The VR community seems to be holding its collective breath to see what impact the Oculus Rift head mounted display will have on the future of virtual reality gaming. Patiently folks are waiting for the Kickstarter funding round to start and I’ve learned today that it has been delayed two weeks. Don’t fret though; Palmer Luckery, the brains behind the project, says that the delay “is not actually bad news at all.”
If you need a bit of catching up on the project: the Oculus Rift is a high field-of-view head mounted display that many hope will mark a seminal point for VR gaming. Here’s a detailed article about it.
Over at the lengthy MTBS3D forum thread dedicated to the Rift, Luckey says he cannot go into details about the delay, but that the reason for the delay is one that he “can promise that nobody here would possibly be upset with it.” Here’s the latest update about the Oculus Rift staight from Luckey (AKA PalmerTech):
Bad news: The Kickstarter is approved, but I am going to have to delay it for two weeks.
Good news: That is not actually bad news at all. A lot has changed in the past week, and while I cannot go into details just yet, I can promise that nobody here would possibly be upset with it. Some really big names in the game industry are getting involved with this, not only the initial kit, but future development as well. Thanks to those names, the Kickstarter can be 30 days instead of 60, meaning that the Kickstarter will end and start shipping units even earlier than before! More info as soon as I can give it.
Thanks for holding on with me!
At first blush a two week Kickstarter delay does seem like bad news but, as you can see above, the duration of the Kickstarter funding round is going to be cut in half (from 60 days to 30 days), meaning that people will actually get their units more quickly than originally planned.
A two week delay on the Kickstarter, which was original supposed to launch on the 14th or 15th of June, means we’re now looking at somewhere around the 29th or 30th of June.
Even more exciting is Luckey’s tease about “really big names in the game industry” getting involved in the Oculus Rift project for both the initial offering and further development of the HMD. As if this project wasn’t exciting enough already — it sounds like things are getting taken to the next level! The very first Oculus Rift in question is supposed to be a DIY kit for those experienced with hardware hacking and the like. I’m hoping that the mention of “further development” means that we’ll see an Oculus Rift 2.0 that will be ready out of the box for consumers. Time will tell.
As for the identity of the “big names” getting involved in the project… Luckey could be talking about publishers, developers, or even individual figures, so we don’t have much to go on at this point. Valve’s Michael Abrash is a reasonable suspect seeing how he’s been toying with wearable computing and calls it a “very interesting and promising space”. Id Software is also high up on the suspect list because of John Carmack’s involvement with the project.
If I had to choose a developer who I’d want to be involved, it would definitely be Bungie. And how about the readers? Let me hear in the comments your best guesses and hopefuls!
