Virtual reality uses head-mounted displays to immerse users in simulated environments by generating artificial 3D images and sounds. The Oculus Rift helped popularize virtual reality for gaming and was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Though early models suffered from issues like motion blur and the screen-door effect, later versions improved tracking and display quality. Facebook acquired Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion, helping to launch virtual reality into the mainstream but also generating controversy. While still in development, virtual reality is poised to transform entertainment and other industries through applications like virtual tourism and education.

2. What is Virtual Reality?
• Virtual reality can be defined as an artificial
environment generated by a computer and
presented to the user in such a way that the
user suspends belief and accepts it as a real
environment.
• It is most effectively achieved with the use of
a head-mounted display.

3. HEAD-MOUNTED DISPLAY
• A head-mounted display or helmet mounted
display, both abbreviated HMD, is a display
device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet,
that has a small display optic in front of one
(monocular HMD) or each eye (binocular HMD).
A pair of lenses is used in order to help the eyes
focus on the screen and cover a wide field of
view.

4. VIRTUAL REALITY
AND
AUGMENTED REALITY
• It is important to differentiate augmented reality (AR) from virtual reality (VR).
• Virtual reality cancels and replaces our normal vision with computer generated
images.
• Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a real-world environment
whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated data.
This means, for instance, that we can add an imaginary dartboard to the ground in
the street while still seeing the real world normally.

5. PRESENCE
• Michael Abrash (game programmer and Oculus Chief Scientist)
defines presence as the sense of being someplace else while in
virtual reality; many people feel as if they’ve been teleported.
• It shouldn’t be confused with immersion, which merely means that
you are surrounded by the image of the virtual world. Presence
means that you feel like you are in the virtual world. It is an
incredibly powerful sensation and unique to virtual reality.
• The whole point of VR that enables presence is that it engages the
perceptual system well enough to deliver what it feels like a real
experience. It happens at a level below consciousness, and requires
suspension of belief, in order to remind yourself that the simulation
isn’t real.
• It can only be understood by experiencing it

9. • Palmer Luckey (born 19 September 1992) founded OculusVR in
2012 along with Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell, amongst
others, in order to develop a head-mounted display (HMD) after
he realised that nothing in the market at the time was
compelling enough for him to be totally immersed in virtual
worlds. He developed a prototype he called the “Rift”, based on
the rift that the HMD creates between the real and virtual
worlds.
• John Carmack, a game programmer known for titles like
Wolfenstein 3D or Doom, which started the 3D First Person
Shooter genre, asked Palmer if he could buy one of his
prototypes when he found out about his activities in an internet
forum. As Palmer admires Carmack, he just sent it to him for
free.
• At E3 (the biggest trade fair for computer games) 2012, John
Carmack showcased Palmer’s prototype getting the attention of
thousands of people after he mentioned a Kickstarter campaign
would be launched to get the product he was showing, to the
consumer market.
Palmer Luckey, founder of OculusVR
John Carmack, CTO at OculusVR
BIRTH OF OCULUS VR

10. • Kickstarter is an American crowdfunding platform, which
consists on the collection of finance from backers all
around the world to fund an initiative via the Internet.
• Oculus announced that the "development kit" version of
the Oculus Rift would be given as a reward to backers who
pledged $300 or more on Kickstarter, with an expected
shipping date set of December 2012 (though they did not
actually ship until March 2013).
• Oculus secured its intended amount of US $250,000,and in
less than 36 hours, the campaign had surpassed $1 million
in funding, eventually ending with $2,437,429 coming from
9,522 backers.
OCULUS RIFT KICKSTARTER

11. OCULUS RIFT DK1
• The Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (DK1) is the first
version that was available for anyone to purchase for
$300
• It was targeted at developers, in order to create
content that can be used in the future consumer
version (CV1) of the Rift
• It had 2 major problems: motion blur and screen-
door effect.
• Specifications
Resolution 640 x 800 per eye (LCD)
Refresh Rate 60 Hz
Persistence full
Viewing Optics 90° Field of View
Sensors Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Magnetometer
Update Rate 1000 Hz
Weight 0.379 Kg

12. MOTION BLUR
• Motion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still
image or a sequence of images such as a movie or animation. It results
when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single
frame, either due to rapid movement or long exposure
• Obviously this doesn’t happen with our normal vision, so replacing our
normal perception with a virtual one that suffers from motion blur, is likely
to induce nausea

13. SCREEN-DOOR EFFECT
• The screen-door effect or fixed-pattern noise (FPN) is a visual artifact of
the projection technology used in digital projectors, where the
fine lines separating the projector's pixels become visible in the
projected image.
• Because the screen is so close to your eyes, you can see the spaces
between individual pixels, so it almost looks like you're viewing the world
through a grid or a screen door. This effect should be negated with the
improved screen that Oculus VR plans for the consumer version.

14. OCULUS RIFT DK2
• The second version of the Rift Development Kit was
first shown as a prototype at CES 2014 with code
name “Crystal Cove”.
• Its new features include 6 degrees of freedom
positional tracking, and a low persistence display
• On March 19, 2014 Oculus VR announced the Oculus
Rift DK2 was available for pre-order at a price of $350,
and again it was intended for developers. The
expected ship date was July 2014.
Resolution 960 x 1080 per eye (OLED)
Refresh Rate 75 Hz, 72 Hz, 60 Hz
Persistence 2 ms, 3 ms, full
Viewing Optics 100° Field of View
Sensors Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Magnetometer
Update Rate 1000 Hz
Near Infrared CMOS Sensor (60Hz)
Weight 0.440 Kg
Crystal Cove Prototype
Oculus Rift DK2

15. LOW PERSISTENCE
• Low persistence is a new technology that was included in the second Development Kit (DK2)
as a fix for DK1’s motion blur that was inducing nausea in a large amount of users. It is
possible thanks to an ultra-fast Samsung’s OLED display, which shows the image for 0.002
seconds (2ms) and then switches to black until the next image is shown.
• The following example shows how a full persistence display works over nearly 100ms (0.1s)
when running at 75Hz. Colors represent different images in a sequence.
The following example shows how a low persistence display works over 100ms (0.1s) when
running at 75Hz. The black sections indicate that the screen is off, waiting to receive the next
image. This way we just show the image when it’s right, and then turn the display off until the
next image to avoid perceiving wrong data.

16. LOW PERSISTENCE

17. POSITIONAL TRACKING
• With the second version of the development kit, OculusVR
implemented positional tracking.
• This adds 3 more degrees of freedom equivalent to translation
movements, in addition to the already existing 3 rotational
movements in DK1, making a total of 6 degrees of freedom.
3 DOF, Oculus Rift DK1 6 DOF, Oculus Rift DK2

18. FACEBOOK ACQUISITION
• On March 25, 2014, Facebook announced that it had agreed to buy
Oculus VR for $2.000.000.000
• This included $400 million in cash, $1.6 billion in Facebook stock, and
an additional $300 million subject to Oculus VR's meeting certain
financial targets in a transaction expected to close in the second
quarter of 2014
• Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, stated after the purchase that
"Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and
change the way we work, play and communicate.
• Brendan Iribe, CEO at OculusVR, was also very excited about this
agreement: “Facebook shares our vision for connecting a billion
people through virtual reality with the power of shared presence.”
• This move created a lot of controversy on internet forums, specially
amongst people that had been following the project from the
beginning.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO
Brendan Iribe, OculusVR’s CEO

19. OCULUS RIFT CV1
• The Oculus Rift CV1 (Consumer Version 1), is the code name for the first
commercial version of the Rift dedicated to the general public, expected to ship
sometime in 2015
• OculusVR has refused to give any estimates on when it will be launched, but CEO
Brendan Iribe stated that they would be dissapointed if they haven’t shipped
before the end of next year.
• Not much is known about the final specifications of the device, but the confirmed
ones include: higher resolution, lower latency, higher framerate, lower weight,
eliminated screen-door effect, higher FOV and improved ergonomics.
• This is, according to Iribe, the first Oculus HMD that will be able to deliver
presence in a constant basis, as opposed to DK2 that is only able to showglimpses
of it.
• Rumors say, that Mark Zuckerberg decided to purchase OculusVR for $2 Billion
after trying their internal CV1 prototype.

20. PROJECT MORPHEUS
• Project Morpheus is the codename for an upcoming
virtual reality headset produced by Sony Computer
Entertainment.
• It was announced on March 18, 2014 at GDC 2014, a
day before Oculus announced their second
development kit. It is designed to fully function
with Sony Playstation 4.
• It is currently a prototype and there is no release date
for the final version.
• It is expected that the quality of the virtual reality
experiences given by Morpheus will be lower than
Oculus Rift’s due to PS4 hardware limitations when
compared to desktop computers.

21. THE DAWN OF VIRTUAL REALITY
• Virtual reality opens up an unlimited amount of possibilities for
entertainment and education. Some of this applications are, but not
limited to:
-Virtual tourism: Visit places like if you were actually on them
-Virtual tickets for concerts/sports: You will be able to buy tickets to see your
favourite band, or watch your football team like if you were standing in between
the crowd
-Virtual home cinemas: You can simulate you are sitting inside a virtual cinema,
with a 400’ screen in front of you to watch any media just by putting on goggles in
your home.
- Educational experiences: Imagine studying the Solar System while travelling
around it in a spaceship, being able to sense the scale of the planets in front of
you, or seeing how the human body works from the inside.

22. THE FUTURE OF VIRTUAL REALITY
• Virtual reality isn’t even really born yet, but still it has a very bright future
ahead. The technology is still on its infancy, and it is predictable that
HMD’s will be reduced to the size of sunglasses at some point.
• When virtual reality and augmented reality merge into an all-in-one device
with high enough resolution, TV’s and flat screens as we know them today
will tend to disappear.
• We are able to reproduce two senses so far, sight and hearing. More
research is being done to implement something as important as touch, as
well as motion capture devices to enable the ability to move through the
virtual environment in a natural way without the use of a classic controller.
• It is expected that a lot more resources will be thrown into these systems
once virtual reality reaches a wide audience.

23. THE FUTURE OF VIRTUAL REALITY
Virtuix Omni Sixense STEM
ControlVR Gloves
Cyberith Virtualizer PrioVR Motion Tracking Suit

24. TEST TIME!

25. REFERENCES
• Wikipedia
• OculusVR
• Tomshardware
• http://giphy.com/