First Impressions of Explore

[Shon_T]

Disclaimer: These are my very FIRST impressions of Explore. I have used it a grand total of one day. I am sharing this experiences in the hope that more experienced users can provide words of advice or tips they have found useful. I fully expect that some of my impressions may be wrong or ill informed. 

Background: for the last month I have been using my Oculus Rift, exercise Bike and Google Earth to do a virtual ride across Japan. I'm currently about 800 miles and 50% through my trip. While I've enjoyed The experience thus far... There have been more than a few bugs with my makeshift process. For one thing...I have to use a hand controller to steer and to advance photos click by click. Google Earth wasn't made for this type of project either. It is clunky and often takes a while to start working. About every 15 minutes or so, I have to restart the software in order to maintain performance. Otherwise...pictures will start "shaking" in the headset, and I will be forced to go to my computer to manually reboot the software. Google Earth Street View will often unexpectedly teleport me on side streets, tunnels, or street view will unexpectedly stop working, not being able to continue loading the next photo. It is also hard to know where I am. It is easy to get lost as there is no HUD, so I am periodically stopping to check my phone and see where I am at.

After hearing several folks discuss the virtue of VZ Fit, I decided to give it a try. I have an Oculus Go, I have a few bucks to spare, and thought it might be an upgrade over my current experience.

Installation only suffered one minor hangup, because the directions specifically told me to look for the Explorer and play apps via the store to download, and I could not find them anywhere. I was a bit confused as to why the instructions would ask me to do this, as I just finished entering the redemption codes in the Oculus store. Eventually, Looking at the "uninstalled" apps on my Go, I realized that Explore and Play were already there waiting for me to download. Once I figured that out... the rest of the installation was fine. 

I already had some experience creating maps using Google. Thank goodness, because the software wasn't particularly intuitive to me. I had already watched the sample video that VIRZOOM recommends... and that was the video that taught me the basics...so I found it fairly easy to create my own map and import it. I created a 40 mile map which included the next planned segment of my journey. 

First Impressions:

The very first thing I noticed was the difference between the FOV on the Rift and that on the Go. Of course...spec-wise, I always knew this was the case, but being a "bike riding" app, and already using Google Street view, the loss of peripheral vision was noticeable. I got used to it. It isn't a big deal...just something that I noticed. It may be something worth appreciating when VZFIT is available on future headsets.

The next thing I noticed was that the standard viewing experience for Explore, just simply wasn't going to work for me. Buildings looked giant and distorted. Cars stretched in odd shapes as my ride advanced, Bridges looked like they were wallpapered with long distance scenery. I really liked the locomotion effect, but the rest was a real turn-off, especially while riding through the city. I eventually turned on "Comfort Mode", and while the locomotion was much more like my previous experience, I found the experience to be much more desirable. POV is a bit high for a bike, but the scale of buildings, cars and people is much better. I did find the forced third person perspective to be a bit annoying. I would have preferred to have the option to turn off the animated avatar. 

I really liked that my route was planned out ahead of time. I spent much less time worrying about where I was at. The HUD told me how long  I had been riding, How many miles were left, and what percentage I have traveled. I was able to focus much more on the experience, and I was definitely getting a better workout  this way, than I was with Google Earth. Unfortunately... I was lulled into a false sense of security. Over an hour into my ride, and about 60% into my journey...The map froze and I could not continue. I waited for a while, tried different settings, but nothing was working... The Go would not let me close the app, and I was required to do a hard reset. Upon getting back into Explorer...I found that I was only 30% through the route... and there did not seem to be a way to advance where I left off. This meant that completing my ride meant an extra hour added to my journey...covering ground I had already covered. I was not very happy. 

VZfit was certainly an upgrade to my own hobbled together system. Even on "comfort mode", the pictures advanced much more regularly and faster than I could manually advance them in Google Earth. Pedaling to advance certainly adds to the experience. That said...the journey was not exactly bug free as I mentioned above.  At some points, slides failed to advance, even though I could still see dots ahead of me. One workaround that I discovered was switching the settings to the regular viewing mode would allow me to start riding the route again...and then I could switch settings back to the "comfort mode" a minute or two later. For some reason the menu would not come up until RMP was zero...so this required more stopping and going than I would have liked.

Similar to my Google Earth experience, pictures on the ride fluctuated between right and left side of the road. Usually with Google Earth I had better control over which side of the road I was on...especially on divided highways. The experience on VZ Fit seemed much more random. 

Many of the "bugs" I was hoping to avoid by switching to VZFit, still exist here, and are likely a function of the Google Earth and Street View Software.  I found my self teleported unexpectedly to sidewalks, side streets and pedestrian tunnels. On this journey I even found myself in a subway station. For the most part... I liked the way VZFit handled the routing, but it could still be confusing. Sometimes the white dots would lead to a left turn while I was on a one-way overpass. Sometime the dots would act like a slalom course, right then left then right again...but the picture transitions didn't follow the same course, and this could be a bit jarring. Sometimes things would just stop..and I had no idea what the problem was.

Using Google Earth VR, when pictures stopped advancing, or when I got transported to a pedestrian tunnel, I would have to exit street view, re-position over  my desired position, and re-enter street view. I could also easily exit street-view, save my position, and see where I was on a terrain map. In VZ Fit The app automatically corrects and teleport me to the right place, but sometimes it would take longer than  I would like... and my anxiety at losing another hour of my ride was constantly gnawing at me.  I would have been much more comfortable knowing that even if there was a technical glitch, I could easily find my place again. Because of the instability of Google Earth on the Rift, I frequently saved my place. I don't have the same luxury with VZ Fit.

I acknowledge that many of these "bugs" and experiences are a limitation of the Google Streetview software itself, and I appreciate all the work that the VZFIT team has done to address some of these issues to the best of their ability.

I wasn't happy with the pause menu. When I clicked the compass, the Clock continued to move forward, even with the menu open. When I left to use the restroom and came back, the clock and spins started all over, but at least my position on the street was not lost. What should have been a 2 hour maybe 2.5 hour ride, turned into a 3 hour ride...but I finally made it through my journey.

Some enhancements I would like to see:
- Ability to actually pause the timer and keep the Spin number for the entirety of the workout...and not lose it because I had to answer the phone, use the restroom, etc.
- Ability to advance to a specific point on the route. If I'm at 30%, could there be a way to advance the percentage to say...50%? maybe as part of a longer ride that folks have created...some might have a specific section they enjoy more than others...just a thought. It also helps address situations like mine... where a glitch added an hour of my time. I would hate to think How I would have felt if it was an 8 hour course...and a glitch added even longer.
- Ability to remove third person avatar on comfort mode. I find it a bit more immersive to not have the avatar there at all.
-Make notification of turns at intersections more noticeable (Perhaps the white dots become yellow at intersections?).
-Click on miles in HUD and transition between "miles traveled" and "miles to go". 
-2D map in HUD like GPS, or 2D map location or progress in pause menu
-Ability to turn off HUD completely. Sometimes, it is more enjoyable to look at the scenery without all the clutter and distractions.  
-Map and export progress: this is more of a stretch really...I'm mapping my journey through Japan, and would love to import my progress, perhaps in the same format we export google map routes in? As it stands now...I'm concerned about creating a route in game, because I want to be able to map my route. On the flip side, I'm not happy with the route finding on Google Maps. I wish it would natively  avoid highways...it would make planning much easier.


Conclusions:

Well...I haven't drawn any yet, as I said...this is just my first ride. It definitely seems an upgrade over my own hobbled together experience...but I have my doubts that it was as major a step in the direction I would have liked. I'm just not sure the enhancements are worth the monthly subscription fee and extra expense for the sensor and controller vs what I was doing with the equipment I already owned, but time will tell. It does seem the VZfit team is actively working on addressing as many issues as they can, and I suspect that this experience will only improve over time. I also think that as my own familiarity with the software increases, I will be better able to deal with bugs, etc. As much as I have my concerns...I do think the small monthly fee is a low price to pay in an effort to continue financing the development of this project. Maybe my doubts really revolve more around my extreme dislike for monthly subscriptions?

[Tercelman]

The distortion fix will be out very soon.

[Shon_T]

Second Impression:

Second ride today. I found the GPS Coordinates to be very helpful for quickly locating my position on the map. This made me think that If I do decide to create an open ride or I decide to create a ride "in-app" it should be fairly easy for me to make a breadcrumbs trail and update the map of my journey later on.

Things seem to be rougher in built up areas...which was my experience with Google Earth as well. In Japan, main roads are often underneath long expressways. This means Street view will occasionally transition onto a highway, side street, or expressway. In cities I often found myself seemly glitching into every intersection even for minor streets.

I'm thinking that part of the problem could be that I didn't draw the route as accurately as I might have. From farther away the rout appears to follow the road exactly, but on closer inspection, there are certain areas where the route isn't accurately following the main highway.

I'm about 40% through my current route. When I finish it, I may try an in-app route just to test the difference.

[emalafeew]

First of all, we love your dedication and openess! We'll answer point by point but not quote your original post to save space.

We've done some R&D with Google Earth ourselves, and without going into details can say that it would only have worked on the Rift and not the Go or Quest, which we feel are the right headsets for the exercise given their price and portability. Some of the things you mention later could have been solved with a more powerful computer attached to the Rift, but we've done our best to translate to these all-in-one headsets.

Setup is our biggest headache since we aren't on the Oculus store, but we're working hard to make it clearer and also make the store a possibility in the future.

The FOV of the Quest and Go is a bit smaller than the Rift, granted.

The comparison of Google Earth with Google Streetview is a bit apples and oranges. Earth provides actual geometry, derived from satellite photos but viewable from any angle, that looks great from 200 ft or above but is very undetailed at street level. Streetview provides 360 panoramas at street level, but only every 50 feet or so, with just enough depth data to make it possible to traverse in VR. From our experience at street level it's a toss up about which is better, but it's also moot since Earth isn't available as a streaming API. If it were, we'd say at 200 ft high Google Earth is great but also requires a gaming PC to render.

In 3rd person view we use the POV of the Streetview camera for minimal distortion. We feel that continous motion is our main mode, with comfort mode available for those turned off the the intermediate distortion between white dots. And we have just released a new City Mode, which uses 3rd party building and street data to project Streetview images onto for greater stability in cities.

We're sorry you lost progress along your route. We save checkpoints at every necessary juncture, including when you take your headset off or it is about the run out of battery, which it fails to inform our engine about even! If you know the lat/lon where you got stuck we'd be happy to debug.

We appreciate you noticing how smoothly we process Streetview images... it's been a major challenge to do that on the Go & Quest memory and performance budgets. We feel that pedaling though the scenes is crucial to the sense of immersion and therefore exercise motivation you get. Note that our default continuous rendering mode works best in the country side, but our new City Mode (as of tonight) provides continuous rendering appropriate to cities. Comfort mode is still available to reduce distortion and motion in both cases.

The data provided by Streetview isn't perfect, which results in imperfect image transitions. But we've found redundant data that helps us make the best of it, in fact better than the Streetview website.

Hopefully you can come to trust VZfit to save your progress along rides, as we know it's very frustrating to cover the same ground, and feel that completing each ride is the ultimate reward.

Our HUD clock keeps moving forward when the pause menu is open, mostly because if you went into VZfit with a limited amount of time you'd want to know that even in the pause menu. But also because if you are riding with someone else online, their time keeps moving regardless of what you are doing.

If you leave your game for an extended period (greater than 30 minutes) we reset the clock and your spins, considering it a new session. Some people had complained when it didn't do that, it's hard to please everyone!

We don't currently allow you to advance along a ride because completing a ride is the main metric of accomplishment in Explorer. Any problems you have with saving ride progress should be reported to us, with lat/lon and ride name if possible, so we can fix.

We could offer the option to remove the avatar in comfort mode, though it does serve the purpose of showing when you are steering to follow the white dots. I don't know if you've read other explanations, but we feel it's critical you steer with accompanying head rotation to actually go around curves, to synchronize your eyes and inner ear for VR comfort.

We like your idea to call out when the white dots take a sharp angle at intersections, that you perhaps cannot see or weren't expecting early enough to start turning. Note we do automatically slow you down in that case, to help you regain the path.

Your idea to click on miles in the HUD is something we've been experimenting with, to allow people to customize the elements of the HUD.

We agree a 2D map in Explorer would be an awesome way to see your ride progress and scope out new rides. It's on our roadmap!

In addition to letting you customize the HUD we're also experimenting with letting you place it, including making it invisible if you wish.

Exporting your progress is also on our roadmap... we were thinking it would first appear in a Strava integration but could also let you download directly.

If you choose a ride start and end in game, you can uncheck "use highways" to avoid them.

We hope you stick with us, as we're committed to constant improvement of VZfit through updates every month between Explorer and Play. We may not be able to compete with the exact thing you are trying to do on the Rift, but to the extent your ideas would benefit everyone and are feasible, we will put them on our roadmap.

Finally thanks for being honest about the monthly subscription cost. It's what keeps us in business and allows us to support and improve VZfit. We are just trying to cover our costs on the sensor kit, but had to make it because off-the-shelf speed sensors and Bluetooth buttons aren't good enough for VR and VZfit.

Cheers and hope you enjoy our latest update!

[Shon_T]

First of all, we love your dedication and openess!  We'll answer point by point but not quote your original post to save space.

...

I appreciate your detailed answers an explanations. I agree that comparing the Rift hooked up to a gaming PC, is an apples and oranges comparison to  a stand alone Oculus Go. What you have accomplished is in fact, very impressive given the processing limitations of the Go.

My second ride went a bit smoother. I am acclimating to the differences. I might just stick it out, both to support development and to see where this thing is headed.

[emalafeew]

Cool. Streetview metadata quality is variable so it's worth trying different rides. City Mode is a less dependent on that metadata, but it's not really appropriate for country rides. Our "suggested rides" were picked for being relatively good for Country Mode, as are many user-shared rides. We've also seen that Google can update that metadata, for better or worse, so we're looking into an automated tool to evaluate their changes, or possibly preserve image lookups to their ride creation date.

Also, the Quest would be a bit more comparable to Rift than a Go. On a Quest our apps run at a higher framerate, and the default steering mode is your leaning (detected from head position tracking) rather than head tilt. It uses forward/back leaning to dive faster in Play's flying games (Go users can press the B button). It offers monoscopic rendering as an option, rather than force it like the Go. It draws City Mode out a bit further, with less foveated rendering. And of course Quest's position tracking means that leaning changes your perspective, which feels more natural with respect to your avatar.

[Shon_T]

Cool.  Streetview metadata quality is variable so it's worth trying different rides.  City Mode is a less dependent on that metadata, but it's not really appropriate for country rides.  Our "suggested rides" were picked for being relatively good for Country Mode, as are many user-shared rides.  We've also seen that Google can update that metadata, for better or worse, so we're looking into an automated tool to evaluate their changes, or possibly preserve image lookups to their ride creation date.

Also, the Quest would be a bit more comparable to Rift than a Go.  On a Quest our apps run at a higher framerate, and the default steering mode is your leaning (detected from head position tracking) rather than head tilt.  It uses forward/back leaning to dive faster in Play's flying games (Go users can press the B button).  It offers monoscopic rendering as an option, rather than force it like the Go.  It draws City Mode out a bit further, with less foveated rendering.  And of course Quest's position tracking means that leaning changes your perspective, which feels more natural with respect to your avatar.

It's good to hear the differences.

---

Third Impression:

I came back to my ride today, planning to complete my custom route that I had only completed about 40% of the day before. Unfortunately, the software only put me at 15% completion...which would have added a couple of extra hours to my ride...

I was prepared, and had saved the coordinates of my last position on the route. Instead of continuing my saved route, I created an open route and started riding.

The open route worked fine. it was relatively smooth and glitch free I  stayed on a straight course for the most part...but I could see  the path options at intersections I was crossing. I was satisfied with the open route...I think it would have worked fine, but I was a bit worried about losing my way, and I wasn't all that familiar with the area I was trying to ride into.

With a specific destination in mind, I decided to create an in headset route using my current coordinates. I made sure to "avoid highways" in planning my route.  This turned out to be my best experience so far. The route was incredible smooth, staying on the same side of the road for almost the entire ride. There were minimal glitches. I also had some wide open spaces where I was able to enjoy "country mode" for a while. 

I periodically paused to write down GPS coordinates so that I could later map out my route. I found that the coordinates on the pause menu were quite handy...I just wish I could make them stay on the screen as I often had to wait for the coordinates to flash several times before I could write them down.

I'm thinking my previous hand drawn routes were pulling data from both sides of the road...creating a slalom like effect. I had none of that on this ride. It might have helped that most of the ride was in open country...I suspect most of my previous issues are in busy cities with multiple layers of data.

Tomorrow I am headed to Mount Fuji. There is a Google Street view that shows the entire hike. Will I be able to bike it? I guess I will know in a couple of days when I get there.

[emalafeew]

Do you remember how you left the ride that didn't remember all of your progress? Was it by quitting Explorer, or the exit button, or by changing to a different ride, or did you just take the headset off for a day?

Glad everything worked better today! If you make good long rides, we'd love if you shared them with the community. Find it under your Created Rides, and choose Options then Share. It will then appear to everyone else under New and Popular Rides based on how many spins it gets. You can only share rides you've completely ridden, and therefore know they are good, and can Unshare them at any time.

Your diagnosis of the slalom sounds correct, we just query along the path you choose and get the nearest data points, and cities often have multiple crossed paths. You should see the same thing in the Streetview website, which is a good thing to spot check with your hand drawn rides. When there are enough data points within range we keep to ones with the same creation date.

The lat/lon display on the pause menu is too short, but when we made the flip time longer you didn't realize they would appear. Maybe we can fix by making the lat/lon display for longer than the location? Or perhaps change them into a button you can toggle.

I wouldn't expect mountain trails to work very well, because they are often captured by cameras without depth information necessary to make country mode work. If you get lucky please let us know!

[Shon_T]

Do you remember how you left the ride that didn't remember all of your progress?  Was it by quitting Explorer, or the exit button, or by changing to a different ride, or did you just take the headset off for a day?

I used the compass to "pause" the ride and took the goggles off for the day. When I returned my progress was lost.


The lat/lon display on the pause menu is too short, but when we made the flip time longer you didn't realize they would appear.  Maybe we can fix by making the lat/lon display for longer than the location?  Or perhaps change them into a button you can toggle.

I understand your explanation. I think a toggle button would be great.

I wouldn't expect mountain trails to work very well, because they are often captured by cameras without depth information necessary to make country mode work.  If you get lucky please let us know!

No...I'm not expecting much, and I certainly wouldn't use country mode. It's definitely NOT a biking trail...I'm expecting that the switchbacks will be particularly challenging if not impossible...we shall see...

[Shon_T]

Fourth Impression:

I came back to resume my journey through Japan. I am now headed towards mount Fiji. Picking up where I left off, I had difficulty navigating a route to Mount Fiji. I could get it to work on Google maps...but for some reason it would not work in the headset.

Eventually, I discovered that the road I was trying to get to is currently closed due to snow. It didn't seem to bother Google, but the headset just wouldn't go there. Eventually I reset my destination for further down the mountain, where the road was still open. This time it finally worked so I started riding.

About 14% into my ride the white dots just stopped. I was not able to go further. Sometimes switching modes has worked for me...but no luck. I tried switching to Sedona and back to my map, but it still would not let me progress. I tried building a new map from that same spot...but upon entering the new map I still had the same issue...there was simply no route forward. Google Maps showed street view in this area...so I'm not really sure what the hang up was. Eventually I used coordinates a bit farther up the street and created yet another route. This time it worked and I continued my journey without further issues.

I rode in my more wide open country today... I also rode on a highway that was boxed in by woods and retaining walls. I spent quite a bit of time in Country Mode. I really enjoyed the personal trainer pacing me and keeping me on my toes.