The Oculus Rift - bargain low latency HMD

What sounds like a demonic ritual is actually a newly developed HMD (head mounted display) focusing on the small purse, low latency and huge FOV.

On a sidenote, as this is a CG forum… …do you notice the bad quality of the product visualization below? :smiley:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/094/418/0c7ab132719971110b7c6ff2a833d7dd_large.jpg?1343828035

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game?ref=home_leanback

The resolution of the current SDK model seems not so impressive with 1280x800, however the hFOV of 110° and the vFOV of 90° does, this means you don’t look into two small screens, you don’t see the screens edges anymore and are “inside” of whatever you look at. Similarily cool sounds the promise of ultra low latency for the gamer in you.
And I think the “low” resolution ain’t all bad, it allows to play games stereoscopic on an average machine as well, hence when doublebuffering you got to calcluate 4 Frames “at once”
And it works great for us geeks, as it also works if you have to wear optical glasses :wink:

There’ll also be, and mostly already is, support for:
Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, Unity3d and the UnrealEngine, along with IDs Tech engine, as Doom3 is the first compatible game already.

Now what sounds really great are the 300USD per device. I was looking for a HMD quite a long time now, and in this quality they generally are 1000-10000 USD, depending on the resolution.
And if you look at Nvidias stupid Stereo3D glasses which cost 120 Euro (at least where I live) a piece it’s especially cheap.

Personally I think this is a great device and I can actually imagine using it for Blender as well, for sculpting or basemeshmodelling, where spatial perception is more important than a high resolution :wink:

If I had 300 bucks laying around I’d already have ordered one and started looking at the SDK and if it works properly with OpenGL (which I assume, how else should it work in Linux and OSX).
I’d love to have support for it in Blender, not because I need it, but because it’s plain cool.

I’ll sure keep an eye on that one. It’s already founded, so no need to chip in, what they need now are skilled programmers integrating the SDK in their tools and engines.

And with ID, Valve, Unity and Epic backing it it can’t be bad… hell if Gabe and John are impressed who am I to be sceptic haha.

It theory it is very cool ! In practice it kills your eyes rapidly ! Our eyes are not “built” to focus hard on something that close.

Have you even tried it, reC ?

One fact is that when you focus on such a device you blink less and your eye dries out… same applies to your regular display though.
Everything else is speculation, there is no scientific proof that it is bad. It is likely that focusing on near objects puts constant strain on your ciliary muscle controlling the accommodation of your eye. However as it is a muscle made of smooth muscle tissue like your heart it’s argueable that using it is abusing it :wink:

But if you got any medical papers saying otherwise, I am all open to reading it, I most certainly don’t like to hurt my body if I can know better.

I’m sure there are lenses in it so that the focus point is further from you than the actual display.

Just saying that if staring into a monitor for more than a few hours daily is your job then you are likely better to sticking to a monitor instead of a device that is not yet widely used. In that case you are likely already wearing glasses.

I don’t know about you guys but i would much rather stay with the tried and tested before going for something that probably has much more side effects than just the optics involved. Speaking from my personal experience here watching 3d movies at the cinema makes me dizzy and makes my eyes hurt. I bet this would do me allot worse than just plain 3d glasses.

Its bad for your eyes.

I can say from experience, that this may not be the best for your eyes.

I myself already have eye problems that have developed from use of Computers, specifically the proximity of the screens.
I am now slightly short-sighted and have trouble focusing on objects (it takes slightly longer these days).

Naturally, this is only me, and the eye issues may have arisen regardless of whether or not I had stared into screens for hours on end, but I could hardly say that it seems that it would have helped my eyes in any way.


I obviously think that this is cool and would be a great thing to show off to your equally nerdy friends.m And if I got the chance to use one then I would absolutely have a go and possibly have a bit of fun.
Don’t get me wrong, it is awesome but I can say it might be dangerous…

Might be cool to combine with the Leap 3D, then you can sculpt with a 3D tool while viewing your model in 3D…

whatever, I’ll just buy some clay at the art store XD

Looks like they will be present at Siggraph, if its possible i’ll check it out and give some feed back here on the forums. The last VR head set I tried at Siggraph was amazing, but huge, it didnt quite fit into something usable…what as cool about that one though is that it tracked your location as well…so if you walked forward, you would walk forward in the 3d space. I really hope this kind of tech takes off…

The stream I talked about earlier should start now on http://www.own3d.tv/QuakeCon
At least I hope they’ll talk about the Oculus some. :slight_smile:

if i seen someone wearing something like that i’m gonna smack them
in the back of the head then run before they can take them off. :evilgrin:

That’s nonsense. Most HMD’s have holographic lenses in them that make the screen appear 10 meters away or more.

I ordered one and am looking forward integrating it with the Blender Game Engine. Also, I’m hoping that the flight simulator that XJazz and MartinUptis made can be modified to use it

I was thinking of making something like Microsoft Flight Simulator WWI Ace from the early 1980’s. Simple but fun.

That would be awesome! Flight simulators with this kit seems to be very interesting. Not that it would be any worse with any other first person experience but flight simulators will be the most realistic VR experience since you’re already sitting down in a chair in real life anyway. :slight_smile:

If anyone want to see the Virtual Insanity video it has now been uploaded to youtube.

I dont believe you can “order” one just like that… since this product doesnt actually exist outside of being a prototype. Unless you are a top notch developer, im not sure they would send a kit to you. Just saying, I find it hard to believe.

You can if you donate more then $300 to the kickstarter you’ll get an “EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BFG”.

The only thing that worries me is that I’m afraid one of the big console companies (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) will try to buy Oculus to get the tech for themselves and we won’t get our developers kit nor see it for the PC platform. We might even see a bidding war break out with outrageous sums being offered for the company (billions of $)…

MS and others have been working on VR for along time.

have you ever seen the movie lawnmower man? (1992) 20 years ago
its not exactly a new concept.

If you are wanting to buy this as a consumer product, you will be disappointed… this is the developer edition… meant for developers… its resolution isn’t as great and probably wont be as nice as the consumer edition they are planning on releasing at a later date.