On Monday and Tuesday half of CDOT was at OCE Discovery, Canada’s leading innovation-to-commercialization conference. Highlights included a 3D printer that printed using chocolate and the Oculus Rift. While there were many exhibits created by talented and hardworking individuals, the Oculus Rift, ironically an already existing product, stood out the most. I say ironically because the 3D chocolate printer was fully built and designed by two Waterloo students, while the guys demoing the Rift paid $300 to have a dev kit shipped to their house. So sure, the Rift isn’t exactly an example of Canada’s burgeoning innovation, but it is a glimpse into the future of immersion – and damn does it look good. For the unacquainted, the Oculus Rift is a high field of view, low-latency, consumer-priced virtual reality head-mounted display.
Yeah you look like a total nerd wearing these, but once you put them on you start to realize just how awesome it is to be a nerd these days. Your body almost instantly forgets where it is. The simulation that was demoed for me was that of a roller coaster, and if the exhibitor hadn’t offered me a seat I surely would have fallen over. From the moment I put the Rift on my body was tricked into thinking it was in the seat of a roller coaster and not in a chair surrounded by eager attendees waiting to try it on. The optics on the device caused the image I was seeing to almost completely wrap around my field of vision in stereoscopic 3D. As I moved my head to look around, the view inside the simulation shifted accordingly in a virtually 1:1 mapping. Looking down the tracks at the peak of the ride made my body instinctively brace for the drop that would never come. At each bank of the ride I felt my body trying to compensate for what would have been a sharp turn. Looking down to find that my legs were not recreated in the simulation created a spooky sense of disconnect from reality. By the end of the simulation my face was breaking out in sweat and my eyes were aching, but I was convinced that this is the future of virtual reality immersion. Dev kits are on sale now for $300 and will ship in August. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to August.