The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset. Though still a prototype, with each new update, the applause grows louder. The most recent version, dubbed Crystal Cove, received glowing reviews at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Caveats and disclaimers aside, we want to see Oculus succeed. Engineers and researchers have been working on virtual reality for decades, but the Rift is the first real candidate for a quality experience at an affordable price. (They’re still hoping to sell the system for around $300.)
What’s so special about Crystal Cove? Previous versions of the Rift induced excitement because of the newness of the experience—but that experience was still imperfect.
Early Rift prototypes suffered from poor screen resolution (your eyes are inches from the display) and motion blur. Further, whenever the user moved their head back and forth or side to side, the entire world was dragged along. Motion sickness was a real concern.
Now a few of those flaws have been corrected, and though no date has yet been set, the prospect of a consumer version potentially later this year seems more realistic.
Added to a high-definition, OLED display incorporated late last year, Crystal Cove offers positional tracking and low persistence.
The first of those, positional tracking, is thanks to an external camera that tracks infrared LEDs embedded on the outside of the Rift headset. Users can now bend over, move side to side, or look around corners in the virtual world.
Meanwhile, low persistence gets rid of the blur. Previously, as a user moved their head, the machine continuously created and rendered updated images of their new point of view. This happened very fast but still took time. In the interim, frames displaying out-of-date images would flash by the user until the updated image appeared.