusive/lock down" crap?

What is this "exclusive/lock down crap" you're talking about?

There are a couple dozen games that were fully funded by oculus and these won't be ported to other platforms, but that doesn't mean there's any "lock in", it just means there are first party games. Third party oculus developers can port to whatever platform they want.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

Short version: It works, as proven by the above screenshot we snapped of pack-in Oculus game Lucky's Tale running within the SteamVR interface (complete with its "chaperone" boundary lines). The author's test system, which includes a 4.2 GHz i7 processor and a GTX 980Ti, ran all test games without hitches in performance, while other users have reported similarly smooth performance on "VR-ready" Windows 10 PCs

I wonder if there's any optimization yet to be done that could bring those specs down a bit?

 

[microlith]

Miwa[/url]":1xnz7uzw]It'll be amusing when valve abandons HTC much like google does with vendors for nexus phones.

Yep, Valve's just gonna throw in the towel on VR. Just toss it aside.

I wish Touch was out today, just to hear what other excuses people will use, other than the direct hate for facebook. (mind you, I don't use facebook, but oculus is still oculus, whoever owns them)

Yeah, that's the only reason people are choosing Vive, not the fact that it's apparently quite good and not trying hard to establish a console-like walled garden.

 

[microlith]

Miwa[/url]":36u3zqz4]

microlith[/url]":36u3zqz4]

Miwa[/url]":36u3zqz4]It'll be amusing when valve abandons HTC much like google does with vendors for nexus phones.

Yep, Valve's just gonna throw in the towel on VR. Just toss it aside.

Just like google tossed aside nexus? Read much?

The problem with drawing a comparison to the Nexus is that Valve has shown no indication of doing anything remotely like Google.

The PCMR ranting is amusing though.

The criticisms of Oculus are entirely justified. Trivial patches bringing games from Oculus to Vive while they imply that valve/HTC is somehow blocking them kinda undermines their position a bit.

 

[intel352]

Miwa[/url]":204glnh9]

microlith[/url]":204glnh9]

Miwa[/url]":204glnh9]It'll be amusing when valve abandons HTC much like google does with vendors for nexus phones.

Yep, Valve's just gonna throw in the towel on VR. Just toss it aside.

Just like google tossed aside nexus? Read much?

The PCMR ranting is amusing though.

Nexus is Google's own brand, and still alive and well

 

[Wolvenmoon]

I'm shocked and appalled at the notion that anyone would ever dare violate an EULA. Especially for compatibility or privacy reasons.

 

[Rindan]

oxHanoverxo[/url]":2b8lppyt]

Causality[/url]":2b8lppyt]

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that "we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,"

Oh yeah, being owned by Facebook totally didn't change the culture of Oculus and result in Palmer lying right to our god damned faces. Here's hoping a Vive+ headset with superior, Rift-like ergonomics is on the way.

Also, why the hell wouldn't Palmer/Oculus want to sell games in the Oculus store? He's breaking even on the hardware and were only planning on making money from software. If anyone, Valve would be the one fuming over this since Oculus is now officially competition to Steam..

The issue isn't selling games at the Oculus store. No one cares about that. The issue is that Oculus was paying developers to make games and then intentionally prevent them from running on other hardware, despite the ease of making it compatible to all VR headsets. What this person did was show just how easy it is to get both VR headsets running on these games. Literally the only reason why these games are not also working for the Vive is because Oculus is paying them to make them NOT compatible with the Vive.

Perhaps if you are not a PC gamer, you can't understand why this is upsetting. This would be like if some games were built to intentionally not run with certain monitors or keyboards because monitor and keyboard companies were paying off game companies to fuck their competition. It fucking sucks for the consumer. Consumers do nothing but lose when this sort of bullshit happens. This kind of fuckery is for the console market, not the PC market.

Honestly, I felt guilty when I canceled my Oculus order and got a Vive instead. The full room stuff won me over to the Vive, but I felt bad about leaving Oculus because they are the ones that started this revolution. That guilt is gone. I don't want my keyboard to refuse to play on some games, or my speakers to not work on others, or my god damn VR head set only work on some games and not others, all because a hardware company bribed a software company to break their own product.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Think of it this way, Vive users are now giving Oculus/Evil Facebook money. Isn't that some sort of betrayal in the VR Fanboy Wars kingdom? Even better is that this is automatically an "at your own risk" proposition, which means Oculus can make money without having to provide official support.

This all sort of works out in Oculus's favor.

I don't give two shits about Facebook and the evil empire crap. I want Oculus to do well. I want them to get rich, grow, expand, and compete with Vive and make more headsets. I want other people to make VR headsets. I want a dozen VR headsets to choose from from a dozen companies in a few years. I just don't want each of those VR headsets to have their own exclusive fucking games. Also, the money is going to the software companies that made the games, not Oculus. At best, Oculus is getting a small percentage cut for each sale.

I want to see this shit system of "exclusives" for pieces of compatible hardware die and die hard, that is why I am happy to see people promptly hacking these games and making them work properly.

 

[Xochipilli]

Abhi Beckert[/url]":4yc5069s]
There are a couple dozen games that were fully funded by oculus and these won't be ported to other platforms, but that doesn't mean there's any "lock in", it just means there are first party games. Third party oculus developers can port to whatever platform they want.

They don't need to be "ported", these aren't games on different consoles with different architectures. It's just a flipping MONITOR, FFS. The lock-in is that the games are deliberate crippleware. Just like if the latest version of MS Office only works on a Dell monitor, and Chrome only works on a Samsung monitor. It's senseless opportunism where they hope nobody knows any better to call them on it.

My Rift dev kit doesn't have or need any networked runtime environment to do its thing. It works like a regular monitor for any suitably VR enabled game. It was all open source hardware and code and openly interoperable. If I knew that they were going to sell the company and close everything off I would never have bought it.

 

[DonGateley]

Causality[/url]":m25m4hua]

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that "we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,"

Oh yeah, being owned by Facebook totally didn't change the culture of Oculus and result in Palmer lying right to our god damned faces. Here's hoping a Vive+ headset with superior, Rift-like ergonomics is on the way.

It didn't really change anything. Luckey was always a scheming dick with a winning smile and goofy carriage. He and Zuckerberg were made for each other.

 

[foxyshadis]

Sphynx[/url]":22yyw2j5]TotalBiscuit summed it up nicely. VR headsets are more akin to monitors than consoles. They are not an enclosed ecosystem like consoles. They should therefore confrom to universal standards like monitors and and thus be interchangable as such. Of course the likes of Oculus et al would rather this not happen for obvious business reasons, so once again the age old battle of consumer and technological progress vs business interests begins anew.

Unlike you, I remember the beginnings of monitors. You could get CGA, MDA, Orchid, Hercules, or Coloplus, all mutually incompatible in various ways, often including different connectors. Then EGA or Tandy, or you could buy a PS/2 with MCGA. Some worked with TVs, some didn't. (And you always had to manually tell software which one you had, because it couldn't tell and would look radically different on different hardware.) Then finally VGA, the one standard to rule them all, six years after the first options appeared.

I don't think forcing VR into a set of narrow standards before they even reach consumers in the first place is in the best interests of anyone. Let the market and feedback shake out the best and worst ideas while it's still flexible, then we can figure out what the standards need to be for the next generation. And if you don't like walled gardens, vote with your dollars.

 

[Hawley]

If only they were games worth playing. Anything worthwhile works on both already.

 

[edzieba]

microlith[/url]":1sgqdaro]
The criticisms of Oculus are entirely justified. Trivial patches bringing games from Oculus to Vive while they imply that valve/HTC is somehow blocking them kinda undermines their position a bit.

You're assuming the blocking issue for Oculus is technical rather than legal.

Oculus do not want to implement SteamVR, as they do not want to open Home up to any POS HMD that happens to write an OpenVR wrapper. Valve are perfectly happy to leave sorting the wheat from the chaff to the customer (both in terms of games and hardware) because Steam will continue to bring in money regardless of whether VR succeeds or fails. Oculus are tied directly to VR's success, so they want to offer a 'plug in device, get excellent VR' experience. So instead, they want to implement the Vive as part of the Oculus SDK to address it directly rather than through the SteamVR wrapper.

 

[rock1m1]

I simply cannot support a closed platform around a peripheral, it is just absurd in so many levels. This is a critical time for VR and madness such as this from Oculus will only alienate people from getting into the VR wagon.

 

[Goofball_Jones]

Good. This is a whole new thing and we don't want to stifle the public's uptake by getting into any platform wars. While competition is great, "exclusive" titles are not. Not this early. You do NOT want any FUD in this. WIth people second guessing a purchase that they're already maybe hesitant on. "Wow, I sure hope I pick the right platform...what if I choose the wrong one?!?!"

If you want people to buy your hardware, then make your hardware the best it can be. Don't rely on "well, we may not have the best hardware, but we have this exclusive title only on our platform!"

For now, the Vive beats the pants off of the Rift...but again, "for now". If Facebook can get the Rift up to speed with controllers and tracking, then they'll be on a more equal footing. But it seems that they released it too fast. They weren't ready. Hell, they don't even have their software nailed down as it still requires you to have all your games and software on the C: drive. Plus it's marketplace has a LONG way to go to catch up to Steam (thankfully, you can just use Steam on the Rift...but the front facing "store" of the Rift, which is what customers will first see, isn't fleshed out that well. But it will change in time).

 

[Geebs]

Rindan[/url]":20bqeidg]

oxHanoverxo[/url]":20bqeidg]

Causality[/url]":20bqeidg]

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that "we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,"

Oh yeah, being owned by Facebook totally didn't change the culture of Oculus and result in Palmer lying right to our god damned faces. Here's hoping a Vive+ headset with superior, Rift-like ergonomics is on the way.

Also, why the hell wouldn't Palmer/Oculus want to sell games in the Oculus store? He's breaking even on the hardware and were only planning on making money from software. If anyone, Valve would be the one fuming over this since Oculus is now officially competition to Steam..

The issue isn't selling games at the Oculus store. No one cares about that. The issue is that Oculus was paying developers to make games and then intentionally prevent them from running on other hardware, despite the ease of making it compatible to all VR headsets. What this person did was show just how easy it is to get both VR headsets running on these games. Literally the only reason why these games are not also working for the Vive is because Oculus is paying them to make them NOT compatible with the Vive.

Perhaps if you are not a PC gamer, you can't understand why this is upsetting. This would be like if some games were built to intentionally not run with certain monitors or keyboards because monitor and keyboard companies were paying off game companies to fuck their competition. It fucking sucks for the consumer. Consumers do nothing but lose when this sort of bullshit happens. This kind of fuckery is for the console market, not the PC market.

Honestly, I felt guilty when I canceled my Oculus order and got a Vive instead. The full room stuff won me over to the Vive, but I felt bad about leaving Oculus because they are the ones that started this revolution. That guilt is gone. I don't want my keyboard to refuse to play on some games, or my speakers to not work on others, or my god damn VR head set only work on some games and not others, all because a hardware company bribed a software company to break their own product.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Think of it this way, Vive users are now giving Oculus/Evil Facebook money. Isn't that some sort of betrayal in the VR Fanboy Wars kingdom? Even better is that this is automatically an "at your own risk" proposition, which means Oculus can make money without having to provide official support.

This all sort of works out in Oculus's favor.

I don't give two shits about Facebook and the evil empire crap. I want Oculus to do well. I want them to get rich, grow, expand, and compete with Vive and make more headsets. I want other people to make VR headsets. I want a dozen VR headsets to choose from from a dozen companies in a few years. I just don't want each of those VR headsets to have their own exclusive fucking games. Also, the money is going to the software companies that made the games, not Oculus. At best, Oculus is getting a small percentage cut for each sale.

I want to see this shit system of "exclusives" for pieces of compatible hardware die and die hard, that is why I am happy to see people promptly hacking these games and making them work properly.

The two systems have very different approaches to head-tracking though, don't they? Presumably the SDK wrapper isn't guaranteed to 1:1 map from one headset to the other, so it's not entirely unreasonable to put in a lock-out to prevent people from getting bad tracking and getting sick.

I agree that the headsets should behave as monitors and find the whole "ecosystem" thing terribly off-putting, which is why I'm going to wait until somebody wins or everybody loses in this particular platform battle.

 

[renoX]

rock1m1[/url]":1u53v6pb]I simply cannot support a closed platform around a peripheral,

You have a weird definition of closed platform, a closed platform is one where you need to have the permission of the platform seller to develop software from. This is not the case here..
Oculus giving money to some developers to make exclusive games doesn't make it a closed platform and Oculus not implementing other APIs doesn't make it a closed platform either (the API translation can be made inside the games).

 

[Zak]

Goofball_Jones[/url]":36zoo0gj]Good. This is a whole new thing and we don't want to stifle the public's uptake by getting into any platform wars. While competition is great, "exclusive" titles are not. Not this early. You do NOT want any FUD in this. WIth people second guessing a purchase that they're already maybe hesitant on. "Wow, I sure hope I pick the right platform...what if I choose the wrong one?!?!"

If you want people to buy your hardware, then make your hardware the best it can be. Don't rely on "well, we may not have the best hardware, but we have this exclusive title only on our platform!"

For now, the Vive beats the pants off of the Rift...but again, "for now". If Facebook can get the Rift up to speed with controllers and tracking, then they'll be on a more equal footing. But it seems that they released it too fast. They weren't ready. Hell, they don't even have their software nailed down as it still requires you to have all your games and software on the C: drive. Plus it's marketplace has a LONG way to go to catch up to Steam (thankfully, you can just use Steam on the Rift...but the front facing "store" of the Rift, which is what customers will first see, isn't fleshed out that well. But it will change in time).

renoX[/url]":36zoo0gj]

rock1m1[/url]":36zoo0gj]I simply cannot support a closed platform around a peripheral,

You have a weird definition of closed platform, a closed platform is one where you need to have the permission of the platform seller to develop software from. This is not the case here..
Oculus giving money to some developers to make exclusive games doesn't make it a closed platform and Oculus not implementing other APIs doesn't make it a closed platform either (the API translation can be made inside the games).

There can't be any PC VR "platforms", or rather, a PC is the platform. VR headset is a peripheral that I will attach to my PC and I should only need drivers for it, no on-line connected crap, no exclusive stores. I'm not buying any VR gear that wants to be a console-like, closed exclusive platform. I want a VR headset that I can get software, movies and games from anywhere. Otherwise I have zero interest in it no matter how great the hardware may be.

 

[Chartreugz]

NeoMorpheus[/url]":334jwxxp]Here is a crazy idea, how about not giving oculus and by consequence Facebook any money until they stop that "exclusive/lock down" crap?

Buahahaha! That'll happen right after everyone stops using Facebook until they respect your privacy and stop collecting your data for their advertising business. Just like any good democracy, asking people to vote (with their wallet, which is basically what you're saying) requires a well-informed majority. If there's anything I've learned in my life, it's that most people are not well informed about anything when it comes to technology, the cost of supporting businesses blindly, or just about anything that would help them make an informed decision here.

TLDR; It's a good thought, but it's not grounded in reality.

 

[Goofball_Jones]

Zak[/url]":1n14v7la]

Goofball_Jones[/url]":1n14v7la]Good. This is a whole new thing and we don't want to stifle the public's uptake by getting into any platform wars. While competition is great, "exclusive" titles are not. Not this early. You do NOT want any FUD in this. WIth people second guessing a purchase that they're already maybe hesitant on. "Wow, I sure hope I pick the right platform...what if I choose the wrong one?!?!"

If you want people to buy your hardware, then make your hardware the best it can be. Don't rely on "well, we may not have the best hardware, but we have this exclusive title only on our platform!"

For now, the Vive beats the pants off of the Rift...but again, "for now". If Facebook can get the Rift up to speed with controllers and tracking, then they'll be on a more equal footing. But it seems that they released it too fast. They weren't ready. Hell, they don't even have their software nailed down as it still requires you to have all your games and software on the C: drive. Plus it's marketplace has a LONG way to go to catch up to Steam (thankfully, you can just use Steam on the Rift...but the front facing "store" of the Rift, which is what customers will first see, isn't fleshed out that well. But it will change in time).

renoX[/url]":1n14v7la]

rock1m1[/url]":1n14v7la]I simply cannot support a closed platform around a peripheral,

You have a weird definition of closed platform, a closed platform is one where you need to have the permission of the platform seller to develop software from. This is not the case here..
Oculus giving money to some developers to make exclusive games doesn't make it a closed platform and Oculus not implementing other APIs doesn't make it a closed platform either (the API translation can be made inside the games).

There can't be any PC VR "platforms", or rather, a PC is the platform. VR headset is a peripheral that I will attach to my PC and I should only need drivers for it, no on-line connected crap, no exclusive stores. I'm not buying any VR gear that wants to be a console-like, closed exclusive platform. I want a VR headset that I can get software, movies and games from anywhere. Otherwise I have zero interest in it no matter how great the hardware may be.

Indeed. If Oculus/Facebook go down that route, they'll be mudding the waters when we're at a point where the waters need to be VERY clear. If we want the public to have mass adoption of VR, don't try to corner the market by having these "exclusives". Want to corner the market? Make the best hardware you can. But obviously I'm not a marketing genius.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

foxyshadis[/url]":3ozlhjuq]

Sphynx[/url]":3ozlhjuq]TotalBiscuit summed it up nicely. VR headsets are more akin to monitors than consoles. They are not an enclosed ecosystem like consoles. They should therefore confrom to universal standards like monitors and and thus be interchangable as such. Of course the likes of Oculus et al would rather this not happen for obvious business reasons, so once again the age old battle of consumer and technological progress vs business interests begins anew.

Unlike you, I remember the beginnings of monitors. You could get CGA, MDA, Orchid, Hercules, or Coloplus, all mutually incompatible in various ways, often including different connectors. Then EGA or Tandy, or you could buy a PS/2 with MCGA. Some worked with TVs, some didn't. (And you always had to manually tell software which one you had, because it couldn't tell and would look radically different on different hardware.) Then finally VGA, the one standard to rule them all, six years after the first options appeared.

I don't think forcing VR into a set of narrow standards before they even reach consumers in the first place is in the best interests of anyone. Let the market and feedback shake out the best and worst ideas while it's still flexible, then we can figure out what the standards need to be for the next generation. And if you don't like walled gardens, vote with your dollars.

In the spirit of remembering the good old days, let's also remember that 'the PC' as we know it exists because those punks at Compaq had the temerity to write a compatibility mechanism for IBM's product.

It is true that actually-decent standards tend to coalesce out of proprietary-quasistandard fights; but only rarely(if ever) because everyone respectfully doesn't touch anyone else's product or attempt to support it in their own and finally the industry decides to stop bickering and adopt a standard.

Generally, the period of proprietary and quasistandard fighting includes a lot of attempts(some shoddier than others, some resisted by the vendor harder than others) to build some degree of compatibility for competitor products into your own product in an attempt to make it more desirable.

When the 'standard' actually shakes down(whether it be through a standards body, or just because everyone now has a register-compatible clone of National Semiconductor's 16550); it is frequently a direct descendant of whatever proprietary spec was most popular, ended up with the largest collection of decent 3rd party implementations, etc.

It is unlikely that "VR" is ready for some IEEE-ification process; but that doesn't make attempts to tear down the walls between competing proprietary standards somehow unseemly or abnormal. Indeed, the most 'abnormal' aspect of that process today is how comparatively difficult it is: Cryptographic locks are a hell of a lot tougher than proprietary connectors or weakly obfuscated protocols; and deference to clickwrap EULAs and DMCA-based effective bans on compatible 3rd party implementations are all pretty new. Historically, the legal impediments simply weren't anywhere near as strong; only the really, really pricey vendors could afford to throw enough gates at cryptographic enforcement schemes; and it was the irrelevant backwaters of the console market where the worst of the NIH-and-shoot-on-sight engineering happened.

Over in PC land, the standardization(with varying degrees of consent from the originating vendor) of various proprietary technologies extends almost across the system; and seems to have done the platform a great deal of good.

 

[rabish12]

foxyshadis[/url]":i9r4u2r4]

Sphynx[/url]":i9r4u2r4]TotalBiscuit summed it up nicely. VR headsets are more akin to monitors than consoles. They are not an enclosed ecosystem like consoles. They should therefore confrom to universal standards like monitors and and thus be interchangable as such. Of course the likes of Oculus et al would rather this not happen for obvious business reasons, so once again the age old battle of consumer and technological progress vs business interests begins anew.

Unlike you, I remember the beginnings of monitors. You could get CGA, MDA, Orchid, Hercules, or Coloplus, all mutually incompatible in various ways, often including different connectors. Then EGA or Tandy, or you could buy a PS/2 with MCGA. Some worked with TVs, some didn't. (And you always had to manually tell software which one you had, because it couldn't tell and would look radically different on different hardware.) Then finally VGA, the one standard to rule them all, six years after the first options appeared.

A lot of your facts are pretty far off here. Most of the adapters you mentioned used the same connectors, and particularly in the first list there was a lot of cross-compatibility and the adapters you mentioned were often for very different use cases. There was also a pretty clear standard for developers to target in most instances - CGA dominated color graphics for most of its lifespan, and then EGA did the same, and finally VGA - part of why VGA was able to become the sole standard is because it was part of a lineage of other standards that had been achieving market dominance for a long time prior.

It's also not a good parallel for VR, since they actually accomplished how they displayed things in wildly different ways and for different purposes:

- MDA was for text-only monochrome displays.

- Hercules and Orchid were meant to add high-resolution monochrome graphics to MDA adapters (meaning they were both compatible with MDA, and Orchid actually required an MDA card to run), primarily for businesses.

- CGA was for color displays.

- Colorplus was a superset of (read: entirely compatible with) CGA.

They also all required that developers write directly to the hardware. Compare all of that to the Vive/Oculus situation, where:

- Neither device is providing wholly new technology - displays are pretty entirely standardized, and motion control devices (ie. head tracking devices) have been around long enough and are simple enough in terms of what they need to accomplish that they should be pretty easy to standardize.

- Both headsets use the same connectors.

- Both headsets' displays are virtually identical, offering the same refresh rate and resolution.

- Rather than home computers being a nascent industry (like it was when the display adapters you mentioned were coming out), it's a long-established one in which the accepted best practice is generic and standardized APIs over device-specific ones where possible.

I don't think forcing VR into a set of narrow standards before they even reach consumers in the first place is in the best interests of anyone. Let the market and feedback shake out the best and worst ideas while it's still flexible, then we can figure out what the standards need to be for the next generation. And if you don't like walled gardens, vote with your dollars.

I'm not sure you really understand how the kind of "standards" we're talking about work. People don't want some sort of solution where all VR hardware has to be homogeneous and function identically both inside and out. Instead, they want something that generalizes the things that are fundamentally necessary for VR:

- Outputting two images based on the same scene with a perspective shift between them.

- Tracking head position.

That's it. It doesn't matter if you use two displays, one display, two 3D displays, or a direct brain interface to feed those images. It doesn't matter if the position is tracked with motion sensors, laser sensors, or sensors attached to your muscles that pick up electrical impulses going through them. Developers don't care, so the API doesn't need to care either. It doesn't even matter if you want to offer additional features - you can go right ahead and produce a broader superset or separate API to support the extra features that you offer.

EDIT: TL;DR, there are a couple of things that have been the standard features for VR headsets since the 1990s and there's no reason they shouldn't have a generic API so that cross-compatibility's at least an option.