I studied architecture. I can't wait to get my hands on this, it feels very much like the killer app for that niche. What separates the students from the men and women who have developed their "vision" is the ability to go back and forth between how you imagine a space will feel to walk through and the lines on the paper. This shortcuts that completely.
With some snap to line and plane functions, mirroring, copy-paste etc this would be pretty usable for rapid prototypes. Imagine importing the blueprint for a cathedral, drawing a few lines in 3D space to define its verticality then blowing it up to its true scale so you're standing in the pews.
You just made me imagine how it would be to play a Sim City type of game in VR. I could create a city and then walk in it or drive through it or fly over it. So many different possibilities. I can't wait.
Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon (2 or 3?) where you could ride the coasters you designed in FPV? Can't wait to induce motion sickness without ever leaving my desk.
Oh man, SimCopter was an enormous amount of fun for just that reason. You could even edit cities using SCURK (SimCity Urban Renewal Kit) and build your own ideal place to zoom through. Nothing's ever really captured that fun - some come a bit close, but never with the in-person feel of it.
I've been struggling to "get excited" about VR, but I think this thread (including the roller coaster/sim city comment) puts it into a bit more perspective. I think the initial tech requirements are putting me off, I don't want that headset on my desk or even on my head. I'm getting old, feeling bad about that. Ironically I am excited about AR. The MS HaloLens demos were amazing
It still feels better to mix and apply real paint to a physical surface with an actual brush held in one's hand. More time spent lashed to an electronic apparatus feels less like relaxation these days.
I experienced TiltBrush over the weekend with the HTC Vive / SteamVR set at a friend's house. It was an amazing experience.
By far the best VR experience I had to date (I have a DK2).
The creative joy and glee you feel when painting in TiltBrush is phenomenal.
Some extremely satisfying micro experiences:
* Painting stars / sparkles above your head that sink down onto you
* Trying to draw a cube in 2D, then leaning forward and realizing that you are in a 3D world and need to draw completely differently - actually walking the cube.
Ordered the HTC Vive and I think it's the "game" that I'll have my kids (age 4 and 7) experience first. They both loved some of the demos and games available on the DK1 and DK2, but I think the creative freedom this seems to encourage will be even better.
Small note here: I have not seen any anecdotal or objective data on it, but I have a feeling this headset may be overly large or slightly too heavy for a 4 year old's face/head, and the controllers may be too big as well... I do hope I'm wrong, though! TiltBrush looks like a child's dream! :)
I wish my friend had taken a video of me as I was frolicking whilst throwing sparkles as high above my head as I could.
Or perhaps as I free-form drew a (wobbly) cube in 3D (should have used the straight line tool!), then stuffed it with flames. Then I taped up the sides of my first cube skeleton to hide the flames. Obviously this makes no sense at all but the experience was incredibly creative.I don't think anything parallels this right now.
I got a chance to try tiltbrush recently. I drew a little cottage around myself, complete with a table and couch. While I was painting the ceiling, I subconsciously stepped around my couch to avoid tripping on it. That's when VR clicked for me :)
My first time with VR I had a similar experience playing a driving sim on a friend's DK2. When I had finished playing I stood up out of the chair, ducking to miss the door frame
We've got a Vive Pre so I've had the pleasure of being able to use this a bit. It's as fun and amazing as it looks in the promo video there. I'm not an artist so I can hardly put the features to any real use, but I'm always amazed to see what people are capable of creating.
I think this is truly a new form of artistic expression - and I think it has the potential to become very popular in the future. I'm imagining having holograms on display of works done by famous modern artists... being able to walk around them and see them from different perspectives - I'd love that.
> being able to walk around them and see them from different perspectives
Reminds me of something I believe I saw in an art documentary. It was said that sculptures, like Michelangelo's David, were meant to be seen at night by candlelight. Being able to do so allows for a change of perspective while walking around it, in addition to the flickering of the flame making it 'come alive'.
My mind is exploding with the possibilities this presents even for existing film and animation production pipelines.
Just one example: A layout artist being able to directly sketch into being the spaces and sets they envision, then being able to storyboard and block character animations by sketching with traditional animation techniques, but directly in the camera space.
Similar kinds of programs could be a revelation for modeling, rigging, and animating characters... it had never occurred to me till seeing this how awesome VR interfaces could be for that kind of artistic work.
Combine this with some kind of haptic feedback device and you will have something really cool. I just skimmed the description, so not sure if it support volumetric 3D objects, i.e. sculpting, or only painting?
Not exactly the same thing but I've actually been sitting on an idea for a mobile app that was inspired by Google: Essentially, you'd be able to look through your phone camera and draw on the world on the screen. Then other people could see your geolocated creations and maybe modify them. (I also considered autodecay for dense areas) I never did figure out the physics of how the projection would work or if the accuracy of GPS made it feasible, but I thought it'd be a good way to blend our real world and allow a sort of "virtual graffiti", a form of augmented virtual reality. As with all interesting ideas though, if you wait too long, someone comes and does it and I saw something similar on HN except with stickers also. As for how Google inspired it, their photo app lets you physically rotate your phone to pan around photospheres.
TiltBrush seems more of a pure creative endeavor meant for artists or anyone just looking to mess around a virtual world. I really much like how you can walk around the creation/space. The fact that it's three dimensional actually makes it more like sculpture than painting, though I"m sure there isn't anything other than parallax errors preventing 2D drawing. The granularity of the brushes seems to be good, so it will all come down to how well the hand controllers will work together with the headset. (hopefully not requiring surgery-like stillness just to get small details right, maybe by allowing adjustable head movement sensitivity)
When I last explored this idea, "stickers" are necessary since most surfaces in real life are generic "textures", so there's no way to know which section of a wall you're looking at if you're too close to it.
Interesting how it's in 3D, and pretty interesting considering how early it was done. (back before all the Oculus hype) Oh and sorry what I meant by stickers were colorful cartoon drawings popular in Facebook and LINE. Although what you're saying does make sense in regards to manipulating surfaces.
That's pretty sweet, especially the tracking. Building blocks might be slower but the results look much better and friendlier haha. Kinda like Minecraft for the real world :).
Thanks for the link! I think their approach of including the real-world is very exciting and has just as much potential as completely virtual applications.
Edit: Just realized you were asking me a question. Well nothing quite as advanced. The user would look through their camera on the phone screen and draw directly on the screen and also be able to see other people's overlays, kinda like snapchat but in 3D and realtime. If I find the implementation I saw on HN I
l link it.
I like how it takes the idea even further into a sort of social bulletin board. (also like snapchat for the real world) Making it text-only is also an interesting choice which makes it seem aimed towards notes.
The announcement that TiltBrush will be available on the Vive's launch is what moved me from "Hmm, maybe" to "Shut up and take my money".
I just hope there's a way to export the ensuing paintings in some kind of 3D format. Self-expression in static form is all very well, but I want to take them into Maya, fire up the mocap suits, and make movies with them!
On a related note and without Google's marketing budget, there's also a guy working on early-stages animation software for VR including the Vive:
God I would love to use this for building 3D game models, the art aesthetic would be an awesome change from either super photo realistic or flat polygonal. A sketchy/painty look like the video could really make an indie game stand out from the crowd
That was my thought exactly. Wouldn't it be cool to model Blender (or whatever tool you use) stuff in VR. I'm horrible at 3d modeling but something like TiltBrush could make it fun and engaging and motivate me enough to explore in new ways.
This will be a landmark app, in that it looks to be one of the most flushed out stabs at vr painting. It defines a number of UI/UX components and philosophies all using direct manipulation (with what looks like an Adobe-flow), plus a number of original 3D-specific tools.
I think it would be more accurate if they wrote "acquired by Google" instead of just "by Google". Also, why is this not under the Alphabet umbrella given that this product has nothing to do with search?
When I see interesting exclusives X on Vive, Y on Oculus and Z on Playstation VR, I won't buy all three platforms. I'll just say 'screw you all, I'll pass'.
Valve has developed and supports the OpenVR platform[1], which is designed to allow different hardware on the backend. Rift/Facebook seems to be primarily pushing a closed platform with exclusives. Playstation VR is obviously Playstation-only. Make your purchasing decisions accordingly.
Oculus has exclusives because they partner with developers, offering money and support. Vive has exclusives because there's stuff you can do with the Vive's native VR controllers that you simply can't with the Rift's Xbox One controller.
When Oculus releases its Touch controllers (hopefully before the end of the year?) you might see Vive titles ported over to Rift. Movement in the other direction depends on what terms and conditions are in the contracts studios agreed to sign.
The ability to walk around something makes it seem so much more real. With vive you can duck below and look under a table, lean around, view something from all angles. With oculus you're limited to seated experiences so it doesn't feel much different than sitting at a desk with a 3d monitor.
Also, moving your character with a controller or keyboard can be nauseating. This is why the best oculus games are going to be "cockpit simulators" or they're just going to have a"virtual screen". The vives ability to move yourself with your own legs keeps nausea in check.
The Vive's entire ecosystem is set up for moving around, using your hands, and really being 'VR' like we've all imagined. The oculus is your head as a camera in comparison.
I really hope Google puts aside their differences with Microsoft and tries to get a demo of this running on Hololens. I think it would be SO much cooler to be able to walk around someone's cool 3D art piece using AR rather than VR.
I've used Hololens, and not everything it projects it translucent. It does have a small FoV, but it will get bigger with time, right now it's because of battery tech and chip energy efficiency/power.
Part of me wonders how little body consciousness future generations will have when there is easily accessibletechnology like this that sucks the focus away from the immediate body you reside in and into a virtual world. On The Positive, I like how you can stand to use this technology, and not be trapped sitting in a chair.
I think the term 'fully control' is tricky in hiding 'gotchas'.
Does 'full control' of sensory reality imply a pre-condition of being locked into a near-sight helmet where the eye muscles are limited to only focus on an object right infront of them for (possibly) many hours at a time? Questions for 2020 i suppose.
If the method of viewing these isn't completely proprietary, someone should be setting up a site to distribute free and paid experiences. First or early to market would pay off like it did for early dominant Minecraft forums and the like.
I can see this becoming a thing. As a commenter here notes, people could create graphic novels in 3D space.
I wonder what the file format is... is it open, so it can be viewed by other VR systems, or is it tied to HTC? Can you view the creations in a browser? (Obviously you can make videos, but is there a 3d navigator for non-VR viewers?)
If we nail VR over the next few years, it's going to change everybody's motivations. You think people are locked into their screens today? Just you wait..
We have one in our office and it really is amazing. My favorite moment was when I pulled my hand back to go around a line, forgetting that it was virtual. Real immersion.
This is by far probably the biggest motivating factor for me to buy one of these latest gen VR headsets. Everyone else seems largely preoccupied with trying to get into VR filmmaking or slapping VR onto just any old game, but this really unleashes a lot of the potential of VR.
Admittedly I'm a little disappointed to see nothing about the old company's story on the website. The founders must seem truly remarkable, yet the landing page gives no clue as to who they are. We just know that it's by Google, which technically isn't wrong.
Maybe in the future so much content will be created by so many (eg digital photographs, youtube), that the notion of preservation will lose a lot (but not all) of its former value, with the focus shifting on the next thing rather than enjoying the last thing for 400 years. Humanity as we understand it today, isn't going to exist in hundreds of years, we've already taken over control of our own evolution, and there's a high probability that we'll merge into the machines and never come back out. At the rate all of this is accelerating, long-term preservation is very likely going to be moot.
I have this idea in my head that one of the niche communities in fifty years will be people who trawl through discarded mass storage devices: cobbling together hardware fixes, undeleting files, and scanning them to see whether they contain anything interesting, like cached pages of lost websites, photos containing the faces of celebrities but from decades before they were famous, troves of old corporate emails, and so on.
"That refresh rate is annoying, which is a shame because lots of people put lots of effort into making this artefact"
"So flat and pixelly"
"Why am I sitting inside a sensory simulation box when I could be doing more exciting and fulfilling things in that-which-we-refer-to-as-the-physical-world?"
"The faster you move your head, the more the graphics lag behind the sound... Woah, try it with the music visualizer, it's like multimodal flanging or some shit"
I have had the opportunity to play with Vive headset. The lag is hardly noticeable and once the drugs kicks in it should be more tolerable(i am guessing :P).
And for some the physical world is too boring anyways, So might as well be trapped in the sensory simulation box.
The real issue would be the ergonomics and the walking part to create something with the brush.
You only get to draw on the planes you create is that correct? I would like to see how you select different panes. Not enough details, creating 3D art is tough.
Recently I had a very immersive experience with the LeapMotion controller and my DK2.
If you get a chance try the new Orion experience from LeapMotion! Wow!
I would really love to do this with a bunch of friends in the same virtual room, physically present or not. Just painting together, walking through or around each other's creations and working together. I really hope they add a multiplayer aspect to this someday!
Can you walk around, walk away and come back? How much movement is allowed before experience breaks down? This is the major difference between VR devices like Occulus/Cardboard vs Hololens.
Do you happen to know the limitation they are getting around requiring cables? I can only imagine in the future it will be wireless. Not that I think I could wait that long to try VR, just curious :)
Bandwidth, power, weight, cost, combination of all?
All of those things. With current headsets you'd need to losslessly stream 1200p video at 90fps which is a lot of bandwidth and those numbers are only going to increase. It also has to be very low latency and not skip/stutter to avoid motion sickness. Hopefully we'll see it in consumer headsets in the next 5 years.
The Vive version? Absolutely not. I have a Vive Pre--before that the developer kit--and I've seen people new to VR spend over an hour straight in Tilt Brush. My Steam account shows 10+ hours logged.
I'm assuming you're either referring to the Google Cardboard version (which I haven't tried), or just trolling...
With some snap to line and plane functions, mirroring, copy-paste etc this would be pretty usable for rapid prototypes. Imagine importing the blueprint for a cathedral, drawing a few lines in 3D space to define its verticality then blowing it up to its true scale so you're standing in the pews.