I have the 3D connexion space-explorer now for almost 10 years and i can't live without it.
I can tell you it is a good investment. Besides that, it's a beautiful object to look at.
As for the oculus; when i took it to work to show at my colleagues they were very excited, my boss wanted to pay for it immediately,.... well i said no off course. 🙂
I'm a professional too (24 years working with autodesk, betatester for 12 years), i think this .....is a ......
Aaddekcrom..
I too have used such a perifual. I was using a Spaceball left-handed, mouse right-handed, operating CATIA. I was incredible the dexterity after about an hour of use. I was an incredible added benefits I got. But again many people could just not craspe doing two things at once. Maybe the same crown reluctant to try something, even though intermittently, as another display device.
I have the dev kit of the Rift and while it is fun, and could be useful to show clients machinery from their "own" perspective, or walkthrough plants and such, I do not think I would find it useful in day to day activities. Not to say that a few years from now the tech and demand changes and we're all doing it.
Ray,
I like your statement “the more naturally I can work with my computer”. Remember 20-25 years ago when AutoCAD did not have colors? And we not think twice of ordering a PC with at least two screens. Screens I agree, will always be part of our workstations.
Also you wrote “clients own perspective”, also operator in manufacturing. Have facilitated very large-scale VR rooms, it was always feels liberating to see marketing or engineers that at a start of a project would stay silent on traditional product development rendering or prints. Then when we invite them into the VR room, they are chatterboxes discussing what they “know” they see. Happened many many times. Some just can’t read plans or isometrics.
But I think where the biggest gain is the added Stereo imagery. Without a HMD, you are not going to get a comfortable “immersive” stereo pair image that reacts so rapidly to head movement. From what I have seen at numerous tradeshows, and AU’s of the last 25 years. There is hands down “nothing” better out there than the Oculus Rift. I have had a SDK1 since the Kickstarter rolled out, and everyone that has tried has been floored with the lack of latency, the comfort, and believability. Now that the SDK2 is orderable, and its far improved from SDK1, every design firm should buy one just for the purpose of getting their team acclimated to its abilities.
If you are older than 45 you remember the ViewMaster 3D. Ho how it allowed you to feel you were really there. Our childlike minds allowed that to happen, but damb is was cool.
Hello Autodesk Engineers – this is your forum????
My biggest “Hope” is that if there are a group of Autodesk Engineers that are reading this, have the Rift, that would stop building apps for high school students to model clay dogs, or build spaceship out of laser cardboard,
But would give a plug-n-play for Autodesk programs that support “stereo” – like Showcase that already supports stereo.
I did speak to Carl Bass about this exact thing two years ago at AU - still shacking my head he had no idea what was coming.
Wondering if autodesk is inbed with Sony, Microsoft, or anther manf. that is limiting them from moving?
I wouldn't expect a CEO of a major technical company to understand such issues. Their job is to manage the people, the money, and the stockholders, not the ground-level technology. Even if there are plans they cannot (and should not) be publicly discussed for a variety of business reasons.
Naturally, we can all guess at "what is coming" and every one of us can be completely wrong.
dgorsman.
Thanks for your insight. True that he's got bigger fish to fry, but his peple now are raising new frontiers...
I am posting this now, so I can go back in time to show my feelings on this topic, but mark my words that Carl Bass mentions in his Keynote at the next AU something around the lines of "designing in virtual space", "stepping into your virtual design", "Autodesk is working on... for your HMD", "using a virtual design portal for you clients".... that I know will happen, now I just need to get my boss to graciously send me again to AU..
I would also think his people are knowing when he's mentioned in the Autodesk Community Forums. Will be nice to see them pipe-in.. (hint hint)
@dgorsman wrote:
I wouldn't expect a CEO of a major technical company to understand such issues. Their job is to manage the people, the money, and the stockholders, not the ground-level technology. ...
I think you might be surprised to know what Carl Bass knows about ground-level technology. I was at a meeting last year where he answered a users question with a "ground-level technology" response that left me wondering, "Why doesn't he say stuff like this during his keynotes?"
The statement wasn't intended to be exclusive. Indeed, some executives know quite a bit about their field, especially when they have worked their way up from the ranks. Its just a nice suprise when it does happen.
Hi All,
I had a handful of FIRST Robotics interns this summer and one of them spent time trying to get the Oculus to work with Inventor Flow design. The biggest problem we ran into was a lack of API objects within Inventor. My guess is some 3rd party application will need to be developed and a few API objects will need to be exposed to make this work anytime soon. To make this work as a design tool we would need to ignore the physical mouse and keyboard and have some UI in camera that uses special gloves to manipulate data in the VR world. From what we were able to get working, the framerate was around 3 fps (terrible) and since you can't see the keyboard nothing constructive can be modeled with our current method of working.
Maybe this thread can be a starting point for someone wanting to try this and an Ideastation post can be the main area where customer (developers) can add information supporting what is required on the API side to make this happen. I looked in the Ideastation but did not see a post in there requesting VR support. If you submitted one, can you add the link to this thread?
From a visualization/marketing/sales POV coupled with a 3D motion controller this could be an awesome experience. We are still moving forward with testing and I would like to see where other people go with this. If you are seriously working on a plug-in for this to work with Inventor please send me a private message with your contact info.
Thanks,
Andy
Andy,
Wow you are the first (from my tracking) from Autodesk to utter the phase Oculus Rift. It is exciting to hear that the Oculus was in the halls of AD. I would think Showcase or Revit would be a better application to embrace the features of a HMD. Do you know if others at Autodesk that have the Oculus Rift? It would be spectacular if Carl Bass would use the word “Imursive” in his keynote at AU.
Ken
If Carl Bass used the word "Imursive" nobody would know what he meant, unless they mistakenly heard it as "immersive" instead...
Hey Ken,
We have a few units floating around the company. It is a cool idea and it pains me to say this but the framework is just not there to support VR with the modeling environments yet.
Would you fill out a detailed Ideastation request for VR support with Inventor and link to this thread? The product management team can review the details and if the community support is there it can be taken to the next level and researched. This has to show a clear benefit to you and not something that will come and go with time.
Thanks,
Andy