Hey guys,

I am making great progress on my HMD kit! All of the hardest stuff (Optics, display panels, and interface hardware) is done, right now I am working on how it actually fits together, and figuring out the best way to make a head mount. It is going to be be out of laser cut sheets of plastic that slide together and fasten with nuts and bolts. The display module is going to be detachable from the optics module, so you will be able to modify, replace, or upgrade your lenses in the future!

The goal is to start a Kickstarter project on June 1st that will end on July 1st, shipping afterwards as soon as possible. I won't make a penny of profit off this project, the goal is to pay for the costs of parts, manufacturing, shipping, and credit card/Kickstarter fees with about $10 left over for a celebratory pizza and beer.

I need help, though!

1) I need something that illustrates the difference between low field of view HMDs and high FOV HMDs, probably some kind of graphic illustrating the difference in apparent screen size. Would probably want to compare the rap 1200VR, the HMZ-T1, and the ST1080. Maybe throw in a few professional HMDs like the SX111 for good measure.

2) Logo/s. I am listing the organization as "Oculus", I plan on using that name on my VR projects from here on out. The HMD itself is tentatively titled "Rift", if you have better ideas, let me know. I based it on the idea that the HMD creates a rift between the real world and the virtual world, though I have to admit that it is pretty silly.

3) Ideas for what I should show off in the Kickstarter video.

4) Ideas for Kickstarter rewards. The obvious one would be a full HMD kit, but I want to have some lesser monetary options for people who just want to show support. Laser cut badges? Some kind of software? On the other end, it seems like it would be a good idea to have some more expensive options that net you stuff like a wireless battery/video pack, or a motion tracker.

5) Anything else I am forgetting!

The help is appreciated! Really excited about this, I think it could be the kind of thing that jumpstarts a bigger VR community, and hopefully shows that there is a big demand for wide FOV, truly immersive displays.

I can probably whip something up in Photoshop showing the difference in resolution/FOV of different headsets. Maybe something like this ( http://3dvrm.com/hmd_comparison.gif ) but made easier to understand. I have the HMZ-T1, had the 1200VR, and plan to get the ST1080 at release. So I may be one of the few people with experience with all 3 of these consumer HMDs. Could also put some older stuff in the comparison as well (VR920, etc.) just for historical reference. Not much experience with professional gear, but I could base that on specs.

Also, this is a great idea. I hope there are enough people to get it off the ground. I will surely contribute what I can to make this happen.

Need any free CAD work, be glad to help with that, it's a main part of what I do for a living. Also do design work on logos and such (in CAD, but exportable of course to various formats) as part of many projects. Often design parts and such for direct laser/CNC/waterjet manufacturing, or just plans. Typically aircraft or electronics related these days, but am used to working with extreme precision.

Have a (now modded) HMZ, pre-ordered the ST1080 during that first month. Actually already have a basic CAD drawing of relative screen sizes between those two as I wanted a visual representation to compare them myself.

Any way, I am busy these days, not in the greatest health right now, but if I can be of any help, I'll do what I can as quickly as I can.

Hi Palmer,

My understanding is your unit will output 3D in SBS mode. I'll experiment with Lumagen RadianceMini that if I can sucessfully convert 3D Frame Pack to SBS and do the aspect ratio correction, then I'm in. Want to try out 120 degree FOV in gaming compare to 50 degree FOV. What's the native resolution of the LCD panel and input signal?

Hi Palmertech,
I am ophthalmologist and Oculus is name of one german company

here: http://www.oculus.de/

what about: " OCULARITY" OCULAR + VIRTUALITY
or " IMMERSITY" IMMERSION + VIRTUALITY

?
But Oculus is nice, only the problem with rights...
I am looking forward to the set...hope it will be not in time of my hollidays.
By Peter

oooh pierreye, that Lumagen thing looks great. How much is that?

@PalmerTech: Honestly I think you should charge more for these units and consider taking a profit on them. You are one of the few guys in the industry that seems to understand the needs of the VR community, so I think it would benefit everyone here in the long run if you were able to create a viable business out of this. I would consider it an "investment" to pay a little extra up front in hopes of a true commercial Palmer unit in the future. I assume the world-wide market for this type of unit is pretty small, but it is also completely untapped. The first company that comes out with a $1000 HMD with 90+ FOV will monopolize the entire academic VR and gaming market.

PS. I like the name Oculus. A long as they are in separate industries it should not be a problem having a duplicate company name. The bigger problem is web domain names. Always hard to find a good one that's not taken.

@Palmer If it's ~$500 I will instantly buy one, but I agree with brantlew that you should consider making a go of this as a "real" business. Are you in contact with any traditional customers (military/academic) yet?

Also, like pierreye, I'd love to have a detailed spec for the required input signal. I've got several demos I want to do, with your HMD in mind.

1. Have to agree with Brantlew on this one; You really need to charge more to earn some kind of profit for yourself Palmer! It's extraordinarily cool of you to keep this rock-bottom on the pricing tier but you absolutely deserve to make something from your efforts. This could be the start of something much bigger and you needn't limit yourself unnecessarily.



You're going to have to dumb it down a little but focus on immersion and what it means to be truly immersed visually and how the industry has failed in that regard (and how you're doing something very different). Show someone sitting at a soul-sucking computer screen playing a game and then contrast that with the merits of a true VR experience. Keep it light, short, funny even. Don't bog people down with techno-babble (you can do that in the description). Relate it to popular videogames and the sense of place you can bring to people "Step into your favorite videogame and live the experience." Show shots of your workbench, the lab and bring people into your world. Show them what you've been working with and express your earnest desires to share technologies which are years away from commercial viability.

2. I've blabbed about it before but I do graphic illustration, design, product branding and product engineering for a living (video and board games mostly). I would love to design a logo for you. When do you need it by, do you have anything in mind or as a basis for inspiration and what sizes do you require? I'm happy to take a crack at it without any initial feedback as well:)

Here's an example of my most recent. Everything you see below is me...

You can get it from
http://www.curtpalme.com/Radiance.shtm

Sometime it's on sale at around USD 1.3k. Might be expensive if you use it for HMD only but valuable for TV and projector for greyscale and CMS tuning.

Thanks for all the feedback!



Thanks, that would be great! It would probably be good to throw a TV and a movie theater screen in there for a point of reference that people can relate to. On a side note, I have an ST1080 on pre-order, I can lend it out so you can review before you buy, if you want.



Thanks for the offer, I may take you up on that! I am decent at CAD work myself, but only in 2-D. My goal is to keep these parts as simple as possible for the initial run, so I think I am good at the moment. Maybe a second revision!



It takes 3D in, ideally, un-distorted SBS mode. IZ3D can do this and use the whole FOV, if you are willing to reduce vertical FOV, it also works with TriDef drivers combined with Nthusim. I am experimenting with using Nthusim to correct for lens distortion, as well! The native resolution is 1280x800, and currently it takes VGA. I am talking to the control board manufacturer to see if I can get a small, custom VGA/DVI board made.



Thanks for the concern! I have checked out the copyright side, and I think we are in different enough businesses/geographical location that things will be fine.



I have some plans for making it a viable business later on, but I don't think the resolution or driver support is far enough along to make a push in the consumer gaming market, not just yet. In the meanwhile, I think minimizing the cost barrier to entry is the best thing for the community. If, say, Toshiba releases those 6.1" 2560x1600 panels... Well, expect another Kickstarter project. What I might do is set aside a certain amount for things I can continue to use. For example, right now, I have to borrow time on a laser cutter. Might make sense to build a few thousand dollars into the Kickstarter budget to buy my own laser cutter than I can use to produce parts.



It should be less than $500, though it might get close to there, depending on how many things I add in. I am in contact with some potential big customers, not going to plan on anything from that sector, though. If it happens, then it is a nice bonus.



I think I will benefit in the long run, squeezing a few extra dollars out of the enthusiast community strikes me the wrong way. I am working on something along the lines of the old Virtuality arcade systems, I think there is easier money in that direction. Aside from that, the more money I take for myself, the more responsible I am for supporting the product; Tech support, warranties, I don't want to have to deal with that. A logo would be great! I want to stay as high contrast as possible, black and white. I need a text logo for "Oculus" that I can put on the front of my HMDs (Maybe all caps?), a "RIFT" text logo, and some kind of graphical logo for both of them. I was thinking something eye-inspired for Oculus, and something that illustrates the concept of tearing through reality for the Rift. I am not an art person, not at all, so I really appreciate it!

Sure thing, that makes sense. Also, I'd love to try the ST1080 and write a review for it. Honestly don't need another HMD at the moment, so my main goal in buying would just be for review purposes. Eventually I would like my own unit, when I actually have some applications that will utilize it. So, yeah, thanks again.

If you are talking to the LCD driver board manufacturer, ask about supporting higher display rates! 120 hz would be ideal, but there is still a noticeable difference between 60 and 85, which most boards can manage.

John Carmack

That is one of the reasons I would like to go with a new driver board instead of my current one. They said they can do 75hz for sure, and are going to get back to me soon with info on higher refresh rates.

I'm in! Missed the $100 off the SD1080 though

I'm considering selling my z800 for the SD1080.

Cheers,

Contractor

You definitely should. The difference in quality between the two is vast.

Your intended consumer is not the general public, but rather the hacker. Universities may also be interested. It is for someone who wants to play with the technology, and is OK with something that has limited real usefulness because of driver issues. I am guessing that your kit would be ideas for someone who wants to make their own modifications, upgrade he display, etc?

I don't think you need to put much effort into getting the general gaming enthusiast interested in the full "kickstart", but rather they would come in at the lower support levels.As others have already suggested, showing the difference between current consumer models, and what you want to offer is the main issue.

Joe Dunfee

I need the minimum support of DVI/HDMI input for the wireless HDMI to work. Hope you can find the supplier that can sell you the HDMI board. As for support, I think it is not necessary on the low entry price as most of us would have some experience in troubleshooting simple issue. The project I can foresee is not for average consumer initially but with VR community feedback and modification could be a solid product for general users.

There are small/cheap HDMI to VGA adapters for about $40 USD, they introduce almost no latency. That is what I am using with my current HMD. I would rather get DVI/HDMI, though, so that is one of my current goals!

I think you guys are spot on about the target market. I would rather not have regular gamers buying this not understanding what it is and the limitations, and then giving it all kinds of bad reviews!

So your looking at a ship date of july or a bit later ?

Plus, I'm sure we'll all be here on the forums trading info and mods as soon as we get our hands on it.

That makes me think of something else Palmer, are you going to set up any kind of "official" website through which you'll deal with customers? Probably it will be mostly us at first, but you probably want a "professional" avenue of communication as well.

I'd really like to buy one of these instead of a ST1080, but the lack of software support is what is holding it back. There really needs to be a ready to run game that can be provided for free with it, or it needs to work with modern games with the correct aspect ratio. If one of the software or hardware methods you guys are investigating pans out, and provides the ability to work with modern stuff, then this is really extremely exciting and I'll definitely donate. Alternatively, I feel it really needs a 'killer app' , since otherwise this great HMD will be useless for many people. Something like 'Dactyl Nightmare 2', a simple run around and shoot VR game, would be great. Something that we can use as a tech demo and play amongst ourselves. Perhaps we could set up a project to do this in Unity or similar, to provide something for people to actually USE their HMD's together with. I really feel we are on the cusp of that revival, that most of us have probably been waiting for for a long time, and this HMD may well be the thing that enables people to demonstrate the potential of virtual worlds, for a reasonable price.

PalmerTech, how is it with displaying 2D imagery? If I could use this with my FPV cameras, it would be awesome, especially since many cameras now can do similar FOV. I probably don't require AV in since I already have

@WiredEarp: We would need a special driver to display any 2D content. My understanding is that each lens is focused at 1/2 the LCD screen so if you just displayed an unbroken 1280x800 2D image on the screen each eye would only see half the image. To display 2D would require the creation of a driver that took a 640x800 2D signal, and concatenated it into a side-by-side view. Then each eye would get a complete copy of the image. It would look terrible if you just tried to take a 1280x800 signal and squash it by half, so you want the driver to report it's resolution as 640x800 to the OS so that desktop graphics were rendered at the correct aspect ratio and you didn't have to scale horizontally. After I get my Palmer unit I will try to put some time into this. An open-source movement might be another option.

This is the second or third time recently that I have seen the idea put forth for an open source game to demo VR technology. I think it's a good idea. Not only could you show how to really immerse the player visually (proper HUD, wide FOV), but you could also demonstrate better motion controls (yaw, pitch, AND roll, independent hand and head, etc).

Mmm, sounds complicated ;-( Unless - could 2d functionality also be achieved by physically removing the lenses and partitioner and replacing them with a wide lens? If so, that could be workable as well.
To have a wide FOV solution for FOV/telepresence would be extremely handy, FOV's on FPV HMD's seem to have been dropping over the last few years and its hard to get much with more than a 40 FOV.

That is the sort of immersion I am talking about. Independent body positioning, gun movement, etc, so you have to 'aim' down the sights, and can lean, stick your gun round corners, etc, just like in the old Virtuality systems. The gun becomes a sort of 'hand' substitute and it aids immersion a lot to have it independently moveable in all 6 dimensions.

This is definitely exciting! I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread!

My guess is that the distortion would be pretty bad. This is definitely an advantage of the micro-display systems because you can switch from 3D to 2D without any loss of resolution or quality. What do you think Palmer?

I think Palmer should keep focused on it being a 3D VR HMD and get it out as fast as possible.
Him wasting time on a 2D solution is not needed in my opinion.
I like the idea of this HMD being fully centered around VR Worlds and gaming with the HMD being 3D with a large FOV.
The VR comunity can make a 2d mod if they want. I have no problem setting up with a 2D monitor and then putting on the RIFT for stepping into that Game/VR world.
This is not just self serving because I want the RIFT in my hot little hands but I do think it is best to get it out the door as quick as you can. Make it the best VR HMD, don't wast any time on anything else.

@3Dvision: I agree. That's why I advocate a software driver solution instead of a hardware solution.

I'm more thinking of people building it, if its designed correctly it should be extremely easy for people to make a 2D mod themselves.

A software solution would be great, but the higher res from using the whole panel could be nice for FPV applications.
However, I stick with my opinion that this will not be of much use to most people, unless the aspect ratio issue can be sorted so people can actually start to use it OOTB.

There's another reason to keep it as focused as possible on the "3D VR Worlds & Gaming" market and that's fan generated support (especially somewhere as hipster saturated as Kickstarter is). One of many consistent failings with most VR enterprises is targeting research and private or military industrial contracts. Keeping it relevant to modern gaming (even if that gaming requires modification to work with the hardware) will create a substantially larger user group for supporting infrastructure.

Yes, I'm being self serving by saying that but its also true



Sounds good. I'll bash some ideas around for you!

No, I agree with you..LOL

I first thought 2d funtion mattered also, but then my mind shifted or RIFT-ED and I now look at the RIFT as a VR & VR Gaming specific device to be used after you have gotten every thing setup and ready to go using your 2D desktop.
Just don't think Palmer should waste any of his time working on 2D.

I bet others like me would have been happy with Palmer just building and selling the Optics assembly and letting us buy and build the other parts on our own. But I won't complain about the compleat kit in a box idea either, I like that very much also.
In case you can't tell, I also like the idea of calling it "RIFT".
Remember the band the Doors.The name of the band was referring to the doors of perception. So you could name it "The Door"..LOL..We will be using it as a reality EXIT...The "EXIT" theres an idea for it's name..LOL

Here's It's tag line... Sick of reality, than open your eyes and don't miss your EXIT..HaHa

Go Palmer!

Theorectically 3D Vision enable 3D desktop mode when stereoscopic 3D is enable which is why it can support windows mode 3D game and video. If my experiment with Lumagen conversion of 3D frame pack to SBS prove to be successful, then it is possible to display windows desktop on the HMD.

Perhaps, but remember, wouldn't that just be the same type of things PalmerTech did with his MRG conversion? I think he said that was quite good despite slight distortion...
People can always open source mod this afterwards to add 2D support, I just thought it might be a selling point if it can be easily done.

Speaking of which, I had the idea that most of our 2D/3D problems can probably be solved by some cheap chinese converters in the future. So I did a hunt and found this:

Specifications 2d to 3d hdmi converter
- 1920 x 1080 (Full-HD) Resolution
- 2D to 3D
- HDMI (480P/576P/720P/1080i/1080P)
- Converts 2D content to 3D "Anaglyphic" Amber/Blue format for any 2D TV with HDMI input viewed with Amber/Blue Glasses
- Converts 3D “Side-by-Side-Half” (SBS-H) content to 3D "Anaglyphic" format for any 2D TV with HDMI input viewed with Amber/Blue Glasses
- Converts 2D content to "Side-By-Side-Half" 3D format for Shutter Glasses type 3D HDTV
- Converts 2D content to "Line-By-Line" 3D format for Polarized Glasses type 3D HDTV
- Converts 2D content to "Frame Sequential" format for 3D DLP Projector
- Switch conversion 2D content to 3D on/off with a key press
- 3D output color adjustment (Half color/Full color/Optimum, programmed by firmware)
- 3D stereo effect adjustment (Convergence: Inward/Middle/Outward, programmed by firmware)
- Select 3D Depth effect adjustment (Index: Weak/Medium/Strong) with a key press
FUNCTION DESCRIPTION
Support 3D “side by side” format convert to 2D HDTV with anaglyph amber/blue glasses
Convert 2D to 3D Stereo image
Support 2D convert to "Side-by-side" 3D format for Shutter/Polarized Glasses type 3D HDTV
Support 2D convert to 3D anaglyph for any TV with HDMI input
2D transfer to 3D function with bottom switch
3D effect control (3D Index: Weak/Strong)
Support Maximum 1920 x 1080 (Full-HD) Resolution
Output to TV in 1080P HDMI
Input:
HDMI (480P/576P/720P/1080i/1080P)
Output:
HDMI (1080P/720P)

Could we use this to convert 2D to 3D content, with zero depth, for display on this HMD? We'd still have aspect ratio issues I guess however...

An interesting possibility. There may also be existing software implementations that do the same thing. Aspect ratio would be annoying but for short term usage (ie. configuring and setting up game play) it might be acceptable.

Just sold my HMZ as it was just not what I had hoped for (do not get me wrong - it is amazing) however it was just not what I wanted in an HMD. I am watching this thread like a hawk for status updates lol!!!

I'm getting ready to buy soon also, so I hope the RIFT comes soon also.

If everything goes well, yes, shipping in July! I am still working on how it should actually mount to your head, designing something that can be adjusted for everyone is tough.



Yes, I am in the process of setting up a site. Gonna be pretty barebones, but enough to do what it needs to do.



I think some demo software would be good. I have gotten it to work in the correct aspect ratio with some modern games using the IZ3D driver, it just requires a bit of custom resolution work for each game you want to use!



It could definitely be done, that is one of the advantages of a modular design. Making a new optics faceplate for 2D use is pretty simple, I might even look into that as an option for the Kickstarter project. Basically, you would be making it into the same thing I did with the PR1.


As for all the discussion about hardware/software methods for displaying 2D, my advice would be to just use a cloned monitor to set everything up. The edges of the lenses are pretty distorted, and while you can correct for this in DirectX stuff using Nthusim or the like, the Windows desktop is not particularly fun to use, especially since the field of view makes it tough to see your keyboard! Some kind of custom game launcher that puts all the elements closer to the center could be very interesting, though.

Thanks again for all the support!

I don't mind paying extra for 1080p panel. I checked out Lumagen yesterday and it had no problem converting 3D signal from FramePack to 1080p 60hz SBS or 720p 60hz SBS.

Just wanted to chip in on behalf of the lurkers that I would buy one of these too!