Monday, August 25, 2014

Pole ingenious challenges Oculusowi and Facebookowi – Virtual Poland


  One of the most important technology news this year was the purchase of the company Oculus VR, working on modern virtual reality goggles by Facebook for $ 2 billion. Representatives of both companies assure us that their solution will be shaped by the future. Meanwhile, a Pole reached – he says – the same effect in three days using only a smartphone and a little creativity.
 

  From all this noise?
 

 Virtual reality is a term for the first time it got loud in the 90s on the wave of popularity Reaper minds subsequent producers assured us that soon we will all be able to completely move to created the computer lands. It soon turned out that the current solutions on the market a lot of lacking vision, roztaczanych by enthusiasts. Most glasses tormented eyes, cause nausea, their users have complained about the inconvenience. Achieved visual effect is absolutely not allowed to forget that look just two small screens, located a short distance from their eyes. A full immersion in the virtual world there could be no.
 

 A kind of culmination of overly optimistic tendencies of large companies was the Virtual Boy, introduced in July 1995, created by Nintendo game console promised impression, which even in the electronic entertainment was not. In fact, only display a black-and-white (actually a black-red) image miserable quality was horribly uncomfortable to use and was rightly seen as little more than a spectacular fraud. The device completely withdrawn from production less than a year after its release. Reasoned defeat sprzedażowa and image-Virtual Boy made of virtual reality ceased to speak for years. One no longer believed that the vision of the Matrix can ever come true.
 

 For the next great movement of virtual reality, we had to wait until August 2012. That’s when the site was launched Kickstarter collection, designed to help create the first developer version of the glasses Oculus Rift. Their originator, Palmer Luckey, promised that now finally come true dreams of moving to another world using a computer. His proposed technology does not differ dramatically from what was present already 20 years earlier – but the use of much better quality screens had to make that the barrier between what is real and fictitious eventually fall.
 

 As it turned out, virtual reality enthusiasts who are just waiting for the message, not missing. Within a month, the creator of Oculus gathered portal crowdfundingowym nearly $ 2.5 million – ten times more than the sum by which the initially requested. When less than a year later, the first copies of the unit has been given to support and show up at the trade fair, reactions were enthusiastic. It seemed that this was actually just we need to dream of virtual reality finally come true.
 

 This opinion, moreover, it seems to share Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, who in March of this year, the company decided about buying Luckey for $ 2 billion. Social media giant sees this device is not just a gadget to a new form of entertainment. According to him, the virtual reality goggles may forever change the way we communicate and rotate daily on the internet.
 

  Do it yourself
 

 The involvement of such a large corporation and the scale of this investment allows you to think that we are actually dealing with the technology of the future. Not everyone, however, is this sentence. Marcin Grygiel, who lives in London, Polish computer scientist, says that within three days he was able to create a device that matches the Oculusowi not only, but also in some respects superior to him. He used to do this only smartphone Google Nexus 5, universally accessible housing Durovis Dive and, as he writes, “a little programming magic.” He was able to at the same time achieve something you earlier, as argued, no one else has. Not only used the phone to read the user’s head movements, but also sent him the picture in Full HD with a connected computer. As we explained:
 

 - The point is that the use of games developed for Android leaves a deficiency compared to PC games. So I decided to play games on the PC, and then send them on your phone screen while leveraging its motion sensors – such something no one had ever done and there is no ready-made software. “Magic” involves the use of many different programs to achieve the desired purpose.
 

 This approach makes the Grygiel his household resources created fully functional device corresponds Oculusowi. In theory you can run on it every game that supports DirectX from version 9 onwards, although still need software translates sensor readings on the phone to move (in the above experiment prepared by the author). “Domestic VR” also provides a higher density of pixels in the screen than Facebook device (445 dpi vs. 386 dpi). Resulting from the streaming slight delay in response, which is 30 milliseconds, do not mind the creator in a comfortable game.
 

 Goggles virtual reality homemade ingenious creator cost just $ 400 (although not included in the price the cost of a smartphone). Oculus itself when its consumer version will appear at the end of the market, will cost the equivalent of approx. 1,100 zlotys.
 

 Grygiel your project wants to show above all how widely available at the moment technology, which two years ago seemed to be a breakthrough. He hopes that his work will be in some sense an impulse for dealing with virtual reality companies to seriously take up the implementation of its solutions.
 

 - The whole virtual reality goggles are just the phone, case, strap and lens mount on the head. So why all this noise around the company Oculus VR, since the same effect achieved his “samoróbką”? The first VR goggles were created in the early 90s of the last century. Developer Oculus VR just remembered about this technology at the right time and so Oculus Rift hit the Kikstartera. It just goggles with display (alive removed from the Samsung Note 3) motion sensor and software. Meanwhile, the already created a whole two years and has still not announced the date of their release.
 

 Is your project wants to develop further? For now, probably not, treating it merely as an interesting experiment. His ambitions extend further.
 

 - If you have found a group of programmers enthusiasts, you could create a software specially designed for streaming the VR goggles. I have other plans, and now I have to collect at least 10 thousand. pounds to start with another project virtual reality. Something that did not exist before, and I guarantee that when you see this, it will drop you hats off!
 

  DG

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