Palmer Luckey and the Oculus Rift crew said they had a something new to show off at CES 2014. The revival of virtual reality has been progressing along very nicely. First came the 720p-resolution developer kits, then the company showed off a 1080p HD headset, and now Oculus Rift has hit another milestone with "Crystal Cove," the latest prototype VR headset.
Crystal Cove is a modified version of the 1080p model I saw at E3 2013. The only difference is that Crystal Cove has little dots on the front of the headset that allows a custom camera to track its movement using infrared. The other improvement Crystal Cove has is something called "low-persistence." In layman’s terms, it means the motion blur found on the dev kit has been virtually eliminated.
I was treated to two demos. The first was a game demo made with Unreal Engine 4 that you viewed from a third-person overhead perspective. With positional tracking, you could lean in and out instead of only being able to look around on an x and y-axis. So lean in and out I did. There were little goblins running around the level and as I leaned in, I could see them up close. Instead of feeling like I was observing them from afar, I suddenly felt like I was right in the middle of the level, up close with a magnifying glass; the goblins ready to be scooped up in my hand. When it came time to take off Crystal Cove, I just kept thinking of how great games would be with the ability to lean in and look at things more closely. Can you imagine a game like Pikmin where you can lean in and find hidden treasures you wouldn’t be able to see from a fixed camera view? Positional tracking opens up a world of new creative gaming possibilities.
The second demo was Eve Valkyrie, a first-person perspective game where you’re a pilot in a spaceship. I was shown the demo with and without the low-persistence and the reduction in blur was immediately noticeable. Text that would normally have been impossible to read while turning your head left and right quickly is now readable; it’s not perfect yet, but baby steps. I’ve tried this same demo before with the dev kit and, well, with positional tracking, I was able to finally lean in and get closer to my digital legs with Crystal Cove.