Just a few days prior to their ‘Step into the Rift‘ press event in San Francisco, Oculus has accidentally leaked what they’ve called a “placeholder concept” image which shows some never before seen additions to the Rift VR headset.

Shortly after the image—apparently hidden in today’s Oculus website overhaul—was uncovered, founder Palmer Luckey took to the Oculus section of Reddit to verify its authenticity, but also to explain how old it is.

“This is an old placeholder concept image that we accidentally leaked. Everything in it is ancient, certainly nowhere close to final (as evidenced by the GPU specs and the game named “war”) Enjoy checking it out, at this point, but don’t expect everything to carry through to the stream on the 11th,” he said.

See Also:

In addition to some highlights we pulled out in the articles above, here’s the leak in its entirety:

1 of 10
See Also: Here’s the Entire Oculus Rift “Placeholder Concept” Leak
Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • augure

    The small controller is a great idea. Otherwise not thrilled to discover once again that the CV1 set for a year from now is already a year old, and that it might be less good that it’s original concept.

    No hand-motion tracking is really a bad thing from a conceptual standpoint for VR.

    • polysix

      “No hand-motion tracking is really a bad thing from a conceptual standpoint for VR.”

      100% agree. Palmer himself knows this and has U-Turned on all he said about it in the past. I don’t buy that bundling it is anything like sticking a crap camera (kinnect) on a sub-par console (Xbox one). VR is an entire – linked system – not just the head, but the active interaction too. Anyone who’s used rift DKs with a gamepad long enough (as I have) can tell you that while it’s still cool it’s far from going to win over the masses feeling like an old style Videogame (control) tacked onto mostly face aiming shooters or limited interaction ‘look around’ games.

      If HTC has the nutz to bundle VR input day one, putting their money where their mouth is and risking less sales, then oculus should have done it too, and eaten half the extra cost to seed GREAT VR as they promised!

      Someone had to be brave upfront with VR controllers as standard first = dev support = player buys. Now that ‘braveness’ falls on the shoulders of the consumer who must risk another £200 on the seperate touch controllers and pray they get supported.

      Former oculus fan but have to say it’s Vive for me, doing VR right from day one! VR is much more than just an HMD.