Thursday, December 15, 2016

Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch Hands On Experience


Yesterday I got the complete Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch hands on demo by my longtime friend Roger F.  Roger is a "kids don't try this at home" level of software developer and we have known each other going back to the late 1970s.  He always has the latest and greatest toys, so when he mentioned he just got in a new Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch I could not resist the offer to come over and try them out.

What a difference two years makes!  The last time I was using a Oculus Rift was in September of 2014 at IMTS.  Back then it fell in the category of "this is interesting".  Roger took me through a large number of the demo environments and it was impressive.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy the Oculus Touch was to use.  This allows the user to touch and grab things in the virtual reality.  This made the experience very interactive.

I will give you one sort of funny example.  In one of the demos I was on the top of the skyscraper.  I walked to the edge, but hesitated stepping over the edge - even though I knew I was on firm ground :-)

The question I always ask is, "will this go the way of quadrophonic 8-tracks?"   There is a lot more work to do, but certainly for gaming, training and education this could be a game-changer.