Our Oculus Rift VR headset arrives

On Friday the 10th May, Sentient Computing received our very own Oculus Rift kit. This was met with much enthusiasm, excitement and more than one exclamation of “WHOA!”

A bit of back story.

In August of 2012, OculusVR launched a crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the creation of the Oculus Rift, a Virtual Reality headset aiming to be both effective with its immersion, and affordable to the general public. Within a few hours, the Rift blew past its goal of $250,000, to reach an incredible $2.4 million at the close of the campaign 30 days later, nine times their initial target.

Skip forward 8 months, and the developer versions of the Rift begin shipping; a plethora of videos, pictures and demos appeared over the following weeks as eager devs got their hands on their very own Rift – and now Sentient has joined them.

The experience with the Rift is amazing; so amazing in fact, that it’s very difficult to understand what it’s like without experiencing it for yourself. We’ve all seen graphical fidelity improving over the years – greater numbers of polygons higher definition textures – but for all the beauty to be found in the digital landscape, we continue to watch it through a porthole, the video screen providing just a small window into those worlds, and a barrier to fully experiencing them. Enter the Rift, and that barrier is shattered; look straight ahead, and our view isn’t from a porthole, instead we are there – turn around and we don’t see the familiar walls and furnishings of the office, but instead an incredible vista from the world we have entered. Left, right, up, down, it doesn’t matter where you look – now we are truly experiencing the world as it was meant to be.

So where to from here? Well, that’s rather easy actually;

Training. Inductions. Simulation.

The immersive potential for training is huge – instead of simply having a trainee or contractor watch a video, answer a few questions and promptly forget the important bits, you could have them experience exactly what happens and how to handle a situation – cheaply, safely and in a way they will remember. Induct someone through a digital version of the very plant they will be working at, have them navigate their way to a muster point in a simulated emergency, or assist a coworker with a task. There are many other possibilities that a safe, immersive environment can provide.

We’ve already began working on integrating the Rift into a number of our demonstration projects, and look forward to giving our customers a chance to experience the Rift for themselves. Keep an eye out for upcoming events, as the Rift could be a feature presentation!