Your right. If the optical distortion correction isn’t just right, not to mention the variable acuity resolution, then you would have image mismatch. I didn’t think of this, thanks zalo. Seems like it could be a deal breaker. I might have to experiment anyway. I am hoping for some decent Unity 3D integration which was hinted at by Palmer.

In terms of stereo overlap, you should be able to do this with my DIY driver when its ready. Some bugs still right now, but I can probably fix it this weekend.

In terms of the Rift 2, please, lets not get ahead of ourselves. The Rift itself is a HUGE leap forward compared to what we have had in the past. There is nothing on the consumer market that even comes close in terms of immersion. Resolution is not as important as you might think for the overall experience. Of course, higher quality screens are better. But things could always get better. And if the Rift 2 eventually does come out, its more than 1 year away so its not really worth getting too hyped up over (and we don't even know for sure its coming out). But right now its important that the Rift one is a HUGE success as this will set the stage for a Rift 2 or for other companies like Sony, Vuzix, SMD, etc. to step up their game. Even if you can't afford the full kit, or miss the first 500 spots, you can donate anyway to the Kickstarter so Palmer will have incentive to continue this work.

Seeing how tight Abrash and Carmack are (wrote Quake together), and how Abrash is now leading/a part of Valve's wearable computing division and how Carmack is cofounder of id, I daresay that extraneous donations will not be hugely neccessary if they see the RIFT's quota max out in the first 10 minutes.

But by all means donate! I know I will!

Heck, maybe Valve and id will partner up with Oculus to make an HMD for the entire industry if all goes well. I hope Palmer doesn't get left behind when they run wild with the whole thing.

Wow, this seems to be coming together nicely!

Any swedes around who'd like to try and help me hype this thing up on the SweClockers forums? I created this thread last night but it's just not getting any kind of attention. (CyberVillain, I've seen you over there ) I may have pitched it all wrong, I wrote it from "our" perspective rather than focusing on how it could improve people's gaming.

Right now though, the one thing that's really hyped around those forums is high resolution screens, so this will be a toughie.

@zalo: Yes, I can see what you are saying in that he might not *need* the money. However, if there is a monster response, for example getting over a million dollars, then this will send a big message to any companies in the industry that consumer VR is a viable market.

Thanks great cybereality! Do you have any thoughts if less than 100% overlap will cause problems at the edges (the line between stereoscopic and monoscopic images) considering between optical distortion correction and variable acuity resolution, the images may not converge quite right.

Zalo:
I'm sure there are plenty of companies trying to hand Palmer a wad of cash or just hire him, but the kickstarter really needs to happen for the Rift to remain as open as possible. Oculus needs to stand on its own!

Worst case scenario is it getting locked up to a certain game corporation.

Sure, I'll take a look at it as well later on. I figure it will probably be easier to get interest going when the Kickstarter launches and it becomes more obvious what the goals are. Right now it's probably a bit too abstract for a lot of people to wrap their heads around it.

I'm worried about over hyping the Rift. I'm OK with something glitchy/ugly/uncool-looking that I patch up with duct tape and start writing my own code for. Most people (even on a special interest site like sweclockers) are not. The push-back if too many consumers get the initial version could kill following models.

Here's hoping I'm just a pessimist.

I think maybe the "seriously" I put at the start of it was taken the wrong way so it wasn't seen as the light hearted comment it was. I guess thats still one of the major issues with text conversions and not being able to convey sarcsim or tone properly without explicitly indicating your doing it by saying so.

Anyway this is all completely off topic and under the bridge now and no need to keep going on with it so lets just end it there and get back to the RIFT

Most of you may have found this already. I just found this really lengthy interview with Carmack and the R&D he did on the Rift

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-09-john-carmack-on-virtual-reality-uncut

Thanks for posting this link. Getting late now, but I will be sure to check it out tomorrow.

It's an excellent interview. A must-read.

I am pretty happy to see Palmer making this come true. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these as I know Palmer does good work.

I'm down to ZERO HMDs now, and I've had everything from i-glasses to a V8 to a modded MRG2.2. I need my fix.

Sweet interview, once again though all the comments are way off. 'Only Carmack could pull this off', 'Carmack is a genius' etc...

I hope when the Rift comes out officially Palmer gets the credit he deserves

Yeah, great read.

Spotted a casual mention (a small flame out, down around mid-page). Anyone give their kids an iPhone? LINK

Well, this is a fascinating forum that has been a pleasure to spin through. Between this and the multiple John Carmack articles I've read and 2012 E3 vid's I've watched, I'm truly excited about what the next few months, and perhaps more importantly the next two years, has in store for HMD's. ...and the potential for what could someday be called the baby steps that led to viable VR hardware. (and software)

I have to admit, I'm a console gamer at heart. However, I understand that this will be built for the PC with the idea of a grassroots movement of individuals trying to better this unit with the big picture in mind. It's fascinating to see a small group of individuals (growing daily though), rivaling some of the largest tech corporations in the world over this type of technology. Take pride in this.

HMD's (and VR) are again gaining steam. Microsoft is apparently researching an HMD, Sony has released a commercially successful unit, and the first 1080P units have just hit the shelves. Still, approaching this from the true gamer's stance, as you are, is the path that interests me most.

When gaming, I like to get lost in the environment that is the game. I guess all entertainment mediums are forms of escapism. But gaming, being the interactive art form it is, drives this home further. I rarely play MP games anymore. I'm always looking for new campaigns to conquer, new places to see.

When console 3D gaming became en vogue over a year ago, I was all in. I purchased a 3D TV and enjoyed several games in 3D on the Xbox360 and the PS3. The 3D did help to draw me into the environment a bit more than ever before, but this is just the beginning. An HMD with a wide FOV, head tracking, low latency, good optics, and sound software could put us inside the environment. I think this has been the dream for many of us since the term virtual reality originally surfaced.

Anyway, I'm sure Palmer is busy, so... Could someone please provide a reset for the state of things, at this moment?

As I understand it, the Kickstarter will start in the next few days. At that point, any money raised won't fund until the goal is reached. However, I also realize that Palmer is accepting pre-Kickstarter funding. For the $500 price point, what would be the differences between the pre-Kickstarter and the Kickstarter? ...perhaps just an earlier delivery?

My interest... For one, I'd like to collect what I think will be considered a piece of technology history. Secondly, I'd like to say I was in from the ground floor and helped to participate in its advancement. Even if at a minute level.

I wish all involved the best of luck. Keep working hard and moving forward!

Don't discount Carmack's contribution to this project. Palmer had the brilliant insight that you could create a compelling piece of hardware using simple, cheap components but he was not able to express this idea fully without the necessary software support. Only a handful of people really understood the potential of the PRx (now called Rift) and luckily Carmack stumbled upon it at exactly the right time and understood its significance. The Rift is a marriage of hardware and software and Carmack was able to provide the second part of the puzzle. He provided a proof of concept that everyone could understand. Without Carmack, the Rift would have been a small garage project that 20 or 30 people had access to. Software support would have been spotty and slow to mature. And the larger gaming community would have ignored all of it. Instead, because of the quality of Carmack's Doom3 demo and his personal influence, the Rift has invigorated the hobbyist and commercial gaming community.

You make a good point Brantlew, I didn't mean to discredit Carmack either, its obvious he's brought a lot to the table here too; the difference is that Carmack is already rich and famous...

I was surprised to read in that article that John Carmack offered a $10,000 bounty to reverse engineer/make an open source box for the HMZ-T1 and that no one took him up on his offer. Does anyone know where he posted that bounty? He mentioned wanting to get rid of the lag in the Sony box in the HMZ-T1 thread, but I didn't see anything about a cash bounty.

He offered a bounty on this forum, and that's when he started talking to Palmer. If you look back in the long HMZ-T1 thread you can find it. But I don't think he ever quoted a dollar amount though.

I remember the discussion about the bounty here; I forget who was looking into it, but the conclusion was that you'd need to roll your own custom built FPGA solution which, even discounting engineering costs, would be very expensive.

I would rather if someone could reverse engineer the iphone display so that we can send it raw images directly. Mounting two side-by-side, giving 960*640 wide-screen display which could (with appropriate prisms) even be put into a 'consumer acceptable' form factor, for about $60 for the displays!

It would cost ~$200 to get all of the hardware required (for someone who already does FPGA development and has the necessary lab equipment). The only hard part would be writing the FPGA code since you would have to communicate via DisplayPort protocol instead of HDMI which isn't as readily available. $10k would be very worth it which is why it caught my attention when I read about it. It doesn't seem like much of a point now though since everyone is onboard the Rift train.



Why the iPhone screen? Just from a quick search, a lot of Android phones have 800x1280 and 720x1280 resolutions.

I dont know if it was already posted but I found a guide how to make a similar wide FOV single screen device for 25$ using android phone for screen and video.

Or more advanced users can replace the android with real screen with inputs and whatnot.

http://www.vrtifacts.com/hmds/leep-on-the-cheap/

DisplayPort isn't really an issue (it's just TDMS in a different wrapper to DVI/HDMI), rather taking that and talking to the OLEDs themselves. Even with a datasheet, writing an interface to a custom display is A Bit Tricky, and even moreso when you have to first reverse-engineer the interface for a panel with unknown response characteristics, especially when you have two of them you need to keep genlocked. Same issue with the iPhone display, or any other bare LCD or OLED panel.

Is this reverse engineering problem you guys are discussing right now somewhat analogous to the problem being discussed a few pages back? Someone noted that we couldn't just rip a high res OLED screen from a newer Samsung phone etc. to get a 1080p display on the cheap, due to the fact that it talks directly to the phone hardware and so requires a custom 'driver board' (sorry if I got the terminology wrong). I remember whoever it was said that it would be extremely difficult to get something like that working, but from your current discussion of the HMZ-T1 it almost seems doable with the right combination of tools and coding know-how. (Or is it just that tasty 10k bounty which is making people optimistic all of a sudden?)

Maybe you are all getting sick of these interviews, but my curiosity is maxed out on this. Anyway, here is another "long -version" interview with Carmack. It's similar to the one I posted a link to a couple days ago. A few interesting different quotes from Carmack in this one. He goes a little more in depth about Palmer's research. Of course the reporter gets his name wrong. And he specifically says that both Sony and Microsoft saw a version of the HMD. I can't wait for the fresh interviews to come out of quake-con!

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3226063

Nice job tracking down the longer interviews, C3DPO. Thanks for posting!

But the bounty was to replace the Sony box which according to the discussion back then was sending a DisplayPort signal to the headset. The headset itself was doing the hard part you mention of driving the OLED panels.

It seems doubtful that the bounty even exists anymore. This was back before the Rift and the to-be-determined commercial HMD, when the Sony was the only real option. Plus there's a good chance that after CES, Carmack is getting direct support through Sony with this issue.

Ah, I see (I haven't had a chance to actually use a HMZ-T1 before). From reading the manual, it appears the processing box takes a HDMI input and outputs DP (and recieves control signals) through the proprietary connector. Presumably (and as described in the manual and marketing blurb), the processing box is dedicated to image processing and alignment (in place of doing it on-board the headset itself, either with a chip or by moving the OLED panels themselves). If said alignment were done in software, the processing box should be superfluous, as long as you provided the correct voltages via the custom connector (and assuming the controls require no response, or only a basic ACK) you could just connect the lines from the custom connector to a regular DisplayPort connector and connect directly to a PC.

But as Brantlew says, now the Rift is on it's way it doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the link!

It's kind of funny seeing John trip over himself in an attempt to say as much as possible. He tried to cover everything he didn't in the last interview, but it's muddled and hard to understand in the one if you hadnt heard the last one. His whole degrees of interaction with the controller integration and the mouse was out of context here.

Just goes to show how excited he is that he tries to say everything and forgets a few bits. I can only understand how hard it must be to explain why things like "FoV" are issues to the uninitiated.

EDIT:

Does anyone know exactly what's going to happen at Quakecon with the Rift?

So, so sorry for not replying to anything, wanted to wait for some things to solidify (And they all did!) I am going to reply to things that other people have not already explained, if I missed something, let me know!



I will support it as much as I can! It really depends on how much of a leap the consumer version is. If it needs new displays, new optics, and a new enclosure, there might not be much from the Rift that can transfer over. I am not going to have my own booth at QuakeCon this year, but we will definitely be there. Don't worry, Oculus will have a good presence.



The panels are not available right now, there are several options that will be in production next year. Upgrading depends on how far improved the hardware is, a quantum leap would mean that there is little from the Rift that would go into the consumer unit.



It is not a revolution just yet, but I do have to admit that I did not see this coming. I am not dictating any rules to the game companies, though, just trying to get them to work with me! Thus far, everyone has been very fun to work with, game developers all want games to be as fun as possible!



It goes ahead regardless. Showing support is still very, very important though. The profit margin on the Kickstarter is going to be practically non-existent, so I have little to gain myself, but a lot of Rifts sold = A lot of gamer interest = even more developer support!


Are you talking with Sixense/Razer about this? The Hydra is amazing and I saw Mr. Carmack talk about it a while ago.[/quote]

Yes, I am.



This is one of the best things about the Rift, IMO. In the past, cool looking and well marketed HMDs got a lot of hype, but the people who actually tried them usually came away unimpressed. In contrast, EVERYONE who has tried a Rift (One of the two prototypes currently in existence) has has a hugely positive response, even the several people with vision problems or a little dizziness when they unplug. The only people slamming it are people who had not had a chance to use it yet.



Glad you will be getting one! I like to think my work was good before, but the results of it have gotten much better over the past year as a result of working with some of the most brilliant VR people in the world.



Kevit Mellott is a really knowledgeable guy, his site is a fantastic resource: http://mellottsvrpage.com/ I don't know why he has been so hostile towards the Rift, I have seen him on a few different sites assuming it is going to be a bad HMD, an opinion nobody who has used it shares. The Rift does not use a cell phone display as he asserts, and if this is about being first to the "finish line", I would think that the FOV2GO project I was a lead on beat that Sanwa by a long shot.



Deathmatches.

Another update: CliffyB (Cliff Bleszinski) is the design director for Epic Games, he got to try out one of the prototype units:

https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/stat ... 3216811008


He liked it.

Just wanted to say I couldn't be any more stoked about this.

Thank you Palmer! Can't wait to play with this!

First, I'd just like to say that, before the price reduction, I was on the fence as to whether to buy the Rift due to it being just outside of affordability for me, but now I'm definitely buying it! Thanks Palmer and investors!

Anyway, I've read all 50 pages of this thread and every interview I could find, but I still have some questions (thought I might have missed an answer or two). And I apologize for the large number of questions below. I've been collecting them for a long while; I just haven't had the time to post them until now. I hope that Palmer or some of the very knowledgeable people here will be willing to answer what they can! Thanks in advance!


- Would DDD or IZ3D to enable 3D for the Rift work with any game? If not, what are the limitations?

- I've seen some minor complaints about the low resolution in interviews, but is it more or less noticeable than the HMZ-T1?

- Due to the way the image is distorted pre-HMD and how, when the fish-eye optics compress the image back into normalcy, there are more pixels in the center than on the edges, which is supposed to mimic how the human eye works. However, the display doesn't move with the human eye; it moves around and will be looking at other parts of the screen as well. Would it be a concern that, unless you are looking dead-center, the resolution will look significantly worse than if there is no fish-eye distortion? I'm honestly not aware of how much attention I give the center of the screen vs the sides while gaming, so I'm a little concerned about how it might affect playability.

- Related to the above, how much denser is the pixel density at the center of the screen versus the edges? How much of the viewable area is at a higher pixel density than if there was no distortion? That is, if the Rift's display size is 6", its pixel density is approx 251.6 PPI. What percent of the viewable screen is above that number?

- Also, some multiplayer games have a chat box located in the corner of the screen. Because of the lower pixel density combined with the magnification, will the text be still readable without having to have a huge font size?

- How much of the $400-500 cost is the screen?

- The optional film that can be placed on the screen (or was it the lenses?): its supposed to make the individual pixels less noticeable, but how does that affect the sharpness of the image and the quality in general? Does the film have to be applied before shipping or is it one of the things done by the customer? If the latter, can I remove and re-apply it to do comparisons to see whether the effect is something I'd like? If its not easily re-applyable, can I buy more of it?

- What kind of game support does the Hillcrest head tracker have? I'm wondering if it would be better to just go with something like TrackIR that already has a lot of game support. Since I will likely be gaming only in front of my computer with a keyboard and mouse, I don't need 360 degree motion, but I like the idea of having greater freedom of movement with the tracker being on my head and the future game support of it. Does Doom 3 support TrackIR?

- At what distance does your eyes focus at when looking at the display? Is it like the HMZ-T1 where the eyes think the screen is actually far away instead of an inch from your face?

- Can you take a picture of an image as seen through one of the optics and show it to us?

- Since it comes with no manufacturer's warranty, it seems like you could get a 3-year warranty from Square Trade for $85 under the Miscellaneous->Other Electronics category. Would it be possible to get a receipt in case of a warranty claim?

- Will you have a presentation at QuakeCon? Or just John Carmack touting it during one of his events? And as far as the deathmatches hint goes, does that mean its going to be used for the Quick Draw contest this year? I've been going to every QuakeCon since 2000 and I'll look forward to seeing the Rift there! (And I'm hoping I'll get a chance to demo one while there before my own gets sent to me after Aug 19th

- I know little about Kickstarter. If I give money to your Kickstarter project and the Kickstarter goal is not met, would I still get an Oculus Rift? If not, could I still buy one directly from you?

- At what time on the 19th will your kickstarter go up? Or will that be sent out in the newsletter? I wanna get in before the rush!


Thanks again! And special thanks to Palmer for the amazing work you're doing!!

I'm probably not the most qualified to answer all these questions, but the bit that stood out was:
'there are more pixels in the center than on the edges, which is supposed to mimic how the human eye works'
I think that you're not quite understanding the problem. It's not that the optics mimic how the human eye works and having higher pixel density in the center of the screen, but it is an unintentional distortion of the optics that stretch the pixels towards the edge. Emerson has been working on a way to invert the distortion caused by the optics, so that it will all appear straight to the viewer:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=15086
There has also been some discussion about doing the same for chromatic distortion correction.
I don't think that it will change the resolution within the viewable area much though.