The Oculus Rift Kickstarter is officially live. Here’s the link! Read on for pricing and other details.
Here’s the Kickstarter launch video for the Oculus Rift:
There wasn’t a straightforward commitment from Valve about Source integration as I had hoped, but both Gabe Newell and Michael Abrash were on hand to vocalize their support for the project and encourage people to back it. Quite excitingly, Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski said that he’s “a believer” and excited to integrate Oculus Rift support into the Unreal Engine! The CEO of the Unity Engine, David Helgason, said that they are behind the project; this comment and the Kickstarter page indicates that Unity integration with the Oculus Rift is comic as well.
Pricing is even better than expected. There are 100 slots (I imagine soon to be sold out) for an unassembled version of the Oculus Rift for $275. This is for serious devs who want to construct the Rift on their own. This version will ship a month earlier (estimated in November) than other versions.
Then there’s the $300 version which has no slot limit that comes assembled but ships a month later (estimated in December).
Both versions include the Oculus Rift head mounted display, a copy of Doom 3 BFG (with native Rift support), as well as access to the Oculus Developer Center, the Oculus SDK, samples, docs, and engine integrations.
Lower tiers offer a post or shirt, signed depending upon how much you contribute, but I’m willing to bet most are interested in getting their hands on this exciting HMD!
Disappointingly there are almost no details on Oculus Rift specifications except for the mention of a 110 degree diagonal field of view. I have a list of preliminary Oculus Rift specs here, but they may have changed. Expect to see more specific info during Quake Con (starts tomorrow) and once the official OculusVR site goes live.