Oculus Rift demo impresses the technical experts
The Oculus Rift is a next-generation virtual reality headset designed for immersive gaming and other virtual reality uses. The Oculus Rift puts the participant literally in the middle of the action with a full 360 degree 3D experience. David Lipowicz, upcoming intern at Google gave our team a new experience with gaming when visiting our offices last week.
David is a talented programmer with his own Oculus Rift development kit. Technica Solutions wish David well in his future studies and with his upcoming internship at Google. We all expect David Lipowicz’s name to be well known in technical circles in the future.
The Team found the hands-on demonstration an amazing experience and all are looking forward to seeing what the future of virtual reality brings to gaming and business applications.
Our technicians have shared their individual experiences of the Oculus rift as well as their visions for the future.
Jason Ozin
“Gaming aside, this is what we can expect from commercial software in the very near future. Imagine attending a video conference but actually being in the room, able to look around as if you were at a chair at the table.”
Liam Shanahan
“I thought that the technology was brilliant, I have been waiting to experience virtual gaming for years and was impressed with how realistic and immersive the game play was. Once the HD graphical element is implemented I believe it will be the next big thing.”
Chirs Buglass
“I absolutely loved the system and I’m glad that it lives up to all the hype. The future looks like a bright one for Oculus, with the imminent release of the HD version which can not only display better visuals but also better frame rates and with true 1:1 movement input, it can achieve full immersion which is what no other VR system before this has managed. All it needs now is a good few big name development teams behind it and with all the support from some industry heavyweights it really could be an interesting twist in the ever-continuing ‘console war’.”
Louise Noonan
The visualisations are really impressive, the feeling of being encapsulated within the game was as surprisingly realistic and gave me a real sense of depth and feeling of being in ‘another world’. A HD experience would further the realism and also increase the feeling of reality.
The only criticism of the product is the feeling of nausea that it can sometimes bring on the user. I understand this is a common issue and I, in particular, felt uncomfortable wearing the headset after a very short time simply because of this vertigo type feeling.
As for the future, I think it is very appealing. Especially in multi-player games / environments where interaction between players could take pace in the virtual world / game and actually feel like you are meeting someone – even if they are not in the same country!
David Izen
The Rift was really interesting. Two things stood out, firstly that the VR concept hadn’t really moved forward quality-wise since I saw what were then state-of-the-art units in Florida about 4 years ago. The second thing was the price – the headset and controllers were a few hundred pounds when I thought they would still be thousands.
So while the experience hasn’t necessarily moved forward, the price has tumbled, which is great. David (who gave us the demo) is developing games for the unit and it’s great to see that this isn’t specialist or elite hardware any longer, it could be mainstream; what it needs from here is a few really good titles and people will start buying them as they are affordable.
David was saying that to create the 3d image in the visor and take input from the hand-held sensors, a reasonable but by no means excessive amount of computing power was necessary, depending on the complexity and size of the world you’re set in. It’s so easy to see how the experience will develop with sensors on different parts of the body so that rather than just seeing the world with a representation of your hands, you can see a complete avatar, that moves entirely the way you do.
The technology is already good enough that you could do VR sight-seeing tours, or view properties for sale without leaving home, but I think it’s so evident that there’ll be massive improvements that the majority will put off buying just yet.
My over-riding memory? I spent I think about 10 minutes running around my virtual house and playing in my virtual garden. I threw my virtual basketball out of windows and into the sea below, and I set fire to a virtual log and put it out in my virtual water-feature. Then I took the visor off and felt nauseous for the rest of the day.
For more information about Oculus, take a look at the website http://www.oculusvr.com/