Greetings all,
I had the opportunity due to a kind soul to try out the Rift last night. I have mine on order and I am pleased to say that I received an email yesterday as well from Oculus VR saying that my order (70xxx) was going to move to processing!
The first demo was Tuscany and I tried at first with the B Cup but moved to the A Cup quickly. I actually have pretty bad vision that is neither far sided nor short sighted and my glasses only help a little bit. I decided that the A cup was the best experience as I see about the same with glasses or without. Anyway--I definitely liked the A cup even though they were pretty close to my eyes.
I moved around in Tuscany and it felt natural. I was using keyboard and touch pad on a Macbook Pro running OS X. I was most amazed when I encountered the blue butterfly it truly felt like it was there in front of me. I ran around the space for a while and was ready to try another demo as I had a limited amount of time and wanted to get the broadest of experiences in the time remaining.
Next I tried the chicken game.. and that was fun and also felt pretty natural (well as natural as anything can be when you are playing the role of a chicken!). I played this for a while and was thrilled.
I had pretty low expectations on the quality of the rift based on all of the discussion I have read for months about the low resolution display and the screen door effect(tm). Truthfully it was a lot better than I expected! In a way I am glad that I was worried about this aspect because in worrying about it I was pleasantly surprised unlike probably the most of you who experienced it for the first time. I was okay with the display.
My new friend suggested I power up my Mac and try some of the demos I had downloaded. I had already repartitioned my killer 15" retina Macbook Pro (i7 w/16GB RAM and 512GB SSD) and installed Windows 7. Windows 7 fired up nearly instantly and I plugged in the rift and started the demo I had been looking forward to the most--Blue Marble.
I started the demo and set the screen to 1280 x 720 and was hoping to be amazed. What I saw instead was something that was very blurry all of a sudden. I am not clear what the issue was - I tried increasing the resolution that I was sending to the rift and it helped a little but truthfully it was just super blurry. Windows was set to mirror the display--the frame rate was great so that wasn't the issue it just looked super muddy. Having already had my experience with Tuscany on the other Mac under OS X I knew what it should look like. It just didn't. I have no idea why.
I left Blue Marble and then tried Oceans Rift and it was fun--still blurry but good enough to keep going. I swam around and played in the water for a while. Now I have run this demo without the rift and I know what happens when you get into the deeper end still when it happened to me I nearly jumped out of my chair. I couldn't believe the impact it had on me.
My last demo was virtual cinema and for whatever reason that demo looked really good. I didn't see any blurry issues at all. Truly the blurry thing is a mystery to me. I think Virtual Cinema and Tuscany was my favorites, though I did also play one demo where I was falling and trying to hit targets and that was great (that was on the other Macbook Pro and was not blurry).
Anyway--after the Oceans experience and the fun I had with the VR Cinema I had to quit. Truth be told the experience with the Oceans demo had given me a slight headache (maybe it wasn't that but the fact I didn't re-adjust the straps and maybe the rift was a bit too tight on my head). The other thing was I was extremely hungry--like crazy hungry. So we went ahead and shut down and talked for a bit.
You see as I have posted here before--I am starting my own VR meet up in Colorado. It looks like I now have a meeting place! If you are interested in joining here is the site:
http://www.meetup.com/Boulder-VIrtual-Reality-Meetup/My first impressions were great. The time passed quickly and the quality of the video and the rift itself was good enough for me (blurry issue aside as I assume that is a Windows / video thing). I had watched many videos of people using the rift jumping out of their skin when things happened and I just thought that was a bit of BS. Now I don't think so. When I was attacked it was much more personal. When I walked int he virtual cinema and looked at the screen playing the Star Trek trailer i just couldn't believe the scale. The 3D I saw in the tuscany demo was natural and not like I have seen it on 3D televisions. In short we are in for an exciting ride!
Here is my bottom line--I can't wait for my rift to show up. I am amazed and can't wait to get my VR legs!
Any idea on the blur issue guys/gals?
