Oculus Rift

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/rift/

by aaronbrethorst • 11 years ago

430 370 11 years ago

I was a little disappointed to not find the one thing i really wanted to see on this site: a buy button. But I want it NOW!

nine_k• 11 years ago

Also, no price point, and I did not notice any compatibility / minimum requirements information yet.

kd5bjo• 11 years ago

See https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

heyheyhey• 11 years ago

Yeah, I was disappointed they didn't announce the price. I can understand as if it were expensive (which I expect it will be), it would probably be a distraction to their announcements.

christoph5• 11 years ago

I was fairly disappointed by most of the keynote, but maybe my expectations were just too high?

I was hoping for some real innovation that elevated it above Vive, but it just didn't seem to deliver. The new controllers look great, but they aren't going to be around until mid 2016, whereas I will probably have the Vive ones in my hands by the end of year.

I think possibly Oculus are more focused on being consumer friendly than Valve, but the inner techy in me is certainly more in love Vive and their ecosystem at the moment.

The entire cinema mode integration with Microsoft just seemed like a total misstep to me - why would I want to play a game in a virtual living room? It just looked cheesy, gimmicky and silly. The fact you have to stream it over a PC as well and can't just hook the headset straight into the Xbox seems like it's just way more hassle than it's possibly worth.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

I think the cinema mode is to ensure that you don't have to take the device off when you switch between a game that's designed to support the Rift and software that does not. With that it mind, it seems like a reasonable compromise. I mean, do you want to have to take the thing off every time you alt-tab to Windows Desktop, or do you want to be 2" from the Windows Desktop?

Animats• 11 years ago

They're not shipping until Q1 2016? With all that funding? They're going to miss the 2015 holiday season? Zuckerberg needs to kick some ass over there.

[1] https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/first-look-at-the-rift-shi...

Kurtz792• 11 years ago

Having all that funding means having the luxury of shipping a properly debugged and refined product, instead of having to chase the holiday season with a potentially bugged and broken one (which is far from an exceptional occurrence in the videogame industry).

sunnynagra• 11 years ago

Anyone else disappointed that they announced a new interface controller (Oculus Touch), but did not show any type of demo?

mliker• 11 years ago

Palmer said it'll be demoed at the E3 booths. Yeah, you're right they should have demoed it onstage.

austenallred2• 11 years ago

I have a hunch it's not ready, though I have no evidence to support that

pervycreeper• 11 years ago

That makes sense in view of their decision to bundle the Xbox controller instead.

ngoel36• 11 years ago

Good enough for Zuck to play! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10102175618819241&se...

joshuak• 11 years ago

Yes. Also lackluster considering cooler possibilities like leap motion[1].

1. https://www.leapmotion.com/product/vr

robertfw3• 11 years ago

Leap Motion has been a pretty big let down, though I have not yet tried the latest tools they have released.

melling• 11 years ago

The original Leap Motion doesn't really cut it. The company is moving on with a new technology called Dragonfly for VR:

http://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2015-leap-motion-co-founders-tal...

Rovanion• 11 years ago

The LEAP is a really inexact input device. Used it for a project this winter and the only reliable input we found was the position and rotation of the whole hand.

pkaye• 11 years ago

They missed the opportunity to get it out by Q4'15. Would have been a great Christmas seller.

Kapura6• 11 years ago

I think you overestimate the draw of device that isn't really market tested and doesn't yet have a lot to recommend it besides its newness. Christmas of 2016 will give it time for good games to have bubbled up and make the value proposition of the Oculus + supporting hardware much stronger.

christoph5• 11 years ago

This.

It appeals to a very specific market at the moment. Most consumers will probably never experience VR on a PC at home.

The real seller to mass market will be a combination of integration with phone handsets (a la Gear VR) or console (Morpheus/PS4) devices. The mass market doesn't want a big, expensive black box chugging away in their living room.

smacktoward2• 11 years ago

Christmas is exactly the right time to roll out a product that has nothing to recommend it besides novelty and a ton of buzz. That's when all the people who know nothing about what they're buying go shopping!

Pushing it to Q4 2016 will give them time to develop some good apps for it, but it will also give competitors like Valve and Sony a year to build up an installed base. And "pay X hundred dollars for this novelty gizmo" is a much harder sell when the customers already paid X hundred dollars for a similar gizmo the year before.

macspoofing• 11 years ago

Nintendo Wii.

baldfat4• 11 years ago

I am still not sold on VR, but I feel that AR (Augmented Reality) really is the future.

1) AR seems to help in real world situations vs VR which actually makes you feel vulnerable due to lack of vision and impaired hearing of what is around you.

2) VR also has the issue with physical issues with nausea and 10% of people with lazy eyes or other optical issues that make them unable to see 3D clearly.

3) Star Trek Holosuite is AR and that is my dream one day.

4) If Wii motion controls didn't continue their popularity how will making a helmet make that physical exertion more appealing?

dj_doh• 11 years ago

I agree with your assessment. AR is more ubiquitous VR is more like SecondLife 2.0. Some of the engineering and design outcomes are noteworthy, but that's about it.

baldfat4• 11 years ago

Second Life 2.0 doesn't sound very exciting to me. I really see VR as being a short hit and quit activity. Touring some place in VR in the classroom seems great but more than 10 minutes and most will quit whatever the activity is.

I am still willing to give it a try but on the outside looking in I find this as long term success stories as Second Life and the Wii.

swalsh• 11 years ago

One of the really cool applications I've seen for google glass was for a Dr to take notes in an EHR while visiting a patient. Its such a good idea.

There's a lot of enterprise real world useful applications that you get with AR. It lets you be in the real world.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

They said the same thing about Surface, and I agreed - Surface seems the ideal device for doctors. Doctors just use paper.

therein• 11 years ago

I still see palm detection as an unsolved problem. I've tried the latest Surface too.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

But AR requires several technological leaps beyond VR in terms of transparent screens and location tracking. So I'd expect to see usable VR headsets to appear in homes a generation two before AR ones.

I mean, the HoloLens is additive. That means if you want to show a dark object in a room with white walls, you cant.

Arelius• 11 years ago

I mean, the HoloLens is additive. That means if you want to show a dark object in a room with white walls, you cant.

You sure? Do you have a source you can cite?

drzaiusapelord2• 11 years ago

Hololens hands on show it to be a ready product. It doesn't require any breakthroughs.

One reviewer was shocked at how opaque the holograms were. I think the situation you're describing with a black object has already been solved:

What did surprise me, though, was how little opacity there was to the holograms. I expected them to look somewhat transparent, with the background shining through. That really wasn’t the case, though. They looked really solid and there was almost no transparency.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/30/hololens-is-real/

baldfat4• 11 years ago

The tech industry has been investing and buying AR companies left and right. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2015/05/30/apple-f...

There is a lot of money in the AR space right now, and the different technologies for AR right now take several different approaches.

1) CastAR (Eye Glasses that reflect back light to the viewer) looks really promissing: http://castar.com/ I seriously could see this taking over monitors for some people for computing especially if there is security or privacy issues.

2) Magic Leap (Sounds like Science Fiction, have little faith in their promis right now) Beams light into your eye in a way that won't make you sick or give you a head ache. Serious technology problem with silicon photonics production that has stumped Intel right now http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538146/magic-leap-needs...

3) Microsoft Future Vision 2011 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 Uses glasses to overlay a translation on signs (Traditional idea of glasses with transparent display) I find this to be a decade away easily.

4) Contact lens (Super cool idea not sure how many of us will drop a contact into our eyes) Not only AR but the ability to measure sugar levels for diabetics. http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/25/the-future-of-augmented-re...

5) AR looks to have a $120 Billion dollar projection and VR has a $30 Billion dollar projections http://fortune.com/2015/04/25/augmented-reality-virtual-real...

josephpmay• 11 years ago

Magic Leap, however, is apparently not exclusively additive

fr0styMatt26• 11 years ago

I wonder why we need transparent screens though. I see AR as a subset of VR, not a superset of it. Once you've solved the field-of-view, screen resolution and (I'd also argue) dynamic range/colour accuracy of VR, you add a front-facing, wide-FOV stereo camera to it and there you have it, AR with the dark object problem already solved for you.

leapmotion_alex4• 11 years ago

Transparent screens are definitely the way forward, but don't discount the possibilities of camera-to-screen passthrough within Gen 1 VR devices. Ultimately the distinction between AR and VR is going to dissolve to the point where it's just different ends of a spectrum -- add enough objects and backgrounds to the real world, and you get a virtual world.

christoph5• 11 years ago

I agree with your view that AR is more the long-term future of all this tech. However, I would disagree that VR isn't going to be a big thing in the short to medium term.

It's a completely new medium to a large extent that is still finding its feet. It offers a completely new* experience and developers/artists/storytellers have yet to really tap into what it can do and deliver in terms of feeling and emotion. Everyone is still trying to make old methods suit the new format - you could see this just from the fact that Oculus demo'd a 3rd person game. Once teams start to fully embrace the medium and the hardware has caught up, I honestly believe it will deliver some very innovative and emotional experiences that will lift people out of their real life environment. Its uses will be much more widespread than just gaming - training, relaxation, education, social interaction, etc.

* When I say new I know it's been knocking around for decades, but the tech has only just reached a point where it is somewhat viable.

baldfat4• 11 years ago

I would disagree that VR isn't going to be a big thing in the short to medium term.

I was speaking long term, hence my analogy to Nintendo Wii controllers

Kapura6• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, have you used any of the modern VR headsets (Oculus, Vive, etc)?

wvenable• 11 years ago

AR and VR serve different goals. In this page they mention presence, which is basically the internal lizard-brain feeling of being somewhere else. Presence is what makes VR something unique, different, and powerful. AR doesn't provide presence.

I think AR is infinitely more practical for practical things but ultimately less useful as an entertainment medium. And the holosuite is just as much VR as it is AR.

tedajax• 11 years ago

I equate VR -> movies and AR -> smartphones.

VR is a medium for immersion but AR really shines as a tool.

leetNightshade• 11 years ago

I'm with you on your second statement, not on the first.

VR will be clearly more than just movies. And AR is far from just for smartphones. Granted HoloLens isn't ready and might not be that great, but it has so much more potential than just smartphone gimmicks. A good set of AR can completely replace my work setup, I wouldn't have the need for monitors anymore. I'm excited by that idea, a new way to interact with the world.

drzaiusapelord2• 11 years ago

I feel VR will be strictly a gaming toy and even then will be something of an eccentric item considering the cost/hassle of it all, not to mention all the side-effects. AR seems promising, and this hands on review has me really interested in Hololens.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/30/hololens-is-real/#.ciyefr:x...

Its crazy that we have a wearable hologram headset that produces real world opaque holograms but no one is really talking about it. Yet an ugly VR black box mounted on your face projecting a cell phone into your eyes somehow gets all the press. If anything, Oculus shows us how gamer-centric the tech press is.

Hololens is pretty much a wearable holodeck. The money I had earmarked for the Vive or Oculus is going to sit in my savings account until the Hololens comes out. I doubt I'm the only one sitting this first round out. AR might just strangle VR in the cradle - and that's a good thing. Let's face it, Oculus didn't firesale itself to the evils of Facebook because it had a bright future. It did so out of desperation.

exDM692• 11 years ago

AR seems to help in real world situations vs VR which actually makes you feel vulnerable due to lack of vision and impaired hearing of what is around you.

AR is also better suited for games and simulations that have more than a handful of controls. Flight simulation, for example, is next to impossible with an Oculus because it blocks your view of the controllers.

Flying around is fine when you have hands on the stick (or yoke) and throttle. But when you need to operate the landing gear, flaps, lights, radios or navigational instruments, etc you need to find the right button on your controllers or keyboard. That doesn't work with the Oculus.

I'm looking forward to try out the CastAR in the future. It looks like a very nice solution for home cockpit builders.

http://castar.com

mankyd• 11 years ago

What do the rings on the controllers offer that could not be put into the base of the handle?

jwcooper• 11 years ago

Looks like they may have IR LED's around the outside that are used by the camera for positional tracking. Might also be used to track finger movements on the inside of the ring, but not sure there.

alex_anglin• 11 years ago

Protection from hitting your hand while swinging the controller around?

zacharypinter• 11 years ago

They mentioned finger gesture detection (thumbs up, pointing, etc). Maybe that's part of it?

onedognight• 11 years ago

A target with a wide baseline for the tracker.

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

The ring serves 3 functions as I understand.

-Tracking of the controller: There are leds on it that emmit IR light so the tracker can accurately track the controller. This accuracy is not achievable at the moment with just internal sensors (although the controller has these, presumably for even better accuracy)

-The inside of the ring has sensors to track your finger gestures. I can imagine this would not be possible with just the internals of the controller.

-The ring acts as a sort of extra handle. Imagine opening your hand totally (as in waving). This is a gesture you would maybe like to do in VR. The ring will hang between your thumb and index finger while you do this. Other more traditional tracked controllers would fall out of your hand.

aaronbrethorst4• 11 years ago

Does anyone know of a list of PCs that meet (or exceed) the recommended hardware specs for the Rift? Not that I'm going to run out and buy one of these machines in anticipation of the Rift's release next year, but I'm interested in knowing roughly what a premium VR experience costs today (excluding the headset, obviously)

Edit: To rephrase my question, can anyone point me to a list of PCs manufactured by companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. that meet or exceed these requirements?

monk_e_boy• 11 years ago

The recommended PC specification is an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290, Intel i5-4590, and 8GB RAM.

So yer looking at £750 for a PC.

christoph5• 11 years ago

Today you really need a Titan X or 980 GTX Ti for a premium experience across the board.

I don't think anyone can predict the future as there is currently so much optimisation going on across all the involved parties - Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Oculus, Valve, Epic, Unity, etc. They are all focussed on getting the best performance and experience out there.

This is a great summary of what Nvidia are currently doing:

https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/game...

corysama3• 11 years ago

Assuming Nvidia's VR SLI pans out, dual 970 TIs should get you 80% of the perf of dual 980 TIs for a cost comparable to a single 980TI. But, wait until VR SLI is demonstrated and tested in the wild. Until then, the added latency of AFR SLI is counter-productive to VR.

bigdubs• 11 years ago

I would imagine you'd get the best results from an Alienware style sub-brand of the listed companies; very few stock PCs come with the high-end GPU's you'd want to make the rift a good experience.

sytelus2• 11 years ago

This is likely going to be the biggest turn-off. People don't have those big PCs any more. Most people have just laptops/MacBook. I guess nobody would want to bring back those beasts in their living rooms again just to use Oculus Rift. They should have really considered full device experience where you get everything you need and hardware is exactly designed to give optimal Oculus experience. World has long moved on from knowing which graphic card you need for your PC. I really hope this has good enough performance on typical Lenovo/MBP at least.

nightski5• 11 years ago

The entire PC gaming industry would beg to differ, which is likely the initial target market. Of course that will change. Also I wouldn't exactly consider my desktop a beast. Form factors are pretty small these days.

pinum5• 11 years ago

People don't have those big PCs any more.

People who play video games on them do.

Most people have just laptops/MacBook.

Not people who play video games.

I guess nobody would want to bring back those beasts in their living rooms again just to use Oculus Rift.

If they like to play PC games in their living room, they already have a PC there. If they don't, this won't change that.

"They should have really considered full device experience where you get everything you need and hardware is exactly designed to give optimal Oculus experience."

So... sell the Oculus together with a gaming PC? What's the difference between that and getting your own separately?

World has long moved on from knowing which graphic card you need for your PC.

Except for those people who play video games on their PC. Those people generally do know what video card they have.

I really hope this has good enough performance on typical Lenovo/MBP at least.

It will not. A powerful desktop gaming computer is absolutely required for acceptable VR performance in any interesting game.

tempestn2• 11 years ago

Something like this may become more mainstream [1]. Use your laptop on the go, and plug it into a high-power graphics card at your desk (along with monitor, keyboard, etc., and now Rift!)

ionised3• 11 years ago

None of what you're saying is true.

pinum5• 11 years ago

To rephrase my question, can anyone point me to a list of PCs manufactured by companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. that meet or exceed these requirements?

Buying a prebuild is a bad idea. Apart from being overpriced, they often have strange custom motherboards and cases which make upgrades complicated.

There's always those places where you select the parts and they assemble the machine for you, but I can't recommend them. I bought a machine from Cyberpower UK a few years ago and had nothing but problems with it.

Just grab the parts from Amazon and assemble them. It isn't difficult, you're simply buying it in 7 parts and plugging them together. That way you'll know it's been done correctly, all the parts are standard, and you didn't pay over the odds.

Anyway, your question was for a hard price. I would budget $900 USD for all the parts (including 4690K CPU and GTX970 graphics crad). For a really high end setup for Rift (980Ti), the next step up would be about $1200.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

Prebuilds do work for users that

a) Want something that physically looks good enough to have in their living room - modern prebuilds are sleek and small while making a small-form-factor custom is super-hard

b) Have more money than time. Who has time to track parts compatibility and figure out the upgrade path for your device, only to drop half of the cost of a new unit on your upgrade? There's a reason Apple has been so successful while ignoring upgradeability: the hardware market has never made upgrading easy-enough to be in-reach of the majority of users. While physically installing the parts is simple, compatibility is always frustrating.

sixothree2• 11 years ago

I normally build. But recently I was helping someone purchase a new desktop. I noticed that it is extremely difficult to match the price of some pre-built systems. What he ended up getting came equipped with a Gigabyte motherboard as well as a load of standard parts that I costed out to be more than the purchase price.

aaronbrethorst4• 11 years ago

I haven't built a computer since, roughly, 2006. It's just not very interesting to me. My computers today are an iMac and a MacBook Air, both of which work wonderfully. I normally play games on a PS4 or PS Vita. Again, they work seamlessly. I don't want to mess around with finding the optimal power supply. I'm too old for that.

fr0styMatt26• 11 years ago

I had my last gaming rig built at a small PC store. Not a big chain or online or anything, just one where I could walk in, sit down and talk to the guy about general components, pick all the pieces I wanted and then have them order them in and build them.

Build quality was great, he did a really good job with the cabling, I got all the boxes/manuals/extra parts. Have no complaints.

I've done some upgrades to that machine myself over time (RAM, graphics card, PSU, a drive change). PC assembly has gotten incredibly easier than it was in the past. It's the little touches. I notice that tolerance on cases are a lot better these days (things tend to align much more easily than they used to). PCI-E slots are a lot easier to put cards into than the older ones. RAM sticks generally have heat-spreaders on them, so you don't have to worry as much about handling them as you used to. Drive cables are easier (cabling in general is easier as most things are keyed these days), thumbscrews are almost ubiquitous, as are easily removable drive bays.

The only thing I still get nervous about is CPUs and their heatsinks. I haven't fitted a CPU in a long time and a mate of mine did my heatsink replacement for me.

All that said, I'd still pay someone money to assemble my PC from scratch. Someone good that assembles PCs for a living is going to do it way better and way faster than I would. At least, I'd hope so :)

alexqgb3• 11 years ago

All in, a headset plus a machine to drive it will probably run you ~ $1,500 at launch, though the cost of the PC will come down over time.

Interestingly, Oculus has noted that the target spec. for the PC "will not change for the lifetime of the product." In other words, they seem to realize that this is expensive now, but that it's better to deliver a really high quality experience that gets cheaper over time than to launch with a sub-optimal experience that eventually fires on all cylinders.

invesari• 11 years ago

Neither Dell (Alienware) nor Lenovo sell reasonable pre-built hardware configurations.

Companies like http://www.ibuypower.com/ let you start with a base system and configure it until it meets the requirements. The recommended configuration costs about $1300, a premium one would be $1600.

aaronbrethorst4• 11 years ago

Thanks. Out of seven direct replies, you are the only person who answered my question.

jonknee• 11 years ago

The Xbox controller is really surprising to me. Years in development and it will ship with an Xbox controller. Oculus Touch didn't even get demonstrated and "prototype" was mentioned time and again.

taylorwc• 11 years ago

That really doesn't bother me. Having used an Xbox One controller regularly, I think it is a fantastic controller, and I like that Oculus didn't feel the need to reinvent the wheel. I am excited about new interfaces other than a traditional controller though.

badsock2• 11 years ago

VR definitely needs a reinvented wheel in this case. Being able to move your head in virtual space but not your hands is clearly suboptimal, and the motion sensors in that generation of controllers are not up to the task.

My take: this a bandaid, so they can get the headset out in Q1, ahead of the proper controllers in Q2. Not what they wanted to do, but Vive forced their hand on timing.

fudged71• 11 years ago

It could have been possible to rebrand or restyle the controller to actually match the headset. It's a bit strange to buy something from them which you could get on a store shelf in Walmart for years. Make it exclusive somehow.

pyrocat4• 11 years ago

Interestingly enough, it looks like it will be wireless, which currently isn't possible with the PC. The Xbox One controller is only wireless for Xbox, the drivers/wireless receiver aren't available for PC. I wonder if they partnered with Microsoft to make it wireless?

lucb1e3• 11 years ago

I like that Oculus didn't feel the need to reinvent the wheel

Fair point, but instead of a custom controller you could use any old controller you have lying around. Bundling it just increases the price.

gibsonje2• 11 years ago

"The oculus will ship with...

A wireless....

Xbox one controller"

I closed out of the stream at that point.

wavefunction2• 11 years ago

You might want to get that checked out.

Turn around and sell the Xbox controller on ebay if you feel the need, nothing says the two are wedded or the controller is required to use Oculus.

benihana• 11 years ago

It's not 1997; wireless controllers aren't shit and Microsoft makes good hardware and has some great software.

0x02• 11 years ago

Since OR is under Facebook, and Facebook has been fairly Microsoft friendly in the past (opting for bing maps and some office docs stuff etc), it doesn't seem like a huge surprise, especially since Sony/PS4 has their own thing in development (Morpheus)

I guess this also explains the earlier announcement dropping OSX and Linux support.

nightski5• 11 years ago

I think it is more than Facebook being MS "friendly". Like it or not, Windows is still the dominant platform for PC gaming period. As much as many would like this to change, it is not even close to happening.

cies• 11 years ago

Dropping Linux support means dropping SteamBox support? Wow, I'm stunned.

Kiro• 11 years ago

Microsoft owns a couple of % of Facebook.

ohitsdom• 11 years ago

It will be interesting to watch this relationship as Microsoft's HoloLens develops.

pyrocat4• 11 years ago

Why reinvent the wheel? The xbox controller is widely considered the gold standard.

lelandbatey• 11 years ago

Exactly; Microsoft invested approximately $100 million into development of the Xbox One controller[0], and it shows.

[0] http://www.gamesradar.com/video-designing-xbox-one-controlle...

nilkn2• 11 years ago

The Xbox One controller is certainly good, but the mini-trackpad-button-hybrid on the PS4 controller is a real touch of genius in interacting with menus, when support is properly implemented.

madsushi• 11 years ago

The X360 controller is/was the gold standard, the XBONE controller has more mixed reviews. I personally prefer Sony's DS4 to the XBONE controller (for next-gen controllers). But I still keep an X360 controller around.

dec0dedab0de• 11 years ago

I think the GameCube had the best controller ever.

Bahamut2• 11 years ago

The gold standard is Nintendo's controllers, not Microsoft's.

wildpeaks• 11 years ago

At least now we know why they went Windows-only for the time being

Kapura6• 11 years ago

If you think that's the only reason, you should look into the additional dev costs of building modern games on mac and linux.

dbbolton2• 11 years ago

I was equally surprised by the on-ear style headphones. I'm sure the design team thought about the choice in depth and has good reasons behind it, but I would have imagined over-ear to be better for immersion (personally I find them more comfortable as well).

LesZedCB• 11 years ago

Sounds quality isn't really dependent on circumaural vs supra-aural headphones. The major complaint I hear with supra-aural headphones is that they apply pressure on the ears, which can be unconfortable. Sound quality, however, is largely affected by the drivers.

malandrew3• 11 years ago

The technical terms are supra-aural (on-ear) and circum-aural (around the ears). Both can be sound-wise excellent, but circum-aural is definitely more comfortable.

I used to own a pair of Joe Grado HP-1 HP-1000 supra-aural headphones and they were excellent and did a great job with binaural recordings. Since selling those, I moved on to the Denon D7000 circum-aural headphones. Far more comfortable. Bar none the best audio experience I have had was with AKG K-1000s hooked up to 75-watt tubes monoblocks. However, that wouldn't have worked for VR presence because of the latency from the tubes. With solid state speaker amps to keep the audio in sync, the presence would probably be unreal, assuming the K-1000s do well with binaural recordings, but that is something I'm uncertain of.

babuskov• 11 years ago

What is really needed IMHO is a mind-reader. Something simple that would detect brain waves and allow you to move around. That way one could aim by turning your head and move by thinking about it.

I know tech. has some way to go before it gets there, but that is the missing piece that would make this the next level of computing (and probably one that would cause Half Life 3 to finally show up).

jfoster2• 11 years ago

Head turning without thinking about it would probably induce motion sickness. I think something the earlier Rifts taught us (through low framerates, lack of head tracking, etc.) is that our brains freak out if there are any significant inconsistencies between our movements and what our eyes see.

hartator• 11 years ago

What are the specs of the display? Is it the same one than the V2?

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

They are better than V2 (also called DK2, as in developer kit 2). The total res is 2160x1200 at 90 hz. 1080x1200 per eye. You can find out more here: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

Haha, thanks HN mods for changing the title to the uselessly generic "Oculus Rift".

ljk• 11 years ago

what was it before?

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

Something like "Oculus Rift announces commercial availability Q1 2016"

lawnchair_larry• 11 years ago

Yeah, the mods don't seem to understand the difference between context and editorializing.

Rockdtben• 11 years ago

Going to a page and the first thing I see is someone with their mouth gaping open and looking up. Horrible design.

th0br0• 11 years ago

I'm guessing you're supposed to associate "Aaah" and "Oh" as in Oh-culus, but I agree: that's a terrible filler for your first product page.

smacktoward2• 11 years ago

"We call that the 'O' face. You know, for 'Oculus.'"

Alupis• 11 years ago

And it's supposed to be intuitive the black oval in the top left is somehow the "Home" button?

aaron-lebo2• 11 years ago

That was my immediate thought as well. Their choice of a scruffy looking guy (nothing wrong with it in and of itself) says a lot about their intended audience.

Hard to imagine Apple or Google marketing a product with that kind of imaging.

darkstar999• 11 years ago

The second model is also a scruffy beardy man. Hmm.

robertfw3• 11 years ago

As a "scruffy looking guy", what does it tell you? I'm curious what you are able to glean about me and other "scruffies" by virtue of our facial hair

erroneousfunk• 11 years ago

But they have the back of a lady's head at the end! You know, for balance and stuff.

ionised3• 11 years ago

He just has a short beard. What's the problem?

mortenjorck• 11 years ago

Opening the page at work, it triggered my scroll-down reflex.

Maybe it's just my memories of 90s predictions of VR pornography, but the image does feel off-puttingly suggestive.

platz• 11 years ago

open mouths w/ the rift already appears to be a meme:

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/20bqyw/mouths_close_...

sp332• 11 years ago

At least they blacked-out the inside of his nose. Ew.

falcolas• 11 years ago

I'm a bit of a sound nerd, but the on-ear headphones are really underwhelming. No noise isolation, most likely low quality drivers... this would make for a pretty terrible VR experience.

Simply upgrading them to closed back, over the ear headphones would make a big difference - you'd be able to use lower volumes (at which point even cheap drivers aren't oto bad), and you'd be more isolated from the environment, similar to how the rest of the headset works with your vision.

errtnsd2• 11 years ago

Palmer claims the headphones are very high quality. If you don't like them you can replace them with your own.

pyrocat4• 11 years ago

Oh yeah? I can't find where it says you can replace them with their own. That'd be cool though.

stcredzero2• 11 years ago

So the way to signal that one is an evidence based aficionado of sound is to call yourself a "sound nerd?" In today's parlance, "audiophiles" are all deluded woo-woo proponents who are deserving of ridicule. (I find that to be a form of shallow prejudice: One can simply evaluate the science behind what someone is saying.)

freehunter4• 11 years ago

I have no idea what point you're trying to make.

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

The earphones are detachable and you can use your own audio headphones. As I understand the quality of these are actually pretty good, and definitely better than "gamer" headphones that the target audience might have. The reason they are on there is because they want to be sure everyone who has the rift has a decent audio solution, because positional audio helps so much with tricking your brain into being immersed.

cma2• 11 years ago

The Crescent Bay prototype used the drivers from porta-pros, which are pretty good. The point of included headphones:

A) Based on Twitch and YouTube a lot of people didn't use headphones, losing most benefits of headtracked and spatialized sound. Integrating them makes them much more likely to be used.

B) Standardized frequency response and built-in DAC/amp means their HRTF (head related transfer function) spatialization tech can be tuned precisely, without worrying about the EQ of thousands of different variations. Though people are still free to use their own and lose the fine tuning.

CarVac• 11 years ago

Closed back headphones don't offer as much "soundstage" as open-back headphones. With open-back headphones things really sound like they're coming from outside of your head, which is critical for the 3d sound illusion.

tiffanyh• 11 years ago

Off topic, but PHPBB would not have been the first forum software I would have expected Facebook to use.

https://forums.oculus.com/

cma2• 11 years ago

It was a legacy from the acquisition and I believe they have already had to pay out bug bounties on it.

ameen• 11 years ago

They could've at least gone with Discourse. But I guess owing to the abundance of PHP talent at hand, they might've chose to stay with a widely used one.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

I really like Discourse. But having looked into it quite seriously, it has a lot of gotchas, drawbacks, and limitations. The interface is very nice, but the feature set isn't as "mature" as other older forum software. It seems like if you're using it exactly the way they use it on the official demo/Discoure site, then you're good, if you need to use it in any other way then tough luck.

PHPBB is fine if you skin it well. Plus PHPBB's system requirements are extremely easy to meet (PHP and MySQL). Discourse requires a more niche tech' stack and requires a much more powerful machine to run. Good luck running it on a $10/month VM.

BHSPitMonkey2• 11 years ago

That forum pre-dates the acquisition.

pierrec• 11 years ago

One problem is that migrating away from phpBB is hard (especially if it's phpBB 3). Anyways, it's not hip but it's not horrible either.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

I like the split controller. I hope they sell those as a stand-alone device - I'd like a 1-handed controller for gaming on my phone, for example.

freehunter4• 11 years ago

I've used a couple phone controllers, and the problem always comes back to no game really supports them because not everyone has one. The best games for a controller are the Modern Conflict games, and even then they have quicktime events that require me to drop the controller and touch the screen.

Pxtl8• 11 years ago

At the very least 8-bit era emulators will be able to capitalize on them well since those games just require 2 buttons and a D-pad, which a single hand of this controller supplies.

mladenkovacevic• 11 years ago

Separating the controllers into 2 devices for each hand is a natural way to do input in VR, but I feel that the hand and finger motion should also not be limited by the need to hold the controller. The pointing and thumbs up gestures are ok, but imagine if the computer could respond to the full range of motion a-la Leap.

Maybe it would look something like a cone that's at its base wrapped around your wrist but at its height contains Leap sensors that can recognize the full 3-dimensional range of hand/finger movements.

Cantremeber2• 11 years ago

Hell why not just use something the same thing glovers use. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xxAghmBb6zQ/maxresdefault.jpg

Just use IR LEDs instead of colored.

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

I really completely agree.

But I think the intention with this device is to make something 'more' than just gestures. They wanted to make a device that can understand gestures, but also gives you more fine controls (buttons, analog sticks, grasping). It seems like they really want to get the basics right, and then expand on all sorts of forms of input in the future depending on the reaction and ideas of devs and gamers. In their way of thinking you could buy a leap motion right now, strap it to the headset and have complete finger tracking. The only downside is the probable fact that there will be more applications using Oculus' Touch device and some few novel unpolished apps using something like a leap motion.

Maybe there will be a device like you explained in the future.

evo_9• 11 years ago

Some observations and concerns:

1. Oculus is a display, therefore it should work with almost anything (aka modern devices that put out HDMI, etc). A 4k monitor doesn't require me to buy a whole new computer to use it. I don't understand why Oculus (or any other VR display) needs to be proprietary to the point that I may end up owing one device (Oculus) for PC and another (Morpheus) for PS4 gaming. This makes as much sense as companies launching nearly identical video formats (BluRay vs HD-DVD most recently). And again, this is a display not unlike a 4K display and should work similarly universally, I would think/hope.

2. It seem too big to me to be truly immersive. To lose oneself you have to not notice you are wearing this, which at its current size seems unlikely.

3. It needs to be wireless, any cables will detract from the immersive experience. I'm sure they are working on this.

4. The controllers they created look pretty interesting but I don't see how they will be conducive to touching, picking up, grasping items which would seem to be a more important thing than re-inventing FPS controllers if VR is truly going to take off this time.

5. I worry that too much focus is being placed on adapting FPS to this (and other) VR tech. While it would seem a 'natural', and probably will prove to be the easiest style of game to adapt, it's also lazy. It will be far more challenging (and I think rewarding) to adapt VR for other purposes such as viewing live events (concerts, sports etc), driving games/sims, sports games/sims and action adventure games such as Witcher and Dark Souls, just to name a few off my head. Maybe the new controllers will work great with those types of games/activities but my gut is these are really optimized for FPS, which is a shame.

It's exciting times for VR but I sure hope it doesn't get overtaken by FPS games because there are so many more potentially awesome applications out there to also focus on.

alexqgb3• 11 years ago

@evo-9, All of your observations and concerns suggest a really superficial understanding of VR in general and Oculus in particular.

Do a Google search for recent lectures by John Carmack. If you have any serious interest in the field, you won't find a more rigorous or illuminating introduction.

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

To react to all your points view with my points of view:

1. It's not a display, it's a device that contains a display. It has motion and tracking sensors. What the rift wants to achieve is the latency from input (moving your head) to photon to be really really low. This problem is hard. And to solve it you need to create your own solutions first. In an ideal world everyone would work together to make the best "Rift" that works on all devices, but that is not how capitalism works. This does not mean that we will not see this in the future. Some companies will win the VR battle, and they will probably be the ones to provide the best HMD for multiple devices. Hopefully we will go to a world where we have a HMD standard, but that is just not how new technologies evolve.

2. The Rift is lightweight, and people who have tried the Rift don't even notice the HMD on their head after a couple of minutes.

3. The technology isn't there yet (or too new/not mature) to do it with as low latency as with a cable, but like you said it will be eventually.

4. Agreed. Although they have a grasping button I'm not sure if it will mimick grasping convincingly enough. Playtesting with the actual device will tell us more I think.

5. I think we will see a lot of games that are not FPS oriented to be honest. I didn't see any FPS announcements (except for the dogfighting in space game but that's not really FPS to me). I'm personally not too worried about this.

p1mrx2• 11 years ago

I'm curious to see how they intend to solve the glasses problem. Ideally, they'd partner with someone like Zenni Optical to provide $10 drop-in lenses for any prescription.

errtnsd2• 11 years ago

It isn't a problem.

Just like monitor manufacturers don't offer prescription glasses along with the purchase, Oculus won't offer lenses.

Corrective eye-wear is very individual and requires some amount of expertise( exam, specialist ), so it doesn't make sense, and it isn't very feasible, for Oculus to provide that for you. Also contacts are very cheap.

sixothree2• 11 years ago

I thought the dev kit came with lenses specifically for near-sighted people.

lfowles• 11 years ago

Monitor manufacturers don't make a device that straps onto your head. Apparently wide frames are an issue[1]. When I was playing airsoft, I had ESS goggles. ESS also sold prescription lenses[1] designed to slot into the air holes in the goggles, all you had to do was send them your prescription.

Contacts may be very cheap, but even with dailies, I wouldn't want to put in contacts just to game. I prefer glasses in general.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/2b5yur/will_nearsig...

[1] http://www.esseyepro.com/U-Rx-Insert_191_detail.html

dimino• 11 years ago

Couldn't you just correctively blur the display or something?

j_s• 11 years ago

I would like to see driver support for punching in the numbers on your eyeglass frames to adjust the focus to the prescription automatically.

p1mrx2• 11 years ago

That's not beyond the realm of possibility, but it would significantly reduce the performance of the display:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~gordonw/VisionCorrectingDisplay/

joshstrange• 11 years ago

I really want VR computer monitors so that I sit at a desk with no monitors so that I can run 4,5,6, any number I want or just 1 big monitor. Also it would give me a lot more privacy as no one else could see my monitors unless I shared the monitor to them which I imagine would be a little easier to do with virtual monitors than when physical ones (even considering screen sharing which is iffy sometimes).

wmil2• 11 years ago

They're no where near the screen resolution needed for that.

lhl8• 11 years ago

Closer than you might think. At 4K, the arc density is about a 14" VGA screen, which was totally usable. At 8K you approach a 24" HD monitor. That's ignoring the additional resolution you get from high refresh rates.

Here's an arc resolution chart I made: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pOx0Jcy6tpMGLxmPYX8n...

davesque2• 11 years ago

I've thought a lot about this as well. There's one big problem I see with this: your eyes would get really tired. The nice thing about having a real-world monitor is that your eyes get a lot of ambient light as well. So, if Microsoft can really develop and evolve their HoloLens, that could be one solution to this problem since ambient light would come through the transparent display.

Update: as other people have mentioned, the resolution is also not quite there yet with the Oculus to have a convincing virtual desktop.

lhl8• 11 years ago

Current HMD lenses collimate the light so you focus on infinity which is isn't too stressful for your eyes. There's still strain from vergence-accommodation conflict, but I think light field displays will outpace the holographic waveguide tech that MS is using.

psychometry• 11 years ago

Your use case is particularly apt for frequent fliers. I've almost had a tray table-supported laptop destroyed on more than one occasion by a reclining passenger in front of me. It would be amazing to just set up a small keyboard+trackpad on my lap and not have to even pull the computer out of its bag.

If I could do this, I wouldn't even care how ridiculous I looked.

sbarre• 11 years ago

A podcast I listen to recently discussed the theoretical horror of flying while being stuck next to a passenger strapped into an Oculus Rift who is totally oblivious to how annoying they are being to their fellow passengers with their gestures and reactions to the VR experience that no one else is seeing.

Please don't be that guy.. :-)

Kapura6• 11 years ago

I, too, want to be a gargoyle. The abundance of virtual space is one of the main draws that I don't think people really understand yet. But if you have a sufficiently hi-resolution display, you could easily watch an imax movie or put an insanely large amount of data in front of you in an intuitive, customisable way. This is one of the main points where I think people really need to see it done well to understand the potential. Good thing Carmack is on the case.

matmann20012• 11 years ago

You won't be able to see the keyboard though. So, how confident are you in your touch-typing skills?

malandrew3• 11 years ago

Besides resolution, you also have to deal with the fact that the oculus rift really only works well with a dedicated GPU. It's going to be a while before it's a legitimate "mobile" solution.

I got a DK2 and have barely touched it because my Macbook Pro 13" just wasn't adequate enough.

seanp2k22• 11 years ago

Also, consider a future where a laptop is just a ~silicone skin over the current "bottom half" of a laptop. Batteries could also be smaller since the screen currently eats so much juice, or it could stay the same size to power the VR headset (but I imagine that the smaller screens would use less juice).

danielbln• 11 years ago

This will be somewhat problematic until there is some sort of a beacon that acts as a fixed reference point in front of you. If there is no positional tracking and it's just the headset's IMU, the plane's movement (e.g. banking) would affect the tracking.

bottled_poe• 11 years ago

You are not seeing the forest for the trees. Why simulate reality when VR escapes those limitations?

cholantesh• 11 years ago

As a devotee of Andy Kaufman, I am eager to do this _precisely_ because it would look ridiculous.

colinramsay3• 11 years ago

Do you? I can't imagine why anyone would want to strap something to their head that would make the programming experience more tiring than looking at a monitor for 6-8 hours a day, which this surely will. Ditto the speculation that this could somehow be a transformative social experience.

apetrovic2• 11 years ago

I remember a conversation with friend about twenty years ago (yeah, I'm old). We're talking about the new exciting thing, mobile phones. "There's no way anyone, save for a few weirdos or people who must have it because of their job, will willingly give up their privacy by having a phone in the pocket all day along!" - said the friend, I remember like it was yesterday.

lhl8• 11 years ago

Do you know any programmer who wouldn't want more screen space?

What if you had FullHD resolution pixels, much less Retina pixels anywhere you looked?

Maybe you're not imagining hard enough? The possibilities, to me, are rather mind-bogglingly awesome.

POiNTx6• 11 years ago

This exists. http://www.vrdesktop.net/

I haven't tried it yet since I have no HMD but I read some good stuff about it. Don't know if it will run more than one monitor though but that feature seems obvious to me.

Like others have mentioned the big problem is the resolution at this moment. You have basically about the same res as a 1080p screen strapped to your face, so the res that you see will actually be lower than 1080p. Reading stuff will be more difficult as you can imagine.

mschlafli1• 11 years ago

I tried this for about 6 hours straight using the DK2, and there seems to be a sort of catch-22. By default, the resolution is not high enough but your head stays stationary as in this default you can see the entire screen from the default head position. Virtual Desktop allows you to zoom in, and this then works wonders. However, you need to start moving your head to see the corners of the screen. Naturally, your neck muscles become the first bottleneck.

kamaal• 11 years ago

This is going to make working from home a whole lot more easier. Expect outsourcing to get easier, expect fall in business travel.

A whole lot of things are going to easy and cheap.

yukakojima• 11 years ago

Hi. FOVE's screen is WQHD (2560*1440). Also we are planning to make Iris recognition for securing privacy. It will be suitable and very secured headset for personal monitor. (bit.ly/FOVEKS)

MaysonL• 11 years ago

This: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wearality/wearality-sky...

seems to meets at least some of your requirements.

amelius• 11 years ago

Also it would give me a lot more privacy

In the meantime, you can use the laptop sock [1] :)

[1] http://cdn.instructables.com/FTR/NFY0/FF78HWJO/FTRNFY0FF78HW...

arca_vorago• 11 years ago

Since Oculus sold to Facebook I dropped them like a hot potato, and am instead embracing Valve's main platform for SteamBox the HTC Vive. That being said, where I think VR will really take off is going to a combination of VR and human brain interface (including gaze tracking) in order to get past some of the limitations of human interface design we have been stuck on for so long (mouse/keyboard/joystick)

tcfunk• 11 years ago

I am seeing a keynote mentioned in the comments, but I don't see anything about that on this website.

Could someone point me toward this keynote? I would very much like to watch it, thanks!

green7ea• 11 years ago

I found this on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdM3jT5swRA

TheGuyWhoCodes• 11 years ago

Here you go: http://www.twitch.tv/oculus

lighthawk• 11 years ago

Does anyone know if the issues people were reporting with simulator sickness have lessened with the version they plan to sell?

see: https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=5127&start=20

BillTheCat• 11 years ago

I used the rift with the full head tracking this year at PAX East and felt no motion sickness at any point. A lot of the issues in 2013 were fixed when they started tracking full head movement instead of just rotation.

Of course I don't think I'm prone to motion sickness and the demo lasted only about 20 minutes max but I believe that I could wear it for over an hour or more with zero adverse effects.

exDM692• 11 years ago

I used the rift with the full head tracking this year at PAX East and felt no motion sickness at any point.

You're one of the lucky ones. I've tried all the Oculus devkits as well as some other VR solutions and I get terrible motion sickness within minutes and it lasts for hours after I'm done with the game. This is a very personal thing but anecdotal evidence suggests that this is a major issue for a significant portion of people.

Oculus DK2 was a major improvement, though.

The Oculus is a very personal device, you'll have to adjust the lenses and the headgear to suit your eyes, and then it might be off for someone else.

This is a real issue they're going to have to solve, so far they've been excused because their products have been called "development kits". But if they start selling a final product that will make half or a quarter of people sick, they'll be getting bad reviews and reputation.

I'd really like to be able to use a VR solution, it's a competitive advantage in the kind of games I play (racing and flight simulation), but nothing I've tried so far works for me.

eco4• 11 years ago

Since that forum post they have implemented low persistence display which apparently helps immensely with the motion sickness some people experience.

You can watch an explanation of how it works here: https://youtu.be/HoLHHUdi_LE?t=5m41s

Essentially it just flashes the frame briefly then switches the display to black. This helps with the tiny motions your head and eyes make between refreshes which normally cause your brain to not respond well because your movement isn't matching what you are seeing.

They also implemented something called Time Warping which is very complicated but it's basically a depth-aware frame interpolation that let's the device create way more frames than actually are which helps again with keeping your brain from freaking out about the discongruity of your head motion and your vision.

This video explains how that works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvtEXMlQQtI

wmil2• 11 years ago

Has there been any news about the Zenimax lawsuit since last June?

davesque2• 11 years ago

What's the news here? Is this just a press release of sorts or new look for the website?

lucb1e3• 11 years ago

The news was in the original title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9701727

arcameron• 11 years ago

Why does nobody make a noscript version of their site?!

There's absolutely no body text on this page unless you allow their JS

mbell• 11 years ago

Any data on the SDE of the new display?

I'm really excited about VR, have a DK2 and am really impressed with the experiences available already. But, I've found it very hard to use for long periods of time (more than 20-30 minutes) as my eyes eventually focus on the screen door and I can't seem to break that without taking some time away from it.

tehchromic• 11 years ago

this is what M$ is good at. it's the heart and soul of the company.

Sir_Cmpwn2• 11 years ago

I recently returned my Oculus Rift, not even two weeks after buying it. Dropping Linux support is not okay.

beernutz• 11 years ago

Returned it to where? It is not even released yet. And the DK1/2 are not returnable.

Sir_Cmpwn2• 11 years ago

I made a special case of it via support. I had a DK2.

omni• 11 years ago

Dropping Linux support is not okay.

It's v1 of a product, if they waited to have every feature under the sun before initial launch then nothing would ever get released, ever.

ganzuul• 11 years ago

Linux support isn't just any feature under the sun. But you're right, they can't wait for it, because gaming on Linux is an actual disaster.

Meanwhile, gaming on Android is working just fine.

fr0styMatt26• 11 years ago

It's strange, but when I think about it, DK1 was a much more positive 'product-y' experience for me than DK2 was. Perhaps part of that is that DK1 was my first VR headset, so much of the initial awe factor had worn off by the time I got the DK2.

The DK2 was/is plagued with software teething issues. Totally acceptable as it's a developer kit, but still frustrating and a little worrying. The other thing I found disappointing coming from DK1 to DK2 was the vastly decreased field-of-view. I think it's a combination of things that contribute/contributed to that (over-zealous vignetting in the earlier SDKs being one of them), some of which may have been fixed since in software. I say this as, to me, the Gear VR FOV seems wider than DK2's despite having a slightly lower quoted value.

My DK2 is basically a brick now. There's been a compatibility issue with AMD cards running it in extended mode, which goes all the way back to September of last year which has not been fixed on my system by any driver updates or Oculus SDK updates since. Given that the cool stuff I'd like to use with it (specifically VR Desktop and VorpX) doesn't support direct mode and only does extended, I've almost given up on it (this affects dev too - I believe the latest Unity editor still doesn't support running stuff in Direct-to-Rift mode from the editor, for example).

TwoBit2• 11 years ago

That's an acknowledged AMD bug which is fixed but I don't believe it's available yet. Oculus v0.6 apps can always just run in direct mode and avoid that problem.

crusso• 11 years ago

It needs a camera on the front so you can have a PIP view and avoid having to take the goggles off to see something in the outside world.

rwmj• 11 years ago

Agreed. Back in 2013 when I played with the original DK1, I wrote that it needed an external camera:

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/oculus-rift-first-impr...

johansch• 11 years ago

When I finally tried OR DK2 last month it didn't meet my expectations. Latency was not an issue, but the fielf-of-view was simply to small to be convincing. It felt like looking through a toilet paper roll sawed in half.

Balgair• 11 years ago

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-57522-oculus-rift-fat-guy-lik...

Be aware, this man is who has bought and the OR type system, and is likely to buy another. I'm not saying this to demean, but to put color to the world where ORs are commonplace. If the OR is going to be common, then this picture will be a common sight as well. People complain about friends always texting and looking at their phones, if the OR becomes widely used, then this picture will be the new complaint

nickhalfasleep• 11 years ago

This really seems like something so personal I would want to try one on before buying, I wonder if in towns like Denver we will get the opportunity?

0xdeadbeefbabe3• 11 years ago

It would be fun to fly a drone this way. How many cameras do you need? How much bandwidth?

sjs3822• 11 years ago

I love that the Oculus Touch controllers are positioned to look like eyeballs.

puranjay• 11 years ago

I'm not going to buy this. Ever. Because I know if I do, I'm not going to come out of the rabbit hole.

9999• 11 years ago

Years in the making and the final industrial design of the thing is just a slight step up from a cardboard box. Awful foam around the headset, crummy plastic on the headbrace, flimsy open headphones, and it looks like it will still be unusable for anyone that wears glasses. I'm still grateful to Oculus for kicking off all of the interest in VR, but I doubt I'll ever be buying their devices if this is the best they can do.

elektromekatron2• 11 years ago

Somebody shoot the graphic designer for laziness. If you are making promotional artwork for a VR headset, try not to have the view in each eyepiece being the same picture slid horizontally. Surely it wouldn't hurt to do two renders.

reedlaw• 11 years ago

It's a well-done site. I had to go back and look carefully to even notice that the views in the eyepieces were not rendered in proper perspective.

elektromekatron2• 11 years ago

Perhaps I stare at 3d graphics too much, was the first thing I noticed.

kup0• 11 years ago

I'm just waiting for some internal fallout in the company between execs so I can make a well-timed "rift" joke... It's interesting to see these images now in comparison to the leaked ones that came out.

peter303• 11 years ago

I heard Jaron Lanier speak about this 30 years at Xerox PARC. And the general principles of VR have changed little since then. Computers are at least a million times faster now. So you don't puke moving your head and the computer is a half second behind.

shmerl5• 11 years ago

Is this the reason they stopped Linux development? http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/11/oculus-rift-consumer/#.xwct...

The partnership with Microsoft will also see the Rift work “natively” with Windows 10, plus play Xbox One games in the headset.

yaeger• 11 years ago

They better not dare making this Win10 exclusive and hosing people who plan to stay on Win7 for the foreseeable future.

People were all up in arms when facebook entered yet there was never an overlapping issue that would mean the Rift would be gimped or held hostage or anything. People who were suggesting FB login to use the Rift were quite frankly talking out of their behinds.

But this deal now with MS is awful. There was no need for Oculus to do that. None. It clearly wasn't a money thing. It wasn't for the controller as they clearly work on their own one. What on earth was riding these people to go with MS when it is clear that they are fully focused on their console and tablets. This does not paint a good picture to what the rift might be reduced to just to make it fit onto all of MS stuff. Pretty much like they are currently in the process of "consolification" of the desktop OS.

shmerl5• 11 years ago

I bet backers who supported the project initially and expected it to be cross platform and not locked into some MS nonsense are pretty upset now.

Luckily there are other alternatives which don't try to force any exclusive requirements on their users.

namlem• 11 years ago

Why would anyone want to stay on Win 7 though? With the exception of businesses who rely on legacy software of course.

lucb1e3• 11 years ago

partnership with Microsoft

Ah, that explains why they call the Xbox controller "one of the best in the world" and shipping it with it, instead of just letting people decide for themselves or making it at least optional. This might actually stop me from getting one, I'm not sure how much a controller is normally but it will increase the price and I have a USB dualshock 2 controller right here which I prefer over the Xbox one.

quux• 11 years ago

They stopped both Linux and OS X development. Previously they said it was to focus on getting the best experience on the biggest platform first, and then expanding to OS X and Linux.

shmerl5• 11 years ago

The reason can be the same. MS doesn't like cross platform competition.

manu29d• 11 years ago

They really didn't think about people with specs or is it just that they're not marketing that aspect?

hrnnnnnn• 11 years ago

They mentioned in the presentation yesterday that they've actually improved the ergonomics for people wearing glasses.

Oculus Rift

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