diy programmed oculus rift dk1 screen 7 lcd panel price

Instructable Update 2.0Thanks to the recent open-sourcing of the Oculus Rift DK1"s internals and schematics, cloned parts are now easily accessible and available to purchase from overseas via eBay. Threw out the old parts list and added a cloned DK1 monitor and head tracking unit to the parts list to avoid confusion.

After finishing the initial design, I decided that I could probably do a much better job. After researching some different designs, I decided to take apart the Nova entirely and start from scratch. The new design allows for the use of a set of flat-visor welding goggles (You can buy them from here) to be attached and offers a much lighter design than the previous one. The welding goggles completely block out outside light and conform to the face much better than the ski goggles, and they have air vents to prevent the lenses from fogging up. They also have a flat visor which can be switched out with my custom-made visor, which holds the two 5x loupe lenses. This means that the display can be detached from the lenses for any reason, such as removing dust from the screen. The lens are now much closer to each other in the visor, which meant I had to set up a divider inside the case to alleviate cross-talk between the two images. Cross-talk is where you see part of the image meant to be seen by your right eye in the image you"re supposed to see in your left eye, and vice-versa. The divider was made by cutting out a piece of cardboard, painting it black, and then taping it to the edge of the visor where the lens slide in to hold it in place. The IR tracking setup from before worked well, but had some glaring flaws that I felt could be fixed with a new head tracking system. So I decided to do something different this time and ordered a cheap air mouse (You can buy the one I used here, but I"d recommend getting a better and more accurate model than I did). I hot glued the PCB of the air mouse to the top of the Head Mounted Display, which means all you have to do is hold your head at a regular position, turn on the air mouse, and you can now move the mouse (and subsequently, the game"s view) with your head. It works well, but has some drift that can be adjusted manually with the mouse.

Ever since [will1384] watched “The Lawnmower Man” as a wee lad, he’s been interested in virtual reality. He has been messing around with it for years and even had a VictorMaxx Stuntmaster, one of the first available head mounted displays. Years later, the Oculus Rift came out and [will1384] wanted to try it out but the $350 price tag put it just out of his price range for a discretionary purchase. He then did what most of us HaD readers would do, try building one himself, and with a goal for doing it for around $100.

The main display is a 7″ LCD with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels and has a mini HDMI input. Some DIY head mounted display projects out on the ‘web use ski goggles or some sort of elastic strap to hold the display to the wearer’s head. [will1384] took a more industrial approach, literally. He used the head mounting system from a welding helmet. This not only has an adjustable band but also has a top strap to prevent the entire contraption from sliding down. Three-dimensional parts were printed out to secure the LCD to the welding helmet parts while at the same time creating a duct to block out external light.

Inside the goggles are a pair of 5x Loupe lenses mounted between the user’s eyes and the LCD screen. These were made to be adjustable so that the wearer can dial them in for the most comfortable viewing experience. The remote mounted to the top strap may look a little out-of-place but it is actually being used to capture head movement. In addition to a standard wireless remote, it is also an air mouse with internal gyroscopes.

I have wanted virtual reality ever since I watched "The Lawnmower Man" as a kid, my first attempt at virtual reality was the VictorMaxx Stuntmaster in the 1990s, LOL, yea it was bad, next was Elsa wired shutter glasses, a Nvidia card, and a CRT monitor, that was early 2000s, worked well but gave me headaches, and did not play well with my prescription glasses, after that I gave up, everything that worked well was to costly, and everything that was cheap was not worth using, but then not to long ago, I kept hearing about the Oculus Rift, and I wanted one, but even at $350.00 its a little to costly for me to buy unless I save up for a few months, so I decided to try DIY, and to keep the cost low, around $100.

I put in an order for an Air mouse today should be here later this week, I found out that when using Vireio Perception that the Oculus Rift settings seem to work better than just side by side, the Oculus Rift settings let you see more of the game, one problem I have is that some of the hot glue holding the LCD to the Plexiglass has came lose, but it should be an easy fix, the Plexiglass may not have been clean enough or might be to slick, I will clean the Plexiglass with alcohol and then rough up the Plexiglass a bit with sand paper before hot gluing it again.

I have been looking for demos or anything to play with and have been pretty disappointed, most seem to not want to work or go into VR mode because they fail to detect the Oculus Rift

I then covered the screen with the piece of sheet protector, at first it was hard to notice a change, but when playing a real video like one of the Oculus Rift GoPro movies on YouTube the image is improved, it is a very small improvement, but I like it, reminds me of an old 1980s CRT TV, LOL.

I used the file "FoculusEDID1.dat", and my screen went dead, but I was able to re-flash with the one I made up, but it kinda scared me, LOL, ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP, later this week I am going to make up another EDID that works just for my LCD and see what it does, and not just use a copy of the Oculus Rift EDID, I am thinking all you need is to change a few values to fool the Oculus Rift software, and leave everything else alone in your original EDID.

but then I ran into a problem, my LCD would not stay programed with my custom EDID, every time I cut power to the LCD it would revert back to the factory EDID, that BTW was not even correct for the LCD

I like my DIY Rift a lot, but its got a few shortcomings, its heavy, and its low resolution, playing older games like Unreal and Quake are amazing, but trying to watch video is just awful, and some games like GTA San Andreas don"t fair so well with the low resolution, its a mixed bag.

I think there is a place for a cheap low resolution version of the Rift, and I know it can be made at the $100-$150 price range because I made one, the question is how low a resolution can you go and it still be usable, I think the 1024x600 LCD I use is the bottom limit, and I think 1280x720 or 1280x800 is the lowest "acceptable" resolution for something factory made.

I would have loved to get one, but my credit card will not work for overseas orders, but I can buy stuff through Amazon thats from China, not to happy about the month long or longer shipping, but I can, I had that $50 screen with only two days of shipping, that"s why I got it, it was quick and cheap, later I might upgrade to a better screen, but I kinda want to wait for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, and I hope it comes out at the end of the year, or sooner, but I think I remember something about 2015

Its got a lot more to it than the DIY EDID spoofer I made LOL, I am using it right now, unfortunately it does not seem to like being programed from the computer, and would not copy the EDID from the DIY EDID spoofer, maybe it needs something I don"t know about to work with the EDID spoofer, it will copy the EDID from a monitor with no problem, and I was able to program my LCD with the modified EDID, then use the ConnectPRO to copy that EDID.

The ConnectPRO does help me because its better made than my EDID spoofer, and unlike my LCD that loses the custom EDID after it loses power, the ConnectPRO will store the EDID until you press its DDC button, I just wish it was easier to program with a custom EDID, I may keep an old junk LCD around just to flash with my custom EDID so the ConnectPRO has something to copy it from LOL, another option "might" be that the EDID chip on the ConnectPRO could be programed directly with something like PonyProg, I did see a 24LC02B on the bottom of the ConnectPRO.

the only thing I dislike is that it came un-programmed, it does not have any EDID programmed, and will not work out of the box on a computer, you will have to program it using something like this:

I printed a second copy of the 3D printed parts because I had modified the original parts too much and also used some more aluminum carpet trim, BTW I got an 8 foot long piece of aluminum carpet trim for $7, I looked at flat aluminum stock, it was double the price.

After using it a little, its much better, but the screen door problem is back, but its something I can deal with, but I do wonder if I should have applied some laminating pouch to the LCD before I put it together, I worry that removing the screws from the 3D printed parts to many times will strip the holes out, it"s a large improvement over the 1024x600 LCD, and videos are just good enough to watch now with the 1280x800 LCD, I wish I had started with the better LCD.

Well, its not 100% better, I know I went from 512x300 for each eye to 640x400 for each eye, but it feels about 50% to 60% better, it seems strange to me that just a few more pixels makes that huge of a difference, BUT there is a difference in LCDs however, the new LCD seems to have more LCD ghosting, the new LCD also has "some" rainbow effect on different objects and text, so its not perfect.

I have tried many more games and the LCD ghosting only seems to be in a few games, not in all of them, but the rainbow effect on bright white text I have seen on most games, not sure whats going on, might just be software, also some games work well with head tracking, others seem to have a drift, or they always seem to have a lean, maybe another software problem.

Could you tell what the need is to edit the EDID? Do you have to do the above steps or can you just flash the bin file straight from the dk1 to your EEPROM? This is just to insure maximum compatibility?

nah89 wrote:Could you tell what the need is to edit the EDID? Do you have to do the above steps or can you just flash the bin file straight from the dk1 to your EEPROM? This is just to insure maximum compatibility?

The 1024x600 LCD I first used, used different settings in the EDID than the Oculus Rift EDID, if I had used the unedited Oculus Rift EDID on the 1024x600 LCD, it would have had the wrong scaling, refresh rate, colors would have been off, stuff like that, the 1024x600 LCD will not work properly with the unedited Oculus Rift EDID.

So the N070ICG-LD1 LCD may not be an exact match, but it"s close, I still may have to edit the EDID later, like the color settings or timings, but for now the N070ICG-LD1 seems to work well with the Oculus Rift EDID.

Something I want to add, the RX-S702 / TKH702S automotive monitor I got the 1024x600 aa0700023001 LCD and controller from had the wrong EDID from the factory, it was using an EDID from a regular desktop monitor, but it worked, scaling was pretty good and colors were nice, so you don"t always need the correct or perfect EDID, just one that works.

It"s interesting that that LCD is so much cheaper than the defacto one used for the diy rifts. Even without the controller board the N070ICG-LD1 LCD comes out to around 50. I wonder if anyone has done a build with it?

When looking at it I understand that the HDMI pin 17 goes straight to A0, A1, A2, and VSS, pin 16 goes to SDA and VCC with the 5v coming from the USB to it with a 47K resistor connecting it to the cable coming from SCL and then also has another resistor between SDA and VCC. Pin 15 goes to SCL and then is also connected to the cable coming from pin 16 with the resistor. Right? Also why does the box mention pin 18 for 5v if it"s not connected to the spoofer circuit?

It"s interesting that that LCD is so much cheaper than the defacto one used for the diy rifts. Even without the controller board the N070ICG-LD1 LCD comes out to around 50. I wonder if anyone has done a build with it?

When looking at it I understand that the HDMI pin 17 goes straight to A0, A1, A2, and VSS, pin 16 goes to SDA and VCC with the 5v coming from the USB to it with a 47K resistor connecting it to the cable coming from SCL and then also has another resistor between SDA and VCC. Pin 15 goes to SCL and then is also connected to the cable coming from pin 16 with the resistor. Right? Also why does the box mention pin 18 for 5v if it"s not connected to the spoofer circuit?

Here is the image I found back in the mid 2000s, using a 24LC21 chip for a Sony PSone LCD, it might help you understand a little better, back then people were trying to use the Sony PSone LCD in cars, for computers and video projectors, but it was not designed for that, so people hacked it

but then ran into problems, first was that 75Hz was giving me discoloration, but 70Hz worked just fine, the second problem was that my main display would only do 60Hz at 1280×800, and for most stuff I clone the displays, when you clone displays it uses the lowest refresh rate, so I was back to 60Hz, then I tried Steam, the Steam games like Half-Life 2 use an extended display setup for VR, showing the game on the extended display not the main desktop, but Steam kept switching displays in VR mode, showing the desktop in my DIY HMD, or a blank screen, when I tried running Half-Life 2 and selecting VR mode in game it said the VR hardware was not detected, but the Oculus Rift configuration utility shows everything plugged-in, not sure what"s the problem.

For now, leave the factory protective plastic cover on. On the backside you will find the only connector you need to be aware of, a mini-LVDS female that is used both for input and power supply (highlighted in red). Be very careful as you manipulate the screen because it is rather fragile and you don’t want to end up with a cracked panel like I did.

Next, let’s inspect the controller board. The board pictured here is an NT68674.5X. Using this exact model isn’t a requirement as long as you have a datasheet for the board you bought (ask the seller).

Connecting the board to the display will either be the easiest step in building your HMD or the hardest. To make it easy you should buy the LCD screen and the controller board from the same seller and ask them for the proper LVDS cable. I am going to assume that is what you did, if not I recommend you reach out to someone with an electronics background and plenty of soldering experience to help you build this cable.

Be very careful when connecting the LVDS cable to the screen. The male connector is very small and it is hard to tell which side is up. Try it both ways carefully – it should not take much force to slide it in the proper way.

If everything is in order, Windows should immediately recognize your assembled components as an external monitor. Next you need to run a few tests to make sure your LVDS cable isn’t noisy. A well-made LVDS cable has a few specific pairs twisted together to reduce noise. However most cables you will find on EBay are not properly twisted which can lead to visual artifacts. To make sure your cable is good, you should load several different images on your LCD screen, the more images you try, the better because sometimes the artifacts only show when a specific color is displayed.

Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016.

In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift"s development, after being founded as an independent company two months prior. The project proved successful, raising almost US$2.5 million from around 10,000 contributors.Facebook for $2 billion.

The Rift went through various pre-production models since the Kickstarter campaign, around five of which were demonstrated to the public before reaching its commercial release. Two of these models were shipped to backers, labelled as development kits; the DK1 in mid 2013 and DK2 in mid-2014, intended to provide developers with a platform to develop content in time for the Rift"s release. However, both were also purchased by many enthusiasts who wished to get an early preview of the technology.Oculus Rift S.

Through Meant to be Seen (MTBS)"s virtual reality and 3D discussion forums,Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and longtime MTBS discussion forum moderator,head-mounted display that was both more effective than what was then on the market, and inexpensive for gamers.

In June 2012, during the E3 convention, Carmack introduced a duct taped head-mounted display based on Luckey"s Oculus Rift prototype, which ran Carmack"s own software. The unit featured a high speed IMU and a 5.6-inch (14 cm) LCD, visible via dual lenses, that were positioned over the eyes to provide a 90 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical stereoscopic 3D perspective.

Two months after being formed as a company, Palmer"s Oculus VR launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign on August 1, 2012 for their virtual reality headset, named the Rift. The main purpose of the Kickstarter was to get an Oculus Rift prototype—now referred to as DK1 (Development Kit 1)—into the hands of developers to begin integration of the device into their games.

The Rift DK1 was released on March 29, 2013,screen door effect and making individual pixels less noticeable. The LCD is brighter and the color depth is 24 bits per pixel.

The 7-inch screen also makes the stereoscopic 3D no longer 100% overlapping, the left eye seeing extra area to the left and the right eye seeing extra area to the right, in which there is no 3D depth perception. The field of view (FOV) is more than 90 degrees horizontal (110 degrees diagonal), which is more than double the FOV of previous VR devices from other companies, and is the primary strength of the device. The resolution is 1280×800 (16:10 aspect ratio), which leads to an effective of 640×800 per eye (4:5 aspect ratio). However, since the device does not feature a 100% overlap between the eyes, the combined horizontal resolution is effectively greater than 640. The image for each eye is shown in the panel as a barrel distorted image that is then corrected by pincushion effect created by lenses in the headset, generating a spherical-mapped image for each eye.

Initial prototypes used a Hillcrest Labs 3DoF head tracker that is normally 125 Hz, with a special firmware requested by John Carmack that makes it run at 250 Hz, tracker latency being vital due to the dependency of virtual reality"s realism on response time. The latest version includes Oculus"s new 1000 Hz Adjacent Reality Tracker, which aims to provide much lower latency tracking than almost any other tracker. It uses a combination of three-axis gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers, which make it capable of absolute (relative to Earth) head orientation tracking without drift.

The entire source for the Rift DK1 was released to the public in September 2014, including the firmware, schematics, and mechanicals for the device. The firmware is released under a simplified BSD license, while the schematics and mechanicals are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

In June 2013, a prototype of the Rift that used a 1080p LCD panel was shown at Electronic Entertainment Expo. This step forwards to twice the number of pixels as DK1 significantly reduced the screen door effect and made objects in the virtual world more clear, especially at a distance. The poor resolution had been the main criticism of the DK1.

A teardown of DK2 revealed that it incorporates a modified Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone display, including the front panel from the device itself.

In September 2014, Oculus once again presented an updated version of the Rift, codenamed Crescent Bay. This version has a greater resolution than the DK2, a lower weight, built-in audio, and 360-degree tracking thanks to the presence of tracking LEDs in the back of the headset.HRTF and reverb algorithms.SXSW 2015, titled "Explore the Future of VR", it was publicly announced for the first time that the prototype uses two screens instead of one as previously thought.

On May 21, 2019, Oculus began shipping a new VR headset known as Rift S.computer vision to predict what path the HMD and controllers are most likely to take.

The Oculus Rift runtime officially supports Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. The installation package includes components such as the headset driver (which includes Oculus Display driver and controller drivers), Positional Tracking Sensor driver, Oculus Service, and Oculus Home Application.asynchronous timewarp, and asynchronous spacewarp.

When the user puts on the Rift and no other content is being outputted to the headset, they are presented with Oculus Home. This is the default environment of the Rift, which presents them with a loft environment and a floating menu, allowing the user to launch VR applications they own, see if their friends are using the Rift, and purchase virtual reality content on the Oculus Home store from the headset.

Oculus maintains a market place for applications for the headsets. The listings are curated to only allow applications that run smoothly on the recommended hardware. Most listings are also rated on their comfort level based on their likelihood of causing motion sickness or number of jump scares. However, developers do not have to use Oculus Home to distribute content for the Rift, this being entirely optional.

Content for the Rift is developed using the Oculus PC SDK, a free proprietary SDK available for Microsoft Windows (OSX and Linux support is planned for the future).

The Oculus SDK is directly integrated with the popular game engines Unity 5, Unreal Engine 4, and Cryengine. This allows for developers already familiar with these engines to create VR content with little to no VR-specific code.

The Rift is an open platform, and thus developers do not need any approval or verification to develop, distribute, or sell content for it, and do not have to pay any licensing fees. The SDK, however, cannot be modified or reused for other purposes or hardware without permission.

Content developed for the Development Kit 2 using SDK version 0.8 or above are compatible with the Rift; however, content developed for the Development Kit 1 or with older versions of the SDK will have to be recompiled using the latest SDK version to be compatible.

On December 21, 2015, Oculus announced the release of their finalized Rift 1.0 SDK, combined with the start of shipping their final version of the Oculus Rift VR headset to developers.

At Oculus"s 3rd annual conference (Oculus Connect 3), it announced the new technology, called "Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW)". This technology allows the Rift to compensate for the dropped frames. According to Oculus, ASW reduces the minimum specs of a PC to run the Rift without any judder.

In May 2015, Oculus VR announced "recommended" hardware specifications for computers utilizing Oculus Rift, specifying a CPU equivalent to an Intel Core i5-4590, at least 8GB of RAM, at least an AMD Radeon R9 290 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, an HDMI 1.3 output, three USB 3.0 ports, and one USB 2.0 port. Oculus VR stated that these requirements would remain in force for the life of the first consumer model. The company also stated that while upcoming discrete GPUs for laptops may be able to reach the required performance for Oculus Rift, systems that switch between integrated and discrete graphics may not handle output in a manner that supports the device. Oculus Rift only supports 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 or later; Oculus VR stated that the device would initially support Windows only in order to focus on "delivering a high[-]quality consumer-level VR experience"; support for Linux and macOS will be developed in the future.

On October 6, 2016, Oculus VR announced lessened hardware recommendations, now suggesting an Intel Core i3-6100 or AMD FX 4350 CPU, at least a GeForce GTX 960 or equivalent graphics card, two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, and Windows 8 or newer. The company stated that these lower requirements were enabled by the adoption of motion interpolation; on systems that cannot handle full 90 frames per second rendering, the drivers will allow software to render at 45 FPS instead, and generate frames based on differences between them to send to the headset to maintain its frame rate. Oculus promoted that these changes lowered the average hardware cost of a PC meeting these specifications to US$500 and would also enable certain laptops to run Oculus Rift.

In June 2018, Oculus VR updated its recommended OS spec to Windows 10. While Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users would still be able to access the standard Rift experience, newer features and apps might require an upgrade to Windows 10.

Existing games with a first-person or fixed-camera perspective can be ported to VR with some development effort. However, Oculus has stated that the best virtual reality experiences are those that are designed, from the beginning, for the Rift.

At the release event for the Rift in June 2015, Oculus announced 9 launch titles for the Rift, including CCP and Edge of Nowhere by Insomniac Games. It also announced that it was working with other developers including Final Fantasy developer Square Enix, Rock Band developer Harmonix, and The Order: 1886 developer Ready at Dawn.

In July 2015, Oculus revealed that it was fully funding more than 20 second party high production value games made exclusively for the Rift, one of these being Insomniac"s Edge of Nowhere.

In July 2017, Marvel announced in the Disney"s D23 event that it will be bringing 12 superheroes of theirs to VR with an Oculus exclusive game called Powers United VR.

Oculus is including Oculus Cinema as a free application, which allows the Rift to be used to view conventional movies and videos from inside a virtual cinema environment, giving the user the perception of viewing the content on a cinema-sized screen.Oculus Cinema will also have a networked mode, in which multiple users can watch the same video in the same virtual space, seeing each other as avatars and being able to interact and talk to one another while watching the video.

The Rift also offers the opportunity to view new types of media that are impossible to view on regular monitors; 360° 3D videos and "virtual reality movies" (an entirely new medium).

Spherical videos (commonly called 360° videos) can be viewed simply by the user moving their head around, and the Rift opens up the possibility for stereoscopic spherical videos (commonly called 360° 3D videos). In September 2014, NextVR announced that they would be using a $200,000 camera rig to produce 360° 3D content for the Rift, including short films, as well as live streaming live events such as sports or concerts in 360° 3D.

The Rift also supports a new medium of entertainment experiences, which Oculus calls "virtual reality movies". Oculus has established Oculus Story Studio to develop this type of content for the Rift, a team which has multiple former employees from major VFX companies such as PIXAR and ILM. Oculus Story Studio showed off its first VR movie, Lost, at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, gaining positive reviews from attendees.

In May 2015, AltspaceVR launched a public beta for DK2 owners to try out their social VR platform. AltspaceVR allows people to inhabit a shared virtual space with spatial voice communications, cast content from the Internet on virtual screens, and interact with objects (allowing activities such as playing chess or other board games). It also supports extra hardware like eye tracking and body tracking.

In May 2015, Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, announced that they too were working on a new virtual world, codenamed Project Sansar, built for virtual reality headsets such as the Rift and Gear VR. Like Second Life, Sansar will be hosted on Linden"s servers and lease virtual land to players, on which they can build and sell virtual items and services (which Linden will take a cut of). Linden Lab hoped to release Sansar by the end of 2016.

As well as the consumer uses, the Rift has attracted significant interest from industry and professional spheres for productivity enhancement, visualization, and advertising.

A number of architecture firms have been experimenting with using the Rift for visualization and design. With the right software, the Rift allows architects to see exactly what their building will look like and get an understanding of the scale that is impossible on a traditional monitor.

In early 2015, Audi started using Rift Developer Kit 2"s at dealerships to help customers configure the car they are interested in, as well as to see what driving a race in the car would be like.

The Norwegian Army has been experimenting with the Rift Development Kit 2 to allow for a greater situational awareness of armoured vehicle drivers and commanders.

The use of Oculus Rift on an innovative virtual operator station assists the control of a teleoperated military mobile robot Tactical Robotic System (TAROS). Human operators can have intuitive control and mediate 3D view from stereovision cameras.

Some online casinos have started using Oculus Rift to provide a unique online casino experience, allowing the user to play slots and experience the lobby of a casino through their VR headset.

ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, which in turn owns Id Software, presented a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the Oculus Rift was the product of intellectual property owned by ZeniMax, developed by John Carmack during his time working for Id Software. The jury ruled partially in favor of ZeniMax, finding the defendants did not steal trade secrets but had violated a non-disclosure agreement. Facebook and some of the Oculus corporate officers were ordered to pay a total of US$500 million.

The Oculus Rift received generally positive reviews from gaming and tech websites. Wired gave 9 out of 10 stars to Oculus Rift and wrote, "The long-promised virtual reality headset is finally here, in a remarkably well-made and accessible device."

Will Greenwald of PCMag recommended the Rift once the price had dropped, writing, "The Oculus Rift comfortably produces an immersive, crisp virtual reality experience that will continue to improve with the development of new software, which has been steadily coming out on both the Oculus store and SteamVR. Now that the Rift costs two-thirds of its original $600 price and includes the Oculus Touch controllers and second external sensor that enables whole-room VR, it earns our Editors" Choice for PC-based VR headsets."

If you"ve picked up this book, you probably already know that the Rift is a virtual reality head-mounted display (VR HMD). You may have one of your own already or maybe you’ve tried one out and were, like us, blown away by the intense immersion. Even if you"ve only read about the Rift in passing, if you watch demo videos and reaction shots, you can often see the look of incredulous delight on peoples" faces the first time they use the Rift.

With the increased field of view (more than double what you get with a typical monitor!) and head tracking to change the viewpoint (the wearer just turns their head to see what they want, no need to use a mouse or joystick to orient), the Rift represents an opportunity for people to view your work in a way they never could before. When thinking about developing for the Rift, the question is less “Do I want to support the Rift?” and more, “Does my application benefit from VR?” This boils down to asking yourself if your application presents a view into a world or environment. If it does, then wouldn’t the application benefit from the view being better?

To write the words “A Brief History Of Oculus” is a bit funny — because really, the company’s very existence has been brief. From the launch of their Kickstarter campaign to their massive acquisition, just 601 days had passed.

On August 1st of 2012, Oculus launched their Kickstarter campaign. For a company with such ambitious (if newfound) plans — to revive an entire genre, to succeed where so many had failed only a decade ago — they had a rather modest campaign goal: $250,000. That’s less than some of those 90’s VR headsets from Palmer’s collection cost when they flopped onto the market.

This dev kit (or Oculus Rift DK1, as it came to be known) gave most people their first glimpse at Oculus’ potential, and it made one thing clear: this little $350 dollar headset was already better than everything that came before it. But it wasn’t perfect.

Its low resolution screen (combined with magnification lenses that helped wrap the image around your view) made even the most beautifully rendered 3D environment look dated. It was like you were sitting too close to an old TV, or staring at the display through a screen door (aptly, this shortcoming quickly came to be known as “the screen door effect”)

Meanwhile, complaints of the headset causing motion sickness weren’t rare. That low-res screen, the early software, the lack of positional tracking — it all swirled together into something that managed to make some people’s inner-ears flip out and their stomaches turn.

Despite the flaws, Oculus managed to sell every last one of these headsets that they could make. They’d sourced enough components to make around 65,000 units of this first iteration — on February 21st of 2014, they officially sold out.

Based on a prototype that Oculus had started showing a few months prior, Developer Kit 2 (or DK2) fixed or improved upon many of the original headset’s flaws.

That old low-res display? They bumped it up considerably, from 640×800 in each eye to 960×1080 — increasing the overall pixel count by over 100%. That “screen door” effect isn’t completely gone, but it’s much, much less noticeable.

As for the motion sickness? Oculus figured out that much of it was triggered by the display’s tendency to blur motion. They countered this in three ways:

They decreased the latency of the headset (the delay between you moving your head and the content on screen reacting accordingly) from 60 milliseconds to 30 milliseconds

Barely one year passed between Oculus shipping their first developer kits (March 29th, 2013) and the start of pre-orders for version 2 (March 19th, 2014), but a ton happened in that time.

At the end of March 2013, Oculus found support from two big video game development engines: Unity gave all Oculus developers free access to their pro-level engine for 4 months, and Epic Games began giving away a new, Oculus-enabled version of their Unreal engine to anyone with a dev kit.

On June 17th, Oculus raised their first, big, traditional VC (as opposed to Kickstarter) round of funding. They’d raised $16M from Spark Capital and Matrix Partners.

Just six months after their first round, Oculus raised again in December of 2013 — this time, it was $75M from Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, Matrix Partners, and Formation 8.

Valve, one of the most gaming world’s most lauded companies, pledged to share their virtual reality R&D with Oculus. Weeks later, one of Valve’s lead VR researchers joined Oculus

Before the acquisition, Oculus had two big checkboxes left on their to-do list: to ship all of those pre-orders they got for the second development kit, and, eventually, to finalize and ship the consumer product.

One of Oculus’ biggest strengths has always been in the way that people perceived it. You just wanted to root for them — and how could you not? It’s the tech world’s favorite tale: a brilliant whiz-kid turns his garage project into a company, makes millions.

Add in the fact that the company launched on Kickstarter, and Oculus had seemingly locked in its cred as something “homegrown”. Something “indie” — even when they went on to raise nearly $100M from traditional venture capitalists.

So of course, them being acquired by Facebook was met with backlash from some of their biggest fans. To them, Oculus was like their favorite band — and this was them “selling out”.

Within hours of the announcement, the top post on reddit was a drawing of reddit’s mascot laying flowers on Oculus’ grave. Many pledged to cancel their DK2 orders, and instructed others on how to do the same. Notch, the creator of Minecraft, immediately (and quite publicly) killed the company’s plans to build an Oculus version.

Oculus insists that they’ll remain absolutely independent at Facebook, publishing not one, not two, but immediately took issue with the term. “This is not an exit,” they wrote back. “Oculus stays independent.”

We released Oculus Rift in March 2016. It was a big moment, the launch of the first consumer VR headset of the modern era. And it was just the start. Rift, Go, Quest, Rift S, and Quest 2—we’ve released five headsets in the past five years, with each driving the technology forward and enabling major improvements in how people interact with VR and the experiences developers can offer.

The gamepad that shipped with Rift gave way to our Oculus Touch controllers, letting people reach out and grab the virtual world. We did away with external sensors in favor of inside-out tracking so that setup would be easier. And we cut the cord with Quest and Quest 2, so that you could take VR anywhere and everywhere—while still connecting to a PC to experience some of the high points of the last five years in VR gaming, including

Oculus’s history didn’t start with the release of Rift, of course. Before that, there was the Kickstarter—a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for DK1, which registered when your head rotated but nothing else. No position-tracking, and certainly no controller tracking. Even so, it was magical and by 2014 Facebook had acquired Oculus with a vision of VR as the next computing platform.

Rift was the first step down that road, a $599 USD fabric-covered headset with flip-down headphones, an external sensor, a remote, and an Xbox controller. It released alongside

Caitlin Kalinowski – Head of VR Hardware: I give credit to Peter [Bristol]’s team. They took a really ugly prototype, Crescent Bay, and figured out how to package it into a beautiful and elegant piece of consumer electronics. The fabric application, figuring out how to integrate audio into the straps...I think it established what consumer VR would be. Almost all VR since then has been derivative of Rift CV1 in some way. It showed people that VR could be a consumer product.

The Touch controllers followed nine months after Rift. Thanks to Carbon Design"s rigorous attention to detail and ergonomics, Touch enabled players to essentially bring their hands into the virtual world. That hand presence ended up being a key turning point for VR, with games like

Shaun McCabe – Head of Technology, Insomniac Games:One of my favorite memories of Touch involved my Mom. She visited our office when we were working on The Unspoken and got to try it out. She was 70 at the time and never grokked how to use a controller, but I remember telling her what button to press to throw a fireball and then telling her, “Now throw it”. She nailed the target on her first try!

Oculus Go was our first headset post-Rift, but it had less in common with its PC-centric sibling than it did with Gear VR, an earlier phone-based partnership between Oculus and Samsung. Go reimagined the media-centric Gear VR as an all-in-one device—our first—with better lenses and longer battery life, a sleek new strap-based audio solution, higher resolution screens, and a mainstream-friendly $199 USD price point.

Nicole Brendis – Product Marketing:John Carmack is really the person that pushed for the creation of Oculus Go. He was super passionate about it, and about making VR less complex. And he was very keen on content discovery as well. There were a lot of partnerships with National Geographic and such that Oculus Go really helped us explore. Carmack worked really hard on getting that content on Go and making it discoverable, with the understanding that it would attract different types of users and developers. It really set the tone for Horizon and a lot of the other non-gaming experiences that we’re building today.

In May 2019 we released two headsets on the same day: Rift S and Quest. Two visions of the future. Each sported a state-of-the-art inside-out tracking solution (Oculus Insight), higher resolution panels, and a $399 USD price tag. They offered very different experiences though, with Rift S a refinement of our previous PC efforts and Quest a groundbreaking all-in-one device that offered a relatively comparable experience without wires or any additional hardware, making VR more accessible to more people—and helping developers reach new, larger audiences in the process.

By the end of 2019, Oculus Link allowed players to connect Quest to a PC for a best-of-both-worlds experience. And in 2019, the addition of an innovative hand tracking solution gave Quest users a glimpse of a more natural and intuitive VR future.

Nick Everist – Product Manager, Rift S / VR Input Devices:I see Rift S as a workhorse. Kind-of an unsung hero workhorse. It brought a lot of new users into VR and into the PC ecosystem. The quality of tracking, the ease of setup. It’s also incredibly comfortable, thanks to the halo strap. It has outperformed where we ever thought it would for sure, and it’s done really, really well.

Atman Binstock – Chief Architect of Oculus VR:I always believed that long-term, standalone VR would be the path forward. The question was more of when. My personal belief was that something like Rift and Touch was the experience we’d need to deliver on standalone. Not the same level of performance as a PC, but the self-presence, interaction, and social-presence. We’re competing for people’s time with TVs, with laptops. Making the product easier to use, making “time to fun” lower—that’s huge.

Oskar Linde – Machine Perception Architect:I got a phone call from this guy, Mark Zuckerberg. He had just acquired Oculus, I think two days earlier, and he was telling me his product vision for Oculus. It was pretty interesting to hear because his vision was basically Oculus Quest, I would say.

I believe some people at Oculus had told him that that was basically impossible. You needed something he called inside-out tracking, and the technology was still far from being ready—especially with the limited compute offered by mobile devices. But apparently Mark didn’t take them at their word. He went out and did his own research, he found me and my company, and he sold me on this vision of building a standalone VR headset.

Ryan Brown – Engineer, DK2 / Rift / Quest:I think a lot of people thought that doing inside-out tracking on a mobile platform was not really possible in the near term. Facebook deserves credit there, because inside-out tracking was a risky long-term investment that required a lot of foresight.

Nick Everist – Product Manager, Rift S / VR Input Devices:We didn’t necessarily think it was possible to hit the quality bar we wanted for PC VR, at least in the short-term, with Quest and Link. The USB-C ecosystem was not necessarily widespread with consumers quite yet, and we didn’t really know what was possible.

Amanda Watson – Software Engineer, GearVR / Quest / Link:I think the coolest thing about Oculus Link was that it was kind-of the first project where the PC and mobile VR people at Oculus worked together to build something. It was really, really cool figuring out how to architect that. These were a lot of the old-school Oculus people that had worked on CV1 and just had a really cool idea and wanted to see it happen.

Denny Unger – CEO & Creative Director, Cloudhead Games:The Quest 2, in so many ways, hits the sweet spot for what a modern VR headset should be capable of. No cable, no external sensors, full 6DOF, hardware-based and visual hand tracking, high-resolution panels at 90hz, awesome catalog, and hyper-affordable. It’s the quintessential sci-fi VR device that can be thrown in a backpack, used anywhere—and has the capacity to link to a powerhouse PC for more intensive experiences.

Ruth Bram – Executive Producer, Oculus Studios:We recently shared the news that developers are generating millions on the Oculus platform. This didn’t happen overnight. We funded numerous developers over the years to help kickstart a now-robust ecosystem, helped small devs become medium-sized devs, partnered medium-sized with awesome IP, and we even built our own development team to discover and publish best practices that we still use today. Even so, I never would’ve predicted that this is where we’d be five years ago.

What comes next? Michael Abrash has been making predictions about Oculus’s future since the very first Oculus Connect, so we asked him. You can read his full response in our oral history, but the short answer is: We"re exploring a lot. Eye tracking. High-resolution panels and refined optics that eliminate the so-called “screen door effect” for good. HDR, so that outdoor scenes seem more realistic. The ability to share spaces with people and feel like you’re actually there with them—or at least, have richer and more impactful social interactions than we do now. These are all ideas we"re investigating for the future, and there are thousands of people working tirelessly to make it happen, not just at Facebook but at development studios around the world.

Oculus Rift is one of the most popular VR devices for PCs. The glasses are designed to completely immerse its user in virtual reality and they allow you to track the movement of controllers and the position of the headset in space. Rift has an impressive range of games and applications. In 2018, Oculus took the second place among the VR glasses manufacturers with a share of 19.4% on the world market due to a good correlation of price, quality and usability.

The Oculus Rift release was preceded by a four-year development and fundraising stage at Kikstarter. The success led to the fact that in March 2014 Facebook bought the Oculus VR company for 2 billion dollars.

DK1 (August 2012) — it was distinguished by its low resolution (640x800 for each eye), a small viewing radius of 90 degrees and headset tracking with the help of an accelerometer, magnetometer and a gyroscope. The device was presented by Palmer Luckey at the E3 exhibition;

The first versions of the device were sold with a standard joystick from Xbox One which was not integrated into virtual reality. There were two reasons: insufficient number of tracking games for Rift (many games required standard control) and an underdeveloped tracking system.

May 2017: the second front camera is included as standard one, which makes it possible to play with full immersion and it makes Rift a full competitor of HTC Vive.

HTC Vive Pro is a more advanced, comfortable however more expensive model. The resolution of the display is higher by 70%, and the gaming space is almost three times more than one in Oculus Rift.

The device is fixed on the head with a flexible plastic frame and rubber ties overhead. The size is easily adjustable with a pullout handle and elastic straps which fit the head tightly from above and from behind. The weight of the device is 470 g, which is less than that of the PS VR or Vive competitors.

Regulators on the lower edge of the glasses allow you to change the location of the lenses in accordance with the interpupillary distance of a user (IPD). There is no exact digital ruler for the arrangement of lenses, so it"s necessary to set the exact distance using a usual ruler. It is possible to use Oculus Rift when you wear glasses, although an hour long use can cause inconvenience. The point is not only in size limitations, but also that the side mounts of the device unpleasantly press the glasses temples. What’s more, there is a danger of lenses damage, and it can be very hot in the glasses itself even in an air-conditioned room.

Oculus Rift is equipped with the OLED display with a resolution of 1200x1080 for each eye — this is identical to the figure of its main competitors, but it lags behind flagship models like HTC Vive Pro or Windows Mixed Reality devices. The viewing angle is standard 110 degrees, but if you play wearing your own glasses it can become a bit narrower.

You can improve the graphics with Oculus Debug Tool. Firstly, you need to open Oculus Home, then run Debug Tool (it"s in the Support folder of the Oculus root folder) and change the Pixels Per Display Pixel Override parameter to figures from 1.1 to 2.0 — this will increase the number of pixels from 10% to 100% . You do not need to close Debug Tool during the game, and the parameter can be changed depending on a game and the PC capabilities.

Oculus Touch controllers are easy to get used to thanks to the familiar arrangement of buttons that is the same as in game consoles. Here there is everything that gamers are used to: a joystick, hammers and usual buttons. Hands are protected from possible accidental blows by plastic arcs, and for additional security wrist straps are provided.

Oculus sensors detect the location of the headset and controllers by means of infrared identification of devices in space. Each of the devices sends signals picked up by sensors. That is why it is important that there are no mirrors and too bright windows in the room. Thus, the user"s head and hands are merged into virtual space. This system is called Constellation Tracking System.

In addition to the tracking of user’s movements there is an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscope in the headset. To make it much closer to the reality the position of the user"s eyes is also tracked: in real life our eyes focus on objects that are farther or nearer, but they cannot see everything clearly and distinctly at the same time . In order not to make brain rack because of constant clarity, Rift uses the technology of eyes pupils monitoring.

It is interesting that sensors can work as a usual web camera — this fact was discovered in mid-2017 and caused a wave of indignation in the VR community. It is mentioned nowhere in the instructions about such sensors’ capabilities, and Windows connects them as a usual third-party USB device. De facto you connect 2-3 additional webcams, although it"s no secret that many users cover front cameras on laptops because of a discomfort.

It is believed that this was done in order to hide the secret of the sensors functioning, and Facebook assures that the image from the camera is not transmitted and processed. However, there is a risk of hacking Rift sensors by intruders in order to obtain images.

Oculus Rift creates a gaming space with at least two sensors (in fact, they are usual cameras) which are located on both sides of the monitor creating a cone-shaped gaming space. The device has a system for monitoring the gaming space boundaries which is called Guardian. To create a space you need to draw its arbitrary boundaries with the help of controllers, and a cube will be formed automatically inside. It will be highlighted by thin lines during the game so that a gamer does not lose orientation in space.

The size of the gaming space is small: 1.5 x 1.5 m if you play with two cameras located on both sides of the monitor. When you purchase an additional third camera, you can expand your gaming area to 2.5 x 2.5 m. Unlike HTC devices, in Rift you cannot integrate real-world objects into VR.

Oculus Home is a standard shell for installing and running games and applications which is configured automatically when the device is connected to the PC. The application is very user-friendly and is similar to Steam.

During the recent year Steam is actively working to become the main platform for VR games for different types of devices. You can start games from there to Oculus if you enable the parameters Public Test Channel and Include Unknown Sources in Oculus Home settings.

Oculus Rift is sold in a big black box, and each component is fixed inside with Velcro and is located on a soft lining. There are not many base components, so the box can easily be used to transport the device.

Oculus Rift Headset is a virtual reality headset with built-in headphones and a cord for connecting to a computer. It combines two wires: HDMI and USB 3.0.

For a new gaming computer you will have to pay 800 USD. If only a video card is missing, you need to be ready for the cost of 220 USD, and upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows 7 will cost about 140 USD. Oculus warned users that Windows 7 and 8.1 supporting might be stopped soon.

What’s more, all the most important replacement parts for the standard Occulus Rift components are available on the official website in case of their damage and obsolescence. This cannot but rejoice, for example, PlayStation VR does not have so many replaceable parts.

Equipment installation for Oculus Rift is more difficult than for PS VR, but it"s easier than for HTC Vive. First of all, you will need to download the Oculus App from the website, create an account and follow the instructions on the screen. The process is relatively simple, and the installation experience can be studied in detail by video reviews.

Two camera-sensors are placed near the computer. The third one must be placed in the back top corner of the proposed gaming space. To do this, you need to use a ceiling mount or a high stand. Cameras create a cone-shaped virtual zone in front of you, so when they are placed in front of a gamer, a blind zone for the VR remains at the back part from a user. Some users use even four cameras for more accurate tracking. There is no need to buy more sensors, this can lead to malfunctions in Oculus software regardless of the PC level.

Users recommend buying an additional USB 3.0 controller and trying to connect the glasses to the port on the motherboard. What’s more, you need to get into the Windows device manager and in the power settings of the USB controller uncheck the item "Enable this device to be turned off to save power". If nothing helps, then the manufacturer recommends replacing the motherboard. And this is one more argument in favor of the fact that before buying Oculus Rift you should seriously evaluate the capabilities of your PC.

Problems with SteamVr. Problems with the software are most often related to connecting via SteamVR: for some games Beta Update is needed, and for others you need a stable program version. It is hoped that in the future compatibility problems will decrease as updates are made. Also some problems with the control and management in some games intended for HTC Vive were noticed — it"s all about the lack of buttons on the Oculus Touch controllers.

Finally, the common object of attention for VR devices is user health problems that can arise during games. Although Oculus users complain much less than those who played, for example, in PS VR, some action games can cause nausea and dizziness.

Users mention that there is almost no difference in the graphics between Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but Oculus tracking is slightly less perceptible than in its competitor. Among the advantages the convenient fastening of glasses and built-in headphones are also mentioned. When you play for a long time in the headset it can be hot because of a warm padding, so it is better to keep a headscarf or napkins near by and take regular breaks.

Buying Oculus Rift can make sense if there is a powerful gaming PC, but there is no desire to spend too much money on HTC devices. In this case, a user gets access to a wide database of games and enjoys unlimited tracking of hands and head in VR.

In the past few years, there have been some significant advances in consumer virtual reality (VR) devices. Devices such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Leap Motion™ Controller, and Microsoft Kinect® are bringing immersive VR experiences into the homes of consumers with much lower cost and space requirements than previous generations of VR hardware. These new devices are also lowering the barrier to entry for VR engineering applications. Past research has suggested that there are significant opportunities for using VR during design tasks to improve results and reduce development time. This work reviews the latest generation of VR hardware and reviews research studying VR in the design process. Additionally, this work extracts the major themes from the reviews and discusses how the latest technology and research may affect the engineering design process. We conclude that these new devices have the potential to significantly improve portions of the design process.

As discussed by Steuer, the term virtual reality traditionally referred to a hardware setup consisting of items such as a stereoscopic display, computers, headphones, speakers, and 3D input devices [7]. More recently, the term has been broadly used to describe any program that includes a 3D component, regardless of the hardware they utilize [8]. Given this wide variation, it is pertinent to clarify and scope the term virtual reality.

Steuer also proposes that the definition of VR should not be a black-and-white distinction, since such a binary definition does not allow for comparisons between VR systems [7]. Based on this idea, we consider a VR system in the light of the VR experience it provides. A very basic definition of a VR experience is the replacing of one or more physical senses with virtual senses. A simple example of this is people listening to music on noise-canceling headphones; they have replaced the sounds of the physical world with sounds from the virtual world. This VR experience can be rated on two orthogonal scales of immersivity and fidelity, see Fig. 1. Immersivity refers to how much of the physical world is replaced with the virtual world, while fidelity refers to how realistic the inputs are. Returning to the previous example, this scale would rate the headphones as low–medium immersivity since only the hearing sense is affected, but a high fidelity since the audio matches what we might expect to hear in the physical world.

Various types of hardware are used to provide an immersive, high-fidelity VR experience for users. Given the relative importance the sense of sight has in our interaction with the world, we consider a display system that presents images in such a way that the user perceives them to be 3D (as opposed to seeing a 2D projection of a 3D scene on a common TV or computer screen) in combination with a head tracking system to be the minimum set of requirements for a highly immersive VR experience [1]. This type of hardware was found in almost all VR applications we reviewed, for example, Refs. [1], [3], [6], and [13–22]. This requirement is noted in Fig. 2 as the core capabilities for a VR experience. Usually, some additional features are also included to enhance the experience [7]. These additional features may include motion-capture input, 3D controller input, haptic feedback, voice control input, olfactory displays, gustatory displays, facial tracking, 3D-audio output, and/or audio recording. Figure 2 lists these features as the peripheral capabilities. To understand how core and peripheral capabilities can be used together to create a more compelling experience, consider a VR experience intended to test the ease of a product"s assembly. A VR experience with only the core VR capabilities might involve watching an assembly simulation from various angles. However, if haptic feedback and 3D input devices are added to the experience, the experience could now be interactive and the user could attempt to assemble the product themselves in VR while feeling collisions and interferences. On the other hand, adding an olfactory display to produce virtual smells would likely do little to enhance this particular experience. Hence, these peripheral capabilities are optional to a highly immersive VR experience and may be included based on the goals and needs of the experience. Figure 2 lists these core and peripheral capabilities, respectively, in the inner and outer circles. Devices for providing these various core and peripheral capabilities will be discussed in Secs. 3.1–3.3.

CAVE systems typically consist of two or more large projector screens forming a pseudoroom. The participant also wears a special set of glasses that work with the system to track the participant"s head position and also to present separate images to each eye. On the other hand, HMDs are devices that are worn on the user"s head and typically use half a screen to present an image to each eye. Due to the close proximity of the screen to the eye, these HMDs also typically include some specialized optics to allow the user"s eye to better focus on the screen [10,25]. Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 will discuss each of these displays in more detail.

CAVE technology appears to have been first researched in the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois [26]. In its full implementation, the CAVE consists of a room where all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor are projector screens; a special set of glasses that sync with the projectors to provide stereoscopic images; a system to sense and report the location and gaze of the viewer; and a specialized computer to calculate and render the scenes and drive the projectors [4]. When first revealed, CAVE technology was positioned as superior in most aspects to other available stereoscopic displays [27]. Included in these claims were larger field-of-view (FOV), higher visual acuity, and better support for collaboration [27]. While many of these claims were true at the time, HMDs are approaching and rivaling the capabilities of CAVE