

Oculus Rift - Update on dev kits, new display, new sensor (shipping in March) - halvsjur
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/update-on-developer-kit-technology-shipping-details/

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incision
Well, this was completely expected.

I was an early backer of this project and thought the timeline completely
unrealistic from the start.

Funded in September on the back of a render and an ugly prototype with John
Carmack's seal of approval - ship in November.

Say what?

I'm sure a lot of folks will be miffed at the lack of communication about the
shipping delay until now, but I'm thinking keeping quiet until they're able to
set a hard date probably saves an awful lot of needless discussion.

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naner
FYI, the source code that iD Software released for Doom 3 BFG edition[1]
includes support for the Oculus Rift[2].

1: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4833987> 2:
[http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/1535206/doom-3-bfg-...](http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/1535206/doom-3-bfg-
edition-on-github-timed-for-oculus-rift)

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ChuckMcM
There is, of course, a huge difference between making a few things, and having
someone manufacture a few thousand things. It is interesting to see people
learning these skills under such pressure. Perhaps there is an opportunity
here for a training class on manufacturing.

I was a bit confused about their comment on the display "We tested every
available (non-proprietary) display we could get our hands on." At their
volume most manufacturers would hand over details of connecting to their
display.

~~~
kryptiskt
> At their volume most manufacturers would hand over details of connecting to
> their display.

You'd think so, but I have had a hardware firm refuse to let me look at the
data sheets unless they got a commitment to an order of 300,000 chips. And
that was even though I tried to flash working-for-a-big-player-in-the-business
credentials.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting, in the past I've had the manufacturer require an in-person
meeting at the facilities (which is basically their way of fact checking I
guess) before coming through but for components never had them require a PO
first.

On a funny/related note back when I worked at Google and was looking into
compressing air during windy periods and then feeding it back through
compressed air motors for energy and cooling, I tried to get specs and pricing
from MTI, the French company that Tata Motors was said to be buying their
motors from. In spite of being from Google and offering up the possibility of
a very press worthy installation they wouldn't even give me the time of day. I
figured they didn't actually have anything at that point and since Tata didn't
ship their car for several years I continue to hold that belief. (I don't even
know if Tata ever shipped their car, one option was buying cars and just
taking out the engine)

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StavrosK
Is anyone else excited at finally being able to work in an immersive 3D
environment? We'll no longer need two/three/N screens, we can either draw up
as many screens as we need in the VR area, or just resize and position windows
as near or far, and make them as large or small, as we like. I'm looking
forward to decommissioning my screens.

It seems theoretically possible, does anyone know if it can happen?

~~~
AJ007
If you need size and not resolution, soon. If you are running multiple high
resolution monitors, I think its going to be a while before small LCD panels
will be able to fit the pixels of 3 2560x1440 panels.

Also take in to account you have weight on your head. In games, players often
get a sort of tunnel vision and ignore whats going on around them, making it
easy to ignore the lack of comfort.

~~~
bryanlarsen
You don't need to put 12 million pixels on your head. 12 million pixels is
useful on the desktop because it's nice to have a high density display
anywhere you look.

For an HMD you only need "retina" resolution straight ahead. Peripheral vision
can make do with a much lower resolution. I have no idea what the magic number
is for retina HMD, but it'll probably be smaller than 12 million pixels. It's
certainly possible that the 5" 1080p display used in the latest HTC could have
a higher apparent resolution than putting 3 WQHD monitors on your desk.

And also keep in mind that higher densities are much easier to manufacture
affordably in smaller screen sizes. There's a reason why you can buy a phone
with a 440PPI, laptop displays with 220PPI but it's hard to buy a desktop
monitor with more than 110PPI.

~~~
jared314
> For an HMD you only need "retina" resolution straight ahead.

"Straight ahead" depends on where your eyes choose to focus at any one moment.

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matb33
I'm trying to get a sense as to how exactly the head tracking will correlate
with the controls. From the videos I've seen, it looks like the
implementations so far have your head movements working in some combination
with movements coming from your mouse/game controller.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd much prefer controlling my character's body (i.e.
where the gun points) with the traditional controller/mouse, and use head
tracking to move my character's head/camera only.

I think it'd be less tiring that way, and probably more immersive too. As I'm
moving around in the game world, I could easily look around without changing
the direction I'm travelling.

~~~
83457
Various games do it differently. For example Doom3 last i I heard has
head/body/aim movement the same while Hawken will be separate. Some games like
ArmA currently have ability to separate crosshairs from view when using
something like TrackIR.

~~~
matb33
I've never tried ArmA with a TrackIR setup but it sounds like it would be kind
of annoying, i.e. when moving your head, your screen obviously stays on the
desk, so you end up turning your head and looking at the screen from the
corner of your eye. I'm sure you can adjust sensitivity, but it sounds pretty
awkward nonetheless.

In the case of having the head-mounted display, it makes perfect sense. The
immersive experience in first person shooters would benefit tremendously from
that separation.

I suppose it's a good idea to let game developers experiment with the various
control schemes, just as they did early on with defaults key mappings.
Eventually it landed as WASD, Ctrl for crouch, space for jump, etc. I remember
using right-click to move forward, inverted mouse, ZX for strafing...

I just have the feeling that "looking where you want to aim" is the totally
wrong approach and look forward to game developers settling on a quasi-
standard of how it should all work, just as they eventually did with
keyboard/mouse mappings.

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gnarbarian
This type of thing really shows the value of having viable 3d printing
available to the masses. The delays involved in just getting ready to
manufacture it are more than 3 months! If enough people in the rift community
had 3d printers we could probably print all the housings for this order.

The delay is disappointing but ultimately not surprising. I was shocked that
they were going to have a fully manufactured product out by December. Not
including the more than 2 months required to make the injection mold and then
running into the month long Chinese new year holiday is pretty unfortunate.

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truebecomefalse
This announcement doesn't speak to the 100 people that ordered the
'Unassembled Prototype'. I'm in this group and wondering when I will be
getting my prototype to play with.

~~~
modeless
Me too. I'm guessing those plans were scrapped and we'll just get the first
assembled dev kits, but an official announcement would be nice.

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schwabacher
The way they chose to present this delay is really infuriating - they have
doubled the time to delivery from when the kick starter campaign ended, and
made the product worse (a heavier screen farther away from your head).

I understand how hard it is to predict a timeline for a product in
development, but I would expect an apology instead of "We’re happy to be able
to finally announce that the Oculus Rift developer kits will begin shipping in
March 2013."

I am still excited to get mine in March, but this attitude from occulus makes
me question weather it is worthwhile to spend much time developing for it.

~~~
angersock

      and made the product worse (a heavier screen farther away from your head).
    

I think you're being both unreasonable and ignorant--who're you to say that
adding 30 entire grams (while exceeding the original specs, most importantly
refresh rate) is making the product worse? Additionally, how do you know that
a change in screen distance is better/worse?

Don't be a jerk. :(

EDIT: Reworded unkind remark.

~~~
schwabacher
My problem isn't really with the changes - there is nothing they can do if
they can't source the previous panel, and I am sure they chose the best one
available. My issue is with how the changes were presented - instead of 'we
are sorry, we made a mistake, and here is how we are fixing it' it was 'we are
happy to announce..'

The reason a larger screen distance is worse is that the torque on your head
is the product of weight, distance, and gravity, so an increase in the
distance will cause your neck to tire faster.

~~~
cma
Put an equal torque on the back of your head, then distance doesn't matter so
much (aside from overcoming inertia when moving your head).

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orjan
Here's a link to that Discovery Channel video on how to make injection molds
that they mentioned, but didn't actually link to:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seZqq1qxW30>

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cma
Moving to a 7 inch display seems like a much bigger compromise than they are
willing to let on... Wish it could have had the 1080p droid DNA screen...

~~~
cdawzrd
Something that most people who aren't in product engineering don't realize is
that sourcing small displays is __incredibly __difficult if you are not
building smartphones. All of the nice displays you see coming out and going
straight into phones are simply unavailable to anyone looking to build a
lower-volume consumer device (where "lower-volume" here means less than a
million). If you want to build a product with a small display (and don't even
get me started on touchscreens), you are stuck with old technology, very
limited choice, and high prices.

~~~
AJ007
What about the rejected panels? Someone must be selling them. I picked up a
few of those 27" korean IPS's that codinghorror blogged about a few months
back. I paid around $300 with shipping, but the import form said $190.

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gnarbarian
The delay is a huge bummer, but if it means we might be able to swap in a
higher resolution display at a later date I'm all for it. Maybe something like
this:

[http://www.technocular.com/tech-news/japan-display-inc-
devel...](http://www.technocular.com/tech-news/japan-display-inc-
developers-7-inch-2560-x-1600-pixel-screen-for-tablets/)

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mtgx
Is that how you'll see the image? Doubled? And won't this backlit display have
a negative impact on your eyesight in the long term, being so close and all?

~~~
quux
The image you see on the monitor is doubled and distorted to work with the
LEEP optics in the headset. Each eye only sees the image for that eye and the
optics focus the light so it appears to come from infinity, not inches from
your eyes. , so there shouldn't be any eye strain.

