Overview
Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset developed by Oculus VR, headed by Palmer Luckey. The headset's primary features are low-latency head-tracking and a wide field of view.
A developer prototype is set to be shipped out in March 2013, with no announced release date or technical specifications for a consumer version.
The Oculus Rift is being built with out-of-the-box engine integration with Unreal Engine and Unity, with a developer SDK being slated to release at the same time the prototype is planned to ship.
Kickstarter
In August 2012 Oculus VR launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund the production of developer prototypes of the Rift, with a goal of $250,000. Rewards included t-shirts, posters and, for those pledging $300 or more, the development prototype and access to the SDK after the first production run.
The kickstarter goal was met, with the total amount pledged almost reaching $2,5 million by roughly 9,500 backers. After the Kickstarter, Oculus VR opened up pre-orders for the same prototype at the same price on their website. Production of the Rift prototype began, with shipping initially estimated to begin in December 2012.
Prototype
The initial features of the Rift protoype, as detailed on the Kickstarter page, were:
- 6 degrees of freedom motion sensors
- 1280x800 resolution
- Fish-eye optics
- A high field of view(90 degrees horizontal, 110 degrees diagonal)
- Packed in of Doom 3 BFG Edition, the first game to support the Rift
Notable differences between the Rift and other head-mounted displays were the low latency motion sensors and the fish-eye optics.
A 6DOF motion sensor includes two 3-axis sensors, an accelerometer for tracking orientation and a magnetometer for reducing error in pitch and roll. The fish-eye lenses were meant to focus the user’s vision on the display in order to minimize the effect of looking at a screen at a distance, which other HMD’s suffer from.
Prototype revision
A Kickstarter update sent out in late 2012 revealed that, because of the unexpectedly high amount of prototypes needing production, the production pipeline had to be changed. This resulted in a delay, with shipping estimated to occur in March 2013, as well as some improvements to the hardware of the prototype. The screen used, while the same resolution, would be larger(7” instead of the original 5.6”), with faster pixel switching as well as having a higher contrast and pixel fill factor. Having a higher fill factor means having the pixels take up a larger portion of the panel, reducing the visible black grid seen between pixels(the “screen door effect”). A large addition was the change from 6DOF sensors to 9DOF sensors, meaning the Rift would additionally incorporate a 3-axis magnetometer.
Supported games
The Oculus Rift currently supports the following game releases:
Log in to comment