Oculus 2014-21

Hypergrid mentions an article published by Wired regarding the Oculus Rift.

The article is interesting, giving insight into the creation of the Oculus Rift people and the technology. The article includes a video that to some extent I see as a separate article in its own. Consider the video an overview on Virtual Reality (VR).

There are some interesting bits of information within Wired’s article. For instance, the Oculus people have been bombarded by requests from the Hollywood crowd, the techies that make the media, for information and participation in projects. So many that Oculus hired a director of film and media. 

We tend to see Oculus in our world as a way to gain more immersion and to actually be within Second Life or OpenSim worlds. But, others see the new headsets as ways to visualize what is important in their worlds in ways most of us have never thought of. Zuckerberg has mentioned using the headsets to be at a sports event, in a classroom, visiting faraway places…

Others imagine use in chemistry, visualizing atoms/molecules and their interactions. Others for medical applications, allowing MRI scans to be turned into actual models of a person that a doctor can walk through something like the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. (Video seems so lame to me verging on funny. But, my parents remember it as a big deal, cutting edge. It so matches the hype of today.)

I think many have not understood why those working with Oculus-like headsets are so impressed. The difference between ‘immersion’ and ‘presence’ is often used to describe what the new headsets achieve. Until someone can experience the difference the descriptions are pretty much an intellectual exercise. When experienced it becomes visceral and we understand what is being said in a new way. As small children we seem to have to experience a burn before we get it. It appears the new headsets are the same. Words alone cannot convey the nature of the experience.

Wired speculates that the Oculus headset will be released next year 2015 and possibly not until late 2015. That’s a bummer. But, as I noted in an earlier article Samsung is planning to build and release a similar headset this year.

Oh, and you’ll find out the ‘inventor’ of Oculus, Palmer Lucky, was home schooled. He put, Wired reports, tens of thousands of dollars into his PC…  he was striving to achieve better game immersion and better 3D. Wired gets into Palmer’s story of his road to VR. (Palmer made his money fixing cell phones.)

They get into the tech of our display systems and the time it takes to change the displayed image to a new one. LCD tech used in our TV’s and monitors is slow compared to the new tech: active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. (AMOLED) The tech has numerous advantages, lower power consumption, lower manufacturing cost, smaller light emitting points, and the ability to produce more colors (97% of the Adobe RGB color space). 

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