The Oculus Rift Made Me Believe I Could Fly | Hacker News Reader

The Oculus Rift Made Me Believe I Could Fly

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48 pointsLiveTheDream19 comments

> The consumer version of the Rift should be out in about a year.

Yeah, and will I be able to buy one and use it without Facebook keeping a permanent record of everything I do with it (tied to my real name of course)? Will it refuse to work unless it's online? I was really looking forward to the Oculus, but man ... if there is an alternative that doesn't have FB integration, I think I'll buy that instead.

Try castAR as an alternative.

Sadly, the license of the library used to talk to the Oculus Rift (libOVR) is also under very restrictive terms - you can't use it with competing systems, can't distribute it in part, and lose the license if your users have health or safety issues with your product.

With the source code available, it's hard to make a clean-room reverse engineered version of the hardware communication layer and shaders.

I haven't actually seen the source code, so maybe me and someone with a DK2 could do it by sniffing USB packets.

I wonder, what do you guys think virtual reality do to the tourism industry ?

Some people say this is "missing the point of traveling" but for certain experiences it's an amazing idea. Going to a quiet museum, exploring a cathedral, or attending an intimate live show could be a lot cheaper and accessible if you synched with a surrogate wearing high-quality cameras and microphones. You can still go in person for the real deal, but the remote version would be at least as good as most chill-out tv shows.

And it would be the only way to attend a Rei Toei concert. Except she will be called Hatsune Miku.

It can promote it and help to diferentiate a proposal, make you wish to be there wherever instead of with a flyer (leaflet).

VR won't replace going there. But, it's a huge improvement over not going there. In practice, saying "Most people do not go to most places." is a bit of an understatement. Therefore, VR can be a huge improvement for most people.

Completely agree. My grandma is afraid of driving & flying but she loves to watch travel TV shows. I think a VR headset with travel content would be great for people like her and would really improve her quality of life.

This is pretty neat. What other potential, non-gimmicky solutions could be built with VR this way? What about 10 years from now?

Also, who remembers the movie: FireFox, with Clint Eastwood? :)

"You must think in Russian... You must think in Russian. Do you think you can do that, Mr. Gant?"

Haha, Yes! Thanks. That post make me smile; well done Madam/Sir.

Correction:

Virtual reality goggles and the Birdly apparatus made them think they could fly.

The copious references to Oculus make me think the Facebook PR team have swung into action, to try to bolster waning interest in Oculus after the disastrous sellout to Facebook.

I'm eagerly awaiting an Oculus alternative, having canceled the DK2 plans. I don't really want to be tying my code into the horrendous Facebook codebase and agenda.

Video: http://vimeo.com/91069214

Has anyone SCUBA dived with an Oculus Rift yet?

Geez I would love that so much.

Will probably be awesome too. However, actually going scuba diving, for real, is much easier than going on a flight like that. Closest thing is probably hang-gliding, which is much more dangerous than scuba diving.

I can't go scuba diving at all, so I would especially love to see it. To me it has a different kind of thrill/interest factor than flying or hang-gliding anyway.

Birds are for wimps. Make it do a Night Fury.

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