Oculus Rift Loses Doom 3 BFG Edition From Launch Package, But Gains TF2 69
skade88 writes "Neoseeker and the Verge are reporting that the Oculus Rift launch will no longer have Doom 3 BFG support. But in some good news to offset the bad, Valve will be releasing an Oculus ready version of TF2 when the Dev kits ship. For those backers who are upset about not having Doom 3 BFG edition support on launch of the Oculus Rift, they are offering the following options:
'$20 Steam Wallet credit ... $25 Oculus Store credit ... or a full refund for your pledge.'"
Carmack Not Onboard? (Score:4, Interesting)
But I thought Carmack was recently demoing a prototype version of Oculus Rift at some gaming con. Has he opted out of this tech? Why, and for what alternative?
Re:Carmack Not Onboard? (Score:5, Informative)
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Carmack has a day job and ZeniMax told him to get back to work on stuff that makes them money and stop giving away cheap games that compete with their upcoming releases.
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Getting Doom with it was a large part of their Kickstarter [kickstarter.com] campaign.
They did say the Kickstarter was only for devs, so Doom would be more as a tech demo than the main reason for purchase, but a lot of the 9,500 supporters looked like regular people wanting to get in on the next cool thing.
I can imagine a lot of unhappy people.
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I dunno, did people actually enjoy Doom 3?
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Well, yeah. Doom is awesome and TF2 is awesome. So, obviously equally bad. He was asking about Doom 3, though.
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Doom 2 was good. Doom 3? Not so much.
(Not unless your definition of a 'game' is just walking around looking at the detail in the graphics.)
Re:Carmack Not Onboard? (Score:4, Funny)
(Not unless your definition of a 'game' is just walking around looking at the detail in the graphics.)
Yeah, Doom 3 has an extremely detailed black screen. I'd take $25 to not own it.
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There is nothing to stop someone modifying the source to receive data from the new tracker, render at the wider FoV, and p
That's ok (Score:5, Funny)
You can simulate doom 3 with a couple of black eye patches
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You can simulate SimCity with a couple of black eyes.
It's a VR helmet. (Score:5, Informative)
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As of late on Slashdot, failing to explain the obvious or things that could be resolved with a couple seconds with Google is grounds for extensive whining and bitching about how the article is somehow incomplete.
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Well, it's not a couple seconds, it's a couple seconds per person and in some cases that adds up to a rather large number.
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As is reading superfluous words in the summary, and they take up space.
by the end of the summary it was obvious that it was that low priced vr thing on kickstarter that's been mentioned before.
it's called editing (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you can cram more insider acronyms and names in a sentence it doesn't make it more informative or better readable than just using plain English. Think of your target audience. People that know every name and acronym in this summary will most likely have read this news well before it ever made the Slashdot front page. This means that your target audience will be those that not yet know about the existence of this device.
You could easily write something like this and actually inform people without the majority going TL;DR on you:
"Gaming web sites Neoseeker and the Verge are reporting that the community funded VR helmet Oculus Rift will no longer have support for the game Doom 3 BFG when the first units are shipped. In some good news to offset the bad, Valve will be releasing an Oculus ready version of Team Fortress 2 when the early edition of the Oculus Rift for developers ships. For those backers who are upset about not having Doom 3 BFG edition support on launch of the Oculus Rift, they are offering the following options: '$20 Steam Wallet credit ... $25 Oculus Store credit ... or a a full refund for your pledge.'"
That took all of 5 minutes to edit and every nub and their mum will more or less gather what it's about. That's the difference between an article with hardly any news worthiness and something that might draw the interest of most people reading the summary. As a writer, which one would you prefer?
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Shame your comment is going unmodded. Points for polite, level headed, response.
Personally, I don't care if I'm not getting a game with it. I'm using linux anyway and will be pointing this device at 10's of petabytes of real 3D data. I'll be too busy to play games.
Still cannot wait.
Re:It's a VR helmet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, but I figured that out with google. Anyone who's used the internet for longer than a week figured out how to do that one.
You would think so, but as I've noticed in the last decade of playing MMORPG's, that most people are too lazy google anything and would rather have you tell them.
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There is also the option of reading TFA.
But all joking aside...
Re:It's a VR helmet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks.
I was on the verge of googling it, but then i thought, "eh, i don't care enough, but maybe someone will describe it in the comments."
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And it's the launch of the Dev Kit, not the launch of a consumer product. I thought the whole point is that it wouldn't have support for any games at all when the dev kits first shipped.
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I've tried evolent vertical 4 with no success. Everything else i've seen is either wireless and garbage or is unsuitable for gaming.
If they happen to make a simple pad and a special glove that works with that pad, maybe... but my gaming days appear to be over.
But... but... (Score:1)
How will I see my TF2 hats?
Does that mean the OR has Linux support? (Score:1)
Is it really as chunky as the pictures suggest? (Score:2)
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Pics in the article are of the dev kit.
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1. It is that large, but much lighter than it looks, as the inside is mostly air.
2. This is just the dev kit. With low volume production and a relatively low development budget Oculus couldn't source the display they really wanted. The consumer version, with a bigger budget and higher volume, should get a smaller, lighter, and much higher resolution display, especially considering the advances in small phone LCDs in just the last couple of years.
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This is the dev kit, off the shelf hardware, 7 ounces, a little bit larger than a pair of ski goggles. But it will probably stay about the size of ski goggles, though, as Oculus wants to keep the low price point and the large field of view without needing two displays(synch & latency) or complex optics($$$).
The size difference is kind of the point, as they are made for different purposes. The Rift is intended be as large as possible, while .5" screen on Glass is supposed to stay out of your line of s
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It has the best hardware for gaming of all the VR sets. and even if it is bulky it still needs improvements. Sadly all those components that makes it bulky are needed.
Luckily technology is evolving fast and probably in 1 year when the consumer version comes out everything will be in place. Google glass as fancy as it looks is nowhere near to deliver proper gaming VR experience.
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My laptop is the same. Looks a lot like my old one. Maybe a bit more resolution but it looks the same so...can't really be all that different, right?
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Doom 3 BFG will be supporting the Rift (Score:5, Informative)
As John Carmack supports the open-source community, he released the source code (not the game assets) into the wild as an open source project. I myself have downloaded, compiled, and played the game using this code and it works well. There is even integrated support for the original version of the Rift inside. While he was unable to release all of the code for the game due to patent issues (lookup Carmack's Reverse), the game is completely playable on homemade Rift units at this time. Once Oculus releases the offical SDK for the Rift, it will be a short time before I or another member of the open-source community takes care of the problem. Just lookup a fork on GitHub called Doom-3-BFG-VR and I will be there doing anything I can to help.
Please, to anyone planning on playing Doom 3 like this, purchase the game and copy the assets rather than finding nefarious ways of finding them. Support awesomeness such as id Software and its remaining founder.
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Big shout out to John Carmack for the foresight to allow gamers the ability to again enjoy a game which is otherwise, past its prime. For the record, Quake 3 has also been released as well so expect to see MANY mods for both franchises very shortly and again, thank you Mr. Carmack.
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Sorry for hijacking your comment, but since we are on the open-source topic, is the Oculus API/SDK open?
I don't mean open-source(although that is a plus). I'm sure anyone can use it and but can anyone make a compatible API that is compatible with code originally designed for the Rift?
If the Rift is actually successful, it's a given that other companies will make similar products(Plus while the Rift is interesting, I want some competition, as it's far from my ideal). It'll be really sad if devs have to wr
Re:Doom 3 BFG not so B (Score:5, Funny)
Good guys, bad guys, didn't matter, everyone respawns.
Is that Buddhism or Hinduism?
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Buddhism. Everyone comes back in a free-for-all deathfest and only the truly enlightened manage to step away from the keyboard.
It'd be Hinduism if it were TF2. You come back, but on the same team and generally in the same role.
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The truly enlightened turns to blast the camper before the visual cortex has an input to react to. Then he leaves the room with great satisfaction.
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Misleading story/title (Score:2)
It's not "losing Doom 3 BFG support," it just won't be ready at release, and therefore can't be included in the initial package sent out with dev kits.