Oculus Rift and VR Overview

Zach Wendt

The Oculus Rift is a new VR headset that has been making a huge waves in the gaming press/community since it’s $2.5M Kickstarter last summer. The Rift v1 / developer kit hardware started shipping at E3 in March, and has been ramping up since. I’ve spent 6 weeks with a Rift, and 4 years tracking this project.

The talk is aimed at developers of all disciplines, My goal is to cut through the hype/dreams and give a true understanding of where we are, and we’re likely going next. I’ll also be giving a fast paced high level education on general VR. Don’t worry, lots of pictures and video included.

• What makes the Rift special vs other VR gear
• Rift v1 shortcomings, and likely changes for v2 consumer hardware
• High level overview of related human senses: vision, vestibular, kinesthesia
• Adapting to VR if you’re prone to simulator sickness (like me)
• Designing for VR vs adapting an existing game, and early best practices
• Clever ideas / videos from early adopters, demos that really “work” in the Rift
• A couple of my wacky prototypes
• What’s next for the VR enthusiast? How far off is mass-market VR?

FAR

Thomas Edmonson and co.

10 students. 3 months. 1 game. Can they do it? Hear about the struggles to build a game engine from scratch, the head scratching of 10 programmers faced with making art, and be amazed at the result. FAR is an RPG/TBS hybrid that was the final projects for “Design and Implementation of Game Engines” at the U of M.

Agenda:

• 6:00 Pre-show: E3 vids. Pizza and Soda thanks to the Nerdery!
• 6:30 Quick highlights from eyeo - various
• 6:45 Thomas Edmonson
• 7:15 Zach Wendt