Torque 3D and Oculus Rift (A Tale in Pictures)

The Story Begins...

Back on September 20, 2012, we launched the MIT licensed version of Torque 3D on GitHub . Next on December 19, 2012, we launched the first new release under open source , version 2.0. Then on January 10, 2013, the T3D Steering Committee announced the roadmap for version 3.0 . Within this roadmap was improved support for various input devices to take advantage of current and future controllers that are entering the PC market.The first new input device was the Leap Motion with support added to thebranch as announced in my blog on January 24, 2013 . the second new input device was the Razer Hydra, whose support was also added to thebranch as announced in my blog on February 22, 2013 On the heels of these two devices, I am pleased to announce that I have been working on a third device but have not been allowed to talk about it until now. It is the Oculus Rift , a head mounted display and tracking system. Some of you may be aware of the Kickstarter project that allowed the Rift to become a reality, and I know there are community members that were part of that Kickstarter (myself included).Thanks to the fine folks at Oculus VR I was able to procure a preview version of the Rift and have been modifying Torque 3D to work with it. I'm not yet ready to merge my work into thebranch but I did want to share with you all my progress. So let's get started!Back in February, 2013, this happened:And then I tried this:Using the included Oculus VR SDK documentation, I was then able to get this:After doing some work to make Torque 3D support true stereo rendering and the Rift's projection offset, I ended up with this:Torque 3D's graphics pipeline was not originally intended for stereo rendering so I ended up with errors like this:And errors like this:Fortunately, I was able to solve these issues:And with the Rift, it looks something like this:When I merge my changes into thebranch we will also include a demo to showcase Torque 3D and the Oculus Rift:We may also have a surprise or two for those that have been following my previous blogs:The journey continues...- Dave