...and now the anticipation is killing me to play Doom 3 on it

Everything I've read about the Occulus is that it's "beyond extraordinary and breathtakingly spooky... like jumping into the matrix as far as DOOM 3 goes"

Anyone else out there preorder one for Doom 3/4 or received their development kit or perhaps played Doom 3 BFG edition on it yet? Mine won't be in till january, but i know they ship some early to early kickstarters.

Month and half... seems like a eternal wait

The developer kit for playing seems like a big waste of money, if you ask me, I'm going to wait for the final product which you know, will be better.

Not that I wouldn't like an early developer prototype too, I wouldn't mind getting one

I **really really** wanted to hold off for the commercial product, but the eagerness to play it asap in VR overwhelmed me and I gave in. I will buy the commercial headset of course, but it'll be kind of neat to see it through its development phase and see the enhancements and updates by the time it hits retail sale Plus, since I'm not a developer, I was considering reaching out to some of the folks who handle the classic DOOM 1/2 source ports and seeing if they'd take a donation of my Occulus Rift development kit to put towards VR implementation in one of the source ports in the future once the commercial product is released a few months later. Not sure any of the source port guys would have interest in it, but if they did, I'd be willing to hand off my developer kit to them to see classic DOOM someday in VR

The whole 3D fad for video games seems like a waste of money and time and extremely gimmicky to me.

This.

It truly depends on how and where it's applied. IT can be done in a crap manner that's less than impressive... or it can really shine and awe people when done correctly. The VR headset is more immersive than your typical 3D screens and TV's... it's more of a 4D enviornment, and everyone who has tried the early demos came out in complete shock and disbelief according to every review/article/etc out there. It not only does hi-res stereoscopic visuals, but also follows the eyes natural focus and blur via resolution and FOV optimizationfrom the inner of the screen to the outer per eye. Your inner vision is clearer than your peripheral, and that plays a huge role in how your mind perceives everything in the real world, and in a VR world as well. The Occulus exploits it, and some say it's too real.... where you almost accidentally start walking trying to move around because your brain cant tell the difference that its not in a real world. For this same reason, the intensity of the reality can make some feel a bit woozy the first few times they use a VR system... after a few times, the woozy/dizzy effects wear off. The Occulus also uses head motion and tracking... you don't look with a mouse or gamepad anymore, you look with your eyes and head just as you would in real life. That intensifies the atmospheric physical effects. Of course, as of current, you would have to use a anolog stick to move the body (walk/run)... but there are several groups and even a university working on small sensors that work like a Kinect so you can place them around you while wearing the rift and look and move/jump with your body, only needing a controller to act like a trigger or weapon switch. This will also allow you to reach and manipulate objects with your arms and legs in the virtual world through skeletal point detection and movement just as the Kinect does now.

Classic Doom in VR would be one of the worst things anyone has ever seen.
Seeing billboard sprites everywhere and mega-pixelation in VR could only result in vomiting.

Anywho, I can understand being to eager to wait for the final product, I too wanted to get one real bad, but at the last minute I had to take care of a different expense. Oh well

Edit: Oh, and actually VR might work in the classic doom source ports, if someone makes a decent model pack with smooth animations. The only port with good animations right now is Risen3D, but ALL doom models so far look "gummy" and toony.
ANYWAY, here ya go, contact these guys, maybe even invest, and get them to finish the first good set of Doom models we would see: http://www.doomascension.com/

Their models are also a bit off, but they look amazing, and are the only hope for a nice VR experience in classic Doom.

Well I've seen all the rendering and graphics/lighting overhauls that the Doomsday engine can do, along with hi res textures, models, etc... I really think if that team got ahold of the development kit, they could work wonders with it. Let me look at this doomascension... seems pretty cool

It IS very cool

They are the only hope to getting a true Doom HD experience. Look at it, then imagine what it'd be like with VR
Again, they may not be perfect models, but they look at least 30x better than any other models available

Well hell, they use the Doomsday engine on ascension =D http://www.doomascension.com/about

BTW, I've also got some old game magazines and DOOM strategies guides I collected back in 1993 when it was released.... John Carmack is in one of the articles clearly talking about doing VR (specifically holographic VR) for DOOM and future games, or at least researching it. You may say vanilla DOOM 1 or 2 may look like butt. in VR.. lolol, and I may be inclined to say it might look silly, but it would be a long time feature I think a lot of people thought about and would be interested to see over the years.

Indeed, and Doomsday does give the best graphics of all the ports, the only thing that svcks is that the original little sprites look terrible next to the HD textured walls and all the nice effects. That's why I can't wait until the Doom Ascension models are done... some day

If I had alot of cash to spare, I would actually donate money so they can keep it going smoothly and finish much quicker...

Interesting! This piece of hardware seems to be more advanced than i expected.
The standard 3D stereo modes involving shutter glasses or polarized filters don't differ between inner and outer focus of the eye, which often leads to ghosting as the software doesn't know where the player is looking at.
This problem seems to be solved with the technique you describe.

IF you goto the Wikipedia, it seems that there's a lot of support for devices that enhance the VR atmosphere beyond the occulus rift that are set to work alongside of it... such as full body scanning/skeletal movement detection by Kinect-like sensors you place around you (allows you to use arms/legs/hands/run in place/walk in place/jump/move body/strafe/). There is also some talk of like gloves or a body suit that gives tactile feeback/force feeback/impact feedback, and the gloves have inverted virtual physics detection... if you hold or pickup a box in the virtual world, the tactile response is configured at different locations in the gloves to make it feel like edges or that your holding something with weight (this same tech is also being applied to tablet/smartphone screens to give things on screen a 4D feel to them through intelligent tactile response adding more/less vibration to specific areas of the screen as the gloves would add more less force feedback to the area of your hand/fingers the box is resting on). Of course, if you pull the trigger with the gloves on in a first person shooter, the force feedback would be more intense than that of a controller. even bumping into walls with a feedback body suit, or being hit/clawed/shot, etc would provide all sorts of tactile responses.

Hmm... Maybe there's more realism possible than i actually want.

My main interest is a real full 3D environment without any ghosting or unwanted side effects.
The total involvement of the human senses might be a bit too much for me.
I guess gaming would turn from relaxation to simulation then.