Oculus Rift Dev Kit Review part I: Exploring The Agony and the Ecstasy, Myths and Reality of post Riftmania VR gaming

After a very painful for some  9 month gestation the Oculus Rift was last week finally delivered into to my hands.. 

I chose to spend my first week with the newborn Oculus Rift  in Bioshock Infinite's Columbia and Arma III Alphas' islands combining the Rift hmd with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker ,foregoing both the Tuscany demo and the Oculus headtracker for reasons I will explain later. Throwing in some speech recognition and LEAP Motion control too.. Yes I intend to spoil baby Oculus ...

Having just come down from Columbia's cloud city with some of the most impressive whilst simultaneously painful gaming experiences I have had ever  it is time to take stock ...I may have spent more time game side than in the real world ... more time in what some people call VR than the real world .. some of us are going to need real world alarms VR side to wake us up. Some of us may even turn those alarms off.. so what I have discovered on my  VR travels ...that I can shout about ...but not too loudly as the baby Oculus has just nodded off to sleep?

There is much hype and the word Riftmania comes to mind surrounding this product which is to be clear still at a developer and really alpha stage.Though this has not stopped many industry luminaries using it to brow beat the competition. So let's root out some Rift truths and slay some Rift myths .. a man has said ..after all..

Setup 
The Rift is pretty simple to set up, one USB lead, a HDMI lead, a power lead and hit the on switch, and when two circles of light stare back at you, you know its ready. 

Note, you will have to navigate using one eye at a time as the Rift transforms your 2d desktop into side by side images over layed over each other. It is best to do what ever preparatory work you need to do on your PC screen. For this test I am using Tridef 3D and FRAPS , so I have those launched on my main monitor before I power up the Rift.I set Tridef to work with a standard display with side by side 3D. 

Before working with any Windows 8 apps It also helps if you place any icons or menus you intend to use towards the centre  or just off the centre of your PC display . You will still need to do the one eyed trick to hunt your mouse cursor to launch games ..

Contrary to popular belief you do not need a GPU of the Gods to use the Rift, I ran the Tuscany demo from an Intel HD3000 powered laptop and that worked fine. More on this in a moment..

Ergonomics 

Fitting : Suits you... sir...

earlier today Oculus Rift with Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker 

Unlike other HMDS, in fact more so than any other HMD the Rift will engulf your face : 

Pros : You are shut off from the outside world: nothing can interfere with your gaming 

Cons : You are shut off from the outside world : cannot see your controllers, keyboards , mouse or anyone or thing else around you. A basic act like operating an in game menu can become troublesome when you are left reaching in the VR dark for your mouse or down arrow  . And as for games that require 101 keys say flight sims (Star Citizen?) , complex Warcraft ,StarCraft macro key combinations .. fuggedaboutit... 

This is why I prefer hmds I can look out from, or look through . Light blockers are irrelevant after a while, you tend to stare at your display, I am greedy for displays I use multiple displays tv , PC , laptop and hmds together. When using your Plasma TV or hmd, or the display you are using now , after a while tunnel vision sets in and your brain shuts off external visual stimuli , but you can always break this spell by looking down at your keyboard or joypad. Transparent hmds like the ST1080 also let you see through the display to find your keyboard or controller bearings . 

Solutions: you will see in the videos below how I solve this problem with the Rift

Comfort : Face Hugger Plushy Chic 

There is no getting round the weight of the Rift, but it is vastly more comfortable to wear than the similar weighted HMZT series. It is also simpler to put on. You literally just put it on and look through, setting the centre head strap if need be. There is none of the rigid and horrid adjustment needed with the old Sony hmd. 

Pros : the Rifts face hugger plushy design does a great job to counter the bulk and weight. 

The most revolutionary design choice in tackling HMD comfort issues the Rift brings is the way it takes the weight OFF your nose, really it is the first HMD to do so, there are no nasal bridge attachments , the whole hmd uses your face to support the HMD taking the weight off your nose altogether. You should not get a mark on your nose (unless you have been bad) and certainly no 3rd eye indentation  a la the HMZT series.. 

That the Rift manages this (for me) is vital, vital because of the bulk and weight of the device.

Cons : the Rifts face hugger plushy design is the cause of that bulk and weight... and that in itself defeats the point of having a fast headtracker .. as lighter devices with slower headtrackers can be moved both more easily and quickly...and a headtracker of the same spec on a lighter hmd ..well ..you get the picture.

With a heavy weight hmd, the speed of your headtracker in every aspect has to be a certain magnitude or multiple greater than lighter hmds simply because that extra weight and bulk will require the user to work harder, exert more force and literally sweat more to move that onscreen cursor and or FOV..

The Heat is On : The Rift itself does not generate too much heat, nothing near HMZT series heat. Which is quite surprising given the size of the LCD and it's proximity to you. That foam doubles as insulation, where the HMZT series convects or conducts  heat being so close to you, the Rift stands off your face thanks to the foam, also around the 4 corners of the device are vents,I was joking about emergency venting  but it is actually there... in the design.. You have to be careful though as the rest of your non Rift covered face will feel the heat from your environment, if you sweat a lot people are not going to want to share your Rift...And it is better to play in cool room or well ventilated environment.. time to open the cellar windows... 

Lastly you also have to factor in the weight and bulk of your head phones, using full size  Astros with this is going to be painful and affect your gaming too as you have to shift even more weight constantly to operate the headtracker. In ear buds are a far better solution but will mean one more cable to connect and get tangled in. The Rift is not meant to be a stationary use hmd and you are not aware of cables entangling when using it, so beware and manage those cables before you start playing.


Optics :

For me the optics just worked, no need to swap the lenses out. There is no lateral adjustment of the eye pieces but with lenses this size, the optics should accommodate most people. Now how effective the Rift is for you as a device you can use as well as wear will depend on your eye sight,level of astigmatism, the distance between your pupils, face structure etc. This is the same problem all HMD designers errh.. face.You got to try before you buy.. 

Do not expect to have the same experience as the guy next to you. 

Bare in mind that the 3D used in the Rift , the stereoscopic side by side solution is something 10 % of the population are blind to. And since the Rift is locked into this method, there is no other method of generating 3D with the Rift , that 10% of the population will not be entering VR through the Oculus Rift ..not in 3D at any rate ..

Like other wide field of view hmds, the optics here are used to magnify many,many,many  times the image behind them. With PC games that can mean millions of moving pixels updating at 100s of frames per second being scaled down to thousands of pixels updating at less than 100s of frames per second. You do not see a raw detailed VR or Holodeck view even though the size of the objects approach reality the fidelity of the images and how they move cannot on this hardware.

The optics in such devices cause your eyes to "work" to see the image behind them. It is not an effortless or painless experience compared to smaller FOV hmds which is why certain hmd manufacturers and users prefer smaller FOVs..These are design choices NOT design limitations as some hyping up VR have come to claim.  So again using the example of the HMZT series , your eyes need to work to focus the image produced . With the Rift this is less so, however this amount of magnification of an extremely large display behind the optics leads to two of the major hurdles to the Oculus Rift becoming a viable commercial product:

1.Screen door : 

The first thing you notice when powering up the Rift is the so called screen door effect first noted in projectors of yore, you literally see the spaces between the pixels,around the pixels, only magnified, creating rows of black dead pixel like formations across the entire field of view ,one dead black pixel sized space for every pixel on screen. Or is that two or three surrounding each pixel?..I will count them later.....one haha ...two haha ...three... haha .. I love to count... 

This is not the minor screen door effect noted with projectors this is far more severe. There is no way around it. 

If the Oculus Rift is going to go commercial this is the topmost issue they need to address. Note this is a physical manifestation of both the design of this wide FOV hmd AND the hardware used, if you have more pixels on screen say a 1080p sized screen are you therefore going to see more screen door? With a smaller screen you will also have to magnify the image more to get the the same FOV. There is no way for your brain to be tricked into believing it is not there, right now you just have to tolerate it . For me this is fine , for consumers though or those who rely on fidelity of images in real world applications of hmds or computer displays this is a VR brick wall. There are optical solutions to counter projector style screen door but are they applicable to a hmd with a magnified view of a 7 inch LCD screen or a 5 inch screen? If I find a solution I will let the world know.  Right now I am happy feeling vertigo and walking round real life sized environments in Bioshock Infinite and Arma 3...and all that screen door and pixels so large you can count them gives the whole thing a nice steampunk retro almost Virtual boy vibe  especially when you are scaling down 1080p 3D ultra hi res textured games through the Rift.. 

2. I see live pixels  ...

Not only do you see the gaps around each LCD pixel, you also of course see the pixels  , which as I joked before you can literally count with your naked eye. Or watch formations of light up and fade like an ancient game of Life we used to type in using Basic on our old computers/mainframes.  Now this is a big issue for hmd fans, the second gen of consumer hmds including the smd ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED both give you displays you cannot see pixels on and are screen door free.Using respectively  raw resolution and the smallest OLED pixel size available. It would be very interesting to place an Oculus style magnifying lens in front of the optics of those hmds.. especially since, as I will later explain, it not necessary to warp the FOV through software to create a wide field of view...

How obvious are the pixels ?Look down at your keyboard, you can see the pixels and the gaps as easy as you can see the raised ridges of the keys on your keyboard and the gaps between the keys..or look at these typed words on your screen , you can discern a pixel as easily as you can discern a word of text or the spaces between them as easily as you can discern the screen door.  You won't have to go looking for these flaws they will come knocking on your Rift screen from the moment you turn it on.. It's so NES it's almost beautiful...

Using a hmd that regresses back to a stage where screen door and visible pixels are evident to such a large extent is right now a show stopper for the Rift as a commercial product. We can talk about mitigating these issues but we cannot solve them with the current hardware or be disingenuous to future VR and hmd consumers  by omitting comment on them or  denying they are present or extolling that they will not be there in future as yet vapor ware iterations. 

A dark black corridor for instance .. of which there are many in Doom 3 is going to look like a lit up Mosquito mesh on the Rift, a beautiful Bioshock Infinite Columbia sky like feels like sitting up close to a game of  Mario on a NES displaying CRT tv from the 80s ..fluffy pixel clouds indeed.. Cool if you like that stuff ( I dig it dude)  or it interests you as a means to challenge the myths of Riftmania. This is where the high magnification solution, pixel size and screen door combine in a trifecta of Rift realities that puts its FOV display solution leagues behind other HMDS. Using other HMDS for instance I can feel the dark in a game like Crysis 3 or Battlefield 3 , so much so I want to move out of it or use it to go hunting... 

Solutions to screen door and visible pixels : there are many solutions when you actually accept the problems exist..in the choices made during the optical design of this HMD.. 

It seems that Oculus VR are going to be relying on OLED or LCD manufacturers to come up with a both a reduced pixel size and eliminate the screen door. They are thus going to be dependent for progress and success on often disinterested third parties with their own self interests. Control of display technology and it's direction is dominated by Japanese,Chinese and Korean companies with their own agendas and road maps , will they will be minded to focus on a niche hmd and take time away from the uber competitive and profitable tablet , phone and PC display sector.. or in some cases their own rival products? Is manufacturing millions of custom panels for a consumer Rift even on Samsung,Sony or others roadmap?  

Reducing the FOV and magnification regime used in future Rifts could  automatically reduce visible screen door and pixels and make the Rift a viable consumer product as well as developer curio. Even with this LCD display there must come a point where screen door and pixels are not visible at the correct focal length or lens magnification.. but then the FOV would decrease to near or less than rival HMDS ..and those have far far higher res panels , or panels with smaller pixel sizes and higher refresh rates. 

And there you have it, the reason why HMDs are low FOV is a design choice , to give the best optical experience possible with today's finest OLED,LCOS or LCD displays.. You can place a magnifying lens in front of those too...

This is the common myth of the HMD FOV .. something I will comment on later in another diatribe..

Performance and Design limited by price point :

You could argue that smd ST1080 , Cinemizer OLED and Sony HMZT-2 displays are already using display panels at an "Apple retina display like" stage, because you cannot see pixels or screen door effects on any of these HMDs. Just go try them.

In the near future we will move beyond 1080p and see 4K res panels in HMDs but the price for those is going to be many times that of a consumer Rift. The whole point of the Rift is to hover around the $300 mark, we are never going to see the finest quality OLED or other displays at this price .. unless the Shenzen massive get involved somehow... 

If the Rift does not have those panels, or the FOV and optical design is not altered the screen door and visible pixel issue will remain unsolved not because the problem cannot be solved but because someone has chosen not to solve it...

Oculus Rift and The Ring of Foam:

Using the Rift you do not see the world as you see it in front of you now, you certainly do not see a wide 110 degree clear field of view that you are doing now with just your eyes, what you do see is into a life sized world through a circle,ring  ..or halo or tunnel ..like the screen door issue, there is no getting around this, literally no getting around this. 

When you are watching Star Trek Into Darkness or Iron Man 3 this week at your local IMAX, make a circle with both hands two thumbs and your fore fingers, now bring the circle you have made to your face and look through and you have just recreated how it feels to look through the Rift .. You are conscious of a large display, in this case JJ Abrams latest lens flare engine raging in full effect, behind and through your hands, you are aware it is a large scale world . BUT you can only visually access that part of it that is visible through the circular tunnel or tube you just made with your hands... Now if we were to warp that cinema screen Rift style , we could see more of it through the tube ,but not all of it you still will physically be looking a through a tube that you are conscious of, however high you set the FOV behind, however large or small the projected cinema screen or magnified HMD screen behind.. or to borrow a Star Trek term what ever the Oculus Rift Warp Factor you set.. keptin..

This is going to impact a lot on Joe Public who through Riftmania is expecting a massive clearly and totally visible FOV of 110 degrees. 

Thus there is difference between Totally Visible Field Of View HMDs ..like the smd ST1080 and the Cinemizer OLED and Partial and Occluded Visible Field Of View HMDS like the Oculus Rift. 

The Rift may have a wider field of view but your view of it still through a tunnel.. wheres the ST1080, Cinemizer OLED let you effortlessly see their displays without any ring or tunnel effect . Just go try them..

Solution : Bringing the display closer to you by tightening the straps can help counter this somewhat , but then screen door and visible pixel issues become even more prominent.Similarly changing the size and shape of the magnifying lens may help but one thing I love about the Rift is the total lack of sweetspot issue that was present on the HMZT1 and these changes may start to bring in Sony like sweetspot issues.. 

The blurb won't tell you this , HMD usage is itself so new in a consumer space , they don't need to.

And this is where we expose another myth of hmd claims the alleged FOV ...and call BS on that Quakecon 2012 Speech :

The experience of using the Rift IS like the you get when using wide FOV hmds like the HMZT1 and 2 . The optics needed to focus and this case magnify the display to give that  wide FOV need to be close to your eyes and face, the contact of what surrounds those optics ,or the curve of the lenses themselves merges and inevitably enters you peripheral vision . In the HMZT series , people like Mr Carmack at Quakecon referred to this with his famous toilet role tube speech, a high point in the in the oh so grown up ongoing debate on VR and HMDs ... or low point depending on your field of view...

Evolving the Quakecon 2012 John Carmack toilet role/hmd analogy ( great minds think alike ) using the Rift, you see through a persistent  black circle or tunnel ...thus one could say you are not looking through toilet role tubes ..but in fact through the toilet seat or bowl...who knows perhaps Mr Carmack will continue his toilet /VR/hmd analogies at this years QuakeCon.... 

In the diagram Oculus VR used to sell the Rift to us, it clearly shows others having a small FOV, the Rift having a far larger FOV . But nowhere does it state :

Those are hmds which throw up displays, without anything surrounding or entering your peripheral vision or occluding the alleged FOV. They were around when JC was making that speech. They are not the Oculus Rift.. 
  
Through that Rift tunnel/ Carmack hmd toilet bowl though you see something completely unique : 

Real Life Size VR worlds 

The Oculus Rift  represents a  fundamental shift in how we perceive game and computer generated worlds. 


The most  astonishing thing about the Rift ,apart from the $300 price, is that it brings you your game worlds in the closest approximation of real size and proportions that you have ever experienced. Now we can begin to postulate why Jimmy Fallon was staring at that Knight's crotch...for so long...and that was I believe on the old 5 inch version...

Every object appears to have actual size, some more than others, so a pillar really does stand as tall as a pillar would. the same for a tree, rock  and shrubbery of course. Most impressively in a games like Bioshock Infinite and Arma 3, people are real in size , buildings stretch out into the clouds. Walking round Columbia was like the first time I walked round New York , with my head staring up at the gleaming towers..In Arma I can feel the height of the trees and even more impressive still :

Gaming on the Oculus Rift gives you Hitchock style vertigo : Real non Rift App gaming too!

In a good way , every time I came to a flight of stairs in the cloud city of Columbia I could feel the height , if I jumped I felt my stomach tighten.

So although the Rift does not solve the problem of how we display a VR image that fills our entire field of view .. if you got that impression from the Rift hype bubble, it does let you peer into a life sized world through a foam circle/keyhole  and the objects and people that inhabit that world appear to have actual size... heights cause vertigo like reactions . And you tend to go into tourist mode , looking round the intricate levels our coding heroes have laboured so long on...


However be clear, this is not VR ,you are not on a holodeck or Gibson style Cyberspace , there is a reason why that's called science fiction kid..Creating VR is not like dustin crops after all.. and tacking on these labels to your wide fov low res hmd is probably not the best way to go if you wish to succeed  long term with devs and consumers..

In order to experience this magic we first have to deal with the agony of ..

Encountering and countering Rift Nausea :

My first play with the Rift using the Tuscany demo, gave me nausea and I mean nausea  that stays with you a significant time after you are away from the device after a period of 16 minutes game time.There are people who experienced Rift Nausea during the brief 2 minute demos at GDC..  I have hundreds if not thousands of hours on hmds of many kinds. This should not be happening.

The cause of this nausea and how to counter it led me to move away from using the Tuscany demo and the Oculus headtracker .. and importantly I switched away from using the Rift's own demo 3D generation in the Tuscany demo to real world gaming in 3D using Tridef 3D .. 

With that and combining the Rift with the Zeiss headtracker , I have not only been able to be wowed by a few minutes of demoing games but I have played through a significant chunk of Bioshock Infinite in sbs 3D at 1080p res , with Ultra textures ( you will need to apply the Eyefinity fix to deal with the low res texture bug in this game , you can also move the HUD around to be visible in the centre of the screen) as you can see in the videos below. And also the ARMA III Alpha... 

Using the Rift I am now able to actually game for hours, not only that but to start to add voice recog , Zeiss headtracking and LEAP Motion control. Using the Zeiss headtracker in combination with the Rift gives me instant lag free headtracking with every PC game I play with the Rift.

This leads me to ponder the possible causes of Rift nausea,  the way that Rift code is generating sbs 3D, the way it scales higher resolutions, the scaling of low res textured objects in the Tuscany demo or the lack of natural head bob in the Tuscany demo ..

Of course a certain component of the nausea is going to be down to the optics and hi magnification of fast moving images at this close a distance from your eyes seen through that tunnel of foam..and a low response LCD display behind it all.

Playing Bioshock Infinite for hours with the Rift was nausea free during use ( there is a limit of several hours where you will feel nausea AFTER you remove the Rift). But to all intents and purposes I can now play through actual games without feeling the nausea I felt with the Tuscany demo. 

Is this something Tridef 3D does , that the sbs 3D of the Rift software in the Tuscany demo does not?  Or is it a result of the design of the Rift ..? 

I was clearly able to counter and negate the nausea for myself, not by building tolerance to it , but by using a different method of generating sbs 3D, Ultra hi res textures, a gaming gpu that could handle this with ease and using the Zeiss headtracker with the Rift. 


All the talk before the launch of the Rift has been about Rift specific apps and games , no one has gone out of their way to say well actually you could game with any sbs source of 3D . The Rift detects 1080p 60hz and throws it up infront of your eyes. 

This is without the need for Vireo or VorpX. 


And here's the proof  /sequence you can repeat this now if you are a dev with a Rift..

Bioshock Infinite Ultra Res Textures 1080p sbs 3D Tridef 3D standard display sbs Power 3D on 

This is the first solid hour of Bioshock gameplay I got out of the Rift using Tridef and the Zeiss headtracker : 

So what is it like ? Well every building and object has real or exaggerated scale and size , the characters have real scale , this is the closest to a real sized gaming environment I have ever experienced.Looking down over stairs and ledges you feel vertigo , looking up at buildings you can "feel" their height. Ignore the screen door and visible pixels and you can see the detail in the Ultra res textures that Levine et al have worked so hard on. Bioshock Infinite is a work of art and this is one awesome way to experience it . It is interesting to think that although game designers create these beautiful game worlds, even they have not experienced what walking IN and around them would be like on a display that throws up near actual dimensions. They are used to looking round them on monitors.. Future game design for the Oculus is going to require developers to create environments with proportions that translate to actual real world size on a  VR hmd like the Rift whilst also giving them the abilty to better do so by walking around in them for VReal..

I did not see any ghosting or blurring using the LCD of the Rift, one great benefit of Oculus VR having to move to this new panel.Of  course the lack of blur could be due to the fact that you can discern every pixel on the screen!

You will lose the corner HUD details, you can always move the HUD to a central screen location as wide screen gamers already do and there are ways around this issue :

Bioshock Infinite Ultra res textures 1080p sbs 3D Tridef 3D standard display sbs Power 3D OFF with Zeiss Headtracking Speech Recognition and LEAP Motion control 

For my second play I set Power 3D off, the standard profile for Bioshock Infinite has Tridef's Power 3D option turned on. This eliminated some cross talk I was getting in some areas. 

I also turned on Windows 8 Speech Recognition, started it in game using " start listening" verbal command. With this I could now navigate in game menus, without having to reach for a mouse or fumble for the keyboard, or bother with a joypad. I could also use verbal commands in game to command Vigors, switch weapons , etc, etc ..

And of course you cannot have VR without  headtracking ..for which I used the Zeiss headtracker and my Cronus, Bullseye, LEAP Motion chain that let's me use the LEAP for WSAD or left thumbstick movement that I first used in Crysis 3 here. 

So we can now talk to Bioshock Infinite , move in it by speech or by pointing a finger downwards over the LEAP , we have lag free headtracking that is used for aiming ( I will combine the Zeiss with the Rift headtracker later to have the Rift doing independent head movement and the Zeiss mapped to a weapon cursor to do targeting , the magic of the Zeiss is you can attach it to anything ..including the real world Portal replica gun or your Game of Thrones replica sword... and have at it! And we have near real world sized gaming environment thanks to the Rift : 

In this video at the point I am IN Battleship Bay at the beach I sat down down watching the ebb and flow of the tide scratching my VR chin ( with a LEAP finger if you so chose ) and pondered questions like how do they a get tide when the waters falling off the edge of the island?  Or I could just lay back staring up at the sky. It is so cool that in a couple of places on the beach, Mr Levine has left us beach towels and even a delectable companion to sit next to...This is an interesting touch when you are playing on a standard display .. with the Rift you can actually go sit on that life size beach with life sized companions around you.. Gotta love Irrational and Looking Glass! Could we get a Terra Nova sequel please! 

Even at this low res screen door and visible pixel stage you can the see the possibilities of this technology that immerses you in your game worlds not with it's detail or image fidelity but thanks to a sense of scale that borders on reality or should I say Virtual Reality (sorry Palmer) 

I intend to play through Bioshock Infinite and many other other games with all these VR leaning controls combined looking for VR hooks on the way . One thing I will say though is headtracking however you achieve it is essential to the immersion. But that headtracking should not take from the ability to play a game like Bioshock Infinite , developers do not need to re invent the way they code or design games , it is the VR controller manufacturers that need to listen to how developers want to use them. Or being able to shake your head around at great speeds ( and with resulting great pain and nausea) independently is all you will able to do in a game as beautiful as Bioshock Infinite. And let us be honest most gamers find it hard to get around in the real world , by giving them the fanciest head and body tracking all you may end up doing is creating a latency free VR model of them slouching on their couch ..it happened with Kinect after all...devs started us off with the joy of leaping in Kinect Sports and ended up having us sit back down to play the likes of Steel Battalion Heavy Armor ( and I use the term "play" in the loosest of contexts here) 

One of the questions I get asked re LEAP for instance is when it will do the things I do through Cronus and Bullseye, or Dangermouse  out of the box .. well the answer is when LEAP include that functionality. The same goes for other VR leaning controllers including headtrackers. Zeiss already have a product that is a joy to use for developers and users alike it works with every game out there . The Rift headtracker needs to be a VR control option that developers and users turn on effortlessly.    

The good news is you do not need to wait to play your favourite PC game in sbs 3D, you can do that now with the headtracker of your choice and additional VR control layers. 

The last game I tried was Arma 3 Alpha .. Playing on the Rift is as close to a real life sized military simulation you can get. Yes there is that circle you are looking through , but you can pretend you are wearing those expensive Sam Shepard style goggles or the goggles Bohemia Interactive's VR soldiers often do..night vision is going to rock with the Rift... In the video below you will find me looking up at trees, or rocks, that is me actually looking up at trees or rocks ..or pulling a Fallon as I will term it from now on...

Arma 3 Alpha 1080p sbs 3D Tridef 3D Zeiss Headtracking Oculus Rift display 

How about the quality of the 3D ? Other hmds fair much better because they will allow multiple forms of 3D generation. Some games in Interleave 3D like the Halo AE on the 360 for instance , or Child of Eden on the PS3 are simply mind blowing from a 3D fans point of view on the Cinemizer OLED and smd ST1080. Play Skyrim on your Cinemizer or HMZT series and the colours are so beautiful thanks to not only to OLED but the small pixel size and total lack of screen door.So the screen door and visible pixel size can impact on the efficacy of the 3D. 

By the time we see a commercial Rift there may be superior forms of 3D generation as well as progress made on the methods we use today.

However effective the 3D effect mode of generation and irrespective of HMD choice ,  its effects  will depend on how you personally handle 3D . As I said before around 10% of the population perceive no side by side 3D effects at all. But perhaps they will also be immune to Rift nausea ? That would be an interesting control experiment to conduct . We could then definitely say it is the way the Rift does sbs, something in the code not the hardware that causes nausea . All we need are some volunteers. Palmer you should check this out ...

The aim of this first weeks tests were to see if I can actually use a device like the Rift, to do so I had to counter Rift nausea and I can say I definitely have done so using Tridef instead of the native 3D generation of Rift apps like the Tuscany demo.

There is a come down effect though even if you do not feel the nausea Rift side , after using it and returning to reality.

Thus you will feel nausea when playing or after playing with the current Rift. I do not feel this with smaller FOV hmds . Note, having an OLED display with a high refresh rate will not counter nausea in a wide FOV hmd ..we know this from the HMZT 1, where the advantages of the OLED displays were negated by the complete intolerance of users to the optics and ergonomics used to create that was for those pre Rift times a wide FOV . And that was with a static wide fov hmd, one normal and optimal use of which was never meant to involve constant head movement like the Rift.

The Rift plays nicely with not just it's own headtracker that only does dof axes and has limited support and questionable use in the majority of games we play now, but also with any headtracker you are used to, if you have an expensive IR set up, it will work . Similarly we can exploit the Zeiss headtracker's ability to emulate mouse control and do dof axes ...

The Rift has no sweetspot issues that I can perceive at this stage, there is no significant screen blur that impacted my gaming. It is true your FOV in a non Rift game goes off screen, but you are lost in the illusion of walking round a life sized Columbia with swirling clouds and air ships or Arma III's military sim  ...so much so you can forgive nearly every shortcoming.Most games will allow you to shift the HUD , as multi-screen gamers or wide screen gamers are used to doing when playing games at extreme resolutions.

Screen door and visible pixels mean this and future iterations are not a commercially viable  product if the design is not radically altered. And other HMD designers are not going to sit around or give up progressing their solutions to HMD and VR design.

The good news is you can play any game you want to that throws up a 1080p sbs 60hz moving image. Now that is as some of my pointy eared friends would say is absolutely fascinating. We could post warp any sbs input or use that source without warping.. from anything that outputs a sbs HDMI signal ..more on this next time

Putting all this together I would say the greatest barrier to the Oculus Rift attaining commercial success is not a function of this or future Rift  hardware and software but the current state of Riftmania that dogs and prevents any debate or even comment on it. If your opinion does not concur with the current state of Riftmanics .. well just go check the comments .. the ones that have not been Riftdacted...yet.. You can see Palmer and co have tried to temper the hype bubble, not all of this is their doing of course. But we need less Carmack toilet role tube speeches deriding rival tech and more real world usage of the Rift. I use the Rift to help evolve it not to worship it .  And people and Palmer that may be in completely different ways to that you first envisioned.

Thanks to chilling out on the beach in Bioshock Infinite's Battleship Bay in real scale Riftovision my Riftmania has been cured ... Hallelujah ... Now the question is how's yours doing ?

More cures for Riftmania to follow as well as comments on real world usage of the Rift as my usage of it evolves..

Next up :

Oculus Rift dev kit review part II : Why flight sim gaming in VR ain't like dustin' crops kid..

Sony's Oculus Rift killer VR headset for PlayStation 4 to appear at the Tokyo Game Show : Game over for The Wonderful OVR? Battling Insurmountable Consumer Rift VR Demons + Rift TVRKING,tagging and trolling for your supper

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