Heptic Virtual Tablet concept (as a SDK API ? )
The idea requires to first add Augmented Reality to the Oculus Rift, which should really be done because it adds a whole new dimension to Virtual Reality (literally) on top of allowing to track your arms and hands.
From there it becomes cheap and easy to include heptic feedback and increase presence to a Virtual Tablet by linking it's location to a physical plastic board, that can be picked up and dropped back on the desk at will (to free back your hands), by identifying that plastic board with AR stickers.
The heptic virtual tablet can then be used as a natural interface for both the Game Menu (saving, loading, quitting...), and as a Game controller (a camera, a game map with GPS, a video phone, a torchlight...).
It can also be used as a wireless joystick (a steering wheel for a car, a joystick for a space ship, a remote control box for a Couch Knight...), as a graphic tablet, as a weapon to bash virtual people with (at your own risk) and more.
Linked to a PC Android Emulator (or to a future Android Oculus Headset), it could be used to emulate a working android Virtual Tablet able to run actual android applications (possibly from inside any virtual game your are playing, rather then as a self contained demo), including playing the mobile game, watching a film or listening to the background music of your choice, from inside any virtual game environment you are playing.
Which could unlock things such as using your virtual tablet to browse the web, or to receive your real life phone call from a friend directly from inside your virtual world, as your space ship takes it's time reaching it's next planet, and being interrupted by a space pirate attack (with that space pirate potentially being played by the friend who just called you on your real life smartphone, to kindly inform you through your in-game virtual tablet that he's about to kick your ass into a pod ride).
Ideally that virtual android tablet would be created and included as a SDK API and the plastic board would be a part of the CV1 hardware bundle, so they could easily be included in any previous or future Oculus project just by the developer making a quick call to that SDK API, all for less then half the hardware cost of a pair of actual wireless hand controllers (meaning roughly the price of two webcams).
From there it becomes cheap and easy to include heptic feedback and increase presence to a Virtual Tablet by linking it's location to a physical plastic board, that can be picked up and dropped back on the desk at will (to free back your hands), by identifying that plastic board with AR stickers.
The heptic virtual tablet can then be used as a natural interface for both the Game Menu (saving, loading, quitting...), and as a Game controller (a camera, a game map with GPS, a video phone, a torchlight...).
It can also be used as a wireless joystick (a steering wheel for a car, a joystick for a space ship, a remote control box for a Couch Knight...), as a graphic tablet, as a weapon to bash virtual people with (at your own risk) and more.
Linked to a PC Android Emulator (or to a future Android Oculus Headset), it could be used to emulate a working android Virtual Tablet able to run actual android applications (possibly from inside any virtual game your are playing, rather then as a self contained demo), including playing the mobile game, watching a film or listening to the background music of your choice, from inside any virtual game environment you are playing.
Which could unlock things such as using your virtual tablet to browse the web, or to receive your real life phone call from a friend directly from inside your virtual world, as your space ship takes it's time reaching it's next planet, and being interrupted by a space pirate attack (with that space pirate potentially being played by the friend who just called you on your real life smartphone, to kindly inform you through your in-game virtual tablet that he's about to kick your ass into a pod ride).
Ideally that virtual android tablet would be created and included as a SDK API and the plastic board would be a part of the CV1 hardware bundle, so they could easily be included in any previous or future Oculus project just by the developer making a quick call to that SDK API, all for less then half the hardware cost of a pair of actual wireless hand controllers (meaning roughly the price of two webcams).