OSVR, the Open Source Virtual Reality initiative lead by Razer and Sensics, has had a busy year welcoming dozens of companies pledging support. Whilst OSVR’s flagship virtual reality hardware the Hacker Development Kit 1.3 have yet to ship to developers in numbers, the previous gen unit is out there and Mark Schramm, has taken his apart and documented the carnage for your enjoyment.
VR Bits, the team behind Oculus Rift space dogfight shooter Darkfield VR, Gear VR action title Nighttime Terror and more recently HTC Vive prototype GTFO had a broken OSVR Hacker Developer Kit (1.2), so in the spirit of the open source initiative from which the HDK was born, Director Mark Schramm decided to rip the unit to bits and document what he found for posterity, and the community.
One note, this is the 1.2 60Hz OLED version of the unit, but take a look at the RGB stripe sub-pixel arrangement of the panel (as opposed to the pentile arrangement found on both the Samsung phone powered GearVR, DK2, HTC Vive and consumer Rift.
One things fore sure, the circuit boards are crammed with silicon, something noted by Schramm when he posted his images via Reddit “Maybe the most noteworthy thing on it is the FPGA and the sheer amount of chips. You can also very clearly see the RGB matrix on the display, even though it seems to be offset by 1/2 pixel every second row.”
HDK 1.3 hardware is supposedly due to ship any day now as OSVR announced units were to ship in October. 1.3 brings enhancements including 120Hz display panel capabilities along with 360 degree, optical positional tracking. Have you received yours? Let us know in the comments below.