There are great possibilities for the experience provided by the Oculus Rift (OR). But, the talk about using it with augmented reality tasks may be premature. Watch the funny video that has now started showing up everywhere.
This does look like a DK1 lash-up. I would expect the OR’s ability to improve with time and probably has in the newer DK2. But, somewhere there is a physical limit to how fast information can be moved, processed, and displayed.
In computers the CPU speed limit is about 8.429 GHz, the current Guinness World Record held by AMD. For consumers the limit is around 3 GHz. Parallel processing via multiple processors increases power demand and consumption to get things done faster. Battery technology is currently deficient for what we need in mobile devices. Thus the larger format phones somewhat from the need to accommodate larger batteries.
So, this is probably going to be a matter of figuring out how to do things smarter. The video shows the state of things now, which while exciting is not yet ready for prime time in AR applications. But, may be this year…
“The video shows the state of things now…”
The lag which is shown in the video was computed on purpose. A Raspberry Pi has recoded the video stream and then sent it with a delay between 0.3 and 3.0 seconds to the Rift. The actual latency of the Rift is between 30 to 51 ms, which is barely perceptible for a human.
I know they are pushing it for spin.
But, I will disagree on perceptible. Many in the VR field are talking about single digit ms lag problems and how it affects motion sickness. So, there is conscious awareness of problems and subconscious perceptions. The body is perceiving the lag.
Just watched the video and almost cried laughing, but I did notice the lag state (3 seconds) was deliberately extreme . At the start it says the normal delay is one third of a second, which while bad for FPS games, and table tennis, lol, isn’t too bad for things like SL. At least unless you’re into the combat RP stuff.
I agree.
I think VR will first be for explorer games and SL VW and then advance to combat and FPS games.