Oculus VR is on hand at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show with an all-new prototype of their popular virtual reality headset. Dubbed Crystal Grove, the revised wearable comes equipped with positional tracking capabilities as well as an OLED display that provides less motion blur and an overall more comfortable viewing experience.
The positional tracking system uses a camera that tracks movement via more than two dozen infrared dots scattered about the exterior of the headset. It’s said to also help alleviate motion sickness because the system is now able to accurately reflect head motions that weren’t picked up in previous iterations.
The addition of positional tracking will add an extra three degrees to the movement of the headset. That might not sound like a lot, but it could certainly come in handy in specific gaming scenarios. For example, a player could lean their head out of a virtual window in-game without exposing their body in a combat or stealth-type game.
The OLED display, meanwhile, features lower latency as it doesn’t need to switch pixels in the same manner that a traditional LCD screen does. This in turn will result in more responsive gameplay which of course is much appreciated.
Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey told Polygon that cost has always been at the crux of the entire Oculus platform and if the hardware is not affordable then it might as well not exist. As such, the improvements made are a low-cost solution that doesn’t sacrifice any quality.
Oculus said they have even more in store for the headset in the near future but declined to reveal when production models will begin shipping.
... at least she was already poking fun at me as I yelled my Dragon shouts at the computer using a mod while playing Skyrim.
