News Bits: RiftUP! Oculus Rift DK1 1080p Upgrade Begins Shipping, Early Recipients Report Issues

We covered the RiftUp! project in detail a little while ago. The project offers an in-place upgrade for the low resolution 1280×800 LCD panel and controller bringing the original developer kit (DK1) to a much more capable 1080p panel. The team launched their Indiegogo campaign on March 27th and quickly received enthusiastic backing from those wishing to update their Rifts with the team surpassing their original $10k goal eventually reaching a final tally of $25,113.

Units began shipping to backers recently but some of those backers have reported issues with their upgrades. The problems seem to centre around display artefacts caused by interference on some later DK1 units which later adopted slightly different internal wiring. Interference cause what the team describes as “Random dots and ghosting of the image”.

The good news though is that the RiftUp! team have been working hard to identify the cause of the issue and announced via their IndieGogo page that they’d succeeded in countering the problem:

DKs used in tests were all produced around the same time period. There has been some change in the cable parameters over time causing too much distortion to the RiftUP high frequency signal (FullHD bandwidth).

Daniel managed to design a new video signal shape, “smoother”, less vulnerable to interference.  It’s achieved by new firmware and some tiny resistor components soldered to the base board connector.

Those backers who have already received units and report the noted issue will receive updated boards plus all subsequent units will receive the updated firmware and hardware mods.

Did you back the RiftUp! campaign and have you received your unit? If so, are you happy with the upgrade? We’d love to hear from you, drop your comments below.