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Oculus VR Founder on Recently Unveiled Oculus Rift S: I Can't Use it, and Neither Can You. (palmerluckey.com)
Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, shares his thoughts on the recently unveiled Oculus Rift S: Rift S is very cool! It takes concepts that have been around for years and puts them into a fully functional product for the first time. Sure, sure, I see people complaining about how Rift S is worse than CV1 concerning audio quality, display characteristics, and ergonomics -- some of the tradeoffs are real, some are imaginary, and people should really wait for it to come out before passing final judgement. [...] My IPD (interpupillary distance, the distance between my eyes) is a hair under 70mm and slightly skewed to the right side of my face. One of my best friends has an IPD of 59mm. I don't know what your IPD is, but both of us were perfectly served by the IPD adjustment mechanism on Rift CV1, a mechanism that was an important part of our goal to be compatible with male and female users from 5th to 95th percentile. Anyone within the supported range (about 58mm to 72mm) got a perfect optical experience -- field curvature on the focal plane was matched, geometric distortion was properly corrected, world scale was at the right size, and pupil swim was more or less even.
Sharp imagery from edge to edge of your field of view was the norm. The small handful of people with an IPD outside that range would not get a perfect experience, but at least they would be in the right ballpark. IPD skews in different directions by gender, race, and age, but we managed to cover almost everyone, and we were proud of that. This is not the case with Rift S. Like Oculus Go, it uses two lenses that are set about 64mm apart, perfect for a perfectly average person. Everyone who fits Cinderella's shoe will get a perfect experience, anyone close will deal with minor eyestrain problems that impact their perception of VR at a mostly subconscious level. Everyone else is screwed, including me. Imagery is hard to fuse, details are blurry, distortion is wrong, mismatched pupil swim screws up VOR, and everything is at the wrong scale. "Software IPD adjustment" can solve that last bit, but not much else -- it adjusts a single variable that happens to be related to IPD, but is not comparable in any way to an actual IPD adjustment mechanism. This is the main reason I cannot use my Oculus Go, even after heavy modification on other fronts.
Sharp imagery from edge to edge of your field of view was the norm. The small handful of people with an IPD outside that range would not get a perfect experience, but at least they would be in the right ballpark. IPD skews in different directions by gender, race, and age, but we managed to cover almost everyone, and we were proud of that. This is not the case with Rift S. Like Oculus Go, it uses two lenses that are set about 64mm apart, perfect for a perfectly average person. Everyone who fits Cinderella's shoe will get a perfect experience, anyone close will deal with minor eyestrain problems that impact their perception of VR at a mostly subconscious level. Everyone else is screwed, including me. Imagery is hard to fuse, details are blurry, distortion is wrong, mismatched pupil swim screws up VOR, and everything is at the wrong scale. "Software IPD adjustment" can solve that last bit, but not much else -- it adjusts a single variable that happens to be related to IPD, but is not comparable in any way to an actual IPD adjustment mechanism. This is the main reason I cannot use my Oculus Go, even after heavy modification on other fronts.
VR headsets in use by now?
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better start thinking about what seasoning goes best with shorts
I didnâ(TM)t read it, and neither did you.
"They see people almost being denied an oculus rift s because they once had a beer while in school, it's unfair!" (sobbing sounds)
"Oculus VR Founder on Recently Unveiled Oculus Rift S: I Can't Use it, and Neither Can You."
This "headline" means that somebody (supposedly the article author) is telling the Oculus VR founder that "I Can't Use it, and Neither Can You". That's hardly what was intended. Learn basic English.
(And this is ignoring the whole Confusing Issue of Typing Texts Like This...)
I would really like to know the reasoning behind that decision. It's not like a lens-adjustment mechanism is going to be break the bank, though I suppose it might cut into profits a bit to maintain that psychologically magical "less than $400" price tag.
I mean, you take a product that works perfectly for 90% of the population, and then make the next otherwise-upgraded version and make it only work properly for 1% of the population? While everybody else has to deal with degraded visual quality. That's pure stupidity, and Palmer speaking out would seem to suggest that it was a corporate decision that he strongly disagrees with as well.
Reminds me of ergonomic chairs on planes, buses, etc. Without the ability to adjust the settings you end up with a chair that's quite comfortable for the few percent of the population that happens to be almost average-sized, while being a torture device for anyone sized substantially differently. What was wrong with a boring, flat chair? It's not perfect for anybody, but it's a huge improvement over improperly-sized ergonomics for almost everyone.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Any good pair of binoculars will have three adjustments - you can bend the hinge to adjust IPD, you can adjust focus, plus a diopter on one eyepiece (to adjust for your eyes focusing at different distances). But binoculars don't rest on your nose. If you broke your nose as a kid the goggles may not line up correctly. Since they expect you to wear your own glasses we could drop the focus and diopter, but that still leaves at least 3 adjustments.
Certainly the non-adjustable IPD is giving some people headaches and is viewed as a step back. This was likely a necessary move on Oculus' part to achieve some level of fulfillment with the Oculus Go panel used in the Rift S.
The decision to partner with Lenovo may in part have something to do with it's right to use a PSVR Halo-strap
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/30/18043112/sony-playstation-vr-lenovo-mirage-solo-daydream-vr-headset-license-patent-deal
But the bigger question of why a Rift S, is likely answered by the up-coming inside-out Oculus Quest and achieving feature parity with the tracking system. CV-1 Rift is now 3 years old and Oculus want's studios to embrace Quest with the option of also reaching the Rift S market. By launching the Rift S this year alongside the Quest studios are encouraged to create content that reaches both.
>IPD skews in different directions by gender, race, and age
What does he mean is skews by gender and race? Everyone knows these are constructs made up by white christian males to oppress the world!
I've been reading about VR for years, and this is the first time I've ever read anything that cut to the chase. Awesome! Now I can die happy, in my own bed, surrounded by ordinary walls, covered with drab wallpaper.
Oculus has always been twofaced about specs. Palmer and crew went on and on about how important minspec was so people wouldn't get "sick" and end up hating VR.
Yet the very first product Oculus did was 3DOF VR in form of a plastic box that clipped on to cell phones where any head translation results in instant nausea.
Now after THREE YEARS they are releasing an inferior product lacking the very features they previously touted as necessary.
HP Reverb is bare minimum of what Rift CV2 should have been and best of all it's not tied to FACEBOOK.
I'm still waiting for Nvidia or someone to release a serious next gen VR HMD. What is needed is at least 32k display with eye tracking and custom foveated display driver to make using it feasible. Bonus points for light field / dynamic focus depth.
It's pretty clear Oculus is out of the VR hardware business which is fine with me.
They crowd funded a product which was expected to have permanent Linux support but dropped Linux soon after. Then they sold out to Facebook who have already started spamming it.
I think I'll be avoiding occulus anyway Tbh.
Some of the dumbest people I know have advanced degrees. I once had a Masters in math, yet could not compute a basic percentage. I've know people with degrees in stuff like Lit, whove not read most of the Classics (this is, admittedly, a problem with grads with more recent degrees).
Drop the college degree snobbery.
Abraham Lincoln lacked the degrees many today worship, yet he was a far more literate and well-read man than most Americans today. Lincoln had no speech writers and personally wrote and delivered some of the most elegant and famous addresses ever delivered.
Many degrees are a waste of the sheepskin they're written on, and are little more than certifications that a student has properly regurgitated the drivel that an earlier student, who stayed on the campus until he became a professor, spewed.
I do not have a Masters in math, I once has a co-worker with a Masters in math who couldn't compute percents. My fingers were not keeping up with my brain.
Palmer Luckey's days dabbling with VR are over and he has made his money and should stop wasting his time. He should focus on politics and other things he is probably better at.
I own an HTC Vive, and while I really like the VR experience I don't exactly have space to dedicate a room to VR. I can still do standing/sitting games but I can't do roomscale at all. The Rift S actually was an exciting prospect to me because it purportedly had no need for external sensors.. but my IPD is definitely not in that golden "average" spectrum, so I guess I'll be sitting the Rift S out and hoping HTC comes out with something.
The furore about NASA not having enough medium-size space suits reflects on the same problem - many devices are only designed to fit a certain, small, part of the population.
Not that it matters, but my IPD is 72 mm - as I've known from having set up hundreds of binocular microscopes over the years.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"