The second development kit of the Oculus Rift has begun arriving at the homes of customers since last week. This has presented some with the opportunity to pull apart the device and see what’s inside. iFixit, the website that specialises in grading gadgets according to the ease of repair has discovered that the display inside the Oculus Rift DK2 is directly taken from the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.
Oculus has literally pulled the display off a Note 3 and hidden the 5.7-inch screen inside the Rift. The evidence is the very noticeable Samsung logo still stuck on the front. It didn’t even take the time to remove the touch controller from the back, which technically means that the Oculus Rift is fully touch capable; not that anyone should try.
This has provided the VR headset with two screens with a resolution of 960 x 1080, although the Super AMOLED display has been slightly modified to run with a refresh rate of 75Hz. The change was necessary to reduce input lag and create what Oculus calls “low persistence”.
It is likely that the Samsung display is being used in the development kit to keep costs down, and Oculus may start using actual custom displays when the final product ships. That being said, Oculus and Samsung are already apparently collaborating on the rumoured Gear VR; which will use Oculus technology as the base hardware. In this case, using Samsung displays in the rift would make sense to test their capabilities for virtual reality.
[Source: iFixit]
