Portal iFixit is not only the world’s most comprehensive archive of illustrated step-by-step guidelines for the Assembly and disassembly of all kinds of gadgets, but also the source of the most current information about what is inside these gadgets is hidden from the eyes of consumers. Once on sale the new device, the site will immediately start its careful dismantling, along the way taking pictures to satisfy the curiosity of their loyal readers. This time in the hands of employees iFixit got virtual reality headset Oculus Rift.
As you probably already know, the first box with the Oculus Rift headset started to deliver to the buyers on Monday 28 March. The founder of Oculus VR Palmer Lucky, personally delivered to the first purchaser of his purchase all the way to Alaska. But it’s time to look inside the gadget, which costs $ 599, while in Europe and Russia and is 699 euros. What hides from us the black matte Oculus Rift?
First, during operation helmet literally lit from within. No, you will not see these LEDs with the naked eye, but they are clearly visible when shooting a special infrared camera. The developers themselves call this system a “constellation”, as tiny light bulbs that serve as markers to track human head in space, are reminiscent of the stars. We remind you that the headset comes bundled with the camera on a vertical pole. A similar decision was applied in your headset and Sony, though there is no infrared LEDs, and a bright blue.
Came the disassembly of the headset. Remove the soft gasket mounted on the body with latches. After that, we can pull the cable, the input image is embedded in the helmet displays. By the way, the display inside the headset are two – one for each eye.
Now Unscrew the bundled headphones. Many worried that it could be done. It turned out that can. The kit even comes with a special screwdriver for this. But experts iFixit decided to use their own, time-tested.
Now disconnect the internal panel of the helmet, in which are lenses and screens. The panel is also attached to the helmet hidden from the eyes of the snaps, which the iFixit engineers found immediately.
And here is the lenses! As you can see, in the lower part of the headset is a slider that you can adjust the location of the lenses. In the upper part of the body, experts found a tiny sensor that either detects the moment when the user wears the headset on the head, or monitors ambient light to adjust the brightness of the displays. The exact purpose for engineers iFixit has remained a mystery.
Extracted from the body part with the lens and display. You should be especially careful with the thin cables, so as not to break them.
The inside of the shell, as you can see, is covered with infrared LEDs connected to them by cables.
Came to look at the motherboard of the device. Here we see the Converter 4K HDMI to MIP Dual-DSI production Toshiba (red), the USB 3.0 controller Cypress (orange), 32 bit microcontroller ARM Cortex-M0 32-bit RISC processor from ST Microelectronics (yellow), 64 MB flash memory developed by Winbond (green), SoC from Nordic Semiconductor supports Bluetooth Smart and Wi-Fi communications at 2.4 GHz (blue), USB audio controller from CMedia (blue) and some nondescript chip marked with pink.
Remove the lens and disconnect the display from the front of the helmet. The displays have a pixel density 456 ppi (for comparison: the iPhone 6s Plus the density is 401 ppi, and the Galaxy S7 – 576 ppi). The overall resolution of the two OLED displays 2160 1200 points. The refresh rate is 90 FPS.
And here is a very non-asymmetric lens that provides a viewing angle over 100 degrees. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that it’s not just lenses, but something like a hybrid of traditional lenses and Fresnel lenses. The edge of the lens covered with a special concentric rings, which decreases spherical aberration. This means that light rays leave the lens nearly parallel beam, without distorting the image.
The front part of the headset hides a charge that controls the LEDs. There are 3 led controller (red) and two large capacitor (orange).
The rear of the helmet had to literally break off because it was glued. Inside, expect the ribbon cable for LEDs and a mechanism for adjusting the size.
And here is the headset, disassembled into its individual components.
