Oculus detailed the “Half Dome” prototype at F8 this year, explaining that the Rift-sized headset features moving lenses to help players focus on objects in the virtual space.
Oculus has only just released its standalone Oculus Go headset and still has the wireless “Santa Cruz” prototype in the works, but the Facebook-owned company isn’t resting on its laurels quite yet.
Instead, Oculus revealed another virtual reality prototype it has in the works at this year’s F8 Developer Conference.
That headset, the “Half Dome”, aims to offer VR with a 140-degree field-of-view (compared to the Oculus Rift’s max of 110 degrees) and lenses that automatically move within the headset to help players focus on objects in the virtual space.
As noted by Ars Technica, Oculus calls this tech a “varifocal display” and hasn’t fully broken down how it works or if it’ll rely on eye tracking-tech, but the company says that the prototype comes packed with a mechanical system that constantly adjusts the distance of each lens from a players eye with “sub-millimeter precision.”
In VR, this theoretically would allow players to view more details on virtual objects near their face as the varifocal lenses automatically adjust to help their eyes focus on those up-close details. A video demo offered during F8, for instance, showed how previously blurry text on a small object held close to a person's face in VR became noticeably clearer when the varifocal tech was used.
Of course, the Half Dome is still a prototype and, as such, Oculus hasn't mentioned much else about the in-development tech as of yet.
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