You must not be close to the insider’s. It’s a pressure vessel here ready to pop. There seems to be a few holding tight to the old way that carry the majority of the vote. (So i’m told) Meanwhile the majority all seem to want it. It’s a hot button look it can take over nearly every topic even unrelated topics on Chief Delphi. MN Districts or Bag and Tag have similar effects.
The question is which will be supported, and which should the teams be expected to support. The former is driven by the partners and what they develop for, and the letter is, essentially, a financial/resource problem.
On the high end the Oculus Rift et al, then you’ve got Google Daydream in the lower range (I think I have 3 or 4 “freebees” of those around here somewhere), and then Google Cardboard. On the bottom you have the “no-vr” option, some PC/web app that lets you click around a rendered field.
And that doesn’t even touch any iOS devices…
HQ will need to give us some guidance, well before kickoff, as to what platforms/systems they expect us to use/support, otherwise this is going to be a disaster.
I don’t think it will be a disaster but I am curious how many FIRSTChoice Credits we will have to spend to get a folding cardboard box. 
doesn’t ring a bell
Hey, if they want to put an Oculus Rift in there for 5 FC points…
But no, disaster would be the right word I think. I would expect that some kickoffs will try to have some of whatever VR system they need. Some may try, but not have it, or be able to get it. Some teams may be unprepared, wrong system, etc. For the lower resource teams a VR system at kickoff by be their only chance to “interact” with field elements before competition, where in the past they may have seen built team elements.
I’m not concerned about the poofs, et al, it’s the low/no resource teams who may take it on the chin here.
I’m not convinced having a wooden field available was helping them all that much to start with. So far the only real argument for the wooden kickoff elements is of the form “BuT mUh pRuDuxZIoN VaLUZe”… I see that argument as perfectly valid but I also know that FRC has changed a lot since I was a student.
Big difference, it is not a small portion of the community that is loosing access to the wooden field elements. Per the blog post ~45% of the kickoffs didn’t have field elements which means that over half of them did. Sure not every team attends a kick-off en force, but no matter how you cut it it is not a small portion of the teams that have been used to having access to the elements.
Meanwhile in MN I’m certain that many teams still don’t really know about the district system and many that are aware of it don’t know what they are missing because they are being kept in the dark about the benefits. Those that are least likely to know and understand the system are those that stand to benefit from it the most. The teams that already understand the benefits of attending two events have the ability to go to two events.
For years I had no clue that there were kickoffs that had field elements available, because I didn’t attend one that did. However once I attended one that did I never went back to one w/o even though it was closer for the majority of my team.
I think people are overblowing this a little. The teams who don’t build pre-kickoff are losing probably 1-2 hours of looking at the field elements. The teams who do build are losing 8-10 hours of build season.
You got six and a half weeks to build a robot. If 10 hours are making or breaking your season in week 1, you may want to investigate why a day or two of work is going to completely ruin your chance at taking your team to Einstein for the first time.
^This.
If any 3620 students are reading this thread – please stop wasting time on Chief Delphi and get back to your actual work assignment.
If any 900 students are reading this thread – please get back to trolling the rest of CD with inane shenanigans… and stop sending your random McMaster orders to my house!
I wonder if theres areas that never got to see parts of the field at kickoff that now will get to experience them, which for them this is now a big advantage…
I doubt the majority of lower resource teams had field parts at their kickoffs, especially for those who may just send a rep out cause its too expensive or time consuming to send everyone to their local kickoff and instead did one at their shop. Sure, we dont know in what fashion they will get it, but if im able to put the Autodesk CAD into a phone app, I bet they can easily create a lower resource intensive version for an app that actually looks good.