Ideas for Oculus Rift use outdoors

"vin" wrote:
This particular idea has several major challenges. The first and foremost is camera system latency. How fast can you get images processed from the cameras and displayed to the user. The second is field/depth of view. The last thing you want is to be attempting to operate any sort of vehicle that appears to be looking through two backwards telescopes that lag by three seconds.

Most of the lag from webcams is caused by the USB 2.0 interface, although cheap webcams can also switch to a slower framerate (more lag) in high-resolution or low-light conditions. If the digital cameras can be integrated with a faster interface, it would be possible to have no more than a single scanline of lag (rolling shutter mode). Combined with a rolling shutter LCD, the video capture and display would have much less lag than the 1KHz head tracker sampling rate. So camera latency is determined by the design, not the available technology limits.

Depth of field requires fast eye-tracking and high-speed dynamically variable optics, which are still rather expensive (used primarily for military applications). So you need both inward and outward-facing cameras.

And THREE SECONDS lag? Even a three dollar Chinese web cam can do MUCH better than that! And why backwards-looking telescopes, when toilet paper tubes would be much more managable (and less expensive) for your proposed experiment? Personally, I have my Rift adjusted for a MUCH wider FoV, even better than a ski mask (due to the lens distortion increasing the FoV). Any less FoV in a Rift is a personal choice.