Oculus Connect is a relatively new conference (only in its second year!) for the virtual reality industry and took place recently in Hollywood.
VR is still very new – although it’s a long way from the first steps taken in the 1990s – and so Oculus’s chief scientist, Michael Abrash, took a very different approach than normal in his keynote speech. Abrash focused on the things that VR can’t do yet – mostly to do with the senses. For instance, smell, taste and realistic hearing are beyond today’s technology.
The biggest challenge for VR today, though, is the sense of touch. Haptic technology is just starting to create basic touch sensations, but it’s very easy to kill the illusion by putting your hand through a virtual object.
Oculus announced partnerships with Microsoft – to bring Minecraft to the Oculus VR platform – and with Netflix and Hulu. They also announced a $100 Gear VR headset with Samsung (MDM Product Roundup – Vol 22 No 39), and a new programme called Oculus Ready. This will be a logo certifying that a PC is good enough to be used to power VR experiences. Dell, Asus and Alienware have already signed up.
Watch a stream of the conference at http://tinyurl.com/pgmhf28. Abrash’s keynote begins at around 1:35.
