Gadgetory

you don't think they're gonna notice my supercool band-aid right hey guys this is Austin this is the oculus rift and huge shout out to oculus for sponsoring this video is mostly thanks to the rift the VR even exists today but what is virtual reality people have been experimenting with VR experiences dating all the way back to the 50s where things were let's just say a little bit more creative than they are today now you can fast-forward to the 90s where Nintendo launched the Virtual Boy this wonderful headset which spectacularly crashed and burns but how does VR actually work as core virtual reality is all about giving you the most immersive experience possible so think the holodeck from Star Trek and not the TV on your wall now that TV is a good example of a VR just isn't sure with both of them you can watch video and play games but with the TV you're eliminated by the size of that panel whereas with virtual reality no matter where you look as long as you have that headset on you were completely immersed the virtual boy achieved this with some pretty basic tech uses a pair of single color displays and two mirrors to flip back and forth incredibly fast give you a decent 3d effect but being limited by 1995 technology meant that this was not a true VR experience back in 2011 the first prototype for the rift was completed duct tape and all now what made this special was that for the first time a head mounted display was paired with not only a 90 degree field of view that was wide enough to look convincing but also motion tracking to allow you to move your head in real life and translate it into the game you know like in real life when I move my head left and right the world stays with me I remember back in 2013 where I first got to try not only an early prototype of the rift but also of a Valkyrie I put the headset on and I was transported into a cockpit of a spaceship and a giant dogfight in the middle of space it was seriously one of the most impressive tech moments I have ever seen right afterwards I walked out of the demo room pulled my phone out and pre-ordered my own oculus dev kit don't get me wrong though at this point the tech was still very early one of the biggest issues with the first dev kit was its fairly low resolution of 1280 by 800 it was enough to get the idea across the actual level of detail was really low at this point fast forward to 2017 and beyond as a whole has seen some huge improvements so take the rift for example now it has a pair of super high resolution pen 80 by 1200 displays one per eye they have a faster 90 Hertz refresh rate pair with being based on OLED which 11 a lot of the earlier issues with smoothness and persistence which is important when the goal is total immersion even a little stutter in a game can cause you to be totally ripped out of the experience there is a lot more tech inside though Laurette headset is filled with infrared tracking dots which pair with the sensor that it comes with is able to track your head in full 3d space with a lot more detail than the original dev kits well there are some headsets like PlayStation VR which take advantage of a console or things like gear VR which actually use a mobile device such as your smartphone to be able to power them with the oculus rift you are using a PC to power it there are several advantages here most notably you can have a ton of graphics horsepower to push now like the graphics but also to keep that performance stable all this tech is great but the controllers are also important now the oculus does support these standard Xbox one gamepad which is fine for some games but what really stands out are the oculus touch controllers you can think of these as an evolution of the original Wii Remote sure they do have motion tracking what's more impressive is the fact that these will fully positionally track your hands which will actually allow you to put your hands inside the game this is important a lot of games such as the climb will use hand tracking in combination with the buttons to simulate actually climbing a cliff it's a neat effect and can do a lot to add to the immersion and immersion really is the key to making sure that VR feels right so you might be okay with a little glitch or stutter when you're playing on a PC monitor when it comes to VR you're essentially tricking your brain into thinking that the game world is real there's essentially no margin for error one of my favourite VR games is job simulator so this is a great example of how the touch controllers works you can see that my hands are completely one-to-one in the game but reach over and pick up this cartridge drop it in it feels very realistic when you pair the rift with the touch controllers it really does give you an immersive experience so I look around this office building it feels like I'm actually here I can walk around I can move my head I can pick things up and it just feels right well it lets you do some cool stuff like say copy some resumes just drop it on a copy machine hit that I can start brewing some coffee start hitting buttons on my keyboard into the phone I mean this stuff is really cool it really does feel so natural so simple I don't have to think about it I can just literally reach over hit something done next we have super hot VR have to stand very still because as I move time will actually start playing and have to okay here here we go and oh no no get away that one and grab it got it boom dude this is so much fun it is easy to forget that just over eight years ago consumer headsets like The rifts weren't even a thing and this really only went on sale a year ago so there is a long way to go but if you have not experienced virtual reality you absolutely owe it to yourself to give it a try so what do you guys think about VR let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one