How Oculus Cracked the Impossible Design of VR

It's hard to believe it's been almost four years

since we first heard the phrase Oculus Rift.

Yet in the intervening months,

the team at Oculus has done a lot, and I mean a lot,

of difficult thinking about the way this thing should look,

and the way this thing should feel.

So let's take a trip down memory lane.

This one, which is my favorite,

because it's such a monstrosity,

isn't even so much a design prototype,

as it is a proof of concept.

The team at Oculus wanted to know

exactly what it would take to shoehorn in

all the things that wanted in the consumer build,

into what was then, the form factor,

one of their early developer kits.

So, here is when they also started

to think about different ways that they could actually

fix this thing once it was on your head.

What they started to play with here,

was if you had this thing on the back of your head,

you had an elastic strap,

what if you had a, almost a bike helmet style

tightening mechanism back here.

It definitely secured it.

But again, lot of moving parts, wasn't necessarily friendly.

This is called the Crescent Bay prototype.

And it was the last thing that developers got to use

to build their games on before the retail unit came out.

You can see that they figured out what to do,

more or less with the audio.

It was kind of an articulated headphone piece

that could swivel to fit the ears of whoever was wearing it,

close down on 'em, or swing back up.

Now this one has seen better days.

But what you're really finally getting

is a sense of those last design touches

that became available in the retail build.

They started playing with putting a fabric overlay

around the eyebox.

That's just one of those approachability things.

So by this one the team at Oculus was trying

to figure out how to account for the fact

that everyone's eyes are slightly different widths apart.

It's called interpupillary distance

and Oculus wanted to make sure

that the Rift would accommodate people

who were within the fifth and 95th percentile.

Which brings us to now.

More than three and a half years

after that very first ski goggle strap prototype

showed up at the E3 game show,

it's the very real, in the flesh, Oculus Rift.

Of course, you can see the answer to all the questions

that the design team grappled with over time.

There's the kind of curved feel to the outside.

There's the fabric that wraps the eye box

to make it a little more approachable.

There's that integrated audio solution

that swivels back and forth

to account for different peoples' ears.

It all goes to your computer through this one, slim, tether.

Now, eventually we want this to fall away.

We want to walk into the metaverse unimpeded.

But until then, I'll see you in virtual reality.