I had good fun demoing the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality glasses to visitors at the Makerfaire 2014 held at the Amazon campus on Sat, 14th June. I walked into the Makerfaire at 9am in the morning with my demo gear, and can only describe the feeling as a kid walking into a candy store :) All around me were 3D printers, space elevators, robotic arms, quadcopters, a WallE prototype that mowed your lawn, a theremin, and other fun hobby projects. Yes, these were all DIY hobby projects made by the presenters.Having failed to get my demo virtual reality game running in time for the fair, I decided to just show the visitors the amazing device the Oculus Rift is. Most of them had never experienced immersive Virtual Reality before, so they were definitely in for a visual and sensory treat :) There are a few good demo programs around - I used the standard Tuscany demo, a hungry Giganotosaurus dinosaur looming over you, Eden River: an ethereal glide over a river, the infamous Malfunction, and a video of a roller coaster ride. My hardware setup was a MacBook Pro connected to the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 1. Many visitors wore glasses, so I was glad I was well-practiced at changing the lens in the Rift quickly (the kit comes with 3 pairs of lenses of increasing power).
I was blown away by the sheer number of people eager to try the Oculus Rift, everybody it seems had heard of it but had never tried one. Most had never even tried a Virtual Reality glass before, so I wasn't kidding when I told them they were going to experience a new dimension soon, technologically and philosophically. My rough guess is that about 300 people tried a few minutes of demo each, most with their family and kids. The fair lasted about 6.5 hours, and it was fun to see people try to physically run back when a gigantic dinosaur tried to bite their heads off, or pensively stare at distant mountains off a balcony in a sunny Italian villa. Many parents lined up particularly to request the dinosaur demo for their kids :)
I was very happy to see many kids not older than 13 asking me detailed technical questions about how the device hardware worked, the programming involved, the math behind the code etc. And they got it, way more than most adults did. It was also interesting that kids were immediately comfortable with using the headset and roaming the virtual world freely, while most adults looked around very hesitantly until I told them they could actually turn their heads and body around.
I really wish I could talk more about the other prototypes at the fair, but my booth kept me busy all through and I couldn't see most other demos, which sucked. I did manage to make a quick round to nearby demos, and was particularly impressed by a homebuilt hexacopter with a clever contraption to keep the onboard camera always looking straight ahead regardless of the turning of the 'copter. The gyroscope wasn't the interesting bit, it was how he had hooked together his feedback-correction motors. We also chatted about how he could attach a stereoscopic camera to his 'copter and look-through-the-eyes using the Oculus Rift while flying, similar to this guy. That's really trippy.
All in all, I'm really glad I attended the fair, and I'm excited about new interesting uses of the Oculus Rift, and hope the Virtual Reality party continues worldwide.
Until next time
