Oculus Rift Dev Kit Observations and Tips


Oculus Rift Dev Kit Observations and Tips

Oculus Rift Dev Kit Observations and Tips submitted by plex.

I received my dev kit several days ago. I haven't had a ton of time to play with it, but here are some random observations from what I've done with it so far:
  • It really does have a ton of 'wow' factor. The field of view is amazing, and the head tracking makes looking around an environment feel much more natural. The 3D effect is very good, and a friend who generally has issues with 3D in things like movies didn't seem to have an adverse reaction to the Rift.
  • UI is going to need to be redesigned for it to work on Oculus - text needs to be in the middle of the screen and it needs to be BIG. I played through the TF2 tutorials, and the on screen instructions were not readable.
  • Head tracking is great, but if you move your head quickly there's a bit of a blur (it's possible that this was related to software rather than hardware). The responsiveness is very good though - it never felt laggy, it just felt like I needed to stop turning my head before things would get back into focus.
  • Motion sickness your first time using it is nearly guaranteed. The second time I used it I was fine, so you do get used to it.
  • You can use the headset over glasses, but it's slightly awkward. While the consumer version will hopefully be slightly better in this regard, contact lenses are going to be a better experience. Using glasses with it reduces the field of view.
  • The lenses it comes with (3 different sets, one for 20/20, one for mild nearsighted, one for very nearsighted) can correct for nearsightedness, but don't do anything to help with astigmatism.
  • I played TF2 offline to get a feel for the Rift in a game setting, and it worked extremely well. They split aim and head direction, and it felt very intuitive after a short time. Being able to focus visually in one direction while aiming elsewhere was very nice - definitely felt like I was able to be more aware of my environment than I usually am in a FPS - I think that environmental awareness may be one of the bigger things that the Rift can bring to first person games. Separating vision direction from aim seems simple but it does a lot. I haven't really played much TF2 previously, so I can't compare the experience with vanilla TF2 though.
  • I didn't notice any FPS issues. The Rift is just acting as a monitor, so FPS issues are still likely going to be the fault of your CPU/GPU rather than the headset.