Specifications

Meet the Oculus Rift

This chapter covers

• Why you should support the Rift

• How the Rift is being used today

• The Rift hardware and how it works

• Setting up your hardware

• Dealing with motion sickness

• Development paths: C, Java, Python, or Unity

If you've picked up this book, you probably already know that the Rift is a virtual reality

head-mounted display (VR HMD). You may have one of your own already or maybe you’ve

tried one out and were, like us, blown away by the intense immersion. Even if you've only read

about the Rift in passing, if you watch demo videos and reaction shots, you can often see the

look of incredulous delight on peoples' faces the first time they use the Rift.

With the increased field of view (more than double what you get with a typical monitor!)

and head tracking to change the viewpoint (the wearer just turns their head to see what they

want, no need to use a mouse or joystick to orient), the Rift represents an opportunity for

people to view your work in a way they never could before.

In this book, we will show you how to build immersive environments that run on the Rift.

While the first steps are rendering to the device and tracking the user's head movements, VR

also presents some unique usability challenges, not the least of which is that it can cause

motion sickness for some users.

Before we get started, let's talk a bit about why you should support the Rift.

other simple mistakes. These will be cleaned up during production of the book by copyeditors and proofreaders.

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