The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has experimented with an Oculus Rift in conjunction with an Xbox Kinect 2 to control a robotic arm — a possible step toward controlling robots remotely in outer space. Windows RT devices (such as Microsoft Surface) were bundled with “Office RT”, a port of the PC version of Office 2013 to ARM architecture. This prototype is reportedly closer to Oculus VR’s vision for the consumer version. As of early 2014, the Oculus Rift is currently out in a developer’s kit version with the aim of encouraging the creation of content for the device before an improved consumer version goes to market. Once you’ve acquired the developer’s Rift and downloaded the SDK and any firmware updates from the Oculus VR site, you need to calibrate the device. Developers can access the Oculus VR Developer Center to retrieve the latest versions of the SDK components and for online support.

They can also revoke your rights to use the SDK if you create an application that causes health or safety issues. Crystal Cove can also track position, rather than just orientation, with the help of IR LEDs (which look like little square white dots) all over the headset that are monitored by an external camera, giving you 6 degrees of freedom rather than just 3. You can lean toward things to get a closer look, or lean to look around corners, whereas with the developer kit you can turn your head in various directions to change the camera view, but you have to use a separate controller to handle all motion toward, away from or around things. There are also references in the guide to specific Oculus VR software features like distortion shaders, predictive tracking and the Oculus head model that developers can use to improve gamer comfort without having to reinvent the wheel.

The document includes advice on how to best handle image rendering, user perspective, degree of stereoscopic 3-D depth, camera movement in relation to head movement, in-game speed and change of motion, placement of user interface and objects, audio, user control, visual design and other technical and design considerations. The guide suggests a few baselines for comfort, like a simulated walking speed of 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) per second, a minimum frame rate of 60 frames per second (fps), an ideal latency of 20 milliseconds or less and virtual placement of static objects no closer than 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) away from the user. The device has a custom-built motion and orientation sensor unit with a sampling rate of up to 1000 Hz. A new prototype, dubbed Crystal Cove, debuted at CES 2014. It has a higher resolution 1080p AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen, lower latency, a higher refresh rate and much lower image persistence, meaning that the images you see on the screen change as quickly as you move rather than persisting on the screen long enough to cause a lot of motion blurring. The experience often induced headaches and motion sickness, and it wasn’t all that immersive.

Crews removed most of the seating and created a padded, 90-foot-long corridor where flyers — the company’s term for passengers — would experience weightlessness. At the maturity level, I think that it’s somewhat probable that Python’s thoughts will provoke possibly more technical, languages aimed at regions of application. To learn more about the possibilities, see the links on the next page. The Rift lets you step into a game, look around in any direction and see the game environment all around you rather than on a flat screen surrounded by your living room decor. He had an idea to do a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of VR headset kits for maybe a few dozen devoted VR hobbyists, and he was communicating with lots of people online about it, including John Carmack, the game developer famous for creating “Doom” and “Quake” and founder of Id Software. There are more than 100 titles available on the share site already, including “Minecrift,” a VR conversion of the popular game “Minecraft” (a paid copy of “Minecraft” is required for it to work); and “VR Cinema,” a simulation of a movie theater within which you can actually watch videos. Due to the unique properties of the Rift, including its wide field of vision and head-tracking abilities, games and other applications will have to be specifically made to work with the device.