Initial experience with the Oculus Rift

Tuesday my Oculus Rift arrived. I bought it after I looked at all the experiences it could do on the Oculus web site. https://www.oculus.com/

These experiences will let you do many interesting things what I’m particularly interested in:

• Nature experiences from BBC Earth like Bear Island
  
• A recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
  
  
• A projected trip Mars with Buzz Aldrin (The second man to walk on the moon.)
  
• An interactive 3D exploration of the Grand Canyon.’
  
• A 3D interactive golf game.
• There are several free 3D games which are good for learning the new hardware.
• There are almost a hundred more.

No, I didn’t get the head set to run Sansar but I will probably try it. It surprised me that Sansar wasn’t one of the experiences listed. Alt Space VR was there and even Facebook’s beta VR application.

The first application I bought was VR Tools. https://www.vr-toolbox.com/

It is a 3D application that lets you run the Windows operating system in a VR office. It even has a virtual keyboard that lets you enter things. Virtual keyboards are slow so if have a lot of entry it’s probably better to get out of VR to do it. An application I  always run is a view from my webcam. It helps to be able to see what is going on around you. Since the Head Mounted Display bock your vision.

The golf game might seem a bit out of place for me as an interested choice. When I was twenty I was good and shot consistently in the low to mid-eighties. I still love the game. I probably have most golf computer simulations. Maybe this is the one!

Tips:

• If you also wear glasses to see long distances use them with Oculus head set. If you are lucky and have them wear single vision and not bifocals.
• Clean your glasses before putting on the head set. You will see every speck.
• I keep a fan going below me because your glasses will fog up very easily.
• Hair stays neat-forget it.

• Don’t try to use the headset for a long time. Take frequent breaks because the Oculus is not very comfortable and the reported nauseous feeling is true.