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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.'"
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Oculus Rift Loses Doom 3 BFG Edition From Launch Package, But Gains TF2

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  • Carmack Not Onboard? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sanman2 ( 928866 ) on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:12PM (#43209267)

    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?

    • by Trubacca ( 941152 ) on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:16PM (#43209319)
      No, things have been pretty hush hush in advance of GDC, but the community consensus is that the original support for Doom 3 was hard-coded in, and with the changes to the Dev Kit the support was no longer available. Carmack didn't have the time to plug in the changes needed, what with Doom 4 in development. We will probably find out more on the 26th.
      • my guess? doom 3 was an anti-loss leader... get people excited about an old product, then BOOM free upgrade to new product!
    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • 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.

      • by Nimey ( 114278 )

        I dunno, did people actually enjoy Doom 3?

    • by Zencyde ( 850968 )
      That was Quakecon, I tried the Oculus Rift, it was fucking awesome. I'm shocked by this news. But in all honesty, the demo was very incomplete. There most not have been a lot of development done yet. Also, get one. While there are potential designs that will exceed the fisheye mechanic that they're using, it's absurd how good this is for the price.
    • by EdZ ( 755139 )
      Carmack is on board, but he's busy on ID 5. The code written for Doom 3 was written before the Oculus Rift even had a name (back when it was Palmer's solitary prototype), and was written for a device using a different LCD and more importantly an entirely different tracker. The code, as was released with Doom 3 BFG's source release, will not work on the release-version Oculus Rift devkit.
      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:12PM (#43209269)

    You can simulate doom 3 with a couple of black eye patches

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can simulate SimCity with a couple of black eyes.

  • It's a VR helmet. (Score:5, Informative)

    by newcastlejon ( 1483695 ) on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:26PM (#43209393)
    Just in case anyone else was wondering.
    • by rta ( 559125 ) on Monday March 18, 2013 @07:50PM (#43209567)

      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."

    • 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.

    • Indeed. My friends are always trying to find little things like this that are my 'saviour'(i have severe right shoulder bursitis, can't grip and move things without pain).

      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.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    How will I see my TF2 hats?

  • If so, sign me up, cause I ain't going back to the dark side. Nope.
  • I admit I'm not that familiar with this project, but is it really as massive as the pictures suggest? Surely they could have produced something less bulky given the state of play with displays etc. these days. I mean I'm not suggesting it would look like Google Glass, but perhaps a the size of a pair of ski goggles... Or is this just the dev kit?
    • Pics in the article are of the dev kit.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • by Zerth ( 26112 )

      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

    • by Krneki ( 1192201 )

      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.

  • by Krashed ( 264119 ) on Monday March 18, 2013 @08:49PM (#43210015) Journal

    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.
    --
    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.

    • 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

  • 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.

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