Oculus "Rift" : An open-source HMD for Kickstarter

Post by **space123321** » Fri May 04, 2012 7:04 pm

Perfect - thanks for the update! Can't wait!!!

Post by **pierreye** » Fri May 04, 2012 9:09 pm

90 degrees FOV is good enough. I just hope a version with 1080p panel is possible this year. With all smartphone and tablet going for retina display, we should be able to get one soon. Palmer's design is modular and allow modder to upgrade the panel when it's available.

Post by **Bishop51** » Sat May 05, 2012 2:27 pm

Just a heads up that I'm still planning on working at branding for you Palmer but I'm currently trying to wrap a very big job. I might not get to it until late May (3rd week in May) as I'll be out of town as soon as this job is done. So, if that's too late for you, no worries if you need to pull in someone else.

Good luck with everything and I'm still super excited about this project!

Post by **cybereality** » Sat May 05, 2012 8:56 pm

You might have heard that IZ3D got rejected from KickStarter for their open source driver. KickStarter said it was not a "creative arts" project. Do you think this HMD project might also get rejected? What other options do we have in that case?

Post by **nrp** » Sat May 05, 2012 9:53 pm

As soon as the total amount of payments will reach US $800,000, the entire iZ3D driver code will be opened and placed on www.iZ3d.com under GPL license.

If they tried to set up a Kickstarter with a $800,000 goal, that probably didn't help their cause. No successful Kickstarter project has ever set a goal close to that high, let alone one to release source code for an already complete product. Kickstarter exists to bootstrap development of a project, which was not iZ3d's intent.

It clearly is PalmerTech's intent though, and Kickstarter is unlikely to reject it.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Sun May 06, 2012 10:04 pm

Yeah, I don't think there has ever been a project set at $800k. Even if there had been, the IZ3D thing is not paying for some new creation, it is basically to cover their past business losses in exchange for releasing something they already made.

There have been a lot of things on Kickstarter that are similar to this. The TOOB got on, it was an immersive spherical projection display, and there have been countless gadgets and machines.

If we do get rejected, IndieGo is a viable alternative.

Post by **roguethunder** » Mon May 07, 2012 2:32 pm

Mmmm. I'm curious on quite a few points.

What parts of this HMD are "open-source", just the software? What about the optics and mechanical side of things? ;P (The driver board and panel being a sourced part, is pretty obviously not going to be. But lol. It's also not all that unique from the sound of it.)

How does the performance look thus far?
How much distortion is there, in particular?
Also rather curious on how much space the optics take up and how far from the eye they sit ^.^'

;P Honestly, a good compilation of information on this project in one place would do it some good.

^.^' I imagine yer pretty buisy pulling it together for kickstarter. Some sort of comparison of playing immersed on a HMD vs on a screen might make a good demonstrative item. Sort of a geek-sitting-slightly-too-close-to-a-decent-sized-monitor vs your HMD design comparison. ;P Hopefully to a flattering end.
Also, lasers.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Mon May 07, 2012 8:59 pm

The optics and hardware will also be as open source as possible. If someone wanted to, they could purchase and fabricate all the parts themselves, the goal of the kit is to keep the costs down through group purchasing and fabrication. The original plan was to make everything out of laser cut sheets, but I might vac-form some of the parts to keep the HMD lighter; I am going to make the plans (And probably parts) for the highest possible FOV available, but if I compromise to around 95 degrees, then the weight can be cut right in half.

A compilation of all the info on this project is definitely needed, I am going to put that on the Oculus website. I am working with some friends who work in the film industry on coming up with ideas for the Kickstarter demo video, because if that can get the general idea across, I think a lot of people will want one of these! The performance is pretty good, there is no distortion in the central area of the image, though it gets worse in the periphery. Luckily, you can correct for this in software.

Post by **davidgutierrezpalma** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:53 am

PalmerTech wrote:if I compromise to around 95 degrees, then the weight can be cut right in half.

I think 95 degrees is a very good compromise for the consumer market (specially if we take into account the fov of the competing products) and I'm sure the weight reduction will improve the comfort. However, a larger fov could be very useful for research... as this project has been planned as a highly modular HMD, you should probably create several pledges in KickStarter to allow us choose if we want to purchase the 95-degrees-optics, the optics with a larger fov or both of them.

Post by **FingerFlinger** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:47 am

I agree; a 95 FOV with a lighter form factor will probably be better as a consumer product, but if it could be easily modded to 120 FOV, that would be perfect. I personally would prefer the larger FOV.

Post by **brantlew** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:01 pm

I can't really say which I would prefer. Having experienced nothing even close to 90 degrees, it's hard for me to imagine what the difference between 95 and 120 would be. I guess software support is important, so if most software only supports up to 90 FOV then 95 seems like a reasonable size - especially if it dramatically increases the wearability of the unit.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:39 pm

The higher the FOV the better, but 90+ is acceptable to me.

Post by **Synexious** » Tue May 08, 2012 7:52 pm

For complete immersion, you want all you can get. I've only ever used the 51° HMZ-T1, but people here have said that even at 120-180°, you can still see there are edges. Palmer created a 270° prototype. Any chance of a Kickstarter for that? That would spread the resolution out too far, but would be great with that really hi-res panel Palmer mentioned.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:40 pm

I think PalmerTech's 270 degree prototype used 3 screens in a Eyefinity type setup. It might be difficult to use a single flat screen to provide 3 views due to the optic path needing to be bent (total guess).

Post by **Synexious** » Wed May 09, 2012 10:42 am

Yes, that makes sense. He mentioned it might require a boom mount because of weight.

Post by **JohnCarmack** » Wed May 09, 2012 11:11 am

I think that one important thing that can be done to improve immersion, regardless of the field of view, is to have the limits of the field of view be defined by physical boundaries near the eye, rather than by running out of pixels at the focal distance of the display. Many of the “practical” uses of HMDs want to see every last pixel straight and true, but that leaves the obviously unnatural sense of moving borders out in the distance. If the visible edges are put between the eyes and the optics, it will scan to the brain like a real helmet / glasses / goggles / glasses that occlude the world. This unavoidably will leave display pixels that can’t actually be seen, potentially a fair number of them if you have a generous eye box, but it is probably the right call for immersion.

John Carmack

Post by **Osobari** » Wed May 09, 2012 11:19 am

Are there currently any HMDs out that feel more immersive than traditional 3D displays? Still trying to decide if it's worth investing in one, considering their price is fairly high in comparison to a 3D monitor, which would be my other choice.

Post by **brantlew** » Wed May 09, 2012 1:42 pm

@John: An interesting point. I can see the logic, but it seems so tragic to give up pixels and FOV when we have so little to spare.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Wed May 09, 2012 1:47 pm

Keep in mind, also, that the vertical FOV of this thing is also going to be around 90 degrees, which is much taller than most HMDs.

The 270 degree prototype is fun, but just not practical. It is big, heavy, bulky, and you need to render 4 distinct views. Even if the software supports it, the rendering load is massive.

John is absolutely right, as far as cutting off pixels go. There are benefits to having distinct edges for "normal" use, in addition to saving pixels; You get an improved senses of "Coming out of the screen!!!!" that competes well with 3DTVs. For VR use, though, having boundaries does not help with immersion. Had I not spent a lot of time with a Wide5, I might have felt differently, but it really does make a difference! Giving up pixels seems bad now, sure, but displays will only get better.

Post by **cybereality** » Wed May 09, 2012 5:28 pm

95 degrees sounds pretty good to me. I think the last prototype I tried was slightly more than that, and it was more than enough. In terms of the vertical, it covered the full FOV. Granted, you could still see the edges on the sides, but it wasn't anything like the tunnel vision of most cheap HMDs. Considering most non-custom software won't even look right at super high FOVs, this is probably the best bet for the majority of people.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Wed May 09, 2012 6:04 pm

@ JohnCarmack: Surely having the view stretch beyond the visible limit is more realistic, as it would be closer to what we see in reality? Although, I guess having a boundary would mean it would seem more like a scuba mask and might provide immersion in that way.

Post by **brantlew** » Wed May 09, 2012 8:09 pm

@Palmer: Hey just curious. I know that your kit is not designed for 2D, but what is it like when you view the desktopt? I mean, your eyeballs don't catch on fire - do they? If you needed to go to the desktop for quick little sessions - you can manage, right? Seems like you could close one eye and just move all the windows to one side of the desktop and it would be ok. (well - despite the fact that the task bar and icons are going to be at an uncomfortable viewing angle)

Post by **PalmerTech** » Wed May 09, 2012 8:57 pm

WiredEarp wrote:@ JohnCarmack: Surely having the view stretch beyond the visible limit is more realistic, as it would be closer to what we see in reality? Although, I guess having a boundary would mean it would seem more like a scuba mask and might provide immersion in that way.

Having the view stretch as far as possible is best, but considering the limitations we are under, better to have a physical boundary (Like a scuba mask) than very clear image borders.

Brantlew, you can definitely manage in 2D mode. I do it all the time for changing video settings and the like. Not too fun, but doable! I keep all the icons for things I access using the HMD near the center of each eye on the desktop so I can navigate to them easily.

Post by **Omarzuqo** » Thu May 10, 2012 5:06 pm

Wow! It's amazing the amount of lurkers that subscribed just to post in this thread. I thought I'd be the only one.

BTW, sorry for the pointless post, I just wanted to make you know that more and more people support the project, not just the regular forum users.

Post by **mayaman** » Sat May 12, 2012 12:01 am

Palmer when will this be available? Any pics? Great work.

Will it work with any game?

Post by **faker** » Mon May 14, 2012 1:51 pm

As you spoke earlier about a FOV comparison:

can you do something like that:
2nd picture on the text:

http://trackingreality.com/2012/02/14/h ... nceptions/

As its easy understandable for people that don't know all the technical terms and formulars if you do it somehow like the others FOV thingies around.

Other nice blogs on this side:
http://trackingreality.com/2012/01/04/h ... s-of-2012/
http://trackingreality.com/2012/02/26/cybersickness/

Post by **cirk2** » Sat May 19, 2012 6:09 am

Hey,
By reading the "A day with an Oculus Rift" Post I got an idea for an Kickstarter bonus:
Maybe Carmack is willing to give vou Autographed Fotos/Cards/whatever.

In my mind that sounds like a nice gimmick ^^

Post by **cybereality** » Sun May 20, 2012 1:32 pm

So I won't hijack this thread, but I just wanted to mention that I am attempting to create that stereo driver I've been talking about and plan to add support for this Rift HMD.

Please check my work log thread and continue discussion there if you're interested:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=14970

Post by **optimus** » Mon May 21, 2012 5:20 am

Just signed up after clicking a link from the iracing.com forums. What a great idea. I've been looking in to a 3 monitor setup for the past half year and was investigating HMDs + Freetrack a couple of months ago. Really interested to see where this is heading; what a great initiative!

Post by **BillRoeske** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:40 pm

Hey Palmer,

One idea for a Kickstarter reward might be to offer fully-assembled FOV2GO Model D viewers. This is just an estimate, but the price of materials and shipping would probably put it into the middle-tier of rewards (in order for a useful amount to still be contributed to the campaign). Since the design of the Oculus Rift feels like an evolution of the FOV2GO, it seems like the software pipeline for displaying proper 3D images across both would be nearly identical. There might be some genuinely useful (although perhaps niche) overlap there, where people who wanted to support the project but couldn't afford the full HMD can still have part of the experience when and if mobile software that supports the Rift starts appearing. If you're not crazy about the prospect of assembling 25-50 FOV2GOs on top of all of the Rift orders, an option may be to offer kits.

A worthwhile low-tier reward might be a pair of anaglyph glasses. While the image quality isn't awesome, it's at least on-topic, inexpensive, and (again) potentially useful. I know I've never picked any up purely because it's just never been convenient. Someone who is just getting into the scene can access a lot of content (YouTube, 3D Vision, lots of legacy stuff) with a decent basic pair.

Anyway, just some thoughts from a first-time poster. The design of the Rift sounds both fantastic (FOV!) and extremely sensible. Coupled with the proposed price and John's hands-on testimonial, it's very easy to be excited about. I'd certainly like Canabalt HD (and any of our future Android projects, as appropriate) to support it and FOV2GO at some point. I can pretty much guarantee that I'll be picking one up as part of the Kickstarter campaign!

Post by **Bishop51** » Mon May 21, 2012 5:11 pm

Hey Palmer,

Admittedly I haven't had a lot of time to spend with this due to other work commitments but I did manage to squeeze out a few concepts for you. If you like any of these or if you'd like to discuss it further please give me an e-mail denunger@worldworksgames.com (Subject: Oculus) and I'll send over the high resolution files to you. Or you can contact me during normal business hours via phone or Skype (e-mail for info).

If you don't like what I've done, no hard feelings at all

Still wishing you the best of luck with this project and really excited for you!

Post by **cybereality** » Mon May 21, 2012 5:32 pm

Cool designs. I especially like the RIFT logo (first one on the top-right).

However the look/feel of the "oculus" seems to be at odds with the "rift". They are very different styles. Anyway, sure Palmer will have more feedback, just my 2 cents.

Post by **pierreye** » Tue May 22, 2012 12:40 am

Oculus looks pretty cool. Like an eyeball

Post by **WiredEarp** » Tue May 22, 2012 6:01 am

I agree, I think the Oculus is great, not so keen on the Rift tho. As said, they are totally different styles... but the thinner Oculus implies greater clarity imho

Post by **Bishop51** » Tue May 22, 2012 12:17 pm

There's some juxtaposition there between the logos in terms of line weight and style but its really a pretty common treatment when defining distinct brands. Oculus and Rift need to stand on their own, otherwise they become a jumble of muddy mega-logo...lol. Or at least that's the designer ramble you'll hear out of me

And yay! The eyeball in Oculus is reading for everyone! That makes me happy

The line darting through the center is an abstraction of the focal plane and or FOV

Rift went through a lot of iteration but it kept coming back to some kind of human form in the negative space creating the rift. In this case, the head is silhouetted in such a way that it feels like we're looking at the back of someones head as they gaze into a wide panorama of image...again, design ramble

Post by **3dvison** » Tue May 22, 2012 4:52 pm

Yes Bishop51,
That is what I thought when I saw the top pictures also.
I thought Oculus was the companys Name/Logo and that RIFT was a product made by that company.
I feel the Oculus Logo would be great to represent the company as a whole and would be printed somwhere on all thier products but then each product would also have it'a own name/model, that would also be printed on the product, in this case the RIFT.
You would print somwhere on the unit in a prominent position,using your artwork "RIFT" Than somwhere else on the unit, still using your art work but printed smaller " By Oculus"

Is that what you mean Bishop51 ?

Post by **brantlew** » Tue May 22, 2012 5:15 pm

My 2 cents. The Oculus symbol has a nice clean look. At first glance it simply looks like a unique font instead of a picture. Also the O is distinctive and symmetrical and would work as a desktop icon. The Rift is a bit too pictorial and literal for my tastes. I think just a slick font (maybe continuing the motif of the sliced letters) would look good.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Wed May 23, 2012 11:13 pm

Omarzuqo wrote:Wow! It's amazing the amount of lurkers that subscribed just to post in this thread. I thought I'd be the only one.

It really is amazing! The more demand the better, can't wait to see what the final tally is.

mayaman wrote:Palmer when will this be available? Any pics? Great work.

Will it work with any game?

I want to have units shipping in summer, exact dates are still hazy. John Carmack posted a few pictures in his thread, I am pretty bad about taking pictures of works in progress.

It will work with many games, but requires fiddling with now-defunct IZ3D drivers, so it is in no way a perfect solution. The ideal solution will be either support by the games themselves, or a new stereo 3D driver like the one Cyberreality is working on.

optimus wrote:Just signed up after clicking a link from the iracing.com forums. What a great idea. I've been looking in to a 3 monitor setup for the past half year and was investigating HMDs + Freetrack a couple of months ago. Really interested to see where this is heading; what a great initiative!

Thanks! I am glad there are sim racing people who are interested, it seems like a good fit. Most of the people here are FPS players, I think, and flight sim people tend to need higher resolution for reading gauges and the like.

BillRoeske wrote:...FOV2GO Model D viewers...

...anaglyph glasses...

Anyway, just some thoughts from a first-time poster. The design of the Rift sounds both fantastic (FOV!) and extremely sensible. Coupled with the proposed price and John's hands-on testimonial, it's very easy to be excited about. I'd certainly like Canabalt HD (and any of our future Android projects, as appropriate) to support it and FOV2GO at some point. I can pretty much guarantee that I'll be picking one up as part of the Kickstarter campaign!

Thanks for the ideas, Bill! Oddly enough, the FOV2GO design was actually an evolution of the Rift design. I have been working on it since last summer, and after making a folding prototype out of foam core, things just went in the right direction.

FOV2GO units would definitely be a cool reward! There are other people involved with the FOV2GO project, though. There has been talk of an FOV2O Kickstarter, so maybe that is how things will go down.

Anaglyph glasses are a good idea, too! Would be very cheap to send.

I loved the original Canabalt, would be awesome to see that or any your new titles on an HMD! The FOV2GO in particular has so much potential as a platform for simple games.

Bishop51 wrote:Admittedly I haven't had a lot of time to spend with this due to other work commitments but I did manage to squeeze out a few concepts for you.

Sending you an email! I have an idea for tweaking the Rift logo, but the Oculus one is perfect. I seriously cannot imagine a better logo!

As an update, I have been working on both the Rift and the unnamed 270 degree demo unit. Nothing too pretty to look at, but I will be taking pictures on Friday so you can see how ugly the prototyping process is.

Post by **brantlew** » Thu May 24, 2012 6:29 am

I'd love to see some pics of your development units. Keep up the good work Palmer.

Post by **fader** » Thu May 24, 2012 4:09 pm

Hey Palmer, just wanted to jump on and show my support, I also ended up here from iracing.com.. can't wait to see what comes out!