Simple Mod for the Oculus Rift CV1 to Reduce God Rays and Increase FOV
So after many years of waiting the Oculus Rift CV1 has finally been released into the wild. Although it has been a somewhat dismal launch for Oculus as a company, people are finally beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel and getting their Rifts. Once received however, a lot of people come to find that their long awaited Rifts are not what they expected and produce horrible God Ray anomalies that are unfortunately introduced by the Hybrid Fresnel lenses that Oculus chose for the Rift.
This seems to be hit or miss for most people and a lot of debate has taken place over on Reddit and other places. Some people are extremely annoyed by this new issue, but there are those who say they just don’t see them or are not bothered by it. There has been wild speculation over all sorts of things that might contribute to this artifact such as eye color or differing facial structures being the culprit, but no clear consensus has been reached. One night after piling though several posts on this subject I started thinking about it and decided to remove my Rift’s facial interface to see if it would make a difference and low and behold it did! All of a sudden the God Rays were very much reduced and as a pleasant surprise, the FOV got much bigger.
So with this new revelation I started trying different things to make the Rift more comfortable. Without the facial interface it did not feel very good having hard plastic resting against my face. I found that the foam from a Gear VR fit perfectly, so after a few small strips of double sided tape to hold it in place I put the unit on and was amazed at how much better it made my experience. The God Rays were muted and now pushed to my outer peripheral vision therefore no longer beaming directly into my eyes, and I started to feel more presence from the expanded FOV I gained from moving my eyes closer to the Rift’s lenses. If you are like me and the God Rays and low FOV bother you, then I highly recommend trying this mod. It is not permanent, so there is nothing to lose by trying it.
If you try this Mod or find a better solution to this problem for yourself please leave me your thoughts in the comments below.
Edit: After receiving feedback from readers I have heard that the Samsung Gear VR Face Foam Pad from VRology works well. Here is a link to the product and VRology has also extended a 10% discount code through the end of July for the readers of VRSpies.com.
i barely touch the leneses with my face…(eyebrows ) i think it depends on the shape of the face …this mod is not for me. greez
Yeah… the God rays seem varied among users depending on their facial structure.
This solution worked for me.
The godrays – that were of a level that I was about ready to stop using the CV1 – completely vanished. On top of that, I got a better overall focus and less light leakage around my nose.
I only got to get used to the initially very strange feeling of being extremely close to the lenses, and to the less comfortable fitting.
Thanks a lot for the tip!
Awesome! I’m so happy this helped you. It does take a while to get used to being that close to the lenses but the trade off for me makes it very worthwhile. This is how the DK1 and DK2 felt so I got used to it pretty quickly. I really hope that we will soon see either Oculus or a 3rd party start to produce different facial interfaces to make the comfort a bit better.
Too many chefs have been involved with the various components of the rift, and a clear difection and consensus has been missing. Employing an optical scientist or physiologist would have improved the visual response from the start, and “borrowing” aiuck-fix elements has only exacerbated the problem.
Where did you order this Gear VR face pad?
I didn’t order this one.. it is the actual face padding from a spare Gear VR i had laying around. I have seen some on E-Bay and I believe vrcover.com sells a waterproof replacement pad that would do the trick. They have also recently started a kickstarter campaign for an actual facial interface replacements with a thinner foam base.
think this will work?
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Gear-VR-Face-Pad/dp/B01HRGPRAC
I don’t see any reason why not… it looks to be the same as the foam that comes with the gear VR just in a different color.
ordered
This mod is AMAZING. Stop what you are doing and mod your cv1 now.
It’s lighter
better visual
feels better on my face
headphones fall better n my head – sounds better
removable
this guy fits perfectly https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Gear-VR-Face-Pad/dp/B01HRGPRAC
no drawbacks
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gwue44x2vxfnql7/2016-07-15%2019.20.37.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fqib22xks5mifvo/2016-07-15%2019.21.05.jpg?dl=0
Thank you for suggesting it
Awesome! I’m so glad it helped you man █-)
Sorry cant see from pics are you covering up the sensor doing this so the rift is always on
Yes.. this does cover the sensor. If you do this mod you will need to remember to close Oculus Home on the desktop each time you finish a VR session.
Cool thanks I have a gearvr and proud owner of a few day old rift, I’ll see if I can happily marry the two
Is there any trade off I. Quality being that much closer in terms of picking up individual pixels ? Also I can remove the bottom half very easily but have been worried to out pressure on the top half when removing the fascia, does it just unclip or is this an irreversible removal?