New Oculus Rift Prototype Features Head Tracking, Reduced Motion Blur, HD AMOLED 156
crabel writes "The Oculus rift prototype Crystal Cove shown at CES uses a camera to track over two dozen infrared dots placed all over the headset. With the new tracking system, you can lean and crouch because the system knows where your head is in 3D space, which can also help reduce motion sickness by accurately reflecting motions that previously weren't detected. On top of that, the new 'low persistence' display practically removes motion blur."
The new low-persistence AMOLEDs also achieve 1920x1080 across the field of vision. Reports are that immersion was greatly enhanced with head tracking.
Long term effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:never gonna happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably he doesn't and he got a fair point here.
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
I've watched 10+ movies in the cinema in 3D, including Avatar, The Hobbit, Star Trek Into Darkness and Gravity in IMAX and a range of others in regular 3D. As many other people will tell you Gravity and Avatar are a different class of 3D movie to everything else. As for the rest, I can easily tell they used 3D as a gimmick. You got the odd spear/bee/shrapnel flying out at you from the screen to remind you that the movie was 3D, because frankly for all else, you can easily forget it/not notice it.
However, I have also played computer games in 3D. The difference between a game and a movie is that the movie chooses specific things to show you in 3D. In a game, they simply render EVERYTHING from 2 viewpoints and transmit that to each eye. I played Crysis 2 on the XBOX360 and was blown away by how it (I really dread to say) added a new dimension to the game. The HUD was rendered to be right up in your face and everything was at not just varying, but the RIGHT depth behind it. Far away monsters were far away, close up were close up and everything in between had it's own natural place. If you had water splash it felt real. It didn't feel like your vision had simply been blurred, it felt like something had actually blocked you, it was there, real.
I also have an account from a guild mate who played WoW in 3D and wonders how he ever managed to play it flat before, all the players now seemed like they were actually standing in places in relation to eachother, and he wonders what would happen if WoW had player collision seen in other games, because when viewed in 3D it looked so horrendously wrong for one player to be standing in the sprite of another, shattering the complex illusion of realness by the 3D effect.
There is so much other than simple games that the Rift could be used for. I paraphrase Palmer Luckey when I say "The reason [Palmer] had chosen to make the rift the way I have, is to make a device that doesn't strive for perfection in one area, and falls down in others. I wanted to make something that was good enough in as many areas as possible, and be affordable, so that we can get it out to people. It is not until people have it, and start using it, that we'll know what it can be used for". He may have mentioned the Kinect as an example of something made for one use, being put to many unforeseen other uses.
You could use a HD version of google streetview to record famous places and locations. Then people could explore them without having to make the trip there. You could use them for 3D conference calls (imagine using a future version of FaceRig to make the Rift Headset disappear). The problem is that there's not enough of these out there for inventors to invent with just now.
What people are thinking this could be used for is only the tip of the iceberg. The reality might turn out to be so much more than first though.
Re:Long term effect (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no training to "overcome" motion sickness.
NASA disagrees. [discovery.com]
"Previous studies have shown the training can enhance tolerance of motion sickness in 80 percent of the participants within six hours of training, notes NASA in a summary of the Navy study."