Michael Abrash
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Valve R&D head Michael Abrash joins Oculus as chief scientist
Michael Abrash, the leader of Valve's Research and Development team, joined Oculus VR as chief scientist today. The news follows Oculus' recent acquisition by Facebook to the tune of $2 billion, which Abrash addressed, in a blog post on Oculus VR's site, as a promise that virtual reality "is going to happen in all its glory." "The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed," Abrash wrote. "I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can." As of January, Abrash was at the forefront of Valve's efforts to work with Oculus to develop in-home virtual reality solutions. Valve's VR leader, Atman Binstock, joined Oculus earlier this month to lead a new Seattle-based team as chief architect. Abrash described his "unlikely" journey to Valve and now Oculus VR in the blog and his work with John Carmack, who joined Oculus in August as the company's CTO. Oculus' own path from a $2.5 million Kickstarter project to a $2 billion sale is equally remarkable, to be sure. [Image: Oculus VR]
Valve: Consumer-priced virtual reality headsets feasible for 2015
During a Steam Dev Days talk last week, Valve Research and Development leader Michael Abrash said he expects virtual reality to hit big in the coming years, and that it "could transform the entire entertainment industry," USA Today reported. "Compelling consumer-priced VR hardware is coming, probably within two years," Abrash said. With Oculus VR leading the way, virtual reality headsets aren't anything new to those that have been watching their growth in recent years. The key words here are "compelling consumer-priced VR hardware" then, which Abrash thinks can be built to the following specs in 2015, per a slide (PDF) in his presentation: 110-degree field of vision, 95 Hz refresh rate, 1K x 1K resolution per eye, three millisecond pixel persistence and 20 millisecond latency. Abrash said a VR headset with those specs is "doable with relatively minor tweaks of existing technology; no breakthroughs or miracles are needed, just solid engineering." In fact, Valve has built prototypes of head-mounted displays with those specifications already, and will "share what we've found with PC companies that want to develop VR hardware." Valve has already built a working relationship with VR hardware manufacturers, working directly with Oculus VR on consumer-level virtual reality options and launched its SteamVR beta just ahead of its Steam Dev Days conference. We went hands-on with Oculus VR's latest internal prototype hardware "Crystal Cove" at CES 2014.
Testing the 'huge breakthrough' in new Oculus Rift VR prototype
The newest internal prototype of the Oculus Rift, codenamed Crystal Cove, adds positional tracking, low persistence and an OLED screen, iterating on the 1080p HD developer model out in the wild. Positional tracking is a straightforward addition that players have been looking out for, and the Oculus achieves this with an external camera that faces the player and watches a series of LEDs on the front of the headset. With positional tracking, players are able to lean down and read text or get a closer look at objects in front of them. Low persistence is a trickier beast to tackle, but it basically means the Oculus Rift has erased motion blur, allowing the player to move his head and keep his eyes fixed on one point, as humans do in reality. The Crystal Cove prototype reduces latency to 30 milliseconds from 60 milliseconds in the HD dev kit, though Oculus VR's goal for a consumer product is 16 to 20 milliseconds. "You want to be able to stay focused on something," Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe said during a hands-on demo at CES. "If there's text in the world and you're looking at it, you want to be able to move while you stare at that text. Your head is always moving. So it actually ends up being really key – it's a breakthrough. This is a huge breakthrough." The Oculus Rift team works with Valve to solve some of the headset's technical issues, and the low persistence solution spawned in part from Valve R&D man Michael Abrash. Abrash previously co-created Quake at id Software with John Carmack, who is Chief Technology Officer at Oculus VR.
Valve researcher: wearable computing project is 'R&D,' isn't a product yet 'if ever'
"To be clear, this is R&D – it doesn't in any way involve a product at this point, and won't for a long while, if ever – so please, no rumors about Steam glasses being announced at E3." A blog post by Valve researcher Michael Abrash clears up just what CEO Gabe Newell was talking about in regards to wearable computing a couple months back – and the kind of hardware "experiences" Valve is hiring for.In short, it's not a product announcement. When Abrash was hired at Valve, he was encouraged to find his own interesting project to work on. Seeing the rise of wearable computing as an "inflection point" similar to Quake (which pushed things like networking and 3D graphics into ubiquity), he decided that was something he, and Valve, should be ahead on."By 'wearable computing,'" Abrash explains, "I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no separate display that you hold in your hands (think Terminator vision)." Google is working on something similar, of course.In other words, Valve hired a guy to do whatever at its game development company, and he decided to research a type of computing that doesn't exist yet. If nothing else, this is an indication of just how much money Valve has.
Valve employee spills the hardware beans: wearable computers, ahoy
When Michael Abrash started working for Valve, he expected the higher-ups to hand him a pile of work and tell him to hop to it. They didn't. Instead, he was told to figure out the most valuable thing he could do for the company, and then do it. So, Abrash wound up kicking off an in-house R&D project for wearable computers, and according to a recent blog post, is looking to expand his research team. More than me-too mice and gamepads, indeed. Abrash is quick to put a lid on rumors of "Steam glasses," however, and warns readers not to expect any big reveals at E3 -- this is just an "initial investigation into a very interesting and promising space," he says, and is more "research than development." Rearing to give Google's Project Glass a run for its money? Or maybe you're just itching for a detailed narrative of employee and employer? Either way, you'll find what you're looking at the source link below.
