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Comment by everettForth | Hacker News Reader

I'm ready to ditch my LCD at work and use this. I hope the higher resolution version is good enough to code on. I'm happy to see that there are already some window managers: http://hwahba.com/ibex/

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The higher resolution one is all I'm waiting for before I pull the trigger and buy one. I want to use this when I'm in bed. My girlfriend will be able to sleep without the light from the computer screen bothering her. I'll probably also be able to switch to using my Kinesis Advantage keyboard as well since I will no longer be married to the laptop because of the screen.

I have the developer prototype and I am hugely excited for the short term gaming and entertainment potential.

However, as a working device, something needs to be solved to reduce eye strain.

After using it for 5-10 minutes, I feel like I've been in A Clockwork Orange. My eyes are spread wide and incredibly tired after that short period of time.

Until you try it, it's hard to explain how close the lenses are to your eyeballs. I accidentally poked my wife in the eye by adjusting the distance improperly.

I'm all for the idea of something like this for long term work, but I believe a different approach will need to be taken, or a significant amount of work needs to be done to make it sustainable for 2-4 hour long shifts.

I'm not sure what kind of effect that might have on the eyes. Tempted to try it but I'm scared that after a couple of months I would get +5 glasses.

i doubt its really designed for non stop use. It might not weigh much, but for hours on end it will strain your neck and eyes i would think.

The developer kit is, I believe, 379grams (~0.835lbs). This is similar to the weight of a typical hardhat, albeit distributed unevenly toward the front. The consumer version is intended to be lighter. If a counterweight could be provided, I would expect the neck strain to be limited.

Also or alternatively, a good-sized, well-sealed helium balloon can lift 50+ grams...

im pretty sure this is better for your eyes than a traditional monitor.

Can I hear your reasoning? Why would rift not increase chances of developing instrument myopia ?

Because your eyes focus naturally, instead of on a fixed plane, the rift should cause less eye strain than using a regular monitor

https://support.oculusvr.com/entries/24808208-Will-the-Oculu...

That is a quote from the Oculus website and therefore cannot be taken too seriously. They are engineers not ophthalmologists. The problem I see is the lens in between the screen and eye, which might cause strain.

I do hope their statement is correct, but it sounds too good to be true.

Wearers of spectacles or contact lenses have a lens between their eyes and whatever they are focussing on nearly all the time during their waking day. It doesn't cause eyestrain and I've always been assured by optometrists and maybe once an ophthalmologist that wearing lenses for myopia doesn't worsen myopia: iirc it's focal distance that matters, and apparently the Rift keeps the focal distance at infinity. Of course Oculus is talking its book, but I'd be surprised if they have no-one who understands the ophthalmology of the lenses-and-screen configuration they're building into their product.

I'm not an optometrist/ophthalmologist by any stretch, so I can't comment on the physiology, but I can say that the most remarkable thing about the Oculus experience is the sensation of infinite depth -- and infinite depth 360 degrees around you.

I think this is the really surprising thing for people who haven't tried it before -- you think it will be like looking at a screen up close, since you've looked at screens your whole life, but it's nothing like that at all.

When the resolution is fixed, probably the one big downside to using the Rift for this kind of thing will be the narrow field of view: compared to a multi-monitor or big-monitor-up-close setup you'll be forced to rely more on head movements instead of eye movements to look around.

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