Explorer Rides without Google

[weightmanw]

I am a gamer and I don't really like the VR games you've made (kayak is probably the best so far) because I don't really like racing genres or tank games. I'm more of a rpg gamer. I'd love a bike based rpg or something similar. Could even be 2d or 2.5d.

Anyhow, so I use explorer quite a bit more. Have you considered renting a stereo 360 camera and actually going over the routes yourselves, or paying another form to do the same? That would be much better than the grainy Google maps. Definitely worth a subscription to get that.

[Stain2319]

that seems somewhat unrealistic. google has been collecting street view images for over a decade and has a huge fleet of cars dedicated to the task... and of course they are a massively rich and large company. Just saying

[weightmanw]

I think it's a matter of scale. Google doesn't do high res because they have so much data to collect. A few miles on a couple of routes would be much less, so could be higher quality.

[Shon_T]

I am a gamer and I don't really like the VR games you've made (kayak is probably the best so far) because I don't really like racing genres or tank games. I'm more of a rpg gamer. I'd love a bike based rpg or something similar. Could even be 2d or 2.5d.

Anyhow, so I use explorer quite a bit more. Have you considered renting a stereo 360 camera and actually going over the routes yourselves, or paying another form to do the same? That would be much better than the grainy Google maps. Definitely worth a subscription to get that.

I've personally tried to create my own routes. 360 photos from my consumer 360 camera just don't compare to the quality of content from Google. 

Google has has a Trekker backpack that they are willing to loan for the purpose of user generated Google Streetview Content. I've never tried to submit an application, I have no idea how hard it is to actually be approved. 

I've used Google Street View in both Google Earth VR and on the VZ Fit. While I found that the photos in Google Earth VR were at a higher resolution, they were not optimized for riding....and so there was often period of lag, where photos just wouldn't load or connect to the "next" photo. While I've found Google street view on VZFit to be a bit lower resolution...it is optimized better, and makes for a better riding experience. Even at a lower resolution, I've found beauty and enjoyment in the locations that I am riding, and I've found the experience to be much better than the grainy streaming 360 videos available online, or other methods I have tried.

Like others have mentioned on the Facebook Community, I will sometimes go back to locations on my PC VR to view them in higher res, or use my PC Google Street View to take higher res photos of places I have ridden or visited using VZFIT. Sometimes I have found myself inside the virtual tour of a castle or at a unique vantage point, like a 360 photo from the steeple of a church.  These experiences add to the value of my ride.

I'm also an RPG Gamer, and like you, VZPlay holds little interest to me. That said...Explore can be much like an RPG game...grinding to get from one location to another. . Some folks might plan a through route...while others might plan a route that takes them through cities or points of interest that might be meaningful to them on their personalized adventure.

[KevinBrook]

I am a gamer and I don't really like the VR games you've made (kayak is probably the best so far) because I don't really like racing genres or tank games. I'm more of a rpg gamer. I'd love a bike based rpg or something similar. Could even be 2d or 2.5d.

Anyhow, so I use explorer quite a bit more. Have you considered renting a stereo 360 camera and actually going over the routes yourselves, or paying another form to do the same? That would be much better than the grainy Google maps. Definitely worth a subscription to get that.

Have you ever tried watching a 360 VR cycling video from Youtube whilst cycling?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiNLLkGfbNg

That's a sample. The video quality is much better but obviously you're not actually there or part of the video in any way, it will play regardless of how fast you pedal, you can't steer etc. But if you all want is better visuals you might prefer it. At the very least it will give you an idea of the trade off. I personally think they are quite cool for the novelty value but I prefer the freedom and interactivity of VZFit Explorer.

Imagine a few years in the future though when fully immersive VR riding looks like this, will be amazing.

Not sure what's possible with the SDK but it would be cool if somehow we could import a VR video into VZFit and then have the speed of the video controlled by the cadence  sensor and how fast we are pedaling? Is that possible?

[emalafeew]

Thanks for both bringing up points we'd have made.

It wouldn't be hard to bring a VR video into our SDK. In fact we've suggested that on another thread.

But the freedom and interactivity of Explorer is a big value to us, and you can't get with videos.

That said we've looked into riding through videos. The first issue is you don't want extremely shaky video that comes from being attached to a bike, but you also don't want the head direction baked into that comes from being from a helmet cam. To do it right you would decouple all rotation from the video and control that separately as a function of the ride and possibly where you are looking (like VirZOOM's anti-sickness solution).

Another problem is smoothness and resolution. 360 videos of sufficient resolution take a ton of bandwidth to stream, and most are a lower resolution than Explorer when you actually watch them in VR. The reason is 360 requires about 8 times the area you can see at once, all of which must be sent to you because you can look around faster than Internet latency. It's not a like a video game which just renders what you can see.

Explorer downloads images at the best resolution that can be streamed at riding speeds over most people's internet connection. It's 4k resolution that doesn't have rectilinear compression or the encoding compression artifacts of most streamable videos, and displays at a smooth 60 or 72 fps with viewpoint interpolation.

Note it's on our backlog to show you the highest 8k resolution like PC/Wander when you come to a stop.

[weightmanw]

Ok specifically stereo images is what I'm getting at. A stereo video matched to your biking pace. 360 video is exciting for VR newbies but I'd rather have 180 degrees in 3D. I don't think I ever look behind me while biking in this game.