Looking for a 5 minute ‘interview’ montage about the Oculus Rift? You won’t find it here. I sat down with Palmer Luckey (Founder) and Nate Mitchell (VP of Product) at GDC 2013 for an 18 minute chat about the Oculus Rift.
For those of you who shared your questions on Reddit, I do apologize that I wasn’t able to include all of them in the interview. There were some 130 comments on the thread and there’s no way I could use them all! But I do thank you for contributing and I incorporated those questions where I could.
You may be interested to know what lengths we go to in order to get you this precious Oculus Rift news out of GDC 2013; to get this video out to you today I stayed at the conference hall, long after everyone had cleared out, to get the necessary bandwidth to upload the video:
Stay tuned for more Oculus Rift coverage at GDC 2013!
We take a look at a new, Kickstarter-funded title from indie developer CloudHead Games that promises not only to support the Oculus Rift but to actively develop the core experience around it. In the game’s first Kickstarter update, Denny Unger, Creative Director at CloudHead Games, demonstrates how the Razer Hydra motion control peripheral might be used to further enhance immersion.
Peripheral manufacturer Razer has launched a sale offering 50% off its motion controller the Hydra through April 25th. Oculus included the promo in its latest email update and indicates the promotion was organised in association with them, presumably to coincide with GDC 2013. The Razer Hydra offers 1:1 positional tracking of hands and is quickly becoming the go-to peripheral for virtual reality gaming.
The Razer Hydra has been used to great effect with in-development virtual reality games like Project Holodeck and Armored Ops. With the controller, developers can easily integrate 1:1 hand tracking. Each controller has a thumbstick and buttons on it as well, meaning you get the benefits of hand tracking without taking away the fidelity of traditional inputs. This makes the Razer Hydra a highly flexible peripheral for virtual reality interaction.
A little while back I had a chance to test out Project Holodeck, an immersive multiplayer virtual reality game that a team at USC is working on. the Razer. In the game you can grab a virtual joystick to fly an airship, swing swords, wield guns, and shoot cannons — all thanks to the Razer Hydra. The experience of naturally interacting with a VR game world with my hands, instead of just tapping buttons or moving thumb sticks, was a significant factor in immersing me in the game. You can see our time in Project Holodeck here:
Oculus have announced that Oculus Rift developers will enjoy ‘Day One’ support from Epic Games’ ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3. Not only that but early adopters will also be able to jump straight into developing for free with the company’s UDK (Unreal Development Kit).
The Oculus Rift is at GDC 2013 this week. Earlier today I met with the Oculus team and got to test out he developer kit with the brand new Hawken, TF2, and DriVR and more. I also sat down for an interview with Oculus’ Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell which will come in due time. For now, take a look at the latest Oculus Rift demos:
The first thing you’ll notice when you put the Oculus Rift developer kit on your head is the low resolution. The second might be the ghosting that occurs when you rotate your head. This is, by all accounts, a developer kit that is not made for consumers. Oculus has said this time and again, and I want to reiterate it here. However, I have to say that once you start to move around, you lose sight of the ghosting and the low resolution and you start to become immersed in the world.
Both of the above mentioned ills will almost certainly be cured for the launch of the Oculus Rift consumer version; the company is well aware of which direction the hardware needs to go. The good news is that the developer kit should be sufficient for devs to get a head start on Oculus Rift development and — dare I say — even at this point it’s quite possible to have fun with the Rift.
Hawken
Today was the first day that the company demoed Hawken with the Oculus Rift. They dropped me into a map populated by bots. Around you is a highly compelling and immersive cockpit. The Hakwen team has built out a 360 degree cockpit. The back of it behind your seat is understandably dull, but the controls up front make you want to reach out and touch them. I can already see someone building a cockpit simulator for Hawken and the Rift. When I looked down I was confused to not find my own two legs; it seems like they should just be there, because your brain is telling you that you’re inside the cockpit of a mech.
In front of you is the game world, but you are protected from it by the glass of the cockpit. Scratches on the glass give an incredible sense of depth. It really looks like that windshield is a few feet in front of you. To the right and left you can see your mechs arms/weapons. Also on the right is some dust on the glass that, again, really drove home the depth effect.
I started cruising around in my mech and shooting at enemies. There’s no reticle at the moment, but it was easy enough to feel where your weapons would land. I’m thinking that a virtual HUD (fighter pilot-style) projected onto the mech’s windshield might work really well for Hawken.
One fun thing to do was to fly up as high as possible, look straight down, and then drop to the ground. Not only do you get a satisfying ‘smash’ into the ground, but the feeling of actually falling is nearly present.
Combat wasn’t significantly more compelling than vanilla Hawken, but the sense of depth definitely helps immerse you into the game. A pair of surround-sound headphones and some careful sound design to complement the VR visuals would make for an incredible experience.
After about 10 minutes in Hawken I started to feel a bit dizzy. I took the Oculus Rift off for a minute or two before jumping into the next demo and fortunately the feeling didn’t return for any of them. It seems some games might be more prone to this than others.
DriVR
DriVR is a virtual reality racing game that Oculus put together in Unity with some pre-made assets. Although it’s just a tech demo, it’s damn fun. Maybe more fun than Hakwen… that said, I only played for a few minutes. Part of the fun might have been from the force-feedback wheel that Oculus had me using.
In the game you are sitting in the driver’s seat of a red car. There’s almost no HUD, but if you look glance up through the big sunroof, you’ll see a virtual clock which I imagine will be used for lap times.
The car was placeholder art and had nothing more than a bland steering wheel inside. There’s obvious promise of how cool it would look to be inside once it is fully developed with gauges, pedals, and levers.
In the game you just cruise around and drift through turns with ease. After a few crashes into the wall, I got the hang of the drifting and it felt really cool to fly around the turns just right. I really hope that they continue to work on DriVR for the Oculus Rift!
Team Fortress 2
I didn’t have a chance to play TF2 myself, though I watched a few others take a stab at it. The control scheme looked like it would take some getting used to. Valve has programmed some 8 or so experimental control schemes so finding your ideal one might be part of it as well.
The game is what you expect out of TF2 except you are inside of your character. Valve still has some things to fix and update, such as preventing a third-person view when the player dies (as it can cause some weird feelings to suddenly be yanked out of first person). Valve is known to issue tons of updates to TF2 though so it’s likely that we’ll see continuous tweaks.
Epic Citadel
Epic Citadel has been shown before. It is the Unreal Engine showcase and although I spent the least amount of time in it of any of the demos, it left me wanting much more.
The game is much slower paced than the other demos. Instead of boosting around in a mech, cruising around in a car, or rocket jumping in TF2, you are slowly strolling around a detailed medieval castle. Snow falls around the landscape and each flake is a discernible distance from you thanks to the great 3D.
As I wandered down a slim alley, I looked up toward the enclosing buildings and really felt their scale. It wasn’t that they were extremely tall or anything, but the tops of the buildings actually felt far above me. The towering chapel gave the same great effect.
I can’t wait to see someone turn this space, or a similar one, into a puzzle/adventure game. The methodical exploration of a detail environment like Epic Citadel could be the first big thing for virtual reality gaming with the Oculus Rift.
In another update to Oculus Rift Kickstarter backers, Oculus have announced that a 4 month free trial of Unity Pro is to be supplied as part of the soon-to-be-shipped Developers Kit. However, many early adopters have been disappointed by the revelation that there’s now to be no Oculus Rift support in the free version. We take a look at the details and Palmer Luckey’s response to the criticism.
The hotly anticipated Oculus Rift developer kit is set to ship on March 29th, said Oculus VR, Inc. in their latest update.
We hope you’re ready– Dev kits should start shipping out to the earliest backers on March 29th (we may slip a day or two in either direction depending on customs). When your kit ships, you’ll receive confirmation info so you can track your Rift as it makes the journey from Oculus to your front door.
The company says that they expect to ship 1000 – 1500 Oculus Rift developer kits per week until everyone’s orders have been fulfilled. Oculus says they’re shipping around 7500 units (which would correspond to Kickstarter orders, not direct website orders). At 1500 units per week, the last unit would be delivered the week of April the 28th. However, they say that “weekly shipments will ramp up as we go,” so it’s possible that those on the tail end of the queue won’t have to wait that long. Orders through their website will start shipping after all of the Kickstarter orders have been fulfilled.
“Shipping 7,500+ development kits will take time, especially for the international backers out there. Just know that we’re moving as fast as we can to get great hardware out the door. No one wants the dev kits to arrive at your doorstep more than we do. Thanks for your patience!” read the latest update.
Oculus Rift Unboxing
Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey and CEO Brendan Iribe took the liberty of unboxing the first unit from the factory. We detailed what was in the box earlier this week, but we’re happy to now have confirmation that there are not one, but three international power adapters. Kudos to the Oculus folks for that! The company says that nearly 50% of Oculus Rift orders came from outside of the U.S.
The official contents of the Oculus Rift developer kit are as follows:
1x Rift Development Kit + Control Box (6ft cable)
1x Hard-Shell Case
1x 3ft Mini USB Cable
1x 3ft DVI Cable
1x 3ft HDMI Cable
1x 6ft HDMI Cable
1x HDMI / DVI Adapter
3x Pairs of Lens Cups (Focal Adjustment)
1x Power Cord with Adapter
3x International Plug Adapters
For those who backed Kickstarter tiers which awarded shirts and/or posters, the company says that they’ll begin shipping “within the next two weeks.”
Last month Sergey Brin took to the stage for a Google Glass TED talk. Reports of Brin’s 13 minute talk were readily available on the web, but TED never released a video. Why? Today Brin’s Google Glass TED talk video has finally hit the web, but not through any official source. A YouTube channel called ‘tedleaks’, which also hosts a controversial TED talk by Sarah Silverman which was never posted, is responsible for making the video available.
Why Ban Sergey Brin’s Google Glass TED Talk?
So why can’t you find Sergey Brin’s Google Glass TED talk on TED.com or the official TEDtalksDirector YouTube account?
Brian S. Hall of ReadWriteWeb, who called the talk “pure promotion” might have some hints to offer. He wonders whether or not TED was the right place for a Google Glass talk which didn’t quite speak to TED’s mission.
Sergey Brin’s Google Glass presentation at last week’s TED2013 conference came off as little more than a product pitch. Wearing his “Google Glass” throughout the presentation, Brin begins by noting that “when we (Brin and Larry Page) started Google 15 years ago, my vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn’t have to search query at all.”
The implication to all in attendance at TED2013 was clear: Google Glass delivers on the lofty Google vision. Is that the right approach for the TED Conferences?
For the most part I agree, but maybe not for the reasons you suspect.
I think Google Glass, and similar devices, has significant things to offer the world. It has the potential to change how we communicate with computers and with each other. If Brin had crafted his Google Glass TED talk to explain the ways that such devices might change our lives, it would have made for a much better talk, and one that I would have been happy to see up there on stage.
In its current form though, the Google Glass TED talk fell flat. We saw nothing new about Glass, and there was very little info about the impact the device would have. Maybe Brin was just being humble?
What do you think, should this talk have gone up on TED.com like all the others?
Valve has provided the first high-res glimpse of the unique TF2 Oculus Rift hat that users of the HMD will be able to wear. A patch for TF2, which enables ‘VR mode‘, rolled out yesterday alongside the news. Valve created an ‘Oculus Rift User Guide’ page in the Team Fortress 2 wiki which details exactly how to use the Rift with the popular FPS.
Hats are an odd obsession in the world of TF2. The game currently offers over 250 hats which can be traded freely among players. While some hats can be purchased for real money through the game’s online store, it’s unlikely that the Oculus Rift TF2 hat can be bought. With only around 10,000 dev kits currently ordered (and not all of those people will actually play TF2), the Rift hat is likely to be a coveted rarity, perhaps at least until the consumer version of the HMD launches.
Yesterday the patch that enables VR mode for the Oculus Rift went live. The top bullet in the changelog reads, “Added support for running VR mode on the Oculus Rift,” among other changes. Full patch notes here if you’re interested.
Additionally, Valve has put together a page in the TF2 wiki titled ‘Oculus Rift User Guide‘ which contains a surprisingly detailed list of info about using the Oculus Rift with TF2.
How to Use the Oculus Rift with TF2
To launch TF2 in VR mode, right-click on Team Fortress 2 in Steam, select Properties > Set Launch Options, then add ‘-vr’ to the command-line (without the quotes, of course). The wiki page notes that “you can also create desktop shortcuts with and without the “-vr” option to let you easily switch between VR or normal monitor modes.”
Following this initial setup, Valve recommends that you use the developer console to initiate calibration:
Although you can just start playing with the default settings, to avoid discomfort we highly advise calibrating the device for your eyes. See “Calibrating your Inter-Pupillary Distance” below.
If you use the “A” vision lenses in the Rift, you don’t need to do anything to let the game know. If you have switched to the “B” or “C” lenses, you will need to set the oculus_lens_type convar to “B” or “C” respectively.
They also have recommendations for reducing any potential motion sickness induces from using the Oculus Rift with TF2:
Start slow. For the first few sessions, plan to play for no more than ten minutes in VR.
Calibrate the device for your eyes. Having the correct IPD helps a lot.
Start with some of the slower characters, such as Heavy or Medic. Avoid the faster or close-range characters such as Scout, Pyro, or rocket-jumping with the Soldier – they can produce particularly intense experiences in VR.
Stop if you feel unwell. You cannot “push through” motion sickness, it just continues. If it gets bad it can last a long time after you stop playing. As soon as you feel uncomfortable, take the HMD off, take a break and do something else for a while.
Many people find that over time they become used to the effects – they get their “VR legs” – and can play for longer without feeling unwell.
Some very lucky folks never get any effects at all and can play for many hours. You are freaks and the rest of us are very jealous of you.
There are some tips for running the game as quickly as possible, thereby reducing latency between your commands and the Oculus Rift:
In the TF2 advanced video settings, make sure “Wait for vertical sync” is disabled.
In the TF2 advanced video settings, make sure “Motion blur” is disabled.
Make sure wait-for-v-sync is not forced on by video card control panel settings.
Disable the “Aero” Windows desktop composition engine. Right-click on your desktop, click “Personalize” and then select one of the “Basic” or “Classic” themes instead of an “Aero” theme. An easy way to tell that Aero is disabled is that your windows don’t have that translucent frosted-glass effect on their title bars any more.
Valve has also built a number of experimental VR control schemes into TF2. They say that the default scheme is what most people seemed to like in their testing, but encourage users to play with the settings to see what works best. A console command let’s you toggle through the different VR control modes:
vr_moveaim_mode: options for controlling movement and aim. Modes 0 through 4 are all interesting to try. 5 and above are probably not.
0: aiming and steering with your face, the mouse just rotates your “hips”. This is a good mode for use with a control pad.
1: aiming with your face, steering only with the mouse. This mode may be buggy and “drift” after a while.
2, 3, 4: slightly different versions of aiming with the mouse within a “keyhole” in your view. 3 is the default that TF2 ships with.
5, 6, 7: assorted other experiments.
You can also cycle to the next value with the console command “vr_cycle_aim_move_mode”
When we backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter back in August, $300 for the Rift alone felt like a steal. Oculus has said that they’re making almost no margin on the Kickstarter. Knowing this, we’re impressed to learn that Oculus has stretched our cash to make sure that kits are delivered with everything a developer might need. After a visit to Oculus, The Verge reports that the Oculus Rift developer kit will be delivered with the SDK and more.
Upon opening their package, developers will be happy to learn that every cable is included. There will be no need to run out to your nearest electronics store to pick up an overpriced cable for the instant gratification of playing with the Rift.
The contents of the Oculus Rift dev kit package includes two HDMI cables, DVI cable, an HDMI to DVI adapter, MicroUSB cable (for power), an international power adapter, and three sets of ‘eyecups’ to help those with less than stellar vision. And it all comes in a carrying case which is styled after the Oculus Rift HMD. The Verge called the case “somewhat cheap”; even so, you won’t find us complaining.
Even bigger news is that the SDK will ready from the moment the box reaches the developer. The kit includes instructions to download the Oculus Rift SDK from the official Oculus website. Until this point Oculus has been quiet about the Oculus Rift SDK release date.
Once the package arrives, developers can load up the SDK and jump straight into some pre-made virtual reality environments (not to mention Team Fortress 2).
Soon you could be roaming your own virtual reality Earth. Outerra is an in-development ‘world rendering engine’ which is literally capable of rendering a geographically detailed world — your own personal planet. The engine uses an impressive combination of real-world data and procedural terrain generation to create detail all the way from the perspective of an orbiting satellite, down to the blades of grass at your feet. The developers of Outerra ordered an Oculus Rift developer kit early-on and plan to support the HMD.
Outerra is a unique 3D rendering engine, a world rendering engine capable to seamlessly render whole planets from space down to the surface. It can use arbitrary/varying resolution of elevation data that it further dynamically refines using fractal algorithms. The fractals try to mimic natural processes, generating fine, believable terrain with high resolution. The world is also being dynamically textured and populated with vegetation using predefined land type material sets and the computed terrain attributes.
The engine’s scale is truly amazing. We’re talking about a 1:1 virtual reality Earth — like Google Earth on steroids. The engine is capable of rendering even larger planets if the developers are so inclined. Here’s Outerra in action:
Combining Outerra and the Oculus Rift would literally give you your own immersive virtual reality Earth around which to frolic. Lonely? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.
We’re happy to learn that the Outerra developers have purchased an Oculus Rift developer kit and are investigating integration. It’s likely that they’re waiting on their dev kit like the rest of us, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing some preliminary work.
Just a few days after the Oculus Rift Kickstarter launched back in August, one of the lead developers began testing anaglyphic stereoscopic 3D in Outerra, noting that “side-by-side [3D] will come as well in order to support Oculus Rift.”
Currently the virtual reality world supports a manually adjusted field of view, as well as three different types of distortion — a necessary component of rendering games for the Oculus Rift. With these systems are already built into the game, it could be a quick matter to integrate Oculus Rift support.
Now before I hype you up, let me make it clear. Outerra is still in alpha. Yes there’s already a demo where you can roam the Earth. Yes you can drive a truck (and fly a plane if you purchase the alpha). Yes you can fly from space right down to a cozy shoreline. But at this point there’s no real gameplay. However, the developers are continuously developing the engine and regularly deploying updates. The concept for the game based on the Outerra engine sounds pretty cool too:
Anteworld is a world-building game on a massive true-to-life scale of our planet. Returning aboard an interstellar colonizer ship built in the Golden Age of Mankind, players arrive on the planet earth to discover civilization and humanity vanished. They will have to rebuild the civilization – exploring, fighting, and competing for resources while searching for clues to the disappearance of humanity.
Things might not have to be lonely on the desolate planet for long. The developers say that multiplayer is in the works, which means you could find yourself among the first pioneers in history to colonize a virtual reality Earth.
I’ll be watching Outerra closely; I’ve got a feeling that the next few patches for the game will be quite pertinent to the Rift.
Valve Software’s hugely popular, free-to-play online FPS, Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is to get Oculus Rift support! Oculus Rift users will also be gifted a unique in-game hat. A news release provided by an anonymous source details Valve’s first foray into the world of virtual reality. We take a look at the details and briefly recap the company’s journey to official Oculus Rift supporter.
In a recent update to Kickstarter backers, Oculus VR Inc. has announced that the much anticipated Doom 3: BFG, the game that John Carmack used to help catapult the Oculus Rift’s fame, will not ship alongside the Oculus Rift Kickstarter rewards as originally intended. The company has offered a few options as compensation, including a full refund should you desire. Along with that unfortunate news comes an indication that Oculus Rift developer kits will begin shipping in the very near future.
An Unfortunate Announcement
Back in August 2012, when the Oculus Rift Kickstarter began, Oculus offered multiple tiers for backers willing to part with their own money in order to support the fledgling VR HMD project. All the reward tiers that included an actual Oculus Rift Developer Kit (the HMD itself) also included a copy of the then yet-to-be-released Doom 3: BFG. The title had been used by John Carmack himself in the now famous ‘Magic Hat’ demos given at E3 back in 2012 and was for a time the new HMD’s ‘killer app’. Doom 3: BFG launched in October 2012 without Oculus Rift support. It was expected that an update would be issued when the Rift launched to add virtual reality support.
When we launched the Kickstarter campaign, we said we’d bundle a copy of DOOM 3 BFG Edition with each development kit as an extra “Thank you.” Unfortunately, we’ve been informed that DOOM 3 BFG Edition will not support the Rift development kit by the time we begin shipping.
No further details as to why the game was so very suddenly unavailable, nor if/when it would be ready for the Rift.
Perhaps the BFG team were unhappy with the implementation and felt it wasn’t ready for even developer consumption? Perhaps the sheer number of Doom 3 copies required to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards became too much for publisher Bethesda to fulfill (although why now)? Perhaps the commercial promise of owning the IP to the most famous Oculus Rift enabled title was too tempting to resist? Frankly, we may not know for some time, if ever.
To Oculus’ great credit (and we suspect substantial financial debit) they’ve given Kickstarter backers three options to compensate for this unexpected turn of events:
– $20 Steam Wallet credit, perfect for buying your next game on Steam (including DOOM 3 BFG Edition without Rift developer kit support if you still want it).
– $25 Oculus Store credit, which can be applied to future purchases at the Oculus Store including Oculus Latency Testers, new Oculus t-shirts, and more Rift development kits.
– A full refund for your pledge. If you’re unhappy with the options above, we completely understand. Email us at support@oculusvr.com, and we’ll be happy to discuss your specific order or refund your pledge in full.
Again, the advise to early Kickstarter backers that you choose your alternative reward as soon as possible as every indication is that Oculus are due to begin processing these orders imminently.
Dev Kits Likely to Ship Imminently
On the bright side however, the update email also urges early Kickstarter backers to ensure their shipping address details are up to date and complete:
Assuming you’re in the first batch of development kits to ship out, the next 24 hours are your absolute last chance to update your shipping address.
Please visit https://oculusvr.com/sales/ one last time to make sure everything’s up to date! Once we begin processing your rewards, your shipping address will be locked.
There is speculation as to exactly how many units this ‘first batch’ comprises. Current best guesses (based on previous Kickstarter updates) is around 5000 Oculus HMDs. Thanks to some fairly painstaking stats gathering by the community, order numbers do indeed seem to be relative to when the pledge was made. Establishing whether your order number guarantees you a unit from the first batch is, at best, an educated guess. The latest Oculus Rift shipping schedule is as follows:
Kickstarter orders for unassambled dev kits (limited run of 100 units): Unkown
First batch of Kickstarter orders (5,000 units): Mid-March
Remaining batch of Kickstarter orders (2,500 units): Mid-April
Direct pre-order through official website: Late April
Brantlew of Oculus opens one of the very first Oculus units, direct from the factory in China
Either way, it now seems certain that Oculus’s promise to have dev kits in at least some developer’s hands by the time GDC 2013 rolls around will be fulfilled. The Oculus has hinted that GDC will see new developer showcases for the Rift. We know Valve intend to discuss VR development this year, specifically regarding Team Fortress 2, as to who else has existing announcements up their sleeves, we’ll have to wait and see.
The University of Southern California’s ‘MxR’ Lab today launched an ‘open source’ DIY virtual reality website. The lab is making freely available many of their innovative virtual reality hardware and software projects. Users can download schematics to 3D print virtual reality hardware and follow the provided guides to put together head mounted displays and more. The lab is also making available several hardware modifications for the Oculus Rift which can be 3D printed, including a forward-facing stereo camera mount and an eyecup modification to allow users to get closer to the display.
The goal of the DIY VR site is to further the development of virtual reality by getting hardware and software freely into the hands of anyone that wants to build with it.
Build Your Own DIY VR Headset with 3D Printing
One of the projects available is the Socket HMD, a 90-degree field of view head mounted display which the Oculus Rift is largely based on. A housing for the Socket HMD, which has been employed by Project Holodeck, can be 3D printed with plans from the site. Instructions from the site tell you which additional components to purchase, and how to put the HMD together.
Oculus Rift Mods
Three interesting modifications for the Oculus Rift developer kit are also available:
The first of which is a mount that attaches to the front of the Rift. The mount makes it easy to attach stereo cameras, like the Microsoft Kinect, which can be used for optical tracking, spatial mapping, and more.
The lab is also making available its VR2GO low-cost immersive viewer. This is a 3D printed HMD case in which you mount your smartphone, to utilize its display and motion sensors, to turn it into a low cost head mounted display. Currently VR2GO schematics are available for the iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, and iPod Touch (5th generation), though anyone is welcome to modify the existing design to fit other smartphones.
MxR Unit Package for Virtual Reality Development and FAAST
If the above wasn’t enough, the good folks at the MxR Lab are even offering up a custom Unity package full of scripts, scenes, and more to assist in virtual reality software development, especially for iOS and Android devices. With it you can quickly create stereoscopic 3D scenes, enable distortion, access smartphone sensor data, and more, all without having to write you own code from the ground up.
FAAST is middleware to facilitate integration of full-body control with games and VR applications using either OpenNI or the Microsoft Kinect for Windows skeleton tracking software. FAAST includes a custom VRPN server to stream up to four user skeletons over a network, allowing VR applications to read the skeletal joints as trackers using any VRPN client. Additionally, the toolkit can also emulate keyboard input triggered by body posture and specific gestures. This allows the user add custom body-based control mechanisms to existing off-the-shelf games that do not provide official support for depth sensors.
You can see a prototype game based on FAAST in action here:
MxR’s Open Source Initiative
Mark Bolas
David Nelson
Mark Bolas and David Nelson of the USC’s MxR Lab are two of the folks behind this excellent DIY VR resource, which they are calling the “Open Source Initiative”
Bolas is the director of the MxR Lab as well as an Associate Professor at USC. Prior to MxR, he founded Fakespace Labs which made the famous Wide5 head mounted display (an impressive but cost-prohibitive unit). He spends much of his time at the lab developing hardware and software to enable immersive virtual reality experiences. Previously we’ve seen him using perceptual illusions to create infinite virtual spaces. Bolas was also featured in the Oculus Rift Kickstarter video (a homage to the origins of the Rift in the MxR Lab, and Bolas’ involvement in project) noting that “the Rift is taking years of virtual reality research and putting it into a package that everyone can use.”
“We went open, because it was the only way to truly disrupt the HMD marketplace. We believe it has just gotten started and can not wait for people to take all these designs we have on our site to see what they will do with them,” Bolas said about the open source initiative.
David Nelson is the Special Project Manager of the MxR Lab and has a background in narrative and documentary film production. He keeps projects on track and helps manage the lab.
Bolas and Nelson are attending the IEEE VR conference this week in Orlando, Florida and have a 3D printer on hand to print hardware for attendees and showcase the newly open sourced projects.
In addition to pushing to get these projects into the hands of the public, both have made significant contributions to the projects that you’ll find on the site. Go check it out!
The first Oculus Rift developer kits are but a few weeks away from landing in the hands of eager developers. Oculus continues to build excitement for the release; this week they were at the annual SXSW and held a virtual reality panel with developers Cliff Bleszinski (formerly, Epic Games), Chris Roberts (Star Citizen), and Paul Bettner (Words With Friends). Oculus VP of Product, Nate Mitchells narrated the panel.
The Oculus Rift is an upcoming head mounted display (HMD / VR headset) for virtual reality gaming. In August 2012, a Kickstarter campaign pulled in an impressive $2.4 million in support for the developer kit. The company is hard at work building up the Oculus Rift SDK and no doubt working on the Oculus Rift 2.0 consumer version due out hopefully in 2013. The first batch of Oculus Rift developer kits are expected to reach developers by the end of this month.
