Riffing on the Rift: Oculus Rift gets big Crystal Cove hardware upgrade at CES 2014

Out of all the weird, wacky devices and gizmos that have been releasing lately thanks to Kickstarter — Android gaming consoles, omnidirectional treadmills, 3D printing pens — only one really seems to be onto something big: the Oculus Rift. An affordable virtual reality headset, the Rift actually works as promised — something many other Kickstarter projects fail to do. Now, at CES 2014, the headset has received a hardware upgrade, making it an even better device.

For the uninitiated, the Oculus Rift is a Kickstarter project that aims to provide an affordable, consumer-grade virtual reality headset to the masses. Unlike a huge swath of Kickstarter projects, the device works as described, and doesn’t disappoint. However, in this case, “virtual reality” isn’t what years of science fiction movies have suggested. The Rift won’t provide a Matrix or .hack-like experience; you won’t put the headset on and suddenly feel like you’re in another world. Instead, your head and neck will essentially replace the mouse, and the Rift will allow you to look around in-game by moving your head, rather than a mouse. Regardless, the immersion is prominent, and using it feels like the future of video games.

Unfortunately, the Oculus Rift does have some drawbacks — mainly that you’re still stuck in a desk chair, shackled facing one direction because that’s where the keyboard and mouse is located. When paired with something like an omnidirectional treadmill, the Rift becomes much more immersive, albeit much more expensive. While the Rift team can’t quite tackle adding a treadmill into the mix just yet, it was able to tackle some smaller immersion issues with the release of a newer development kit, dubbed Crystal Cove.

The two 640×800 screens within the original Rift are essentially smartphone screens that together create a 1280×800 panel. In order to scale the image larger, magnifying lenses are placed over both eyes. On a non-Retina class display, if you stick your face right in front of the screen, you can see the individual pixels, and the overall image then looks much worse. Placing those magnifying lenses in front of the screens within the original Rift did the same, so even though the Rift worked — it didn’t look very good. Now, Crystal Cov has replaced those old screens with what equals a 1080p OLED.

While a 1080p OLED display makes for much higher image quality, the original Rift’s biggest issue was that of motion blur. You may like the effect in your third-person shooter of choice, but it basically crippled the Rift. After all, the whole point of the device is to look around, but looking around isn’t very fun when you can’t see anything because it’s blurry and making you nauseous. The Crystal Cove upgrade has eliminated the motion blur, also eliminating the headache you receive after using the Rift for too long.

Finally, Crystal Cove — which sounds more and more like creepypasta with each mention — also adds a camera and sensors to not only track the position of your body, but the depth of the Rift in relation to it. The Rift can now display more accurate movement, though you’ll still be chair-bound while that’s being provided.

Overall, Crystal Cove is a significant upgrade to the Rift. However, though the Rift is perhaps the most promising gaming tech on the horizon, the device still has plenty of issues to overcome, such as being stuck to a chair and shackled to a keyboard and mouse. It’s worth pointing out that Crystal Cove is still very much a developer kit, too — there is still no sign of the eventual, consumer-grade version of the Oculus Rift.