It's not my intent to form and head a team myself. My friends and I created the kickstarter page together so the "we" pronoun is used on the fundraiser page. Sorry if that was confusing. On here, I want to create a forum for the community to organize themselves into their own team. I completely agree that we need someone to head this project that is a familiar "face", as you say.
I just created this account today specifically to be transparent. If you notice, my username matches my name on Kickstarter. Kickstarter verifies me using my bank account information, even my social security number, so I am accountable on there as a steward. I've already gone way out on a limb here by using my real name as an identifier. That's how much this project means to me.
Which is all admirable, but also largely irrelevant. Sorry. There are very few people I would trust to handle this correctly (Like Sandwich or Zacam or Goober), and you are not one of them.
If you have someone in mind that could pull this off, and possibly head the project, I'd appreciate you reaching out to Swifty and mjm to see if they're interested.
I know that they're
interested (Hell,
I am interested in working on this). That's not the problem. The problem is that, as with
every other feature we have ever added to the engine, we can't commit to a firm deadline, even with the promise of a payout at the end, because at the end of the day, we do this in our spare time for fun. We all have day jobs and other commitments that take precedence over our work here.
I arrived at the $6000 figure because I know that required equipment to run an HMD is expensive, about $1000 for a pc and $600+ for the oculus itself, and I wanted to be able to mostly reimburse everyone for the cost of hardware and their time. The January 1, 2017 completion goal can be adjusted if I do so before too many backers jump on board. But, keep in mind that people are less likely to back the project if there's an extended period between when funding ends and when the product is delivered. It's a balancing act.
The problem with this Kickstarter is that you started it without checking back with me or the rest of the SCP team whether we can actually do this and if yes, what the timeframe looks like. In this paragraph, you're skirting the line to emotional blackmail ("I can change the deadline, but only if not a lot of people have decided to back the project yet"), which I really do not appreciate.
The fundraiser specifically states the goal to be incorporating oculus support into the current version. Not the one in development. Given the limitations of the fundraiser, and the fact that there is already a stable version. I'd like to encourage developers to use the most recent stable version of the code that exists right now as a basis for Oculus support. Even the CV1 still has lower resolution than most modern monitors. With all that in mind, won't VR users continue to be able to use the previous stable iteration of the engine while regular users use 3.8?
That is not how we work. The SCP will only ever support one official line of builds, and we will not, under any circumstances, fork the engine into a VR and regular version. That is never going to happen.
Secondly, in order to be VR-ready, we need to work on the core rendering engine. A good VR experience requires a rock-solid framerate (I think the measure is something like 90 FPS at 1440p or something like that), and right now the engine cannot deliver that sort of performance except for very low-end situations, certainly not in anything using the MediaVPs. This is a really big problem that any VR project has to deal with, and it is just not doable within a definitive timeframe. It may be doable once all the improvements we have planned for 3.8 have been merged in, but certainly not before then.
Again, I'd like to emphasize the importance of phrasing in commentary so that this can be linked on the kickstarter page later if it gains momentum. Granted there are plenty of hurdles. I appreciate them being brought up in a "This is something that will need to be addressed first..." manner rather than a "This won't work and here's why.." manner.
Which, and I cannot stress this enough, is why it was a
really bad idea to start this kickstarter without checking with us first. We could have explained all these difficulties to you then, and if you still thought that you could get support for this project going, we could have worked on setting realistic goals and expectations. As it stands, this has gotten much harder now.
Try to remember that I'm doing this entirely to get financial support for developers because I'd like to see this done. I'm sure plenty of others want it too and that will be demonstrated by the kickstarter in the coming weeks. We got our first $20 backer just hours after the fundraiser was launched and before I even created links to it on hard-light forums, which I think bodes really well. I hope that the way in which we've constructed the fundraiser and my own fiscal backing and willingness to invest my own time demonstrates my magnanimity and puts some of your concerns to rest.
And your enthusiasm is appreciated, it really is. But please understand that there are some concerns over the way in which this thing just happened out of the blue, with no warning or discussion beforehand. As large projects go, VR is certainly high on the list of things we would like to do
eventually, but our experience with the engine also tells us that there's a lot of groundwork to be done first.