While we left off with a Day 2 recap, this episode actually wraps up the last several days of GDC and actually takes place several days after the event ended. Why? Because our friends at Road To VR took a much needed break, recouped, and now Ben Lang is back to give us the final piece to our podcast puzzle.

Rev VR Podcast: GDC 2015 Recap – Day 3

Oculus has announced that they are working on stablizing their SDK, and getting into a routine of regular releases. They’ve also been working hard on reducing latency, and improving framerate. They have several different new processes, like late latching, that will help with this.

StrikerVR has changed their name to HapTech, and was impressing folks on the GDC floor. Motion tracked gun recoil is a fantastic idea, and Ben Lang was very happy when trying their equipment.

Crytek was showing off a Crescent Bay demo that was blowing people’s minds. A dinosaur demo, running at 90fps with amazing physics and a fully immersive experience. With all of the news recently about Unreal and Unity, it was nice to see Crytek maintaining their presence during an event like GDC.

There are no words to describe the GDC Mixer. A room full of passionate people, sharing experiences and stories. Fortunately, the folks at Convrge were streaming from a corner in the room, and so while we did our live stream on VR Casters during the event, we could watch the video and get a good feel for the event.

On the last day, Ben had a chance to check out OSVR’s latest and greatest. New OLED panels, unique lenses, and an affordable price will definitely give this product a place in the VR space.

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Tactical Haptics now has a wireless version of their feedback controllers. Despite a failed Kickstarter early in their timeline, they are still going strong and continuing to innovate their product.

Well, that’s all folks. GDC 2015 is officially over, and our friends at Road to VR have done a fantastic job reporting from floor. Thanks to Ben and Scott, and everyone who listened during the event. Also, thanks to everyone who listened to the live stream on VR Casters.

Now it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled podcasts. Stay tuned!

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Reverend Kyle
  • wheeler

    Really hope Tactical Haptics has more success. If they truly can simulate gravity and other forces as well as the roadtovr impressions seemed to indicate, IMO that could be huge. Given that Valve’s lighthouse tracking is fully open, perhaps they could incorporate lighthouse (set aside the problem of tracking) and focus on the key distinguishing feature of their input device.

    • Ben Lang

      Definitely no gravity simulation, but they do give a sense of inertial forces. We’d also love to see a Lighthouse version of Tactical Haptics!

  • I have heard Ben all over the place lately, but I THINK it was in this podcast he mentioned that OSCV will be good for all the smaller HMD makers to become the third thing developers support. This made me realize that OSVR sure has a place, as I previously wondered if these pushes for VR would collide rather than co-operate.

    It feels like Valve also is trying to make a collective VR API with SteamVR, perhaps they’ll even include both the Oculus SDK (like today) and the OSVR SDK so that developers using it only get… one API to talk to. Well, all this will be made clear eventually I guess.

    Thanks anyway, I went from “Aaaawwuuurg, fragmentation! D:::” to “Ooooaaaaahwooho, world peace! :DDD”

    • Ben Lang

      Thanks for following along : ). When am I going to see you at one of these VR events?!

      Yeah I think it there will be a natural coalescence of standards and OSVR helps group up the smaller folks into a consortium that becomes attractive for developers to support, even if it’s their second of third platform. It’s exciting that OSVR is open source too, it probably has to be in order to thrive in the role that Razer/Sensics have set for it.

      • Hehe, I’m slow to get outside. Closest VR meetup I’ve heard about is still four hours by train :/ It’s a bit much during a work week, but hmm, yeah. Would love to meet up with like minded people and discuss our VR future hehe.

        I think the position of OSVR was made pretty clear by your comment. What I still want to know is Valve’s positioning with SteamVR. How much are they going to support with it, hmm. I guess we’ll know eventually :)