The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is still in development mode and won’t be fully compatible with your favorite video games for some time. That doesn’t mean, of course, that people aren’t excited for all the potential the rift has to offer — including Intuitive Aerial, a group that hooked one of these suckers up to a drone and let it loose in the sky.
Called the Oculus FPV, it’s not exactly a state-of-the-art machine. The drone has an open wooden box with two cameras and a laptop inside it, which compresses and sends the information to the Oculus Rift headset. The connection between the two relies on standard 802.11n WiFi to relay the video back from the laptop to the ground, so it only has a reach of about 50 to 100 meters. Still, the footage that it can capture is remarkable considering that — oh yeah — it’s a flying robot that you will probably be able to pilot with your eyeballs one day. Holy crap.
Speaking of footage, here’s the video of the Oculus FPV’s first flight. As a bonus, everybody involved in Intuitive Aerial is Swedish, so their accents are pretty fabulous.
Judging from the video, it looks like the guy piloting the drone still isn’t able to move the camera by turning his head and instead remains facing forward with manual controls. The team plans to update this in the future, so their next FPV will have a fish eye lens and will turn in 3 dimensional space just the way that the Oculus Rift was intended. Flying with your head and eyeballs, guys. It’s gonna happen.
(via Geek.com)
- If I weren’t so freaked out by the idea of a sky full o’drones, I would be pumped
- You know what with the government spying on us and all
- But can it deliver pizza? That’s the real question
