There were roughly 12 demos. I’m going to detail each and then explain what I think the point was, but the order may be wrong completely and odds are I’ll miss one. Each demo fades to black and out into a new scene. The time in each scene was maybe 30 seconds, but varied based on subject matter. They all had a reason for being there though, and I think the sharp contrast between each really helped.
Demo 1: Welcome to Oculus Connect.
You are on a podium in a holodeck style room. The podium goes down into the blackness of the room below. Hologram text welcoming you appears. The purpose of this one seems to be they needed a cool, but not too crazy intro.
Demo 2: Velociraptor
There is a velociraptor about 5 feet in front of you. It bites at you and looks generally velociraptor-ish in demeanor. The purpose of this seemed to be to start to put you in danger and to check out the better head tracking. They seemed to be slowly training us on the features without saying so.
Demo 3: Submarine
You’re in the main deck (?) of a submarine. It is very claustrophobic. Pipes are above, there are dials and switches everywhere. It felt all very real and kind of overwhelming. The purpose of this was to realize you could look behind you and still be tracked. I spun around a bit before I noticed that I’d spun around in VR. Woah.
Demo 4: Poly World
You are a few feet from Bambi in low poly. A deer, bunny, and other woodland creatures are hanging out around an open fire. It is a beautiful day. Also, the bunny was roasting marshmallows or dancing. It was doing something very cute. Really powerful. The purpose of this seemed to be to show that stylized rendering works just as well as ever.
Demo 5: Height Demo
You are on the edge of a building in a real, but slightly stylized world reminiscent of Bioshock. There is a billboard behind you with a steampunk Palmer and the buildings are all Oculus or Carbon-related. There are dirigibles floating around. When you look down you can see the street WAY below. At the time, my mind didn’t process it, but at this point my body began to flip out. Later, after the demo, I sat down for 20 minutes because my body reacted as if I was on the edge of a cliff. The purpose was to use fear to shut off your rational mind and boy did it work.
Demo 6: Friendly Alien
You are in the antarctic where an alien has crash landed his ship. He looks realistically shaded, but modeled like a cartoon. Very expressive features and he is reacting very emotionally to you. Two alien ships fly over head. It was fun. The ground looked so real I squatted down to see it. The purpose of this was to show how well emotional characters could impact you, and that the blend of art styles still worked in VR.
Demo 7: Mirror Mask
You are looking at a mirror. The room is like an Alice in Wonderland tea party. Your reflection is a floating Venetian mask, but only the mask. The mask is smiling. I’m not sure why, but this scared the living **** out of me. I forgot to add this in the first pass probably because I wanted to forget. It felt like the intro to a horror game. The point seemed to be to show how VR can detach you from yourself. It was a mind trip to look into a mirror and not see yourself.
Demo 8: Tiny Town
Okay, this was my favorite. There is a tiny papercraft town and you tower over them. It seemed like Oculus’ version of Valve’s tiny office. The little town bustled with life. There was a tiny freeway, tiny people at a cafe, tiny traffic, tiny helicopter reporting a tiny fire, and a tiny alien abduction. Peering around the city had so much life in it. I could have spent 30 minutes there. The point I feel was to show off this cool idea, but how delicate the tracking is. The precision here felt real.
Demo 9: The War Room
You are in one of those movie 3D maps that generals in sci fi movies use. This topographic map very big with large light beacons at sections. Nice particles float around. The point seemed to be how data visualization could work well in VR.
Demo 10: Microscope
You appear to be shrunken down to the electron microscope level. There is a large fly looking creature in front of you with a series of floating cell like objects around. It felt very real. The point seemed to be to show how scientific uses could work well in VR.
Demo 11: Oculus Park
You are in a museum for T-Rex. You hear a roar and it appears at the end of the hall. It storms towards you and you’re able to see it up close. Looked beautiful. It runs over you and behind into blackness. The point seemed to be dinosaurs are ******* awesome.
Demo 12:Fractal
You are moving through a demoscene fractal. There is an electric effect moving through the objects. Music is playing which is quite trippy. Your body travels through objects. The point seemed to be that surreal applications are equally as powerful.
Demo 13: Epic’s Showdown
You can see a video of this here, but you are moving slowly down a street while cops are fighting a robot. Time is slowed though, so everything is beautiful. A car blows up and you can watch the passenger inside it as they flip over you. The soda cans have Oculus logos on them. Unreal 4 is remarkable.
Other unmentioned positives:
• It felt light. Maybe the piece holding the cables up helped, but it was hardly noticeable. Felt more like sunglasses than goggles.
• The field of view below was higher. This is really nice. I’m tired of peeking through a tiny speck of light to try and click start.
Opportunities from the short experience:
• The resolution was amazing, but still noticeable in very bright scenes like Poly World.
• The integrated sound was wonderful, but I tested to see if the audio reacted to head movement and it didn’t. This is more of a software issue.
• I lost head tracking once. That is frickin’ amazing. But it is still something that brought me back.
If DK1 to DK2 was a big move, this was just as significant of a move for all of the delicate details. I felt true presence multiple times.
The first was when I was ‘on’ the building ledge. My body freaked out uncontrollably. I had to remind myself I was in a sim, not the other way around. What is funny is how I didn’t realize how bad this one hit me until I left the demo with wobbly legs.
The second was with the tiny town. I was really enjoyed looking at all of the models close up, when I caught the conference lanyard around my neck from my lower peripheral vision. I moved it out of the way instinctively so I wouldn’t bump them. Ha!
The final was in the Unreal demo. A cop was in front of me and I barely dodged him, looking back in amazement at the quality of everything. The stores were reflected in the street puddles. The textures were all high res. It was a slow demo, but I lost myself taking it all in.
Whew! That is my take. Hope you dig it.
Congrats to Oculus for such an amazing show. The openness they’ve had here in sharing their time and ideas is humbling. It makes me want to return the favor with world class software. The Crescent Bay is just the cherry on top, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for VR with the brilliant folks at Oculus behind the wheel.
