Review of Oculus Rift Development Kit 2

So for my birthday this year I bought myself the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2. So when I first got it I read the instructions on how to hook it up to my Mac Pro. I used a mini display port to HDMI to plug it into my video card. I installed the runtime and set up my profile.

So I am a developer so I wanted to write some simple programs for it just to play around with the concepts involved. So I downloaded the Oculus SDK and downloaded a example project to get started.

Programming wise it is really not that hard to get a app setup. Just copy the LibOVR framework to your project or link to it from the command line. I decided to use SDL2/GLEW/OpenGL as the libraries to use for the application. I am very familiar with SDL2 and OpenGL so it was much easier than I had expected. First you call ovr_Initialize then you just create the device by calling ovrHmd_Create and if it fails you create a debug device that you can use to test your programs. You also call ovrHmd_ConfigureTracking to setup the head movement detection. Then you create a OpenGL frame buffer and fill out some structures and call ovrHmd_ConfigureRendering.

Once you got all that sorted the drawing to the Rift is not hard at all. It involves calling ovrHmd_BeginFrame binding the frame buffer setting the Viewport and setting up the projection and then drawing with OpenGL. After you have setup your matrices and drawn with OpenGL you call ovrHmd_EndFrame. This is a simplified description but it should give you a general idea.

So the visuals on the Oculus look great. It feels comfortable to wear and the 3D effect works very well. I tried a few demos most notably the one from the Oculus SDK that is a first person walk around. When I look over the staircase the depth really shows and it is actually quite cool.

So I wrote a few demos for the Oculus Rift most notably a version of my software application Acid Cam. It uses the webcam to create a 3D hallucination effect. You basically are in this room and the stream from the webcam is passed to an effect and all the walls around you and the ceiling and floor start changing. You can look around in the room as the tracking camera keeps track of your heads position. You can change the effect by using the up and down arrow keys.

Over all I am very impressed with the Oculus Rift. It is a very fun device to program for and the sky seems to be the limit. The 3D effect is great and the head tracking with the camera works as expected. I like that there is a debug device you can use to test your code with so you do not have to keep putting on and taking off the Oculus Rift. I am very excited to see how the retail version will compare to the Development Kit 2. I read online today that the retail version will come with a Xbox One controller.

On a scale from one to ten I would give the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 an eight out of ten. It is not perfect and still is in development but the future looks very bright for this awesome device.

- Jared Bruni

Current Projects:

Acid Cam
WebSVN Oculus Projects