The head of AR/VR design at Facebook tweeted something interesting last week that has caught the attention of many inside and out of the virtual reality industry. He said that the Oculus Quest is just the end of a chapter in VR, and that “whats next is where things really get interesting.” You can check out the real tweet below.
If you are familiar with Twitter and how it works, a like can be pretty significant. Anything you like can be seen by anyone who follows you, and often shows up on others timelines that you liked a certain post. Liking a post in twitter is pretty significant. With that being said, if you look closely on the post from Jon Lax, Andrew Bosworth who is the VP of AR/VR at Facebook liked the post, as well as Maria Guajardo, who is the Head of Enterprise AR/VR. This is pretty big news coming out of Oculus right now, and it is definitely something to take note of.
Facebook and Oculus consider the Rift, Rift S, Go, and Quest to be all first generation virtual reality headsets. If you thought the Quest was a step into the future and was opening up the next generation of VR, like many of us did, we were all wrong. Facebook believes that the Quest was just bringing common day VR to the standalone platform. They did that with great ease and understanding of what the users want.
If you check out Facebook’s job openings, they are working toward “our next-generation consumer product platforms that will provide breakthrough simulated reality user experiences.”
Below we will do a quick rundown of what Oculus may be planning to do, and how they are planning to do it. There is a lot that could mean “whats next” from Lax’s tweet, so we are going to dive right in.
Varifocal
If you have multiple VR headsets you know that no matter which one you put on, you are going to be dealing with a fixed focus. This means that each one of your eyes is given a separate image and that the focus part of the image is a set distance at all times. This can cause some pretty bad eye strain and it leads to you not being as immersed in virtual reality as possible. The brain and eyes know that what you are seeing is not natural.
At the Facebook F8 event in May of 2018, the company showed off a potential headset that could hit the market. This headset is a varifocal one that also incorporates eye tracking as well. This is something something that Oculus has been working on for quite some time now. The Half Dome moves the display panels mechanically which then solves the issues that we mentioned above.
The software the company is looking to use in future headsets is called DeepFocus. It is meant to know where and what you are looking at, and blur objects around it. Like in real life, if you look at something up close, everything around it will be blurry. For Oculus, it is all about being inside of an immersive headset. This is a very important advancement in VR headsets, as this will reduce eye strain and discomfort, and at the same the consumers will be more immersed in their virtual reality.
Eye Tracking And What You Can Do With It
Almost all VR companies are either using eye tracking in their headsets right now, or they have already been granted patents for the technology. This technology will enable many things inside of virtual reality, and the most important will be foveated rendering.
If you take a look around the room right now without turning your head, you will notice that only things right in front of you seem to be in high resolution. There could be incredible payoffs if VR companies are able to make this fact of human vision also real inside of the virtual reality headsets. If the headset is able to track your eyes, the display won’t have to be high resolution everywhere you aren’t looking. This saves pixels, battery life, and power inside the headsets.
Eye tracking will also enable the developers to make a software where the IPD is set automatically when the headset is put on. This will make for an even more immersive experience, as you won’t have to worry about the distance between your eyes. Adjusting this manually, whether it be mechanically or in the software, can often be a pain when sharing a headset.
The field of view will also be much more accurate now that the headset can see where your eyes are. All of this is very helpful to the future of virtual reality, and will help when needing a higher resolution and a proper tracking of the users eyes.
Finger Tracking
The Hololens and Hololens 2 have been pioneers in the finger tracking world, but they wont be the only ones with this ability for long. Controllers are the only way to interact and make a visual difference inside of your virtual world, but that may be changing very soon.
Facebook and Oculus are exploring ways to incorporating finger tracking to their next headsets. This of course will never replace the controllers in VR (for now), but it may play an impact in the social world of of VR, especially for those not interested in gaming as much as interacting with others. This is a very important advancement, and could have a big future in controlling your own virtual worlds.
