Oculus Rift Wanna-Be Uses Your Cell Phone

[HardOCP News]

I'm not sure what makes this device any better than holding your cell phone one inch from your face but, I guess if you can't get an Oculus Rift, this is the next best thing.

 

[Grimlaking]

Great just what we need. A whole new batch of people visiting Psychiatrists because of Freudian issues derived from having mom's face pop up in the middle of watching porn on one of those.

 

[kirbyrj]

I'm not sure what makes this device any better than holding your cell phone one inch from your face but, I guess if you can't get an Oculus Rift, this is the next best thing.

Well, the optics in it mean you're not going to be straining your eyes from focusing at a screen 1" from your face for one.

 

[wonderfield]

Yes, apart the focal point being different by a factor of infinity, it's exactly the same as holding a cell phone 1" from your face.

If this is supposed to be a for virtual reality or augmented reality, it's a pretty terrible idea. Smartphones aren't optimized for low-latency either on the output side nor on the input side (sensor-side). I'm curious what their CEO had to tell them to stage that shot with the Oculus guys, because I doubt it was the truth.

Eventually, this might end up being the right approach. You have VR headset components in your smartphone, so just slide the smartphone into an 'optics dock', right? But it isn't the right approach today for the aforementioned reasons.

 

[danrdz]

this looks like a cheap (and much worse) alternative to google glass...

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

Yes, apart the focal point being different by a factor of infinity, it's exactly the same as holding a cell phone 1" from your face.

If this is supposed to be a for virtual reality or augmented reality, it's a pretty terrible idea. Smartphones aren't optimized for low-latency either on the output side nor on the input side (sensor-side). I'm curious what their CEO had to tell them to stage that shot with the Oculus guys, because I doubt it was the truth.

Eventually, this might end up being the right approach. You have VR headset components in your smartphone, so just slide the smartphone into an 'optics dock', right? But it isn't the right approach today for the aforementioned reasons.

Exactly. I have used an Oculus and it is amazing but still needs some minor tweaking. My friend got so gung-ho about it he went out and bought the dev kit for $300 and a new GTX770 just to make sure he had enough GPU for any game that got thrown at it. Right now he is trying to make Metro Last Light work with it, but he has had more luck with the games designed for it as well as some older stuff such as HL2 and Doom3.

The Oculus is purpose built for this sort of thing. It has motion sensors for head tracking, software for getting the screens and 3D correct, huge funding, and some of the best developers working on it (including John Carmack).This device is a fucking joke by comparison.

 

[Grimlaking]

It looks horrible. And what skater would put breakable glass right in their face like that. Let alone trust a phone call won't interrupt everything. I'm sorry but ummm.. NO. A mugger would know your field of view is restricted in a moments notice. Plus that latency though minute would be killer.

 

[MIghty Hooligan]

Well the interesting application was how you could literally record what you are looking at. A true way to get POV, which I found to have potential.

 

[Youn]

Strange, I was actually just thinking of this same concept earlier today. It might be ok for in-plane movie watching. I'd love to try one out anyways.

I don't think the idea is horrible really. Different than Oculus Rift, sure, but the idea of using phone I think will win-out in the long run due to convenience and upgrade-ability. I think a single eye-patch connected to phone's video (which stays in your pocket) is a better solution for AR, but yea, latency would need to be much better.

Anyways, the product itself looks pretty cheap, but if it works even remotely OK I bet people will buy it.

 

[delsydsoftware]

Hasbro beat them by a couple years and failed:


http://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-Viewer-touch-iPhone-Black/dp/B004T7VI2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378247208&sr=8-1&keywords=hasbro+my3d

That does make a nice viewer for 3d videos on youtube, and it's very cheap since it has been discontinued. They even had a couple VR games that weren't as laggy as you might expect...but there was still a little lag.

As far as the view distance, the oculus rift uses the same basic setup (lenses + a flat-panel lcd a few inches from your face). Eyestrain isn't a problem, because you are not focusing on the screen as much as you are focusing on the image projected from the lenses.

I printed and built one of these last week, and it really looks pretty good:

http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/vr2go/

Don't knock it til you've tried it

 

[sfsuphysics]

I'm not sure what makes this device any better than holding your cell phone one inch from your face

Simple, you can not physically focus on an object 1" from your face unless you are incredible near sighted and don't have glasses on at the time.

 

[McFry]

This is exactly what Palmer Lucky had in mind with the Rift. Afterall all his parts were built from and credited from advancements in mobile technology. The cost of accelerometers and gyroscopes have gone down considerably since the wave of smartphones began a few years ago. He's even hinted that he hopes for the device to be fully self-powered so you arent tethered to an entire PC. Using the camera to detect obstacles so you dont fall over a park bench is great. Trying to market such a device right now is silly since we dont have the technology to make the Rift portable just yet, but this is definitely where we're headed. Who needs an Omnipad or whatever that directional treadmill is when you can just run around in an open field?