Microsoft Oculus Rift unveils new technology: Full Room-Scale Tracking

Microsoft improves its virtual reality technology, the Oculus Rift, appearing poised to dominate a market once laid dormant.

Microsoft has implemented Full-Scale Room Tracking into its virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift. This feature was once only exclusive to a competing VR headset, the HTC Vibe (Lilly, 1).Now when the player moves around a room adorning the Rift headset, all the player’s movements are scanned in real-time, captured with motion capture built right into the Oculus Rift, then duplicated in a virtual reality simulator (Lilly, 1). Microsoft has been working tirelessly to implement this feature since releasing its Touch motion controllers last December. However, this feature until recently was in its beta experimental stages during the 1.14 software update. Now with the updated stable release of Oculus Rift, the update includes built-in room-scale motion tracking as a standard feature (Lilly, 2).

Movements once limited to standing or sitting in a single space have become expanded. The Oculus Rift user can walk around a room and interact with VR technology in real time. The feature requires three motion capture sensors, with two sensors becoming utilized for 360-degree innovative tracking features (Lilly, 2). Additionally, Oculus Rift now notifies the user when antivirus software blocks installation of driver updates to make the Oculus function properly, preventing crashing during gameplay, with an instructional safety video now included with the software update, to ensure consumer safety operating in a virtual environment (Lilly, 2).

VR technology remained once considered as an appalling joke, with Nintendo throwing its hand into the ring with the failed Virtual Boy in the nineties. The only two color schemes on the system were red and black for every video game, and the device gave many nausea and seizures while playing it, with a mediocre lineup of games. Even worse, competing companies would go on during this decade to release even worse VR headsets with inferior technology and games to compete with Nintendo, such as the abysmal R-Zone. However, it appears this once fantasy technology is becoming more and more mainstream, with big name corporations such as HTC and Microsoft looking to grab a slice of the pie. Virtual reality may become the future of gaming twenty to thirty years down the line. Imagine playing Call of Duty, and you remain directly immersed in the battle. You don’t need a controller, your body is the controller, and you can swap weapons, kill enemies, or call out to your squad in real time, feeling like you are directly in the virtual world you are engaging in.

Virtual reality isn’t limited to gaming applications. Imagine a boardroom speaker giving a Powerpoint presentation in virtual reality, being able to manipulate charts and figures that surround the audience in three dimensions, even being able to change and reshape an entire room to demonstrate a technical product in real-time. The possibilities are endless, should big-name companies figure out a way to iron out all the potential pitfalls of such technology (health hazards, cost, marketing, ensuring a robust library of software at release), and the modern technological consumer will actively benefit from such technology, being able to interact with software with unimaginable new levels of consumer immersion.

Lilly, Paul. “Oculus Rift Now Has Full Room-Scale Tracking.” PC Gamer, 2017, http://www.pcgamer.com/oculus-rift-takes-a-page-from-htc-vive-and-adds-room-scale-tracking/.