What's causing eye strain in this vid?

It looks to me like the video is not exactly rendered using the Rift parameters (though I can't tell right now as my Rift is at home). Firstly, the original FoV seems a little bit low, and then the barrel warp distortion that is applied does not seem to be using the same K coefficients as the Rift's. Also, there's no chromatic aberration removal. Beyond that, the author should check to make sure that both of his cameras are oriented forwards (both facing parallel ahead, the cameras should not be oriented towards a common point).

30 cm inter-axial separation there is your problem. you should have 6.5cm. the bigger innteraxial separation the bigger depth of view--but it's unnatural and object that are too close are unbarable for human brain. To shorten the distanse you can watch objects in comfort you have to lower your separation distance

I'm with everyone else, this just isn't distorted or recorded properly for the Rift. I just tried watching it on my DK2 and got really bad double vision.

"panmaster" wrote:
30 cm inter-axial separation there is your problem.

This. I've tested a lot of things in stereoscopic rendering, and super-wide separation only works when you want a perceivable stereo effect on something that's very far away. People who try to do things like this to "enhance the 3D effect" are simply advertising that they don't have the slightest idea how 3D actually works. And that's just normal "flat" 3D rendering for photos and video, not even talking about the Rift.

Another big mistake I can see in the very first frame of that video is that the color balance of the two cameras doesn't match. That's amateur hour right there, zero excuse. This is a guy wanting to do something "cool" without having the remotest idea of how to actually do it. You can't just put two cameras side-by-side and expect 3D to just "happen".