Review: Oculus Rift and iRacing

[Anthony Levene]

Bram Hengeveld submitted a new blog post:

Review: Oculus Rift and iRacing

About a month ago I received my Oculus Rift developer kit and thought I’d share my initial impressions.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Oculus Rift it is a next gen Virtual Reality headset developed by 20 year old whizz kid Palmer Luckey, who started a Kickstarter fund aiming for $250,000 and raised close to two and a half million dollars! The headset is only available as a developer kit for now (priced at $300) but the consumer version is expected to be released in 2014, and...

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

[kelaroost]

I think they need eye tracking to finish this head set off.
Reason for that is to enable eye focus,
If they know your looking at something close you adjust your focus and the same with distant objects.
If they can import this idea it would improve the concept 10 fold.

 

[Bakkster]

if they use smaller screen that means the angle of view will decrease?

They use a lens to magnify the screen and set the focal point for each eye, so FOV should stay pretty wide. With head tracking, though, I'm less interested in a huge static FoV since I can just turn my head. I want resolution, and just enough FoV to match what I would get if I were wearing a helmet.

 

[kelaroost]

Rough sketch of what is required to make this work

 

[kelaroost]

You can make this focus work but implementing it woudl require the screens constantly moving depending where your looking and the distance of the object

 

[kelaroost]

Without implementing eye focus and distance within the environment it would probably damage our eyes in the long term because were not using our focus and eye distance we evoloved.

 

[obzen]

Without implementing eye focus and distance within the environment it would probably damage our eyes in the long term because were not using our focus and eye distance we evoloved.

The distance focus will be better done in software. Software is cheap. It would be based roughly at the distance of pixels near the centre of the screen (as shown in some Skyrim mods), then you can bring the convergence forward or back.

Eye tracking, maybe with infrared camera tracker. Too expensive for the purpose. However, tbh, having played with the Oculus for a while, I don't find it to be an issue.

And yeah, the resolution is way too low. I'm even dubious about 1080p (which is 960 x 1080 per eye). 2560x1440 looks like the sweet spot, or whatever similar resolution is available in small displays.

 

[FrankyMS]

http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/infiniteye-project-hmd-with-210º-of-h-fov.73372/

 

[genesis380gt]

"If they can get enough screen resolution in the consumer version I predict the Oculus Rift will be the biggest thing to happen in sim racing."
Havin tried Oculus with iRacing I have to say that I agree 100%.

I second that !
100% positive response on the Oculus Rift !

Cant see far enough to use it with Iracing. Otherwise awesome !

Iracing has an update today for the Oculus Rift, lets stat positive LOL

 

[Turk]

One thing I've wondered about with the oculus rift and people like me that come from countries that drive on the left (Ireland and Britain), our gear stick is on the left. It's not a huge problem playing right hand drive cars now but I'd image inside the rift it feel weird to reach for an imaginary gear stick to your left rather than the one you can see in game to your right.

The only way around it would be to have left and right hand versions of every car. I wouldn't want to have to learn to steer with my weak hand.