An update on something I’ve been eagerly looking forward to — Oculus Rift Minecraft support. While the game’s creators have hinted at official support, one modder is taking things into his own hands and has released an early mod.

In an MTBS3D thread, started by Jademalo, user StellaArtois has been making steady progress on a mod for Minecraft Oculus Rift support.

One of the reasons this has taken so long is that Minecraft uses the OpenGL API rather than DirectX (which already has several mods for Rift support). Over at the thread, it was suggested that there might be an avenue to Oculus Rift Minecraft support with the use of GLSL which can give developers more control over rendering.

In it’s current state, StellaArtois’ Oculus Rift Minecraft mod is still very much a work in progress. That said, warping and headtracking are working, though there’s more tuning to be done. StellaArtois doesn’t have access to the Oculus Rift yet and is tweaking the mod based on feedback from other Rift users.

The mod for Oculus Rift Minecraft support is being updated regularly with tweaks and is not yet an easy install. While I’d love to link you directly to an installer, a better route will be to read up on the thread for the latest developments and builds.

Official Minecraft Oculus Rift Support?

Mojang is clearly interested in virtual reality as they were one of the biggest backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter, and one of the earliest to receive their developer kits.

mojang minecraft notch oculus rift virtual reality
Markus “Notch” Persson and Jens “Jeb” Bergensten pose with Oculus Rift developer kits.

We’ve been following Mojang closely to see if Minecraft will ever get official Oculus Rift support. We know that Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft, has promised Oculus Rift support for his next game, ox10c.

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In an interview with The Verge at the end of March, Notch said that the Oculus Rift was one of the things he was most excited about for the future of gaming. When asked about Minecraft Oculus Rift support, Notch said that it wasn’t his call. Notch handed the Minecraft development Reins over to Jens “Jeb” Bergensten back in December, 2011. So far, Jeb seems to be silent on the matter.

Earlier today, another Minecraft developer, Nathan “Dinnerbone” Adams tweeted:

It would be great to see an official implementation, but with Mojang promising a modding API years ago and still having not delivered one, I won’t hold my breath.

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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."
  • Andreas Aronsson

    I’ve never gotten into mods for Minecraft because of the hassle of installing them. But, it seems like a wonderful world… Mojang should set up an mod-store for Minecraft mods, available in game, and the ability to auto-install mods that are required for a server :P Also, adventure-mode, make a real one… urgh. And on topic, awesome job on this mod, I might just have to figure out how to install it when my Rift arrives, for sure.

    • deadering

      Mods really are not a hassle if you just follow the instructions. Most people don’t though and get errors, wondering why it does not work…
      There are plenty of guides too if you still find yourself struggling.

      I like how Dinnerbone says it would be a lot of work but a single modder was able to implement it, with head tracking and everything. It really seems the Minecraft developers don’t like doing stuff, no offense intended to them.
      I gave up on the modding API a long time ago too.

      • Andreas Aronsson

        Haha, yeah I’m probably colored by a bad experience :P Last year at DHW12 they had a Minecraft server up, using what, 50 mods, and even after downloading the packs and installing a custom launcher versions mismatched and some mods were still missing… It’s probably that part that has made me feel this way. Just a single mod will probably be a piece of cake!

        And I kind of agree with your sentiment on the Minecraft devs, promised features seem to have been pushed to the future forever :P But I read somewhere that the original codebase was not very well structured, or something like that, which was the reason for the mod API to be delayed. From their 800 day repo visualization video I’m guessing they are reworking parts of the game to widen the possibilities going forward :p but yeah, teh slowz… ( http://youtu.be/zRjTyRly5WA )

  • Daniel

    Hi !
    I wrote an Minecraft Oculus Rift Mod Installer last night:
    You can find it in the official Minecrift Release Thread on MTBS:
    http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=17489&p=125222#p125222

    Regards,
    Daniel