Wikipedia

The Oculus Rift is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display. It is being developed by Oculus VR, who have raised $16 million, of which $2.4 million was raised with crowdfunding via Kickstarter.[4] The company was founded by Palmer Luckey and the co-founders of Scaleform,[5] and id Software cofounder John Carmack was later hired as its Chief Technology Officer.[6] Developer kits are in the process of being shipped out.[7]

As a head-mounted display (HMD) designer at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, Palmer Luckey earned a reputation for having the largest personal collection of HMDs in the world, and is a longtime moderator in Meant to be Seen 3D's discussion forums.[citation needed]

Through MTBS' forums,[8] Palmer developed the idea of creating a new head mounted display that was both more effective than what is currently on the market, and inexpensive for gamers. Coincidentally, John Carmack had been "...learning the lay of the land" at MTBS,[9] and also happened upon Palmer Luckey's developments. After sampling an early unit, Carmack saw the potential in what Palmer was developing, and took steps to support his effort

Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012.

Before the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, id Software had announced in May that the company would develop a new version of Doom 3, subsequently known as BFG Edition, compatible with head-mounted display units. During the convention, Carmack introduced a homebrew prototype of the Oculus Rift featuring a 5.6 inch LCD display, visible via dual lenses that were positioned over the eyes to provide a 90 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical stereoscopic 3D perspective.

Fundraising campaign

Following the demonstration of the Oculus Rift prototype at the E3 in June 2012, on 1 August 2012 the company announced a Kickstarter campaign to further development of the product. Within four hours of the announcement, Oculus secured its intended amount of $250,000,[1][12] and in less than 36 hours, the campaign had surpassed $1 million in funding,[13] eventually ending with $2,437,429.[14]

Developer version

The Oculus developer kit was an initial version financed by a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign sought to get the initial Oculus Rift into the hands of developers to begin integration of the device into their games.[15]

In August 2012, Oculus announced that the "dev kit" version of the Oculus Rift would be given as a reward to backers who pledged $300 or more on Kickstarter, with an expected shipping date set of March 2013. There was also a limited run of 100 unassembled Rift prototype kits for pledges over $275 that would ship a month earlier. Both versions were intended to include Doom 3 BFG Edition, but Rift support in the game wasn't ready, so to make up for it they included a choice of discount vouchers for either Steam or the Oculus store.[4] Dev kit preorders were made available for $300 on their website starting on 26 September 2012. These kits sold at a rate of 4–5 per minute for the first day, before slowing down throughout the week.[16] These preorders were expected to start being delivered in "May 2013",[17] but started arriving around March 30.[18] A community order tracking spreadsheet has popped up to help track and estimate shipping information.[19] As of July 25, 2013, Oculus is still accepting dev kit preorders on their website.[20]

Consumer version

A consumer-oriented 'Oculus Rift 2.0' is in development, which will be aimed at a general market and feature improved components. Improved head tracking, weapon tracking, 1080p resolution,[21] and wireless operation are some of the features under consideration for the Rift 2.0.[22] Palmer Luckey has said that such a Head-mounted display (HMD) should be possible in 2014.[23] In June 2013 a 1080p version of the Rift was shown at E3.[24]

Endorsements

The Oculus Rift has been endorsed by a number of notable game industry figures including:

• John D. Carmack: co-founder of id Software and lead programmer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, since August 2013 CTO at Oculus VR
  
• Dean Hall: designer of the ARMA 2 mod DayZ
  
• Gabe Newell: co-founder and CEO of Valve
  
• Cliff Bleszinski: designer at Epic Games on Unreal series and Gears of War
  
• Michael Abrash: Quake developer and author of Zen of Assembly Language
  
• Tim Sweeney: founder of Epic Games and developer on ZZT and the Unreal engine
  
• Chris Roberts: creator of Wing Commander series
  
• Markus "Notch" Persson: lead designer and former lead developer of Minecraft
  
• David Helgason: CEO of Unity Technologies, developer of the Unity game engine
  
• Shuhei Yoshida: president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios[25]

Hardware

The first prototype of the device used a 5.6 inch screen, but after the unexpectedly successful Kickstarter, Oculus decided that the panel wasn't available in sufficient quantities, so they changed their design to use a new 7 inch screen, which makes the Rift dev kit somewhat bulkier than the first prototypes.

The new panel's pixel switching time is significantly faster, reducing latency and motion blur when turning one's head quickly. The pixel fill is also better, reducing the screen door effect and making individual pixels less noticeable. The LCD is brighter and the color depth is 24 bits per pixel. The 7 inch screen also makes the stereoscopic 3D no longer 100% overlapping, the left eye seeing extra area to the left and the right eye seeing extra area to the right. This mimics normal human vision, which does not 100% overlap either, although the overlap area is smaller on the Rift than in real life.

The field of view is more than 90 degrees horizontal (110 degrees diagonal), which is more than double the FOV of most competing devices, and is the primary strength of the device. It is intended to almost fill the wearer's entire field of view, and the real world is completely blocked out, to create a strong sense of immersion. The resolution is 1280×800 (16:10 aspect ratio), which leads to an effective of 640×800 per eye (4:5 aspect ratio). However, since the Rift does not feature a 100% overlap between the eyes, the combined horizontal resolution is effectively greater than 640. The image for each eye is shown in the panel as a pincushioned image that is then corrected by lenses in the headset, generating a spherical-mapped image for each eye. The panel's resolution is expected to be upgraded to at least 1920×1080 for the final consumer version.

Initial prototypes used a Hillcrest 3DoF head tracker that is normally 120 Hz, with a special firmware that John Carmack requested which makes it run at 250 Hz, tracker latency being vital due to the dependency of virtual reality's realism on response time. The latest version includes Oculus' new 1000 Hz Adjacent Reality Tracker that will allow for much lower latency tracking than almost any other tracker. It uses a combination of 3-axis gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers, which make it capable of absolute (relative to earth) head orientation tracking without drift.[20][26]

The weight of the headset is approximately 379 g,[27] (an increase of about 90 grams due to the increased screen size) and it does not include headphones.

The headset has a dial on each side that can be turned with a screwdriver which allows adjusting each display to be moved closer or further away from the eyes. The development kit also includes interchangeable lenses that will allow for simple dioptric correction. Adjustment for the interpupillary distance is done in software, although given its large exit pupil, this should not be a severe issue with the Rift.

The developer version Rift has DVI and HDMI input on the control box, and comes with one DVI and two HDMI cables, and a DVI to HDMI adapter.

A USB interface is used for sending tracking data to the host machine and powering the device, potentially negating the need for an external power supply. However, since its power requirements slightly exceed the rating for USB, it will come with a power adapter that can optionally be used to connect the control box to a power outlet for those computers that don't provide enough USB power.

Software

Games and game platforms must be specifically designed to work correctly with the Oculus Rift. Oculus is producing an SDK (software development kit) to assist developers with integrating the Oculus Rift with their games. The SDK will include code, samples, and documentation, and will be accessible to anyone who purchased a developer kit from the Kickstarter, or a preorder from their website.[5] According to Oculus, game integration will begin with PCs and smartphones and be followed by consoles (much later).

Team Fortress 2 was the first game to add support for the Oculus Rift, and can be played right now with the Oculus Rift dev kit by use of a command line option. The second title to support the Oculus Rift was the Oculus only version of "Museum of the Microstar" which was released in April 2013. Half-life 2 was the third, and Hawken is likely to be the fourth game to support the Rift; it was prominently featured in the Kickstarter, and Oculus used it to demo the Rift at the GDC. Doom 3: BFG Edition was originally going to be the first game to officially support the Oculus Rift,[5] but after the change of tracker and the change to the 7" panel, id has not yet updated the game to support it.

The Gallery: Six Elements is the first announced game being designed specifically for the Oculus Rift and Virtual Reality, rather than adding Rift support to an existing game. This is considered important because many existing games use features that don't translate well to VR, such as a HUD, cutscenes, menus, third person sections, fast movement speeds, not being able to see your body, etc. It is currently on Kickstarter.[1]

Epic Games, creators of the Unreal Engine, have announced that the engine will integrate support for the Oculus Rift. David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies, has announced support for the Oculus Rift with the Unity engine. John Carmack of id Software has stated that he plans to make the Oculus Rift a concurrent part of the Doom 4 development cycle to ensure that it works well with the game at launch.[28] Star Citizen, the upcoming space role-playing simulator from Chris Roberts (creator of Wing Commander and Freelancer) is being built with Oculus support.

Several prominent figures from the games industry, notably John Carmack, the co-founder of Id Software, Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation, Michael Abrash, the author of Zen of Graphics and Graphics Programming Black Book, Cliff Bleszinski, former design director at Epic Games, and David Helgason, the founder of Unity 3D publicly endorsed the campaign. Markus Persson, founder of Mojang, has stated that the company's games will likely support the Oculus Rift.[29] Michael Abrash, who is researching virtual reality and augmented reality at Valve said "I personally would like to get our games running on the Rift and make it a great experience and then ship it for that, I would like to do that. Whether that will be the case, whether we’ll be able to make it work that well and whether we’ll think the experience is that great, that’s not my decision" during a presentation on virtual reality at QuakeCon 2012.[15]

Several titles are playable on the Rift via the free and open source Vireio Perception VR drivers.[30] Games currently with full or partial Vireio Perception support include Left4Dead 1 and 2, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dear Esther, Portal 1 and 2, Half Life 2 and more.

Vireio Perception is the first to include the Schneider-Hicks Optical Calibration Tool (SHOCT),[31] a software feature that makes it possible to safely calibrate the majority of stereoscopic 3D settings without having to wear an HMD through the process. Up until this time, it was difficult to calibrate settings like separation and convergence because head mounted displays are incapable of providing a reference for both views at the same time.

According to Meant to be Seen, open source developers of the Vireio Perception drivers, their current priorities include adding DX10 and DX11 support, easier to use game profiles, and solving the "time differential" flaw in the software's architecture.[32]

While not yet released, another option for playing existing games is the VorpX driver [33] that has listed support for a wide variety of games built on DirectX versions 9 through 11. The majority of the rendering is expected to be using 2D+Depth technology, though true dual camera rendering will be available for a limited number of games. Sample titles listed as being VorpX compatible include Bioshock Infinite, Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Flight Simulator X and more. Publicly viewable 3D screenshots and 3D game footage have not been published yet.

Broadcasting

Demos of the Oculus Rift featuring impressions and gameplay with both single images and stereo images have been broadcast on YouTube by a number of popular video game content providers, including The Yogscast[34][35][36][37] and PewDiePie.[38][39][40] A home video entitled "My 90 year old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift." went viral with over 1.9 million views.[41]

Related projects

While working as a designer at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, Palmer Luckey behind the Oculus Rift worked on the FOV2GO project, an inexpensive kit consisting of a simple housing and optics to allow someone to put together a cheap HMD using a mobile phone as the display device.[42][43][44] The FOV2GO project is now available as a template allowing anyone to build the unit themselves.[45]

A team from the University of Southern California is working on creating a fully immersive virtual reality experience called "Project Holodeck", which utilises Razer Hydra motion controllers, PS Move positional tracking, and Oculus Rift HMDs to give the user the impression of being inside of a complete virtual world.[46][47]