Oculus Rift - changing how we see the digital world

At the beginning of this month Long Beach, California based Oculus announced their Kickstarter project to create a next gen VR HMD (Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display) called the Rift.

Since putting this project on Kickstarter, Oculus has shot past their goal of $250,000 and raised over $2 million for creating the device. The Rift will work on PC and mobile (no mention of Mac), offer 110 degrees diagonal / 90 degrees horizontal field of view, 6 degrees of freedom head tracking, 1280x800 resolution (640x800 per eye), with a weight of only 0.22 kilograms.

What makes the Rift so exciting is that there has yet to be another HMD out there that has great specs that is even close to affordable. HMDs that offer this resolution and field of vision are thousands of dollars. Rift will retail around $300. Check out their Kickstarter video with some big names in the gaming world giving their support.



So I pledged my $300 to get the EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BFG. The developer units are set to ship in December of this year and I’ll receive a developer kit, a copy of Doom 3 BFG and full access to their Developer Center for their SDK, docs, samples, and engine integrations!

Oculus is also working on out-of-the-box engine integrations for Unreal Engine and Unity, so that anyone interested in working with the Rift, including indie game developers, can get started right away! This video of the game Hawken with the Rift looks very promising!

 

If the Rift delivers the type of experience it promises, this could be a game changer for immersive virtual reality and applications far beyond gaming. Guess we will find out in December!

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