I’m not sure how this was supposed to be posted so I’ll be leaving a link to my case study.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6wep6xfhv501kol/oculus%20rift%20essay.docx
The Oculus Rift, not many talk about it because it’s not that well known within the general public but that is to be expected for a device that’s not even have been released yet. Although for some technology enthusiast such as myself, it’s something that’s been buzzing around for quite some time now, but what exactly is it about the Oculus Rift that deserves so much attention? Well, only that it may be the new beginning of an idea that’s been dead for some time now and that idea is virtual reality gaming. The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset in the shape of a thick pair of goggles that tracks the users head position in real time and displays any environment of your choice in real-time 3D. The most interesting part is that as the headset tracks your head position; a camera in the environment matches the exact angle and position of your head, immersing you into the game. As it does this, everything you see is displayed in 3D to make it feel like you’re actually in the game/virtual environment. So how will this headset differ from the other virtual reality headsets already out there you ask? It’s because this time, the technology as leapt forward and there’s quite the expert leading its development.
The man behind the “vision” would be Palmer Luckey who originally was a head mounted display designer at a military research lab for running mock military situations in a simulated environment. While he was working at his position there, he had access to and worked with many different types of head mounted displays. He began to develop ideas and discussed them amongst forums with similar interests. Little did he know that John Carmack, famed game programmer and co-founder of id Software, had been frequenting the same forum and contacted him. With his support, he was able to fully flesh out his invention and formed the company Oculus VR Inc.
The Oculus Rift was announced at E3 of June 2012 with its first demo showcasing a game of Doom 3 with head-tracking and real time 3D. After the demo, it was immediately backed by very influential companies of note such as Valve, Epic Games and Unity. After its successful demo a month before, a kick-starter was launched to help raise money to mass produce this headset. Within hours of stating their goal of $250,000 in funding, the team had gained over 2.4 million dollars in funding; more than enough to conduct the project and then some.
Why was this made? What reason could there be for not having it? If I could ask Palmer why he wanted to create something as big as the Oculus Rift, I guess he would say he did it for fun. You could say he was kind of an enthusiast for this kind of thing. I’m sure he’s had this idea brewing around his head for a couple years, which is natural when all you do is work with head mounted displays and virtual reality all day for a living.
Originally, the Rift was set to have a 5.6 inch screen but after the unexpected amount of fund the team received, the Oculus Rift’s screen size increased to a 7 inch screen spread over both eyes split in half. Each lens for each eye will render at 640 x 800 pixels making the entire thing render at 1200 x 800(16:10 aspect ratio) altogether and this is just the developer version! The consumer version is boasted to have a 1920 x 1080 resolution. The hardware running the 3D is so sophisticated that it can effectively prevent motion blur by presenting each frame of movement at a speed that wouldn’t be noticed by the human eye, this is otherwise referred to pixel shifting. Also the screen has a better pixel fill which means that the screen door effect is less noticeable. What this means basically is that because the screen is so close to your eyes, you won’t be able to tell that easily the individual pixels. It’s important that the only output of this device be flawless.
Another piece of this device is the head tracker, probably the most important sensor for the device. The head-tracker also is well optimized which runs at 100o Hz latency which allows the frames to come in super smooth for that real life experience whenever you move your head which is also good for preventing motion sickness. The way that works in that there are a collection of gyros, accelerometers and magnometers all working in unison to detect the exact position and angle of your head as well as the speed of your head motions. This is all necessary to giving you that real-life experience of being within a game or virtual environment.
There have been several games already stated that will have support set up for the Oculus Rift like Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, most Valve games.., Hawken, and Doom. For most other games, applications, and devices, the team will be putting together a SDK filled with code and examples that developers can work with so they may integrate the Oculus Rift into their games and game engines; Epic Games and Unity Technologies have already begun to do so with their game engines.
There are a lot of expectations the Oculus Rift has to live up to. It’s been widely discussed on many technological sites and it’s received many donations since the kick-starter went up in August of last year. Many were amazed at the idea to a 3d headset that didn’t make you throw up plus its demo at E3 had given them a huge amount of street cred in the entertainment business, particularly with the gaming industry. If this project can be successfully pulled off by the team working the Oculus Rift, it may be the next huge boom that could re-spark the augmented/virtual reality community and the videogame industry as a whole. This could be opening a lot of doors for everyone at OculusVr Inc however it could flop and be such a tremendous letdown but I personally hope that’s not the case. There’s a lot the Oculus Rift has going for it and I for one look forward to its inevitable release and enjoying my video games in stereoscopic 3D.
