One of the more technical points that were talked through today during the keynote at Oculus Connect 3 was how the Oculus Rift has been optimised for virtual reality (VR) use, especially with the consumer introduction of the Oculus Touch controllers coming up.
Brendan Iribe covered this pretty techy point that we all certainly benefit from, even if you don’t understand all of the words. The main piece of news is that not only has Oculus solved how to solve the juttering problem while looking around, but also while walking and moving around, making a much smoother and realistic experience.
Oculus already solved this problem when sitting still and looking around with what they call Asynchronous Timewarp, which resulted in 50 times reduction in glitches with its consistent low latency.
Now Oculus has taken it one step further with Asynchronous Spacewarp where it solves the same problem but when you’re using positional tracking – i.e. moving around. What happens is it takes two frames, and essentially creates a fake one in between to cover up what would then be a jitter or a glitch, predicting what should be there so that there is a smoother delivery. It takes the frames per second (FPS) down to 45, so that it is operating at half of what it needs, so then the synthetic image in every other frame will make it out to be 90 FPS.
Iribe also went through the tweaks that were made to the application programming interface (API) that makes the Oculus Rift as effective as possible. It is down to three: Input API, Haptics API, and Guardian API. Input is how you interact with the application via either remote or gamepads, and so when writing to this API anyone can switch between the Touch controller and a gamepad.
Haptics makes sure there is a consistent and realistic vibration reaction to everything you do in VR, such as feeling the gun kick when you shoot, or a ball hit against the raquet in tennis.
Guardian controls the customisability of the experience, making sure that objects aren’t awkwardly out of reach when you’re playing within a limited zone, or that you don’t bump into things in the outside world by overreaching.
For more on the latest from Oculus Connect 3, as well as all the news, updates, and features in the world of VR, check back with VRFocus.