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Oculus is buying a company that brings hands into virtual reality
Right now, the term "virtual reality" still means "headset" for most people. What we should really think when we read "virtual reality" is first-person immersion. The headset -- like Oculus VR's Rift, Sony's Project Morpheus, and Samsung's Gear VR -- is simply the first tool for creating that sense of immersion or "presence." But once you're in a headset, the first things you do are the undoable: reach out with your physical hands into virtual reality. It's not exactly surprising, then, that Oculus VR would acquire Nimble VR -- the company behind Nimble Sense, a camera and software combo that brings the world around you into virtual reality. Think of it like Kinect: cameras that are able to track your skeletal movement and create a point cloud around you, which then translate that data into a virtual representation on-the-fly.Still confused? We've got a video hands-on of Nimble VR's Sense camera from early November below the break, used in-tandem with Oculus VR's second Rift development kit (pictured above).
Touching virtual reality with Nimble VR's Sense camera
Every time I use virtual reality headsets, I find new limitations. Now that I'm finally "inside" a virtual world, I want to explore. I want to touch things and feel them respond. I want to speak and have my voice heard inside the virtual world. I want to see my hands represented virtually, and I want to be able to use them as I do in real life. I very much doubt I'm alone in this -- the latest Oculus Rift dev kit has a dedicated USB port on top of the headset explicitly for peripherals that intend to solve these issues. I spent an hour last week with one such device: the Nimble Sense camera from Nimble VR.
