Canadian engineering company Iris Dynamics created a portable Oculus Rift rig which can go from folded to fully booted inside VR in “under 60 seconds”.
The pelican case has a full gaming PC built into it, alongside a touchscreen and space for the Rift and Touch controllers. Even better, the Rift sensors are built into retractable arms. The further apart the sensors, the more resistant the controller tracking will be to occlusion issues so this was an important design goal.
Iris builds specialty/custom force feedback hardware mainly for VR training and VR amusement park rides. This case isn’t, and never will be, a consumer product. It’s a custom solution designed to make it easier for their training clients to conduct VR training on the go.
The company detailed the efforts put in to engineering high end PC hardware into this design and keeping it properly cooled:
“Major components are attached to a CNC’d aluminum plate through thermally conductive & impact isolating gel. The plate is floating on all sides by impact absorbing foam, with lots of attention paid to air pathing to get all heat out of the components and out of the box. Cooling is provided by a push/pull PWM (variable speed) fan setup with a cold to hot side. For power there is a standard C13/C14 bulkhead connector (standard computer/printer power cable) with room for storing the cable in the case. The sensors are rigidly mounted on swing arms which are setup to always lock into the exact same position.”
The upcoming Rift S may make future projects of this kind simpler thanks to the onboard sensors. However the PC will still be needed, as the Oculus Quest isn’t powerful enough for these kinds of detailed training simulations.
Iris Dynamics will be showing this unit off at the Sea Air Space exposition in Washington D.C. starting May 6th. The company has had demand from more clients for the case, but noted that they are expensive and time consuming to create.
