

The Oculus Rift Made Me Believe I Could Fly - LiveTheDream
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/oculus-rift-birdly-fly/

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vanwesson
> The consumer version of the Rift should be out in about a year.

Yeah, and will I be able to buy one and use it without Facebook keeping a
permanent record of everything I do with it (tied to my real name of course)?
Will it refuse to work unless it's online? I was really looking forward to the
Oculus, but man ... if there is an alternative that doesn't have FB
integration, I think I'll buy that instead.

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TD-Linux
Sadly, the license of the library used to talk to the Oculus Rift (libOVR) is
also under very restrictive terms - you can't use it with competing systems,
can't distribute it in part, and lose the license if your users have health or
safety issues with your product.

With the source code available, it's hard to make a clean-room reverse
engineered version of the hardware communication layer and shaders.

I haven't actually seen the source code, so maybe me and someone with a DK2
could do it by sniffing USB packets.

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pinkyand
I wonder, what do you guys think virtual reality do to the tourism industry ?

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corysama
VR won't replace going there. But, it's a huge improvement over not going
there. In practice, saying "Most people do not go to most places." is a bit of
an understatement. Therefore, VR can be a huge improvement for most people.

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jonmrodriguez
Completely agree. My grandma is afraid of driving & flying but she loves to
watch travel TV shows. I think a VR headset with travel content would be great
for people like her and would really improve her quality of life.

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WordBiLLY_maker
This is pretty neat. What other potential, non-gimmicky solutions could be
built with VR this way? What about 10 years from now?

Also, who remembers the movie: FireFox, with Clint Eastwood? :)

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kendalk
"You must think in Russian... You must think in Russian. Do you think you can
do that, Mr. Gant?"

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WordBiLLY_maker
Haha, Yes! Thanks. That post make me smile; well done Madam/Sir.

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joeevans
Correction:

Virtual reality goggles and the Birdly apparatus made them think they could
fly.

The copious references to Oculus make me think the Facebook PR team have swung
into action, to try to bolster waning interest in Oculus after the disastrous
sellout to Facebook.

I'm eagerly awaiting an Oculus alternative, having canceled the DK2 plans. I
don't really want to be tying my code into the horrendous Facebook codebase
and agenda.

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spyder
Video: [http://vimeo.com/91069214](http://vimeo.com/91069214)

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bluthru
Has anyone SCUBA dived with an Oculus Rift yet?

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sanoli
Will probably be awesome too. However, actually going scuba diving, for real,
is much easier than going on a flight like that. Closest thing is probably
hang-gliding, which is much more dangerous than scuba diving.

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silencio
I can't go scuba diving at all, so I would especially love to see it. To me it
has a different kind of thrill/interest factor than flying or hang-gliding
anyway.

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tzs
Birds are for wimps. Make it do a Night Fury.

