Oculus Rift price drop (US, Canada, other places?)

It has to. You will never, ever get a panoramic view any other way. A cell phone to the face is a dead end and has been since day one.

I ride a Yamaha Vmax. (I love my bike!) My helmet is far, far more comfortable than that worthless rift strap-on. It's form fitting, light, equally balanced and quite cool even on a hot day thanks to the wicking liner.

They're using the type VR helmet I'm talking about in the military already. It's only a matter of time before that trickles down to us.

 

I know the majority is not interested getting one, but there's a great deal on touch controllers too:

https://www.amazon.com/Oculus-Touch-Pc/dp/B01BHMS88A/ref=bdl_pop_ttl_B01BHMS88A
https://www.amazon.ca/Oculus-301-00...8&qid=1488589248&sr=8-1&keywords=oculus+touch

 

As you wrote, I am one of those, not interested in touch. What I hope will be available one day are touch gloves. It would allow to see the hands in game, so no need for preset hands animation anymore, I also hope it would mean we could touch buttons within the games, on the virtual dash or virtual wheel. One more thing I hope it would allow, when it is all programmed by the devs is the driver head turning in game and with the hand the ability to wave while looking at the other driver looking back.

To me it would bring VR immersion to the next level. One can dream on this beautiful (where I live) Saturday morning.​

 

Hand tracking can be done with leap motion but obviously no racing sim supports it yet..

 

I hope it will be possible to use the buttons in the ingame cars in the future, cant wait to turn on the wipers in AC2

 

I am not familiar with leap motion, without gloves how will sensor know where and what the fingers are doing?

 

Having VR controllers does really expand the VR experience in ways I hadn't fully considered; yesterday, I flew an ultra-light aircraft in "UltraWings" using the Touch controllers. I was able to manipulate switches and cockpit controls, push buttons and levers, control the aircraft using only the hand controllers; it's the most fun I've had yet in any VR flight game.

I also played RoboRecall (Free with Touch purchase) and had a lot of fun. Playing SuperHot can provide a pretty good workout ( . . . and no, it has nothing to do with porn).
While these VR games are occasional distractions from my standard Sim-Racing, they do demonstrate some very interesting VR-related developments and can be very entertaining.

 

How do you get 3D then? You'd still need a pair of lenses (with active shutters, this time) close to your eyes and something like a 180Hz screen. I don't see how that would be better than the current approach.

It's a start. The development kits used an actual phone screen and a couple of lenses, the CV1 has two separate screens (and a couple of lenses). In the future they'll probably use bigger screens, but you'll still need a couple of lenses close to your eyes so you can focus on the screens. Remember, you can't focus on a screen 5cm from your eyes, regardless of its size and shape.
The CV1 lenses "move" the screens about 1.5m in front of your eyes IIRC, a distance where most people can focus comfortably.
You just need bigger screens and bigger lenses to get a larger FOV, that's all.

 

It uses a visual form of hand-tracking combined with the overall system tracking, knows where your hands are within the Leaps visual space. Being an "inside-out" tracking solution, the coverage is not as robust as something like Touch is but, it's interesting tech. Touch also has some limited tactile feedback and has basic 2-postion tracking for some digits.

 

This is an interesting HMD with a much larger FOV. Star VR

Of course, this comes with quite a few trade-offs compared to the current players.

 

Interesting, so the sensor sees the naked hands and fingers, I did not know it was possible. Touch does not work for SIM, since we already have a wheel in our hands.

 

I hope we're going to step away from screens. What I want is a projector that displays the image directly onto my retina.

In the meantime I'm quite happy with my CV1 .

 

Well, a screen is a projector that displays the image directly onto your retina 

 

Haha, you know what I mean.

 

Yes a camera that you clip on the front of your HMD watches your hands it's still early development but looks promising for future models..
leapmotion.com check it out for yourself..

 

Leap motion? I tried to use it for two months but gave up in January. The movement is not translated in a reliable way. Was there any update since?

 

In theory, touch could certainly work with a virtual steering wheel but, the lack of feedback and precision would make it rather useless for most of us; casual players might have fun with it.

Even if we have haptic gloves in the future, the tactile feedback they could provide would be limited. I've read articles on neural-connection tech replacing motion hardware though; some of it sounds like it's not that far off nor will it involve surgery.

 

Honestly don't know haven't tried it the lack of sim racing support stopped me that's all I use my rift for so not really needed.
I was just saying that the tech is starting to come for hand tracking in the future.

Interesting to hear from someone who's tried it though, do you see a future for it?

 

The problem of a movement detection system relying on a camera is that visual obstruction can occur when crossing the hands or between fingers themselves. When there is visual obstruction between the fingers and the camera, the system doesn't work properly.

 

That's the problem with inside-out tracking, it has too many limitations in regard to obscured sensors for controllers, hands, etc. Unless a system like short-range GPS can be used, outside-in tracking is going to work better where multiple cameras can almost always have a clear line of sight to the devices. With the Rift and only 2 sensors, there are very few rare cases where I might experience momentary tracking issues while playing room-scale games; 3 or 4 cameras can provide excellent coverage.