Oculus half dome project
In facebook f8 conference we came across something called varifocal display which sounds weird but it is not. It is specs part of oculus new VR which they are calling oculus half dome. Which means we can experience VR more effectively without any eye strain because usually distance between eye and lens used to be less than 2m. But in this the distance is more
Oculus VR is a company which develops VR product. The product is the application of various different technologies combined with the concepts of modularity, flexibility and good user experience. This article presents a experience for the user in the virtual space, by using an Oculus half dome headset for head tracking and 3D viewing. Objective assessment focuses on eye tracking, body tracking, finger tracking, facial expression tracking and varifocal display.
Introduction
“Half Dome” will focus on allowing users to see more of their environment at once inside the headset, while also making some sophisticated changes that will allow them to shift focus between objects.The prototype will bring the field-of-view from 100 degrees to 140 degrees, allowing users to see more of the visual world in their periphery. What’s even more impressive is that Facebook has achieved this without creating an even bulkier design — the prototype maintains the size of the existing Rift headset thanks to their “continued advances in lenses.” It seems that there are some fundamental display issues the company is aiming to tackle before it shifts the focus to making the headset smaller. In terms of depth-of-field, existing headsets don’t give users multiple focal lengths. What that means is that if someone gives you something to read or another object you need to see clearly, they stick the focus around two meters from the user. This was one of the major issues that Magic Leap was claiming they had solved with their display technology, though it’s unclear what of their research is actually making it into the end product. Oculus says they have been able to achieve variable focus in one of their newest prototypes by physically moving the screens inside the headset to accommodate the different depths of field. It works similarly to the auto-focus function in cameras, but won’t cause any noise or vibrations for users, the company says. Oculus has talked about a lot of advances toward displays like this on the research side, but this shows how close to the real-deal they are with a headset that integrates the technology without increasing the bulk of current Oculus hardware. While Oculus has devoted much of its public attention on prototypes to standalone headsets, “Half Dome” showcases some big changes that will move the dial on the highest-end VR headset displays.
Review and discussion
The first and most amazing technology is Varifocal, a mechanical system that actually moves the screens within the headset depending on what you’re looking at, mimicking your eyes’ ability to focus on nearby objects. Oculus’ Maria Fernandez Guajardo noted that until now, the VR industry has had to place objects at a minimum two-meter distance to prevent users from having eye-focusing issues; Varifocal solves this, enabling you to read a note or examine an object in your hands. The feature uses an optimized mechanical design with no noticeable noise or vibrations. The varifocal focal display means that the screens will actually move inside the HMD, and, there new position + the lenses, to see the object on the screen you will actually have to focus optically at a new position. The act of your eye refocusing as the object moves closer will in theory increase the sense the object really is flying at you, more so than even now in VR
Alongside the new hardware, Oculus also showed off software realism improvements for everything from hands to avatar face and body rendering, as well as tricks to reproduce real world 3D environments in VR. Since the first thing most players see in VR is their hands, Oculus is using a new system of “deep marker labeling” to pinpoint joint points on hands, track them accurately using 2D cameras, then represent them convincingly in 3D using AI solutions.Oculus also showed a more sophisticated second system that uses a burst of stereoscopic images to create a photorealistic panorama in 3D — one that can be enjoyed in VR. This system uses image pairs to gather depth information, blending them together to create super-detailed 3D locations. Guajardo suggested that users’ “most evocative places” are their homes, parents’ homes, and favorite vacation spots, all of which can be recreated with this software without the need for professional equipment or artistic talent.
Conclusion
The Half-Dome prototype that Facebook first teased at its F8 conference last month. This new device has a massive 140 degree field of view with varifocal optics and more. We don’t know when/if we’ll see the Half-Dome released as a true successor to the Oculus Rift but hopefully we’ll have more to talk about at this year’s Oculus Connect developer conference
The headset actually moves the displays to match the positioning of your eyeballs, and could help with the vergence-accommodation conflict plaguing VR headsets today. In virtually all consumer VR headsets, the lenses make your eyes focus far away. When objects appear near, there’s a conflict in where the lenses of the headset are focusing your eyes and where they naturally wants to focus. This can cause eyestrain and limits how long some people want to wear a headset. No dates were given for the release of the new software innovations or the Half-Dome successor to the Rift.
