Exploring the Virtual Reality Threshold with the Oculus Rift

Rebecca Little
Software Engineering: Graphics and Game Development

School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering

Barrett, the Honors College
Arizona State University Polytechnic
Spring 2015

Table of Contents
Introduction

Defining Virtual Reality.

A Brief History of Virtual Reality.....

1
The Threshold .......

12

Oculus Rift.

18

Case Study.

22

References..

25

Introduction
The year is 1995. You finish playing your Super Nintendo and switch to watch television.
Suddenly, you see a new commercial: its the Virtual Boy, a 3D game for a 3D world, and it
looks incredible. Who cares if it costs $180; TRON is your favorite movie and you will not be
satisfied until you experience virtual reality. You beg your mom for one until she relents, and the

2
day finally arrives when you get to try it out. You boot it up with the included Marios Tennis, put
your face up to the eyepiece, and are greeted with a monochromatic red and black display. You
can indeed notice the illusion of depth the Virtual Boy produces, but all peripheral vision is cut
off, and the display doesnt change when you move your head. Your mom makes you use the
built-in option to pause the game every 15 minutes to avoid damaging your eyes, but you cant
play very long anyways without feeling nauseous and getting a headache.

Figure 1: Marios Tennis on Virtual Boy [1] and Super Tennis on Super Nintendo [2]
You cant help but be disappointed, especially when you turn on Super Tennis on your $200
Super Nintendo - the Virtual Boy is barely cheaper, but just cannot compete. It will end up
becoming one of Nintendos few commercial failures.

4
What is missing from this virtual reality experience is called immersion. Without it, the
incredibly expensive hardware needed to generate stereoscopic depth, parallax, and interactive 3dimensional graphics is wasted because the user will continue to interact with the system as if it
is 2-dimensional. There is an invisible threshold which must be crossed in order to fully obtain a
virtual reality experience, and Nintendos Virtual Boy simply couldnt cross it. It wasnt alone,
however; despite the history of a huge amount of interest from both the scientific community and
the entertainment industry, general public interest in virtual reality died in the mid-1990s. The
chasm between what was promised and what was delivered was too great, and virtual reality was
essentially shelved as a science fiction gimmick that couldnt be realized. That is, until virtual
reality enthusiast Palmer Luckey created the Oculus Rift, formed OculusVR, and subsequently
garnered billions in funding for his head-mounted display. It is clear that the threshold that
separates the virtual reality attempts of the past from true virtual reality has been crossed.
This paper will explore what makes good virtual reality, that is, what constitutes the
virtual reality threshold. It will explain what this has to do with the temporary death of virtual
reality, and argue that that threshold has now been crossed and true virtual reality is now
possible, as evidenced by the current wave of virtual reality catalyzed by the Oculus Rift. The
Rift will be used as a case study for examining specific aspects of the virtual reality threshold.
Defining Virtual Reality
Popular media consistently portrays virtual reality as almost comically futuristic, and the
uninitiated are unsurprisingly led to think of virtual reality as such. They view virtual reality as
what they think it can do, and what they think it can do is almost always wrong. Take for
example TRON: Legacy (2010), the sequel to the aforementioned TRON (1982), wherein Sam

5
Flynn, the son of a long missing software engineer, is sucked into a virtual reality called The
Grid and must stop a malevolent computer program from invading reality.

Figure 2: The Grid in Tron: Legacy [3]

The concept of being physically removed from a human body and being transferred to exist
solely as information in a computer or in another body is a common one; see The Lawnmower
Man (1992) and sequel, The Matrix (1999) and sequels, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), and Avatar
(2009), to name a few movies. There are many more, in addition to television shows, books,
manga, anime, and other storytelling mediums. Although it is hard to imagine that it will ever be
possible to transfer ones consciousness, this is the most common representation of virtual reality
in popular media. It is therefore not very surprising that the general public is disappointed by
modern technology and its incarnations of virtual reality.
Nonprofessionals are not alone in misdefining virtual reality; even experts can be tempted
to define it by its applications or by its various physical manifestations. It is not useful, however,

6
to define virtual reality by its applications, as 1) technology is always improving and thus
changing the scope of possible applications, 2) new uses and applications are always being
conceived due to the unexplored nature of virtual reality, and 3) popular media has and always
will misrepresent virtual reality applications for entertainment purposes. Neither would it be
helpful to describe virtual reality through the peripherals used to make it possible because,
despite the image of HMDs (head mounted displays) and data gloves which inevitably come to
mind, there is a huge range of devices used for both input and output purposes and, again,
technology improvements will consistently change the hardware used for virtual reality.
Although there are many definitions in literature of what virtual reality actually is, most wellaccepted definitions are relatively similar to that of Grigore Burdea and Philippe Coiffet, authors
of the most widely used virtual reality textbook, Virtual Reality Technology. According to them,
[v]irtual reality is a high-end user-computer interface that involves real-time simulation and
interactions through multiple sensorial channels [4]. This definition is adequate for both the lay
person and the professional and seems to bear the test of time and thus technology
improvements.
A Brief History of Virtual Reality
The concept of virtual reality is not a new one. Stanley Weinbaum published the short
story Pygmalions Spectacles in a science fiction magazine entitled Wonder Stories in 1935; in it,
Weinbaum described a device that displays sight and sound, like a movie, but with taste, smell,
and touch added. [Y]ou are in the story, you speak to the shadows, and the shadows reply, and
instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it [5]. This is most likely
the very first story to reference the concept of virtual reality, and the description of ... a device
vaguely reminiscent of a gas mask [with]... goggles and a rubber mouthpiece sounds

7
remarkably like todays HMDs [5]. Nearly 30 years later, a cinematographer named Morton
Heilig was issued a patent for an invention called the Sensorama Simulator, a virtual reality
video arcade featuring three-dimensional video feedback, stereo sound, aromas, wind effects
using fans, and a seat that vibrated [4].

Figure 3: Morton Heiligs Sensorama [6]

One of the five short films produced was a motorcycle ride through New York wherein the rider
could feel the wind and potholes in the road and could even smell food when passing a store [4].
Heilig continued to work on improving his three-dimensional experience, eventually envisioning
a simulation mask containing three-dimensional slides with wide peripheral effects. Both the
Sensorama and his HMD design were completely mechanical, however; Heiligs ideas
represented the height of what was possible with the technology of the time. Further virtual
reality developments would necessitate the use of computers.

8
In the late 1960s, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland continued Heiligs work with
HMDs, but used cathode ray tubes mounted alongside the users ears; these were so heavy that
the entire device had to be supported by a mechanical arm suspended from the ceiling [4]. At
around this time, a young electrical engineer and former naval radar technician named Douglas
Engelbart began to use computers as both input and output devices [7]. Having seen digital
information in the form of radar displayed on screens, he imagined an intersection of computing
and graphics technology. This concept, combined with the first availability of computers based
on transistors rather than vacuum tubes, was used by Sutherland to move away from analog
images taken by cameras and towards a scene generator for digital displays that would become
the precursor of modern graphics processors. His scene generator created a sequence of scenes,
each a bit different, and each displayed in a fraction of a second. The resulting effect was that of
animation; in 1973, Sutherlands scene generator could display simple scenes of a few hundred
polygons at a rate of 20 frames per second [4].
The strides made in virtual reality thus far were small-scale efforts, mostly in the
scientific community. Both NASA and the military sponsored the only well-funded projects in
the 1970s; their aims were to create cost-efficient simulations for pilots, astronauts, and any other
operators of expensive, risk-intensive equipment, but most of this work was kept confidential.
The term virtual reality wasnt even applied to any of the products previously described until
the mid 1980s when a computer scientist named Jaron Lanier (credited with coining and further
popularizing the term virtual reality) left Atari to found VPL Research, Inc - the first company to
sell virtual reality technology commercially [8]. Finally, researchers both in industry and in
academia could purchase this initial set of specialized hardware with which to start developing
applications. Included in VPLs product catalog was the DataGlove (input device), the EyePhone

9
(HMD), the AudioSphere (three-dimensional sound unit), Isaac (real-time 3D visual rendering
engine), and Body Electric (visual programming language) [8]. The HMD alone cost upwards of
$10,000, and the company did very well for several years. In 1990, however, VPL Research filed
for bankruptcy; its products were simply too expensive for widespread adoption.
Although there are other examples of companies that sold HMDs and wired gloves, for
the most part this marked the end of commercially-available hardware sold as separate pieces.
There were a few attempts to provide some virtual reality products to the public: Nintendo
produced a relative of the DataGlove called the Power Glove, which had very poor reception due
to low quality and lack of game integration, and of course there was the aforementioned Virtual
Boy, very memorable for its high cost and low quality. These public offerings worked to virtual
realitys detriment by providing so much disappointment relative to expectations created by
popular media.

10

Figure 4: Nintendos Power Glove [9] and Virtual Boy [10]

11
The entertainment industry viewed Nintendos virtual reality failures as the writing on the wall
and did not offer further virtual reality devices. Aside from its omnipresence in popular media,
virtual reality would not make another public appearance for another two decades. From the
publics point of view, virtual reality was essentially dead. People also had quite the distraction:
the internet [11]. The advent of the internet facilitated so many new technologies - for example,
the world wide web, email, and file sharing - that the promise of virtual reality was all but
forgotten.
Virtual reality continued behind the scenes, however, and became a thriving, billion
dollar industry by the late 1990s, operating in fields as diverse as the military, medicine,
business, manufacturing, and education [4]. The trend moving forwards was to create virtual
reality workstations which integrated all the pieces of virtual reality together. While it made
sense for a large company or research institution to purchase a $100,000 virtual reality
workstation, the size of this investment placed quality virtual reality quite out of reach of
individual enthusiasts. Fortunately, the cost of computing has steadily decreased just as its power
has increased.

Figure 5: Computing power in MUCP and cost per MUCP [12]

12
One Carnegie-Mellon computer scientist, Hans Moravec, defines a unit of computing power by
the amount of information delivered per second by a machine. While this definition is a bit
abstract, each of the parameters used to calculate MUCP (million units of computer power) is
available for virtually all computers back to 1940, and for some calculators dating before then
[12]. Figure 5 displays the progress of computing power measured in MUCP and the cost of
computing measured in MUCP and deflated by the price index for GDP. Both curves are Jshaped; it is evident that the limit of both cheapness and power of computing are being reached.
While VPL Research, Inc.s HMD exceeded $10,000, todays technology can achieve much more
for much less; high-end virtual reality workstations are no longer needed to get a good virtual
reality experience. One discerning technologist in particular with a passion for virtual reality was
not oblivious to this intersection of factors favorable for bringing virtual reality back to the
masses.
As a teenager, Palmer Luckey was obsessed with the idea of immersion. Already a gamer
and an electronics tinkerer, his interest in finding more and more immersive games led him to
virtual reality. He began purchasing the best HMDs that he could find on the market, without
finding one that he was happy with. He continued to acquire more and more HMDs; through a
combination of government auctions and private resellers, Luckey eventually amassed more than
50 different virtual reality units [13]. His collection is purportedly the largest private collection in
the world, but Luckey was never satisfied with what he found. He began to tinker with his
collection, producing prototypes which he subsequently announced in online virtual reality
enthusiast forums. Eventually, he caught the attention of John Carmack - the videogame
programmer known as the father of the first-person shooter, and an innovator extraordinaire in
developing software engines. Carmack contacted Luckey and asked to borrow a prototype, and

13
Luckey immediately shipped him one. With Luckeys permission, Carmack modified the
prototype and took it to E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles [13]. Overnight,
the Oculus Rift became a sensation.
Luckey began to form a team of both technologists and executives and created Oculus
VR, Inc. in 2012. The team launched a Kickstarter campaign that asked for $250,000;
contributors of $300 or more would be shipped a fully assembled development kit. The campaign
would end up collecting several million dollars of crowdfunded money. Figure 6 displays the two
different development kits that Oculus VR has released thus far; it has shipped tens of thousands
of each [13].

14

Figure 6: Oculus Rifts DK1 [14] and DK2 [15]

Public interest of this magnitude in virtual reality has never before been seen, even in the early
days of virtual reality. The definitive turning point, however, was when social media giant
Facebook purchased Oculus VR for two billion dollars; no longer is the company in need of
acquiring loans, or at risk of going bankrupt. Now the company can experiment, improvise, and

15
grow unheeded without worrying about turning an immediate profit [13]. While a lot of the
current hype may parallel that of virtual reality in the 1990s, Oculus VR has financial security
that VPL Research could have only dreamed of.
Regardless, though, of whether Oculus VR is ultimately successful or not, it has already
inspired imitators: Sony has its Project Morpheus, HTC has the Vive, and, of course, there is
Googles Cardboard and its kin, do-it-yourself cardboard or 3D printed head mount kits meant to
be paired with a smart phone. The average US household owns at least one dedicated game
console, PC, or smartphone [16]; companies like Sony and Facebook are betting that there will
soon be a virtual reality HMD in every home. This doesnt seem too far-fetched, seeing as the
two problems that plagued early virtual reality - high cost and low quality - are no longer issues.
The cost part of the equation is simple to quantify; obviously, a $300 HMD is an easier purchase
than a $10,000 one. The quality part of the equation is a bit more elusive. The problem with
virtual reality is that it cant just be really good; it has to be perfect. A slight difference in the way
a HMD is built or an application is programmed can be the difference between a mind blowing
experience and throwing up. It is important to identify the factors that make virtual reality work:
the threshold between a novelty for enthusiasts and a standard mode of entertainment and
communication.
The Threshold
In determining the virtual reality threshold, it is necessary to move beyond a simple
definition and identify the cognitive foundations. Burdea and Coiffet identified what they call the
three Is of virtual reality. First is real-time interactivity, meaning ...that the computer is able
to detect a users input and modify the virtual world instantaneously [4]. Interactivity is often
the easiest feature to produce, as 2- and even 1-dimensional systems can be interactive. Burdea

16
and Coiffet claim that [i]nteractivity and its captivating power contributes to the feeling of
immersion, of being part of the action on the screen, that the user experiences. But virtual reality
pushes this even further by using all human sensorial channels [4]. Thus immersion is the
second feature of virtual reality, and arguably the most important. Finally, [v]irtual reality is not
just a medium or a high-end user interface, it also has applications that involve solutions to real
problems...The extent to which an application is able to solve a particular problem, that is, the
extent to which a simulation performs well, depends very much on the human imagination [4].
Interaction, immersion, and imagination combine to create a true virtual reality experience.
Without any one of these features, the experience falls flat.

Figure 7: Burdea and Coiffets Virtual Reality Triangle [4]

Burdea and Coiffet demonstrate this integrated trio using the illustration in Figure 7; note that
there is a triangle that can easily be seen, yet it exists only in the imagination.
Interactivity, immersion, and imagination are useful features to consider in designing a
virtual reality application, but they can be broken down even further. Markus F. Peschl and
Alexander Riegler explore the cognitive foundations of virtual reality in Virtual Science:
Virtuality and Knowledge Acquisition in Science and Cognition. The paper attempts to determine

17
whether simulation can be an information source to science, but the results of its exploration of
virtual reality can be applied to any kind of virtual reality, from scientific simulations to
videogames. Peschl and Riegler identify three modes of knowledge acquisition and construction
in human cognition: the empirical mode, the constructive mode, and the synthetic mode. Figure 8
demonstrates the relationships between these three modes.

Figure 8: Peschl and Rieglers three modes of knowledge acquisition and construction [17]
The first, and what the authors refer to as the classical, mode of knowledge acquisition is
where ...a certain aspect of the environment is detected or perceived by a sensory system [17].
Peschl and Riegler state that ...[b]oth in science and cognition this process of perception results
in some kind of primary representation of the environment However, these representational
states are not some kind of direct mapping of the environmental state - rather they are systemrelative states which are modulated by the environmental dynamics [17]. Notice in Figure 4

18
that the objects in the representational space do not look like those in the environment; what is
observed is relative to a host of factors, including how and why it was observed. Peschl and
Riegler call the primary representational states rather worthless because they only represent a
certain state in the environment and are an unordered and uncorrelated collection of data [17].
They go on to say that [a]ctive constructive processes of abstraction, classification, induction,
and abduction are necessary for bringing some structure into this unordered set of data This
way, a semantic value or meaning is induced into the data [17]. This leads to the second, or
standard, mode - and what most people ... usually refer to as knowledge - be it a scientific
theory or our common sense knowledge about a certain aspect of the environment [17]. Most
learning and thinking occurs in this mode, including finding out how to do things, making
predictions, and surviving in general. However, it is not the only way to generate meaningful
conclusions about the world.
Anticipating events or situations before they physically occur in the environment and
then adjusting actions accordingly is a complex way of saying, making plans. Peschl and
Riegler claim that the result can be referred to as being virtual [17]. They state that ... the
environment is completely left aside as a source of new knowledge. The virtual domain becomes
an alternative stage for developing new knowledge [17]. Thus it can now be seen how virtual
reality relates back to the standard mode of knowledge acquisition; it is knowledge acquisition
that occurs without observing things actually happening. This would include developing
strategies, conjuring up elaborate what-if scenarios, fantasizing and daydreaming, and scientific
simulations, along with any other kind of virtual reality applications.
Considering some of the ways most people already operate in the virtual domain, it seems
that it would be simple to design a good virtual reality application that mimics the realism that

19
most peoples minds can literally create while asleep. Indeed, Shulamith Kreitler states in
Psychological Perspectives on Virtual Reality that the ... emergence of virtual reality has not
been psychologically a surprise [because virtual reality] ... readily found its place within the
set of types of reality or reality transformations within which and between which we have grown
used to navigate or float [17]. However, the reality that a person creates for themselves during
a dream has the advantage of direct access to the brain - it can use pieces of reality that have
previously been seen and add imagination to create a very realistic result. A computer does not
have that benefit and, unfortunately, recreating the environment is the key to a good virtual
reality application.
As the physical environment has been lost in the synthetic mode of knowledge
acquisition, some replacement becomes necessary in order to ensure that the development
of knowledge is constrained by an environment-like entity. Hence, one does not only
need an operational and functional knowledge or model of the phenomenon which should
be described... but - above that - a sound model of its environment. Only if this criterion is
satisfied, virtual experiments become possible: One can explore the effects of ones
actions in the virtual domain [17].
It follows, therefore, that in order to create a good virtual reality experience - the phenomenon
which Peschl and Riegler describe - it is necessary to recreate the environment accurately and
realistically. This is the challenge that virtual reality presents.
It has been shown that for virtual applications, cognition cannot occur without a sound
model of the environment, but it remains to be determined what exactly a sound model of the
environment would entail. On the extreme end, the ideal model would recreate the environment
exactly to the point that it is indiscernible from reality. An exact replica, however, would not

20
involve phenomena that would be impossible in reality - one of virtual realitys most attractive
attributes! Thus, it is important to recall Burdeas assertion that imagination, which ...refers to
the minds capacity to perceive nonexistent things [4], is a key factor of virtual reality. Kreitler
mentions a tension that is both intriguing as well as challenging caused by the inconsistency
between the experience of similarity to normal reality and the cognition or awareness that one
is not experiencing reality [17]. Thus, it seems that failing to perfectly model certain real-world
aspects should not hinder the attainment of a good virtual reality application. It is not necessary
to create an exact model of the environment; what, then, must be modelled?
The quality of a virtual reality experience can be split into two categories: mental and
physical. The mental one is the more forgiving of the two categories; as previously shown, in
terms of gaps between reality and virtual reality 1) the mind is capable of filling in gaps, 2) the
mind is used to filling in gaps, and 3) the gaps dont necessarily take away from the experience
anyways. The physical category, on the other hand, is much less forgiving. The body does not
have the same capacities that the mind does; it is unable to compensate for shortcomings. Going
back to Burdea and Coiffets argument, interaction can be related to the physical category and
immersion to the mental. It is impossible to have immersion without interaction; likewise, it is
impossible to even arrive at the stage of creating a mentally good virtual reality experience
without taking care of the physical. In the past, virtual reality technology could not provide
adequate interaction, leading to physical repercussions including nausea, dizziness, headaches,
eye strain, and general disorientation. These symptoms prevented users from experiencing virtual
reality; thus, it can be concluded that the virtual reality threshold is crossed whenever these
physical issues are resolved.
Oculus Rift

21
When Palmer Luckey was first experimenting with virtual reality, he identified several
areas in which existing HMDs were lacking. Poor image quality due to low-contrast LCDs, high
latency in head-tracking, and an inadequate field of vision all contributed to an underwhelming
experience - and one that was apt to lead to physical discomfort. Through the process of
developing a series of prototypes, then the Development Kit 1, then the Development Kit 2,
Oculus VR has addressed each of these areas and others in order to improve the virtual reality
experience.
In terms of the display, the Oculus Rift uses AMOLED screens rather than LCDs. While
LCDs can take 15 milliseconds for all its pixels to change color, AMOLED screens can switch
color in less than a millisecond [13]. This helps reduce the phenomenon called ghosting, also
known as smearing or motion blur, in which there is an appearance of faded trails behind a
moving object. Ghosting reduces the perceived efficacy of interaction with the system.

Figure 9: Pixel fill factor [19]

Another improvement has been in the area of pixel fill factor, which is the ratio of a pixels light
sensitive area to its total area. Figure 9 demonstrates the difference between low and high pixel
fill factor. A display that has low fill factor is said to exhibit the screen door effect, which very

22
much inhibits immersion by making the user more aware that they are in a simulation. While the
Oculus Rift has a very high pixel fill factor, the process of magnifying the displays can still result
in slight screen door effect. Oculus Rifts pentile, rather than grid, pixel structure helps mitigate
this issue.
The Oculus Rift fuses readings from a gyroscope (a device for measuring orientation), an
accelerometer (a device for measuring acceleration), and a magnetometer (a device for
measuring the strength and direction of the magnetic field) to evaluate head motion. By using all
three of these readings, the Rift can get a better picture of the users orientation in the real world
and thus synchronize it with their virtual perspective. The Rift takes 1,000 readings per second
and has built-in functionality for prediction of movement - this allows the Rift to pre-render
images, which eliminates precious milliseconds of latency [13]. Head tracking was perhaps the
biggest issue in previous HMDs; without all three of the sensors the Rift has, previous HMDs
would accumulate a small amount of error over time, leading to a difference between perspective
in-game and in the real world. Use of all three sensors allows for correction of drift and a better
real-time representation of orientation. Users expect their head movements to result in updated
displays; without this, their bodys idea of where they are in space and their eyes idea are
mismatched, resulting in a very disorienting jar for the user and oftentimes even nausea. Head
tracking is thus essential to provide good interaction and a sound model of the environment.
Field of vision was one of the first big obstacles that Luckey sought to solve. Large
displays were costly and made the entire unit too heavy. He eventually solved this problem by
splitting the display into two and inserting cheap optic lenses in front of each eye. Although this
results in a warped image of the screen, Oculus provides custom distortion shaders in its SDK
(Software Development Kit) that resolve the disparity. Figure 10 demonstrates that the pin-

23
cushion distortion caused by the optic lenses combined with the barrel distortion provided by the
Rift shader results in a final observed image with no distortion.

Figure 10: Oculus Rift distortion solution [20]

The two displays, which are necessary for stereoscopic three-dimensional vision, combined with
the optic lenses results in a 100 degree nominal field of vision. This is a vast improvement over
previous HMDs, and at such a low cost in both weight and expense. The unit is less than a pound
in weight, which is barely noticeable even for extended periods of time wearing the device. This
large field of vision is absolutely necessary to maintain the illusion of immersion; users expect to
not see large black areas in the sides of their vision. It also enables peripheral vision, which is
another interaction issue. Humans rely deeply on their peripheral vision, and allowing this to be
used in the Oculus Rift enables a much better representation of the real world.

24
While low quality displays, poor head tracking, and small field of vision were the major
issues Luckey identified, the Oculus team has tackled several further issues. One in particular is
positional tracking; previous virtual reality headsets enabled looking around but not moving
around. The Rift features a small external camera and 40 infrared LEDs on the headset. This
allows the Rift to track motion, which enables moving around in the virtual space. Now users can
lean towards objects in-game, causing the display to change in real time. They can even look
underneath or above objects and around corners, causing developers to change the way they
approach optimization techniques like back-face culling. This definitely contributes to interaction
by matching what happens in real life to the response in-game. Previous HMDs were missing
this degree of motion, which caused dizziness because, again, the bodys concept of position
didnt match the eyes. While a user is within the camera frustum, their position is quite
accurately tracked; problems occur when a user moves out of this range, and dizziness and
nausea is common.
While there are still many improvements which can be made, the changes implemented in
the Oculus Rift have crossed the threshold and enabled developers to create realistic virtual
reality experiences. Physical issues have been largely resolved, and the 1990s dream of creating
a virtual reality headset that didnt make people throw up has been achieved.
Case Study
As a case study, the author developed a virtual reality application using the Oculus Rift.
In doing so, much research needed to be conducted on the best practices for virtual reality
development. The best current source of determining which mistakes a virtual reality application
should avoid can be found in the Best Practices guide that Oculus VR produced to assist virtual
reality developers. According to the guide, its goal is to help developers create content that

25
promotes oculomotor comfort - avoiding eye strain; bodily comfort - preventing feelings of
disorientation and nausea; positive user experience - providing fun, immersive, and engaging
interactions; minimal VR aftereffects - avoiding impacts on visual-motor functioning after use
[18]. This guide was used extensively in the design of the case study. In the demo, the user starts
seated before a computer monitor on a desk. He or she is in a dark space, seated on a small
platform. As the user transitions to the next scene, he or she begins to hear the ambient noise of a
forest at night. There are owls, crickets, and wind in the trees. The user can see light from a
headlamp which follows whichever direction the user is currently looking. The user is in a dark
forest, surrounded by trees, plants, and rocks. Looking down, the user can see grass and flowers.
All the foliage in the demo is moving gently in the wind. The user can see small bright lights
surrounding him or her, behind trees, up in branches, and among the flowers. Looking more
closely at the bright lights, the user can just make out a sparkling humanoid figure. The demo
ends.
The case study utilized Unreal Engine for the demo. It relied heavily on the Blueprints
system as well as Unreals built-in optimizations for lighting and for assets. Assets were largely
obtained from Unreals free demo scenes, Scifi Hallway and Open World Demo. It also used
Github member mitchemmcs UE4FirstPersonTemplate for a better virtual reality setup than
Unreal Engines built-in first-person template. This template provides head rotation blend spaces
based on HMD rotation, character rotation based on HMD rotation, Oculus Rift optimized global
post processing, and a context menu for changing HMD and scalability settings. It also provides
other features that were not used in this case study. Furthermore, the case study conformed to
virtual reality best practices in several ways. It altered the character to not be visible and to not
cast shadows; while there is some controversy over whether or not including a visible body

26
increases immersion, the author felt that due to the nature of this demo it was better to hide the
body. The case study provided a gradual transition to virtual reality by initializing the character
in a seated position in front of a computer monitor - much as the user would be as they begin the
demo. It featured gradual transitions between scenes, as scene loading causes a freeze in the
display which can incur motion sickness for the user. Other aspects of best virtual reality
practices include lighting, scale, and distance; the case study featured dark scenes (which has
been shown to decrease simulator sickness), the world is scaled accurately (increasing
immersion), and the distance of objects from the face in the virtual space is kept to the informal
optimum of 1.4 meters in virtual units (another alteration to decrease simulator sickness).
There is much further work that could potentially be done for this case study. Although
the direction of the headlamp used Unreals API for determining the HMDs position and
rotation, there is not any other element that does so. Further work would include animating the
bright humanoids and implementing AI (artificial intelligence) so that they move away from the
users gaze. In truth, however, the demo could be extended indefinitely; the solution space for
Oculus Rift applications is indeterminably large. Creating a demo on the Oculus Rift has
demonstrated to the author that there are limitless virtual reality possibilities. Now that the
threshold has been crossed, virtual reality will become a standard facet of everyday life.

References
[1] G. Yokoi, Mario's Tennis. Nintendo, Virtual Boy, 1995.
[2] T. Shoseki, Super Tennis. Nintendo, Super NES, 1991.
[3] TRON: Legacy. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010.

27
[4] G. Burdea and P. Coiffet, Virtual Reality Technology, 2nd ed. Hoboken, New Jersey: John
Wiley & Sons, 2003, pp. 2-13, 285-286.
[5] S. Weinbaum, 'Pygmalion's Spectacles', Wonder Stories, June 1935.
[6] M. Heilig, 'Sensorama Simulator', 3050870, 1962.
[7] Archive.ncsa.illinois.edu, 'Virtual Reality: History', 1995. [Online]. Available:
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/VETopLevels/VR.History.html.
[8] Vrs.org.uk, 'VPL Research', 2015. [Online]. Available: http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-realityprofiles/vpl-research.html.
[9] Power Glove. Nintendo, 1989.
[10] Virtual Boy. Nintendo, 1995.
[11] K. Drummond, E. Hamburger, T. Houston, T. Irvine, U. Tieu, R. Lai, D. Lathrop, C. Mazza,
C. Newton, A. Robertson, M. Schnipper, M. Smith, S. Thonis and M. Zelenko, 'The Rise and Fall
and Rise of Virtual Reality', The Verge, 2015. [Online]. Available:
http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality.
[12] W. Nordhaus, The Progress of Computing, Cowles Foundation Discussion, Paper No.
1324, Sept. 2001.
[13] P. Rubin, 'The Inside Story of Oculus Rift and How Virtual Reality Became Reality', Wired,
2014. [Online]. Available: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/.
[14] Oculus VR, DK1. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.oculus.com/rift/.
[15] Oculus VR, DK2. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.oculus.com/rift/.
[16] Entertainment Software Association, 'Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game
Industry', Entertainment Software Association, 2014. [Online]. Available:
http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ESA_EF_2014.pdf.

28
[17] A. Riegler, M. Peschl, K. Edlinger, G. Fleck and W. Feigl, Virtual Reality: Cognitive
Foundations, Technological Issues & Philosophical Implications, 1st ed. Frankfurt, Germany:
Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 12-16, 29, 34, 40.
[18] Best Practices Guide, 1st ed. Oculus VR, 2015, pp. 3-8. [Online]. Available:
https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/.
[19] Details on New Display for Developer Kits. Oculus VR, 2013. [Online]. Available:
https://www.oculus.com/blog/details-on-new-display-for-developer-kits/
[20] N. Whiting. Integrating the Oculus Rift into Unreal Engine. Gamasutra, 2014. [Online].
Available:
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/NickWhiting/20130611/194007/Integrating_the_Oculus_Rift_into_U
nreal_Engine_4.php