Austin Ward, Dustin Reese, Joey Santilli
To allow for a camera to be controlled and viewed through an Oculus Rift.
The accelerometer in the Oculus Rift was used to control a Pan/Tilt servo mounted web camera. The camera video was sent to the Oculus Rift.
While the original intention was to send webcam and accelerometer data between two Atom PC's on the network, for a remote camera functionality, the video proved more diffucult than originally planned. The binocular vision of the Oculus Rift required very complicated video processing between the webcam and the Rift display. In order to preserve time, the Unity Engine was used for video processing, since it had the capability built in. Because of the complexities of video game development and video game engines, it was decided to focus on a non networked approach. The overall product was very good, a low latency video that was very easily controlled using head movements. After using it with multiple people, after an initial period of getting used to the altered viewpoint, everyone was easily able to control the camera the way they wanted.
Future improvements that can be made would include actually networking the camera data and accelerometer controls. Using multiple cameras offset by only a couple inches would help the bincoular vision of the Rift look more realistic. Adding rolling motion alongside the pitch and yaw would also improve realism. Using the second version of the Rift Developer Kit, due out Summer 2014 would drastically improve the resolution of the screen,