3D Vision Blog

After a bit of disappointment that the Oculus Rift dev kits aren’t going to come with Doom 3 BFG edition supporting them, Valve has just announced that Team Fortress 2 will have a new “VR Mode” that supports the Oculus Rift, available this week. This means that TF2 will most likely be the showcase title for the Rift for a while and you will be able to play it for free as Team Fortress 2 is a Free to Play game. Valve apparently also created an exclusive new TF2 hat: the Oculus Rift development kit. If you backed the Kickstarter campaign at any level, or if you pre-order a Rift development kit from our website before April 1, 2013, you’ll receive a code to redeem your very own TF2 Oculus dev kit hat.

Valve is also planning on sharing what they learned bringing TF2 to VR in two GDC talks:
- Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going) presented by Michael Abrash.
- What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality presented by Joe Ludwig.

The team at Oculus promises that this week is going to be stacked with exciting announcements, including news about Unity, Unreal, and the Oculus SDK, so stay tuned. Meanwhile I’m still waiting to get the good news that my Dev Kit has been shipped, it is one of the 100 DIY kits and the order number is under 150, though it still hasn’t been shipped and these were originally supposed to be shipped earlier than the rest of the assembled kits. I suspect however that we are also going to get assembled kits shipped with the rest of the units as, then there are probably like 10 days until the package comes from the US to Europe, though I still wonder why these weren’t shipped from China to Europe, but had to go from China to the US and then get shipped back to Europe. And I do suspect that the people from Europe that backed the Rift project are no less than the number of people that did it in the US…

Digital Stereoscopy is a new book by Benoit Michel, the editor of the StereoscopyNews website. It is a 350-page bible of modern 3D technologies in which students, amateur moviemakers, and professional stereographers will find a clear description of all facets of the stereoscopic business as well as detailed information on the 3D-image production, distribution, and presentation workflow. This book will let you discover the basic principles of how we perceive objects in 3D, how we can shoot 3D pictures and movies, what digital processes are required to produce quality 3D images, and how 3D movies are distributed. It also explains less known aspects of the production workflow, such as 2D to 3D conversion, storage, real-time transmission for broadcasting, and 3D Blu-ray authoring. The various methods of displaying and projecting 3D images will be covered, along with their pros and cons.

Digital Stereoscopy provides a large number of technical details on all these subjects, making it a reference work for professionals in the field, with explanations of the most commonly used software, hardware, and standards. To make the book as useful as possible, an abundance of sidebars explaining the most important concepts in each chapter and a glossary of the most frequently used 3D-specific terms have also been included. Over 250 black and white diagrams and pictures complement the text, some of them accompanied by QR-code links to full-color images on the web.

This book is for anyone who wants to get involved in stereoscopic imagery or those who already work in 3D but want to hone their skills. Broadcasting students are not forgotten: The first chapters give the basic principles needed to discover 3D imagery, while the subsequent chapters contain the practical information that they will need to put them into practice.

- For more information about the new book Digital Stereoscopy by Benoit Michel…

The good news is that the first batch of Oculus Rift developer kits may finally start shipping to Kickstarter backers this Monday, the not so good news is that there will not be a Doom 3 BFG Edition copy supporting the Rift bundled as it was previously announced. The reason for that is that DOOM 3 BFG Edition will not support the Rift development kit by the time the kits begin shipping. So instead the team at Oculus is offering a few alternative options in the form of replacement awards instead of DOOM 3 BFG.

Replacement Rewards:

- $20 Steam Wallet credit, perfect for buying your next game on Steam (including DOOM 3 BFG Edition without Rift developer kit support if you still want it).
- $25 Oculus Store credit, which can be applied to future purchases at the Oculus Store including Oculus Latency Testers, new Oculus t-shirts, and more Rift development kits.
- A full refund for your pledge.

You’ll need to choose your new reward by logging into the Oculus Order Manager. Codes for the replacement rewards will be delivered in April. You’ll default to the Oculus Store credit if you don’t make a selection by April 5. Also while in the ORder Manager make sure you have an up to date address for delivery and change it if needed.

Now, since Doom 3 BFG Edition with Rift support probably will not be ready by the time the dev kits start reaching people the question what you will test the device with arises. The Oculus team suggests that the game Hawken might be ready with support for the Rift by that time, but we’ll see. Hopefully along with the Dev Kits we are also going to get access to the SDK, so even without games out to support it we could start playing with the device, though there was not word about that in the latest update.