Assignment 25- Julian Perry

One thing I haven't gotten to talk about nearly enough this year (although my friends and family would beg to differ) is the exciting new virtual reality company Oculus VR. After having obsessed over reddit.com/r/oculus for the better part of two years, the most active forum for VR news has left me with no blank spots in my knowledge. The company Oculus was started in 2012 with a wildly successful (the most successful ever, actually) Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of a developer kit for the Rift, a VR head-mounted display. Using cheap optics, this $300 hmd has revolutionized the market with a 100 degree field of view, similar to your sight wearing ski goggles. You aren't in front of a screen. You appear surrounded by the screen, on all sides. This has more applications than in just gaming. Many countries, including the US Government, are experimenting with these Rifts for military purposes. The $300 hmd is superior to any other hmd available previously for thousands, because it uses cheap lenses to create a wider field of view rather than using a larger (and heavier/more expensive) screen. 

Only days ago, a man named James posted the results to an experiment he was conducting on his own. He suffers from a lazy eye, which means he can't focus both eyes at once on the same object. With the Oculus Rift, James coded a game to train his lazy eye to focus correctly by showing it a slightly altered image. He claims that he can now see in true 3D even in real life, for the first time ever. Previously it was thought that a lazy eye could never be fixed after childhood, because the brain hardwires these connections during younger years, but VR is proving that wrong. VR truly is the future, and I'm excited for it.