VR is still maturing as a platform, and Oculus is fully aware of its inherent issues and limitations. Today, May 2, at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, Oculus unveiled a new prototype designed to combat some of the most pernicious issues people have had with the visual quality of VR headsets so far: focus and field of view.
Oculus’ head of Core Tech, Maria Fernandez Guajardo, unveiled the new “Half Dome” prototype as part of a presentation on the future of VR. The new prototype is designed to tackle these two issues head on. First, Oculus is using its previously described “varifocal” lenses — think mechanical autofocus but for your eyes — to track what you’re looking at and dynamically adjust focus to compensate, just as your actual eyes do.
In VR this has been something of a problem because software can only go so far toward simulating depth of field and focus, especially when something is right up close to your face. Oculus’ varifocal lenses work with software and hand tracking to determine when something is close to your face in VR, and will adjust the physical focus of the internal lens array accordingly.
Additionally, the new lens assembly features a much wider field of view than the original Oculus Rift. The Rift has a field of view of 110 degrees, which means if you look around inside the headset, you’re going to see the edges of the screen pretty frequently. The Half Dome prototype on the other hand reportedly boasts a 140-degree field of view, much wider than the original Rift.
This new field of view encompasses your traditional field of view, but also your peripheral vision, which is an important component of how we perceive environments. Whether or not it will have a significant impact on immersion remains to be seen, but it’s still an impressive improvement, and when coupled with a dynamic “varifocal” technology, it’s easy to see why the Half Dome prototype could be an important addition to the Oculus family.
“Our advances are helping to bring the future into the present,” Guajardo said. “We are proud of the progress so far, fascinated about the work we are doing, and excited about the possibilities to come.”
At the end of the keynote, Guajardo continued, reiterating Facebook’s — and by extension Oculus’ — devotion to bringing people together. Guajardo highlighted the social potential of VR, and how overcoming technical hurdles that make VR less than immersive will pave the way for more realistic social experiences in VR going forward.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.