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Oculus Minimus

craigotron
Honored Guest
I had a thought that got me curious about the mission-critical pieces of the Oculus hardware. If you could reduce the product to it's essence, what would that be?

I started thinking about the Rift in terms of mobile devices. Oculus has mentioned that they see mobile as a possible target, but they've been vague about the specifics of that. Let's zip forward in time to whatever point mobile hardware meets minimal requirements for the Rift. Now, let's imagine that the headset is really just a fancy dock for your phone/tablet. You slot it into the front of the headset and it becomes the screen. The various sensors do the job of the sensors in the current dev kit.

My question is, what's missing from the picture, in terms of hardware? Assume things like keyboard/mouse/controller and other peripherals can all be accommodated via bluetooth or some flavor of wireless.

What is the most pared down Rift Oculus could make? What does that consist of?
9 REPLIES 9

jwilkins
Explorer
I really like the idea of slotting a tablet into an HMD except that tablets will have to become much lighter.
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JaredWyns
Honored Guest
Due to differences in Device size, pixel density, aspect ratio and numerous warp calculations required on these respects, It's likely possible, but very unlikely this would happen.

I'll be writing a very large post on my improvement suggestions in an animator's perspective in terms of tracking when I get my rift on Tuesday, but in short, there needs to be more tracking in specific locations for a slottable option to be possible in any form, and it'd have to be programmed for each device.

Unless the headset itself contains the hardware (people are not going to wear a full helmet in 2013 or anytime soon) it would be very difficult for this to take off.

Basically, you'd need all primary components to be separated from the mobile device, You could take a Motorola slot approach, or a Sony one where there are 'rift approved' devices, but still, it's very very unlikely, especially in terms of latency & screen quality. Refresh rate is still really a concern and the average mobile consumer (in terms of device disparity) is usually on a more low-end or free device. Mass-market wise it's just not practical given the state of existing hardware and budgets of the regular consumer.

jwilkins
Explorer
I was assuming you'd slot a specific "Oculus Tablet", not that you could just slot anything in. Obviously that isn't even slightly possible in real life. Also, the thread is about the minimum possible system, so obviously, we can dream up whatever we want and a mobile device that can handle VR and contains all the needed hardware that can be slotted into the device or removed is going to be possible at some point.

A huge problem is the moving goal posts. By the time mobile devices are strong enough to produce today's graphics everybody will think they are outdated. We already face this psychological problem with people insisting that the new consoles are not good enough.
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Gerald
Expert Protege
have a look at this: http://www.durovis.com/index.html
check out my Mobile VR Jam 2015 title Guns N' Dragons

jwilkins
Explorer
"Gerald" wrote:
have a look at this: http://www.durovis.com/index.html


Nice! I shouldn't have said anything was impossible so as not to attract the wrath of geekmaster...

What I meant was I didn't think something like that was best for performance or commercial success. What I was thinking was that for the best tracking and graphics and screen quality it would be best to have a custom made tablet rather than just expecting any smartphone to work. But maybe I'm not considering the possibility that all tablets/phones might end up with VR quality accelerometers and ultra high resolution screens in a few years and we could get away with strapping them to our faces at that time.
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geekmaster
Protege
"jwilkins" wrote:
Nice! I shouldn't have said anything was impossible so as not to attract the wrath of geekmaster...

Hah! Funny! IMHO impossibility is an artificial limitation, and the boundary between possible and impossible can be expanded greatly with research, experimentation, and exploration. Impossibility is a slippery and flexible thing that can often be pushed aside by those who dare to tread "where no man has gone before". IMHO, or course.
😉
And more concern for shedding light on a subject (hopefully helpful), than "wrath".



EDIT: In most cases, "impractical" has a longer freshness date than "impossible". 😉

Gateshot
Explorer
Even before the dive, Palmer and some other college students were working on this http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/fov2go/
I assume that if he thought that was a viable VR solution, Palmer and company would have kept going with the FOV2GO. But seeing as he went on to make the rift, I don't think they want to "pare it down" anymore than the current prototypes.

craigotron
Honored Guest
Great finds, Gerald and Xemakon! It seems imminently doable, but maybe not very practical at this stage. It was wise for Oculus to keep the first iterations of the hardware self-contained, rather than worry about supporting all the hardware/software variants of the mobile sphere. That said, as the company scales and matures, it would be nice to see a mobile/modular Rift emerge.

Question: what's happening in the Oculus breakout box that sits between the Rift and the PC? Has this component been externalized simply to shave weight from the headset? Is the box handling some aspect of the stereoscopic conversion that makes it a necessary component? When will the box disappear?

It does sound like it won't be too long before VR headsets will be just another computing accessory, like the Pebble watch or fitness trackers etc.

jwilkins
Explorer
I do wonder if a custom video decoder chip and whatever else is in the box couldn't be put onto a single chip and the connections broken out into dongles so that the box becomes just big enough to support the 5 buttons. I'm sure they could afford to integrate it more for the commercial version. Right now I'm sure it is a bunch of separate off the shelf components soldered onto a board.
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