Gamers are checking out the latest “Rift” virtual reality headgear made by Oculus VR at GDC2014 in San Francisco.

Article and photos by Marcus Siu

Over ten years ago, a friend of mine was hired to work on a major big budget Hollywood film and was told not to let anyone know about any details of the movie that he was working on. If he did, he would lose his job. The movie turned out to be Kathryn Bigelow’s Science fiction thriller, “Strange Days”, written by James Cameron. The story involved futuristic virtual-reality headgear that taps into the user’s cerebral cortex touching every nerve. The mini discs clones and records the user’s experience, so that any viewer can experience what was recorded directly from his brain. It was definitely an idea that was way ahead of its time and probably way too incomprehensible for most people to relate to. Though, critically acclaimed, it was a huge commercial flop since it was way over the heads of the mainstream public.

Enter Oculus, VR, a company that makes virtual-reality glasses for PC gaming. They exhibited their latest version of their “Rift” goggles at the Games Developer’s Conference (GDC) at Moscone Center in San Francisco last week. Lines nearly wrapped around the large demo area as highly anticipated geeks waited patiently in line to try out the DK2 (Developer’s Kit 2). You would have thought this company had been around for a long time with the fan base it had already generated, but amazingly, the company is less than two years old.

Being a little skeptical, I decided to experience their demo. After being seated in my chair and assisted with my goggles and headset, I was immediately shut off from the outside world and transported into a new one.  Sitting in a virtual-reality space craft, I had the control panel directly in front of me as I was drifting through space. It was surreal. I looked toward the ceiling, below to the floor, and even turned to the back to see the back panels of the space craft. I was part of the reality. Through sight and sound, I was not on earth.

After the immersive experience, the three minute demo was over. My score of zero flashed across the screen. I probably should have taken control of the space craft and shot at things coming at me with the remote that they gave me. I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was in another world and in another reality.  I was shell-shocked, like a deer in front of headlights.

Still, the Oculus “Rift” is a “work-in-progress”. There is some room for improvement on the visual side. The resolution is not quite “retina display” quality. The internal 900 X 1080 LED display is about 1” from the users eyes, so you can see the pixels. In time, as LED resolution technology advances for micro displays, they will be able to overcome its limitations.

A few sections away at GDC14, Sony PlayStation 4 was demonstrating their “Project Morpheus” at their booth. Their virtual reality headgear looks more like an “Apple” wearable device, that LeVar Burton of Star Trek would prefer due to the gleaming blue neon light and sleek design. It has a more visually appealing look than the bulky Oculus “Rift”.

With Virtual-Reality becoming the wave of the future for gaming, I could imagine it could be used for Skyping, or even viewing movies. I can imagine husbands traveling away on business in another state, sitting across the table chatting with their wife at home at the dinner table, absolutely forgetting that they are in a virtual reality environment.

As David Byrne would sing, “You may ask yourself this isn’t my beautiful home. You may ask yourself this isn’t my beautiful wife. How did I get here?”

Perhaps, in the future, we will be able to put on an Ocular “Rift” to clone the experience what the characters in “Strange Days” experienced. Or even better, we will be able to clone the movie experience of another person to understand why they hated it and you loved it. “Strange Days” indeed…

NOTE: At the time of publishing this article, Facebook had just acquired Oculus for $2 Billion.