The Oculus Rift represents the exciting new world of virtual reality that is knocking at our doorsteps. Although it is quite far from being an out of the box consumer device, it has tickled and piqued the imagination of many a techie. We at the Quill got our hands on the Rift! Here’s the first of our series of posts on it. Today we see how to connect and set up the Rift on your PC
It comes in a relatively plain box, given the jazz that is inside. Once you open the box you see that there is good padding all around the various parts of the device. This is because there are sensitive pieces in there like the lenses for the head mounted display unit which are fragile and need to be handled with care.
What’s included:
– Headset
– 2 pairs of vision lenses
– External camera (for positional tracking)
– Camera USB cable
– HDMI-DVI adapter
– Sync cable
– Power cord with adapter and 3 international power adapters (UK, AU, EU) – (to power the USB located on the Rift)
So what kind of PC do you need to use the Rift? Read on
Minimum requirements: A computer running a Windows 7 or Windows 8, Mac OS 10.8 or higher, or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating system, 2 USB ports (at least one powered), and a DVI-D or HDMI graphics output.
Recommended specifications: A desktop computer running a dedicated graphics card with DVI-D or HDMI graphics output, with capability of running current generation 3D games at 1080p resolution at 75fps or higher.
So now, let us start connecting the rift to the PC. So get the head tracker out of the box and set it up on top of your PC display using the clip that it has built into it. It looks like this
After mounting it on top of the screen it looks like this
Take the USB connector for the head tracker out and plug it into your PC, here is how it looks
Now take the head mounted display out, it looks like this
It has a HDMI and USB connector, both are linked to it, they look like this
Plug them into your PC in the right slots, like this
And the connection is done! Now the software part of the set up. For this thing to work, you need two things in place first. The Oculus Runtime and The Oculus SDK. Get them from the links and install them on your PC! And you’re all set to run into a virtual world! More VR with the Rift in the next post.
