One of my favorite moments from the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo was getting to try out CCP Games EVE: Valkyrie (then titled “EVE VR”) on the 720p version of the Oculus Rift VR headset. Despite it being somewhat pixelated, the tracking was smooth and the immersion it offered was light years beyond previous attempts at a virtual reality headset. Earlier today, I got the chance to demo the latest prototype of the Oculus Rift, codenamed: “Crystal Cove”. What was so special about this iteration? First thing was it features a 1080p AMOLED screen with much smaller pixels than before – even on the previous 1080p version. It also features some new technology tweaks to smooth out how it presents motion to your eyes, making things much more natural and less blurry. Finally, the Crystal Cove features positional tracking of head as it moves through space – not just from a fixed position. These new degrees of freedom allow the user to lean forward and backwards, side to side, and even to look behind them (almost)!
The first demo we got to look at was one created by the talented folks at EPIC Games and featured us across the table from a giant demon lord as he looked to be playing some type of tower defense game with small orcs, demons, and other assorted creatures. Looking down on the board, it was neat to see just how realistic this “fake” game appeared before my eyes. I could lean over and turn my head almost parallel to the table and see the small creatures move directly towards my face. The effect was incredible.
The second demo we got to try was a new build of CCP Games EVE: Valkyrie! The new headset really upped the feeling of sitting inside the cockpit of a space fighter and my favorite moment was learning forward towards the fighter’s holographic instrument panels. You could actually read the text on them and it took everything I had not to reach my hand out to push the “buttons”.
Overall, the Crystal Cove iteration of the Oculus Rift takes everything we loved about the previous version and injects it with virtual reality steroids. The Oculus reps on-hand assured us that even this was not the level of quality they hoped to achieve by its retail version – whenever that might be released (they are very tight-lipped on dates). As far as release dates go – rumors abound that we will see a retail Oculus by the end of the year. Please keep in mind that this is, again, all rumor mill stuff. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the guys over at Cloud Imperium games will have Oculus Rift support built into Star Citizen!
