Oculus Rift at CES 2014

with the Crystal Cove Prototype

Oculus Rift’s CTO John Carmack showcased a newer, improved version of the Oculus VR headset at CES 2014 codenamed “Crystal Cove”. The chunky googles  house a pair of lenses trained over a 1080p screen. The new and improved version is embedded with sensors to grasp its position to an uncanny degree.

Once it’s on the head, the Oculus starts to give positional info to the computer. This in turn furnishes the 1080p screen with two parallax-shifted images making it a 3D view to the user. Then it’s the work of the brain which then interprets the 3D view to fill the field of view. Once inside the 3D view, move your head even slightly and you’re peeking around the cockpit of your spacecraft. It is perfectly designed for a fully-fledged gaming experience.

Oculus has revealed that motion blur-induced nausea problem of the previous headset has been eradicated. Other upgrades were inclusion of high-resolution, lower latency and positional motion tracking system to ensure that it is clear where your head is allowing you to examine virtual objects much closer. It still has developments needed to be made especially the slight delay in the translation of real-life movement to screen, but this is still a very big improvement on its predecessor.

Officials have confirmed that a screen quality hike before the consumer release of Oculus Rift is a certainty. Final hardware specifications and the price of the gaming headhave not yet been released. Though the support for gaming is relatively limited, Oculus Rift could definitely shape the future of the gaming world.

Oculus Rift at CES 2014