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Oculus Rift teardown shows improved head tracking and lens setup

By Liu Hongzuo - on 4 Apr 2016, 12:34pm

Oculus Rift teardown shows improved head tracking and lens setup

Teardown of the Oculus Rift.

The latest Oculus Rift teardown shows all the improvements made for the VR headset's commercial version.

The IR array now extends to the back of the VR headset.

The most visual improvement is the new infrared LED array used for tracking your head’s movements. It now features a similar set of IR LEDs on the back of the device, allowing the user to spin in circles while experiencing VR content displayed in the headset. The older Rift developer kits did not have the extra IR LEDs on the back, which meant less VR immersion.

One of the two 90mm OLED displays for playback, mounted on each lens.

The consumer version of the Oculus Rift uses two 90mm OLED displays for playback, which gives us ~456 ppi (pixels per inch). They are mounted directly onto the independent lenses. The predecessor – a second version of the developer’s kit – uses only one 1080p panel that came from a Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

The old lens found in the Developer Kit 2 (left), versus the new custom lenses in the consumer version (right).

Unlike the old Oculus Rift developer kits that came with a pair of interchangeable circular lenses, the consumer version here had a pair of custom-made, non-removable, asymmetric, hybrid Fresnel lenses. The lenses gives the user a large viewing angle despite its short focal length relative to the mounted OLED displays. Unlike traditional Fresnel lenses, the ones in the Oculus Rift headset are curved with varying focus points, allowing the user to simply push the headset lower or higher while on the face, which in turn lets the user catch a suitable focal length for their eyes.

Motherboard of the Oculus Rift. 

At the top of the lens assembly is the entire motherboard, with the following chips mounted from left to right:

  • (Red)Toshiba TC358870XBG 4K HDMI to MIPI Dual-DSI Converter
  • (Orange) Cypress CYUSB3304 USB 3.0 Hub Controller
  • (Yellow) ST Microelectronics STM32F072VB ARM Cortex-M0 32-bit RISC Core Microcontroller
  • (Purple) Bosch Sensortec BMI055 6-axis Inertial Sensor
  • (Green) Winbond W25Q64FVIG 64 Mb Serial Flash Memory
  • (Blue) CMedia CM119BN USB Audio Controller
  • (Cyan) Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 Bluetooth Smart and 2.4GHz proprietary SoC

iFixit rated the Oculus Rift’s reparability at 7/10, thanks to its improved cable management, and removable earpiece speakers and face pads. However, replacing the head strap requires the user to cut the fabric, and the lenses are non-removable due to its delicate ribbon cables and intricate design.

Source: iFixit

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