How oculus rift works. Oculus Rift: Everything You Need to Know. Which games work and support Oculus Rift
It has been a major theme in science fiction novels and films for decades. The first virtual reality helmets were produced in the 1960s. At the time, technology took up quite a lot of space and a huge amount of money. In the late 1980s () and until the 1990s, VR became available to the general public in entertainment centers through heavy helmets and controllers used to play fairly simple games. Head tracking was slow at the time, the field of view was narrow, and the graphics were low resolution by modern standards. The experience often caused headaches, but nevertheless, it was a technological step forward and was definitely being improved.
Since then, more advanced VR headsets have been developed with better graphics resolution and response times, but they were too expensive for home users and still tend to be found more in places such as government and corporate research and educational institutions. The military, the auto industry, space programs and medical projects all use virtual reality in one form or another, out of sight of the general population.
And yet technology does not stand still, and virtual reality, accordingly, too. Small and powerful hardware components that turned our simple Cell Phones into smartphones and made gaming systems much better, now VR can also help - thus, one of the first high-quality virtual reality helmets, Oculus Rift, was born. It is the first of several virtual reality headsets capable of delivering realistic virtual reality to humans and providing great opportunities in the field for the average user.
You probably expected that such a mobile device would be produced for the first time and presented in a high-quality manner by some large mobile giant like Samsung or Google, but that was not the case. A project called Oculus Rift is the most humble start to the life of virtual reality. Palmer Luckey, a teenage gamer and gaming enthusiast with a passion for VR, started building VR headsets and crafting a wide variety of products on his own to try and create something that would work with today's games. Eventually he realized that he needed to make his own device from scratch. This is how the development of Oculus Rift began, a project that is currently popular on a global scale and continues to evolve every day. Let's find out what it is, how it works and, in general, interesting details.
Opening the Oculus Rift
Lucky began working on what would become the Oculus Rift while still attending college for the study of journalism. He created the first prototype in 2012 when he was only 19 years old. He had the idea to make a campaign on the crowdfunding Internet site Kickstarter to fund the project and manufacture the corresponding hardware components, several dozen dedicated fans of virtual reality, and he also spoke to a large number of people online, talking about his idea, including John Carmack - the developer of the famous of DOOM and Quake games and founder of Id Software. Subsequently, Carmack became one of the members of the VR project team and asked for one of the prototypes of a virtual reality helmet. He used a prototype Oculus Rift with his own firmware, and later demonstrated the first VR-ready game, DOOM 3 BFG, at the annual gaming industry show E3 2012, which kicked off the Oculus Rift hype.
Then the teenage gamer founded his own company, Oculus Rift, and turned to several industry insiders for help - Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov, co-founders of Scaleform, a corporation that develops software engines for the computer games industry. The campaign on the Kickstarter website started with $ 250,000 in funding - a level that was broken on its first day. As a result, Lucky achieved even greater success and the amount of funding exceeded the above level by 10 times - in total, almost 2.5 million dollars were collected.
Since then, the company has received millions and more from investors and even from the employees themselves. Oculus Rift currently has partnerships with major game manufacturers such as Valve, Epic Games, and Unity.
As of 2014, Oculus Rift has released a developer kit (SDK) to encourage the creation of high-quality and rich content for the branded virtual reality headset of the same name - this step was taken in connection with the soonest release of an improved consumer version of the mobile market. The consumer version is still in development, and social network Facebook announced its $ 2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR in March this year.
The device itself is a lightweight virtual reality helmet that blocks your entire field of vision and your surroundings and completely immerses you in the virtual world. Oculus Rift allows you to literally immerse yourself in the game world, look around and head in any direction you want, while seeing the gaming environment, not the flat screen surrounded by your living room decor. The most important effect used in virtual reality technology is three-dimensional or three-dimensional graphics (3D). you can read it in a separate article from the column "How it works".
Specifications and other features
Oculus Rift Development Kit version 1.1 includes an Oculus Rift headset that vaguely resembles safety ski goggles. The kit also comes with a control box that is firmly attached to the helmet with a 1.8m cable, a detachable head strap for added comfort and stability, three pairs of lenses with different focal lengths, an HDMI cable, a USB cable, a DVI cable and a standard power supply along with international 5 Volt power adapters. All of this is housed in a hard case. In the Oculus Rift Dev Kit, the glasses weigh less than 1 pound - just 369 grams - and a future consumer model could get even lighter.
The control unit is used to connect the helmet to a computer and further perform basic control functions. This is where HDMI, DVI, MiniUSB cables and DC ports come in handy, as well as five buttons to control contrast and brightness. The blue indicator shows whether the device is connected or not.
The developer's helmet provides the following virtual reality functionality: 3 degrees of freedom (depth of field), ultra-low latency and a field of view (FOV) of 110 degrees diagonal and 90 degrees horizontal for a more convincing immersion in a non-existent world.
The Rift is equipped with a 7-inch (17.8 centimeters) LCD display with a resolution of 1280x800 (640x720 per eye) dots with a 60 Hz refresh rate. The fixed center-to-center distance of the lenses is 2.5 inches (64 millimeters). The company has plans to increase the resolution of the consumer model to FullHD, and Oculus has already shown two prototypes. Display inputs are as follows: DVI-D Single Link, HDMI 1.3 and USB 2.0 Full Speed.
The Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet has a custom-made motion unit and orientation sensors with a sampling rate of up to 1000 Hz. The sensor unit includes a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a magnetometer. The processor in the device is a microcontroller based on the ARM Cortex-M3 platform. Data from all three sensors are combined through a process called a “sensor system” - it allows you to quickly and accurately track your head movements and orientation in space. Thanks to this, you can turn your head in any direction and look around in a virtual environment in real time.
The new prototype, called Crystal Cove, debuted at CES 2014. It has received improved specifications: AMOLED screen with FullHD (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) resolution, low latency, higher refresh rate (75 Hz), lower afterimage, infrared tracker and dozens of IR LEDs to track location in space ... Crystal Cove can track position, not just orientation - this is how infrared LEDs work, which looks like little square white dots). In addition, the number of degrees of freedom has been increased to 6 (was 3), so from now on you can lean towards the thing to see it more closely. This prototype is reportedly a near-consumer version of Oculus VR, but development is ongoing.
System requirements
The Oculus Rift VR headset and development kit (SDK) support Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems. To use the device with a computer, it must have either an HDMI port or a DVI video output. VGA is not supported. There are no specific minimum system requirements, but some recommended ones make the following list:
- Windows (Vista, 7 or 8 / 8.1)
- Mac OS 10.6 or higher
- Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
- Processor with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz +
- 2 GB of RAM
- Direct3D 10 support or OpenGL 3 compatible graphics card
The SDK also includes support for some game controllers: Microsoft XBox 360, Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad, and SONY PlayStation DUALSHOCK3.
Currently, the virtual reality headset from the Oculus Rift company works only in tandem with personal computers, but full support for mobile devices along with cool gaming systems is already in the works.
Open source software and components
The Oculus SDK is open source and open source software, which means anyone can get the right to use or even modify and distribute the code. However, there are also a few caveats that are detailed in the license agreement, including that any changes must be shared with Oculus VR, that the software cannot be used to interact with other commercial VR products, and that the code must be used in general. and not partially. Be sure to be aware that the company may revoke its SDK usage rights if you build an app that causes health or safety concerns.
The development kit consists of C ++ source code, libraries, firmware, samples, tutorials, documentation, Unreal Development Kit, Unreal Engine 4, and Unity game development software. Some of the samples:
- OculusRoomTiny - Displays a small room to show the integration of sensor and rendering.
- OculusWorldDemo - allows you to wander around Tuscany (one of the regions of Italy).
- SensorBoxTest is a 3D rendering that shows a sensor fusion by tracking and displaying rotation in Rift space.
What the Oculus Rift can do
For some reason, the Rift VR headset is compared to smart glasses. On the one hand, these are two technologies that are wearable, but on the other, these devices are in completely different categories. Google Glass is a miniature smartphone in the form of a pair of glasses with a clear rectangular transparent screen on one side of the field of view. At the same time, you can see the real environment around you, but you can also call up the information of interest using voice commands, after which it will appear right in front of you - on the screen. Smart glasses Google Glass should be attributed more to augmented reality technology than virtual reality.
The Oculus Rift is a true virtual reality experience. The helmet completely blocks your view of the real world and you will contemplate a fully-fledged, digital, virtual world while standing in one place. The Rift uses a high-resolution stereoscopic 3D display, a 110-degree wide field of view and minimal lag when immersed in the virtual world.
The Oculus Rift achieves a stereoscopic 3D effect by displaying an image for each eye - so each eye sees everything from a slightly different perspective and creates quality depth that is appropriately perceived by the person. A wide 110-degree field of view extends into your peripheral vision and, when combined with lenses, is designed to help immerse you in the game.
After you've purchased the Oculus Rift, downloaded the development kit (SDK), and updated the software from the Oculus VR website, you need to calibrate your VR headset. This process consists of the following tasks: measuring and determining your height and IPD (Inter-pupillary Distance, or distance between the eyes), as well as calibrating the magnetometer. After the device is calibrated, you can use it for detailed testing or chopping into toys.
What games does Oculus Rift work and support?
As of this writing, a consumer version of Oculus' VR headset has yet to be released, but there are already some games from major publishers and development companies that have been created or ported from one platform to another. These include:
- DOOM 3 BFG Edition by ID Software is the first full-fledged Oculus VR game
- Eve: Valkyrie by CCP Games - Oculus Rift Exclusive
- Valve's Team Fortess 2 is an official port that can be played in VR mode
- Valve's Half Life 2 is another official port that can be played in VR mode
- Hawken by Meteor Entertainment and Adhesive Games
Currently, many existing games have already been adapted to work with the Oculus Rift VR headset. However, the development of technology does not end there, and today both famous and little-known developers are exploring the possibilities of the Rift. Surely with the release of the consumer version, Oculus will present a new pack of cool games from popular and not so popular publishers. It remains only to wait for the release, because judging by the fact that the development of the consumer version has been going on for almost a year.
Reviews, availability and features
Early impressions of the model for developers were largely positive. A lot of people think the Oculus Rift is incredibly cool, including the 90-year-old grandmother of one of the users. In addition, avid gamers confidently argue that virtual reality technology will definitely change the world of the gaming industry in an even more technological direction.
Of course, there were some complaints - this is quite expected nausea, dizziness and some concern about using glasses with the Oculus Rift. You can actually use a helmet with most goggles depending on their size and shape. To position the glasses correctly, you need to adjust the lens distance in relation to your face by turning the two screws on either side of the helmet - the closer the better, because then you will get the maximum field of view. However, using the Oculus Rift with glasses is not recommended due to the risk of scratching your spectacle lenses and the reassurance of reduced field of view.
On the second version of the Oculus Rift Development Kit's model for developers, called Crystal Cove, people reacted much more positively: user emotions are even more expansive due to higher resolution, reduced motion blur and positional tracking. Both iterations mobile device Oculus received the "Best of CES" awards in 2013 and 2014.
As of early 2014, you can purchase the developer version directly from the official Oculus VR site for $ 300, but the release date and price of the consumer version has yet to be officially announced. Let's hope that with such strong support from game developers and publishers, financial support from Facebook and the company's capabilities, the Oculus Rift project will live and develop for a very long time. I hope you were interested and learned a lot about one of the first virtual reality helmets. Stay tuned and good luck.
I must confess that until a certain time I had no particular interest in these virtual reality helmets. I had this helmet from Samsung, I played with it a couple of times - and abandoned it. The vast majority of these helmets are designed for use with a smartphone: a smartphone is inserted horizontally into the box, you put the helmet on your head and look at the smartphone screen through two eyepieces with lenses.
The smartphone uses special programs that output stereo image - to create a three-dimensional effect. Since the smartphone is able to track its position in space, it changes the picture depending on the position of your head, so that you get not only a three-dimensional effect, but also the effect of presence.
On a smartphone screen, such an application looks something like this.
More or less the standard resolution of modern smartphones is FullHD, slightly increased in width for 16: 9 and similar formats. Two identical images are displayed on the screen, which means that they will have a resolution of something like 950 × 950 (part of the image is not used there, because the image is rounded in a certain way). Well, it is quite expected that with such a resolution the quality is very, very so-so. You can still play with toys, although the effect of novelty quickly disappears there, and if you try, for example, to watch films - here the effect of a movie screen is reproduced - then everything here is so dreary in quality that it simply does not make any sense.
And then I found out that there are completely different virtual reality helmets that provide a completely different image quality and much more advanced capabilities. These are Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and several Windows Mixed Reality headsets from Samsung, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and Asus.
These are desktop solutions, since they have their own displays, and the image is created using a powerful VR-ready desktop computer - this should be a powerful enough computer with a cool video card.
You can check how VR-ready your computer is using the SteamVR Performance Test program, and you can also download a program from the Oculus website that will check compatibility.
And such helmets are a completely different story: they connect to a computer via wire (or wireless), they have their own sound, their own game controllers for each hand and their own sensors of position in space.
Most videos of this type are filmed in POV mode - when a man reclines in the foreground and sees everything that happens with his own eyes, and a user with a VR helmet will identify with this man.
Well, if for simple helmets where a smartphone is inserted, the quality of such videos will be rather low, then for serious helmets like this Oculus Rift the quality is very good and here there is a downright frightening effect of realism.
I think that many married couples will have all sorts of ethical questions about whether watching such videos is some kind of adultery - everything looks authentic.
However, for people who, for various reasons, do not have a girlfriend and cannot engage in real sex, such entertainment will be a way out and compensate them very well for what they are deprived of.
Observations at work and conclusions
The device is more than interesting, I have never regretted that I bought it. The lack of diopter adjustment of the lenses is frustrating, but not critical: the helmet is simply not very convenient to put on and take off when glasses are on the nose.
Of course, these technologies will be actively developed for a wide variety of applications. Already, such helmets are not prohibitively expensive, and their prices are gradually decreasing.
And this is in no way a one-off toy from the "play and abandon" series. New services and new games appear all the time that you want to try. By the way, many VR games are also available on Steam, and there they can be significantly cheaper.
The direct competitor of the Oculus Rift is HTC Vive, which is more expensive, but in terms of use and quality, as I understand it, is very similar. If there is an opportunity to test, I will try to compare them.
P. S. Some time ago, the company released the Oculus Go helmet for € 219. He does not need a computer, the screen resolution for each eye is 1280 × 1440. He does not have trackers, so the user is somewhat limited in movement in the virtual world, however, many opportunities for the Oculus Rift are quite accessible here, just the user will sit in a chair. Here you will definitely need to get acquainted with it and compare it with the Oculus Rift. And you can separately purchase lenses with diopters for it, and a special spacer for glasses is included in the kit.
REPOST
As I filled the blog, I realized that all this huge array of information about various virtual reality devices needs to be structured in one place. This page serves this very purpose. On it, just below, I will not only publish all the basic and important information about the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, which is available today, but I will also try to keep it up to date by editing the changed information and adding, towards the end of the pages, fresh and relevant news. If you have not found the answer to some question, write in the comments, thereby you will not only get an answer to this question, but also help the rest of the suffering find it in the future, on this page. So, as Gagarin said - Let's go.
To begin with, in case you wandered here knowing absolutely nothing about virtual reality in general and about the Oculus Rift in particular (and such even in the USA, according to recent estimates, about 60-70% of gamers), I propose to briefly get acquainted with this phenomenon , which has been exciting the minds of many people for a couple of years. To do this, it is worth contacting an article specially written for this, clearly explaining. After that, we follow on. The hero of this page is Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet and everything about it.
A brief history of the Oculus Rift
And we will start from the origins. From how it all began. Here I will note that the history of virtual reality in the 21st century begins with the Oculus Rift. I mentioned the 21st century for a reason. Attempts to assemble such a device were made much earlier, even before 2000. However, the development of technologies did not allow assembling a decent device and they only caused laughter and were not very popular. Until such a project in 2011 was remembered by two comrades - Palmer Lucky and John Carmack, it was they who later became the leaders of the Oculus VR company.
One of the first virtual reality devices of the 20th century
In August 2012, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to raise money to develop and build the first version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. The public was even presented with a working prototype of the device, which was named Oculus Rift Developer Kit 1 (DK1)... The campaign attracted so much attention that in just 4 hours, the entire required amount was raised in 250 thousand US dollars... But the collection was not stopped, and over the next 30 days, about 9.5 thousand people invested their money in the device, collecting a total of about $ 2.5 million. Running a little ahead, I will mention that.
In October 2013, an improved version of the Oculus Rift for developers was presented to the public, called Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 (DK2)... The novelty has acquired a better display from Samsung (in the future, these companies collaborated several more times). It is worth noting that both DK1 and DK2 could be bought by everyone, it was not necessary to be a developer.
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In March 2014, seeing the enormous popularity of the device, Oculus VR buys social giant Facebook... His leader saw the future in virtual reality technology. After the purchase, significant funds were invested in the development.
And already in September 2014 a new version of the virtual reality helmet was released Oculus Rift Crescent Bay... Having received a lot of changes regarding its progenitors, it already looked more like the final version of the device, which soon went on sale.
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The name of this final, at the moment, device - Oculus Rift Consumer Version (CV1)... The first sales began on January 6, 2016, but more on that below.
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Oculus Rift Specifications
I think it's worth bringing specs for all Oculus Rift models, and to make it easier to navigate them - I draw up a summary comparative table.
Characteristics of different versions of the Oculus Rift
| Parameter | Oculus Rift DK1 | Oculus Rift DK2 | Oculus Rift CV | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display resolution (per eye) | Pixels | 640x800 | 960x1080 | 1080x1200 |
| Frequency | Hz | 60 | 75 | 90 |
| Response | ms | 5 | 2 | 2 |
| Viewing angle | Degree | 90 | 100 | 100 |
| Sensors | Gyroscope Accelerometer | Gyroscope Accelerometer Magnetometer | Gyroscope Accelerometer Magnetometer |
Oculus Rift applicability
Initially, starting with the DK1, the Osulus Rift was positioned as a purely entertainment device. It was proposed to use it in virtual reality games, watch movies. But, the further this issue was worked out, the more all kinds of competitors and partners got involved in this business. All the more it became clear that games are far from the only area of application of virtual reality devices. They are currently being used in medicine, business and education. And I only mentioned what immediately came to my mind. In fact, there are much more areas of application, and I will somehow research this issue more closely and write an article.
Oculus Rift Price
So how much is this joy worth? To date, the price of the Oculus Rift is $ 600... Plus, to use it you will need to collect quite powerful computer, with a price tag of about $ 1000... Of course, we are talking about assembling from scratch. For example, I already have a rather powerful machine that passes exactly the lower bar of the Oculus Rift system requirements. Someone may only have to buy a video card.
Oculus Rift computer requirements
In other words, it's best to be sure to know for sure. In general, the recommended system requirements for the Oculus Rift are:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 graphics
- Intel i5-4590 processor
- RAM 8GB
- HDMI 1.3 video connector
- Connectors on the system unit 3x USB 3.0 ports 1x USB 2.0 port
- OS Windows 7 SP1 64
But, I would venture to suggest that few people are able to say so immediately, offhand, that its filling is more powerful and cooler than the recommended ones. Still, this is not the kind of information that is worth memorizing and memorizing. Recognizing this fact, Oculus VR has released a program to test. I will deviate a little from this particular helmet, and I would advise you to additionally use it for their helmet. Unlike Okulusovskaya, it tests more substantively, at the level of more or less real performance, and not just the presence of iron.
Device and Russia
To date, there is no official delivery of the Oculus Rift to Russia. And pre-ordering too. It is only available in the following countries:
USA, UK, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan.
Oculus Rift pre-order
As I said, the start of pre-ordering for the Oculus Rift kicked off on January 6, 2016. Literally in a few minutes, grind the whole batch devices. However, proceeding from the principle of placing orders, by itself, only the delivery will be carried out already in August 2016.
Those who pre-ordered before April received two games as a gift - and Eve: Valkire... To date, the set includes only the first game, which is an arcade about a fox, in the style of "Mario" in virtual reality.
Oculus Rift Package
The Oculus Rift headset comes with an Xbox One controller, a remote control for the built-in Oculus Remote shell, headphones, and a sensor for easy tracking of the headset's position in space. And, as stated above, the game is Lucky's Tale.
Oculus Rift packaging drawbacks
The device does not do without a fly in the ointment. The next paragraph, this is exclusively my personal opinion, formed from observing the situation around the Oculus Rift from the side. In a quest to get to market as soon as possible, to be the first and to skim the tastiest cream from customers, Oculus VR threw a raw and unfinished device onto the market. This is evidenced by a number of serious stocks.
The helmet, in its current configuration, is missing, which is planned to be released in the second half of 2016, of course for an additional fee. Now the bundle comes with an Xbox One controller.
In addition, in addition to the missing controllers, the helmet offers a rather stripped-down version of tracking the user's position in space. It is not capable of creating a "play area" like its competitor, in which it loses to it.
Already today, there are those that use the capabilities of controllers and such a Room Scale system. So these two drawbacks hit a lot in the number of quality games on the Oculus Rift system.
The situation should be partially rectified when Oculus Touch and Oculus VR's user tracking system go on sale, but the price of these items remains open.
Oculus Rift Sale Date
At the moment, the Oculus Rift can only be purchased by pre-order or from resellers (see information above). The assembly lines are packed with orders and the company does not have time to fulfill them due to a lack of components. There is no information yet on the Oculus Rift's availability in retail stores. It is unlikely that this will happen earlier than August-September, since it is for this period that prepaid orders are now being accepted. In other words, closer to August, the lines of the factories will be unloaded so much that "surplus" helmets appear. There is no information about the start date of sales in Russia yet.
The most interesting games for the Oculus Rift
For a number of reasons, I will publish here a list of the virtual reality games for the Oculus Rift that I have on my site. List of interesting games for Oculus Rift does not claim to be complete, some of them could have escaped my attention or are waiting for their turn. In addition, it should be understood that this is exclusively my "IMHO", and my opinion, may differ from your taste.
Games to watch out for:
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Latest Oculus Rift news
From Oculus VR to buyers. It was explained by the absence of an important component of the helmet on the assembly line, and was compensated by free shipping. In total, the entire queue has been pushed back by about a month.
Owners, as even the most expensive model, is too weak for virtual reality games and applications.
The Japanese startup, based on the Oculus Rift, allows you to be close to your loved ones even when you cannot be close to them.
This article will focus on the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Now in Russia they sell two versions of glasses, one of them is the DK2 version for developers, the second is the CV1 final release version for consumers. The official Oculus store on the site only has the Oculus Rift CV1. In a good way, the DK2 version is intended for game and software developers and not for end users. I would like to note that in addition to the CV1 version, there is a version with two oculus rift touch controllers, which can be purchased separately for $ 200.
Where to buy Oculus Rift in Russia
Oculus Rift is not officially supplied to Russia. You can buy on the official website of the company.
Equipment
A virtual reality helmet comes in in such a suitcase, in which everything is compactly laid out.
Inside the case is the helmet itself, an infrared sensor that tracks your movement in space, a remote control and a wireless game pud x-box one.
There is also a screwdriver for twisting the headphones, a cloth for cleaning the lenses and all kinds of documentation. The length of the cable connected to the glasses is 4 meters. At the end, it bifurcates into two plugs, one of them is HDMI, the other is USB version 3.0. The camera sensor also has version 3.0, the joystick controller has USB 2.0. There is one important point. Many users have noticed that if you use the Oculus Rift through an extension cable, lags, fuzzy picture and other similar things appear. To test the rumors, our team connected the device via a 1.8m HDMI 2.0 cable.
In the end, what happened: we did not notice the difference in the picture, but there is a feeling that the flickering has become noticeably stronger. Without an extension cord, the system gave out 75 Hz, with an extension cord - 60 Hz.
Oculus Rift VR headset specifications
Two displays with a resolution of 1080 by 1200 pixels each, the final picture is 2016 by 1200 pixels. Refresh rate up to 75 Hz. To track position, there is a gyroscope, accelerometers, a magnetometer - these are all internal trackers, and it tracks position at a rate of 1000 times per second. An infrared sensor that monitors the position of the helmet in space reacts to changes with a frequency of 60 Hz. In general, an infrared sensor is needed in order to track the user's movement in space in games or applications, where possible. Without it, you can safely play, but only the rotation of the head will be tracked, movements around the room will no longer be tracked. The weight of the helmet is 450 grams without cable.
There are three Velcro straps to fix the helmet on the head, two on the sides and one on top. Adjusting the clarity of the image is as follows. The worn goggles rotate around the axis of attachment up / down, thus adjusting the horizontal lines, and by changing the position between the lenses, for this there are levers inside the helmet - vertical. You put on and take off the helmet like a baseball cap, lift and pull it forward and take it off.
A remote control is needed for a number of demos, control in the Oculus Rift store, working with the volume, as well as pressing the back button, while in any application, you can get to the Oculus settings menu, in which you can correct, for example, the position of the lenses - see if it is clear focus, or other settings.
The difficulty of transmitting complete information about the virtual reality glasses Oculus Rift is that it is not possible to convey to you what the user sees in them, so you only have to describe everything in words. Each game that you started, in addition to launching in a helmet, is also launched in a window on a computer, while a number of settings, such as resolution, for example, apply only to this window, so all the games that you see in the video are only recording this window. A number of games are launched in a window in the mode of displaying both screen windows, and some, on the contrary, show only one owl window.
A few words about the built-in tracker. The tracker is what we use to look around in the game, what reacts to head turns. It has a very decent quality, but there is one thing that, unlike any other trackers, this one has real angles. If you want to look to the right, then you need to turn your head to the right at the angle that you need in virtual reality.
Key questions asked by users
- Is the helmet heavy and how does it feel on the head?
Feels like you're wearing a swimming mask. If worn uncomfortably, the helmet will be uncomfortable, but such that he constantly pulls his head down to the ground is not. If you dress comfortably, then you will not feel any discomfort.
- Do your eyes get tired of the helmet?
Eyes get tired as well as from a regular monitor. We recommend that you pause for 15 minutes every hour and be sure to monitor the frequency of the lenses. If there is any litter on them, you may not see it, but the eye will constantly focus on these unnecessary particles, thereby causing discomfort and additional strain on the eyes.
- Is there any nausea and motion sickness from the Oculus Rift helmet?
Yes, it happens, but for many people it is associated with different things. Those who, for example, get seasick in the car will also be rocked in the Oculus Rift helmet when playing a car simulator. But these motion sickness lasts no more than a few seconds, and the user very quickly gets used to them. To some extent, this adds realism to the virtual world.
- Are pixels visible in games?
If you look at a static picture, they are visible, and if you look closely, they are visible. Strongly visible when a light object against a dark background, but most users do not experience discomfort when present. With intense gameplay, you don't notice them at all.
- What is the field of view of the Oculus Rift?
You can compare playing on Oculus to swimming in a mask. The edges of this mask are similarly felt. In bright games, the feeling that you are in this mask is much less.
- Are there any other image defects or reading difficulties?
Such that it was impossible to read the image at all - no. If you look at the info panel with a glance, without turning your head, the labels will be less readable, because parts of the image around the edges are blurred, in order to make the central picture of higher quality, thereby unloading the graphics processor.
- Does the helmet face sweat and are there marks?
After a long game, traces may remain. The face does not sweat.
- How many games and programs are there for the Oculus Rift?
There are games that were originally made with virtual reality in mind and those that can be launched in a helmet, but they were not designed for this. In the same Steam, you can search for games marked VR, there are also alternative drivers for Oculus called vorpX, they allow you to run those games with glasses that were not originally intended for glasses. The Oculus Rift has its own store.
- Is the cable interfering?
For a sedentary game it does not interfere at all, if you had to run and jump - it may interfere, although if you set up a safe zone in your room, there will be no problems with the cable.
Sound in the Oculus Rift
The headphones are quite good for games and movies. If there is a desire, then they can be unscrewed and removed in half a minute. As for music, it sounds worse in them than in gaming headphones from a PC. The helmet also has a decent microphone and voice recording function.
Technical requirements for the computer in order to connect the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset
Video card. Oculus supports ASV technology, this is when there are not enough frames, then the information of the previous integrated image is sent to the helmet, which gives smoothness and increased fps. We tested the headset with Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD Radeon r9 290 graphics cards, no particular problems were observed.
Processor - intel i5-4590 and above.
RAM 8 GB or higher.
Bottom line: The technology is at the beginning of its journey. I think there will be more helmets with more pixels and larger viewing angles in the near future. Wireless technology will also develop. The cost of helmets is now comparable to a top-end video card, which is a lot, on the other hand, you will no longer feel like playing on the monitor those games that you try on VR, because the immersion in the game is very strong, and it will look flat on the monitor. Before purchasing VR devices, we strongly recommend that you try them out with friends or clubs that provide such services.
Video review of the virtual reality helmet Oculus Rift
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