Just Another Cool Idea for Oculus Rift

[martinP]

It is a shame the big front surface of the Rift does not have any purpose. What about making this surface (curved or flat) touch sensitive? I mean it is a standard medical test (in our country) to touch the tip of your nose with your eyes closed - so any individual should be able to locate this area easily with her finger(s) and it could be used when the application requires an input similar to for what a mouse is used now (but without the need for another peripheral). Or some gestures could be associated, for example swiping from top to bottom will activate night vision goggles in a FPS ...

Martin

[yuriythebest]

well that beats my idea....

[jayoh]

lol yuriythebest!

[StephaneLX]

I don't know if it has been discussed elsewhere but the flat surface could be used for cheap positional tracking with AR trackers.. (Not 360 degree though)

[cybereality]

@StephaneLX: Yeah, its been mentioned, but most people discount it since the tracking angles are low. Personally, I think it could be a pretty decent DIY solution if you know the limitations.

[2EyeGuy]

You might be able to register "button presses" on the Rift without actually having any buttons or touch panels there. A sudden tap might show up on the motion sensors. But I agree with the idea of activating night-vision goggles, helmet-mounted lights, etc. by touching your head.

[martinP]

Yes, that is also a good idea registering the knock. But I was meaning using the front surface as full replacement of a mouse when needed. The touchscreen would be mapped one to one to central part of your view and you will be swiping your finger and therefore moving the cursor and double tap will be a regular click at some icon in your GUI.

edit: ... and you can also use the touchscreen together with that visual effect when your goggles get messy from blood etc (in some naturalistic FPS) - you could just swipe side to side to clean them

[PasticheDonkey]

i'll generally only touch anywhere near my face to clean or scratch. there's far better solutions for mouse like input. so i think it's an extra expense with little usability, also not very naturalistic. and the toggling vision modes etc could just be done with a button and be more naturalistic. some thing like cleaning goggles is cool. but not going to be worth it in my estimation.

[BOLL]

Obviously the best thing to do would be to have a face replica at the front, this way it will be harder for people to discover you are actually in VR instead of paying attention to them in a conversation. For a little function the eyes could be cameras for a stereoscopic video feed Though honestly, just skinning the Rift would be fairly neat, not sure how creepy a face sticker actually would be though

[Popopinsel]

I had the idea of two HD cameras attached to the left and right front facing forward for stereoscopic viewing/filming. Could be used for Augmented Reality purposes, like things laying around or different colors, warped views etc. In combination with Kinect it could turn your girlfriend into an Ogre or something like that... ^^

[Zasteba]

It's easy to come up with cool things to put on the rift, but in doing so we run into a very fundamental issue. The Rift only works as a product if it's under a certain threshold in price, where the amount of consumers that see themselves buying it is exponentially greater than if it were a niche product. If we begin adding a higher-res screen, a camera in the front, a camera on the bottom (to track the mouth), and a camera inside to track eye movements, then we begin to invite a whole other ballpark of extra costs that can potentially push the Rift out of the golden window. I propose a solution though.

It is much easier to make the design of the Rift modular without raising costs, as opposed to simply adding more features on. Instead of including everything at once in the rift (by everything I mean everything that the Rift isn't already planned to have), the Rift can be made compatible with various attachments without completely altering the design. In this case, if someone goes to Bestbuy to pick up a Rift, they have several options. They can grab the vanilla Rift that we all know and love (~$300), or they can grab the premo which would come with additional attachments to track eye movements/hand movements/facial expressions (in the form of small cameras, or sensors in the foam padding, you get the picture) that can be attached and detached at your convenience. It's almost like buying an Xbox, in a way, where you have the standard kit with a rock bottom harddrive, and then the elite that comes with better components. The point here is that even if you buy the vanilla, you can still add on the premo parts to it if you so choose, just like the Xbox and its 250 gig HDD (or the completely redundant kinect).

Chances are someone already suggested this, but its easier to just post instead of reading every thread

[PasticheDonkey]

it's not only price, the rift is weight sensitive as well. it's one of the key elements of the design. a lot of mobile tech is light tho apart from batteries.

[BluHaze]

As others have already said, I've always imagined the best use for the front panel would be to mount a small (or perhaps even multiple) camera. This could be used not only for Augmented Reality, but also to act as a kind of "pass-through" system allowing you to get glimpses of the real world without having to remove the headset every time you want to take a sip of your drink, glance at the keyboard, or talk to someone in the room.


Basic webcams are very lightweight, inexpensive, and don't require much power. This seems to me to be the most practical use of that space.

[Omarzuqo]

As others have already said, I've always imagined the best use for the front panel would be to mount a small (or perhaps even multiple) camera. This could be used not only for Augmented Reality, [...]

Yeah, me too. AR games with the Rift are a no brainer and could be extremely engaging; imagine playing DD with the figurines actually moving on an interactive virtual board or Yu Gi Oh! where the monsters actually come out of the cards and have combat animation just like in the cartoon.

[GeraldT]

@Boll .. ... that face replica is awesome!! I had a similar idea, since I was thinking about a gimmick for kickstarter backers.

Ingame I use a (still very crude) 3d model of the Rift as a player representation. In a way I see these skins as avatars in a later stage.

So this one I use ingame and I thought about making a couple of highres skins to put on the real life Rift as rewards.

rr_head1.png

@Topic

I think it is only a matter of time until they add a cam. It is a relatively cheap addon that allows for a much bigger field of use for the device and might also be considered a safety feature.

[Popopinsel]

Or you could take two HD cameras and mount them to the back of your head (on glasses/goggles or something else) and finally get to know what it's like to have eyes on your back! =) Must be a fun experience as you would have to move your head completely mirrored

[GeraldT]

I wonder how long it will take to make people use 360° vision ... if you invert the picture (upside down) it takes a while, but at some point your brain will be able to correct the "problem". Now with a headset like that we would be able to create a 360° vision and then wait to see if the brain is willing to close the gap and work with it. Not sure how to deal with stereo though!

[cybereality]

@GeraldT: That would be a crazy experiment.

[Apotheosis]

What about a simple ultrasonic range finder for collision avoidance. Like they use on microsofts robo razzi autonomous picture taking robot. Just to provide ledge or object detection and simple feedback to the wearer that if they are mobile they are about to collide with something or step into the abyss, or if seated, someone is now standing or waving in front of them.

[Tbone]

As others have pointed out, price and weight are going to be more important than bells or whistles. At least for the first generation, they are concentrating on making the best VR display available. Adding touchpads, cameras, etc. will counteract all the work they've done to get the thing so light and so cheap.

Now if the Rift takes off and there's one in every household, maybe they can start tinkering with the formula to add more bells and whistles without sacrificing what the Rift is. Or maybe a company like Sony will make the "Wift", complete with trackpad, camera, and phone attachment, that can be worn for up to 15 minutes at a time before needing to see a chiropractor

[TheHolyChicken]

...before needing to see a chiropractor

Just as an aside, chiropractic isn't a science. It's an "alternative" (i.e. bogus) medicine, and whether or not its practice is even safe is disputed. Go see a real doctor if you have back/neck problems.

Back on topic, I agree with most of the sentiment in this thread; I think it would be foolish for the initial Rift to be anything more than a good, solid HMD with great tracking. If any extras were to be added I think the most sensible avenue would be to bundle the Rift with a motion controller such as the Hydra, to try and create a peripheral "standard" for devs to work to.

[squibbfire]

Yes Googlie eyes...I would be lying if i said i hadn't been looking on amazon and ebay already...

[Diorama]

I think it is only a matter of time until they add a cam. It is a relatively cheap addon that allows for a much bigger field of use for the device and might also be considered a safety feature.

Or two cameras. With real time distortion to compensate for the lenses.

[martinP]

So another cool idea for Rift (not the first generation, probably...):
Car Sickness prevention system for children and adults.
You just plug your Rift into GPS navigation unit which will use its powerful GPU to generate appropriate (lovely) scenery based on the GPS data and 6DOF data from Rift - therefore eliminating discrepancy in visual and other sensory inputs as a cause of the sickness.