A Virtual Reality Future

Since a few weeks now, I work for a little French start-up which develops a technology to ease the 3D files consumption, no matter the device you use. For that purpose, we made our own 3D engine to have a complete control of the technology, so it’s our business to make it compatible with external devices like the Oculus Rift.

For people that stayed in a dark cave for too long, the Oculus Rift was originally a Kickstarter project started in September 2012 which had unprecedented success since Palmer Lucky, its creator, asked fo $250,000 to achieve his project. He received 10 times more, with $2,4 million!

The purpose of this project is to create a virtual reality headset, which means a headset that can immerse the user in a 3D virtual world. The headset is simply composed of a screen on which it will zoom through 2 lenses to mimic a field of view close to the one we have in the reality.

The virtual reality fantasy is not new, and some headsets like this have already been sold to the public before, I mainly think of the Nintendo Virtual Boy released in 1995, almost 20 years ago!

Unfortunately, the concept of virtual reality was way too complex for the technology at that time and none of these devices had been successful, unlike the Oculus Rift which offers a previously unrivaled experience.

C’est d’ailleurs grâce à ce dernier que la course vers la réalité virtuelle a été relancée et on sait déjà que Sony et Samsung travaillent sur leur propre casque de réalité virtuelle, respectivement le Morpheus et le Gear VR. Même Google a souhaité se prêter au jeu en proposant à n’importe qui de construire son casque de réalité virtuelle avec du carton !

Thanks to it, the race towards virtual reality has been revived and we already know that Sony and Samsung are working on their own virtual reality headsets, respectively called Morpheus and Gear VR. Even Google wanted to play the game by offering anyone to build his virtual reality headset with cardboard!