1Oculus VR today has made an official announcement about the shipping status of the first batch of Rift DK2s. The shipment, which the company previously said would be leaving distribution facilities on the 14th of July, has been held to provide Oculus with more time to polish and test the latest version of the Oculus SDK.

Before developers can get to work with the Oculus Rift DK2, the Oculus SDK needs to be in ship shape. The company apparently wasn’t ready to deliver the SDK in time for the first batch of DK2 shipments. They opted to hold the first shipment until the middle of next week to afford more time to ready the SDK. Andres ‘Cybereality’ Hernandez, Oculus’ Community Manager, shared the update in the Oculus Developer Forum:

We’ve decided to hold the initial shipment of DK2s until the middle of next week so that we have an additional week to polish and QA the new Oculus SDK.

We’ve been working on this update for over a year, with a focus on making the Rift easier to use and develop for. There are multiple major improvements including overhauled device and display handling, and we want to make sure the new SDK ready for integration by thousands of developers when DK2s start arriving at doorsteps.

Sorry to make everyone wait another week. We wouldn’t delay if it wasn’t important.

The good news is that this only affects the very first group that would have received their units, and this doesn’t change the total number of units that will ship in July.

Again, we’ll keep everyone posted. Thanks for bearing with us!

Back in April, the company released the Oculus SDK 0.3.1 Preview which added John Carmack’s Timewarp technique, improved distortion, and more. At the end of May the company put out an Oculus SDK 0.3.2 Preview 2 with support for Mac and Linux along with further bug fixes and enhancements.

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On the 1st of July, Oculus provided its first shipping update regarding the DK2. The company at that point said that they had received some 45,000 pre-orders for the Rift DK2 and that they expected to ship roughly 10,000 units from factories in July.

The Oculus Rift DK2 is the company’s second VR headset development kit which offers a number of major improvements over the original kit, called the DK1, which was the result of a successful Kickstarter back in August, 2012. Although the DK2 is intended for developers, the company openly offers the VR headset up for sale to anyone interested for $350; new orders are expected to begin shipping in September.

The Oculus Rift DK2′s most notable enhancements are a higher resolution display with low-persistence capability and the addition of positional tracking. The new screen is 1920×1080, resulting in a resolution of 960×1080 per eye, compared to the 1200×800 (600×800 per eye) resolution of the DK1. The DK2 features an IR camera which faces the user to detect translational (up/down/left/right/forward/back) movements in addition to rotational movements. The Oculus Rift DK1 only tracks rotational movements.

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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."
  • sponge101

    Can’t say I’m surprised considering how kickstarter projects have a tendency for delays. Then again it’s only a week and if fans have waited this long another week should be a breeze. What are the chances of another delay next week, right…

    • Kemic

      I think at this point it’s a cop-out to say this has anything to do with their kickstarter from nearly 2 years ago.

      That being said, while I’m disappointed that it’s delayed another week, I’m even more disappointed that according to the Reddit comments, I may have to wait longer just because I live in Canada, even though I ordered on Day 1 of the pre-orders. Though, it hasn’t been confirmed yet if that one user it was directed at would be waiting because of location, or ordering on Day 2.

    • sponge101

      At least Oculus doesn’t have a track record like the Omni– that thing was supposed to have come out last December and I counted at least three delays since then.

      • deadering

        Nahh, Omni was slated for February for the backers of the Kickstarter.

  • justinsuperstar

    Oh great. So I could have quit my job a full week later?

    THANKS OBAMA.

  • Chris Given

    Personally I would rather they shipped this week and have a DK2 in my hands and wait for the SDK which is only a simple download instead of waiting for the SDK and then waiting for the shipping!!

    • deadering

      Yeah, it seems pretty obvious. The DK2 wouldn’t even arrive until next week more than likely if it shipped on time, so the SDK would probably have been finished anyway.

  • zeroNth

    I’m suspect we don’t, but do we have any idea what pre-order dates might be included in this first shipment of 10,000? I ordered 9 days after pre-orders started and I’ve got a very intense and vested interest in knowing how far down that line I was with my order and whether it might have made the cut-off for the first shipment. Any genuine knowledge, educated guessing or even wild speculation is welcome.

    • Poolback

      Sorry but 12.5k DK2 were sold the first 36 hours : https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7191&p=98141

      • zeroNth

        Much appreciated, sir. Not the answer I was hoping for of course, but I’m glad simply to know.

        If you’re still out there I have one more question. I received an email from Oculus just yesterday stating:

        “We are preparing to start shipping the new Oculus Rift Development Kit 2. Please take a moment to update your billing and shipping information on the Order Management page”

        Considering your information, I’m supposing that everyone that pre-ordered got this… not just the people that should expect their Rift to ship next week?