The Oculus Rift is finally here and with it, the virtual reality industry steps from three consecutive years of 'year zero' to 'year one' for VR. There's a lot riding on the Rift. Does it deliver? I envy the person reading these words right now who has never tried virtual reality. While we (the VR community and industry) have waited for several years now for the first desktop-class consumer headset of this new VR era to launch, in your reality, VR has simply appeared, and in the form of a product that will almost certainly impress you. The Oculus Rift launches today and after spending a week with the headset, we're ready to give our thoughts. [irp posts="56470" name="Oculus Touch Review: Reach into Rift"] [irp posts="45624" name="HTC Vive Review: A Mesmerising VR Experience, if You Have the Space"] [irp posts="54138" name="PlayStation VR Review – Console VR Has Arrived"] Table of Contents Hardware Unboxing & Carrying Case Design & Ergonomics Materials Fit & Comfort Foam Inserts Specs & Performance Tech Specs Field of View Display & Screen Door Effect Light Ray Artifact Tracking Setup & Experience Plug and Play Experience Universal Menu & Calibration Tool Games & Launch Lineup Conclusion & The Virtual Elephant in the Room Hardware Unboxing & Carrying Case Oculus has gone full-Apple on the Rift unboxing and presentation. The headset ships inside of a svelte box which doubles as a carrying case. Upon opening, you'll find the Rift, Sensor, Remote and an Xbox One controller. That's pretty much it, save for a few little extras like an Oculus sticker and a lens wipe. See Also: Unboxing the New Oculus Rift Step-by-Step in Pictures The Rift carrying case holds the headset, Sensor, and Remote in a beautiful arrangement, almost as if it was made to be left open on display. The Rift carrying case is impressively well crafted, made out of what feels like thick cardboard covered with a velvety finish. The opening of the case clasps shut with magnets, and on top there's a woven handle the feels plenty sturdy. The case has already come in handy for repackaging the Rift to transport it from one place to the next. Combined with the simple set of components, those needing to move the Rift to and fro will be very happy with the case. Design & Ergonomics I'm confident in calling the Oculus Rift the most aesthetically pleasing headset among any that we know will launch in 2016. Oculus has gone to great length to meld form & function with the headset's design. Materials While the company's prior development kits felt like plastic bricks to attach to your face, the consumer Rift is elegant in its materials and design. Although it's entirely black, it manages to feel welcoming, rather than project an appearance of a device only meant for hardcore gamers or tech nuts. Fabric and soft plastics are used throughout. The main enclosure is rounded nicely and covered over with fabric except on the front. Inside, the lenses are surrounded by a flexible fabric that stretches with them as they move left and right when adjusting the IPD (the distance between the lenses, to correspond with the distance between your eyes) using a little dial on the bottom of the headset, which is the only button/control on the entire device. Fit & Comfort Oculus says they designed the Rift for long-term comfort for lengthy sessions. And while in my experience they've achieve that goal, the unit can actually be quite uncomfortable if you aren't very careful about tweaking the fit. On the prior Rift development kits, a large portion of what held the headset on your face was the horizontal headstrap which squeezed the facial interface (the front part of the headset that touches around your eyes) with the back of your head. The consumer Rift is different, and if you carry your past practices of fitting the headset like the DK1 or DK2, you'll be setting yourself up for discomfort. The most critical adjustment for comfort on the consumer Rift is not how tight the side straps are, but instead getting the rear of the strap positioned correctly. You want the triangle on the back of the headset to be down very low, cupping the crown of your head. You want the weight of the headset to be mostly held up with the strap that goes over the top of your head, with it ultimately hanging down from that top strap with only a small amount of force from the side straps pulling the device against your face. The best indicator I've found to make sure you have the right fit is that the struts protruding from the display housing should be parallel/square with the housing itself. If you see the struts tilted up or down at an angle, the headset is probably not adjusted optimally. Unfortunately that means it's difficult to find your fit while wearing the headset. There's two straps on the right and left of the display housing, along with the top strap. Manipulating them all into their correct positions takes some practice, but it's worth the time to get it right because once you do, the Rift can be very comfortable indeed. Oculus said they've designed the headset so that once you find your fit, it's easy to take off and put back on without additional adjustments. For the most part this is true and it's achieved thanks to a spring system which allows the display housing to extend an extra inch or so when pulled (in the case of removing or putting on the headset), and then spring back to the same position of your original adjustment. One annoyance with this system is that the tether cable—which comes out the top left of the display and then hooks onto the strap so that it falls behind your head and not next to it—causes the left strut to not spring as freely as the right side. This often causes the right strut to be fully extended on its spring while the left is not extended at all. When this happens the headphones then feel misaligned and, even after being adjusted to compensate, feel a like they're resting against each ear differently. This annoyed me for a while, but I got over it quickly enough. You can free up a little slack in the tether cable between the point where it enters the headset and the strap clip point to try to avoid this. Foam Inserts It was our understanding that Oculus would be shipping several foam "facial interfaces"—the foam that keeps the Rift on your face—in the box. However, the Rift only includes the single interface that it ships with. It's removable, and Oculus tells us we can expect to see more down the road. For now the company suggests a frame width of 142mm or less and a frame height of 50mm or less if you want to use glasses with the Oculus Rift Continue Reading on Page 2 (Specs and Performance) Table of Contents Hardware Unboxing & Carrying Case Design & Ergonomics Materials Fit & Comfort Foam Inserts Specs & Performance Tech Specs Field of View Display & Screen Door Effect Light Ray Artifact Tracking Setup & Experience Plug and Play Experience Universal Menu & Calibration Tool Games & Launch Lineup Conclusion & The Virtual Elephant in the Room Specs & Performance Tech Specs Officially, Oculus offers up the following specs for the consumer Rift: Resolution: 1200x1080 (per eye) Field of View (FoV): 100 Degrees Display refresh rate: 90Hz Lens spacing adjustment (IPD): 58-72mm Weight: 360 grams (0.8 pounds) Headset cable: 4 meters Sensor cable: 2.5 meters Field of View Although Oculus said that the Rift DK2 also had a 100 degree field of view, the consumer Rift's field of view certainly feels larger. FoV measurements can be tricky to nail down because it can vary greatly depending upon how close you can get the lenses to your eyes (which is informed by your facial structure). Even without a lens-to-eye distance adjustment (like the DK2 had), for me, the field of view still feels largest on the consumer Rift, but it certainly isn't a huge increase. Display & Screen Door Effect The consumer Rift's display is a huge step up over the company's prior headsets. It isn't yet retinal quality (it'll be a long time before we achieve that), but it's more than adequate. The infamous 'screen door effect' is very minimal and fades greatly from notice once you are focusing on content inside the Rift. In the days of the DK1, almost every person who I've ever seen try the headset for the first time made some comment about the resolution being too low. With the DK2, the percentage of people who said something about resolution on their first try dropped, but it was still a significant number. With the consumer Rift, I've yet to hear any new user specifically call out the resolution as being inadequate. We'll definitely want to continue to drive resolution up from here, but 1200x1080 per eye is a very solid starting point for consumer VR. Light Ray Artifact What I've been calling the 'light ray artifact' is a glaring fault in an otherwise impressive display and optics system. This artifact can be seen obnoxiously wherever there are high contrast elements in the scene (especially white text on a black background). When you move your head, the light rays move with you, like a lens flare on a panning camera, calling even more attention to them. [caption id="attachment_24381" align="alignright" width="325"] An exaggerated approximation of what the Light Ray Artifact looks like inside the Rift[/caption] To my knowledge, the light ray artifact is caused by the Rift's Fresnel lenses, which causes light to scatter because of the ridges. For the record, this artifact is an issue for all headsets that I've seen using Fresnel lenses (which includes the HTC Vive), and is not unique to the Rift. Curiously enough, the light ray artifact can be avoided quite effectively if developers do their best to avoid high contrast scene elements. In fact, where there isn't high contrast happening in the scene, you are unlikely to see or notice the light rays at all. And yet for some reason I continue to see lots of developers putting white text on black backgrounds, drawing full attention to this flaw. Having said that, I think that the elimination of this artifact will be one of the top pieces of customer feedback, on par with the desire for higher resolution. Tracking The 'Constellation' tracking works flawlessly, and feels even better at 90Hz compared to the 75Hz of the Rift DK2. The consumer Rift now also features tracking points on the back of the headset which allows for 360 degree tracking which worked seamlessly for me throughout my testing, even when explicitly attempting to foil the sensor by having my head turned 90 degrees to it where the tracking system should be most prone to failure. We will soon be further testing of the bounds of the Sensor, but, anecdotally, it feels like the field of view is much wider than the DK2 Sensor (which was already pretty wide). Roughly I would guess the Sensor's field of view to be 120 degrees. Continue Reading on Page 3 (Software & Experience) Table of Contents Hardware Unboxing & Carrying Case Design & Ergonomics Materials Fit & Comfort Foam Inserts Specs & Performance Tech Specs Field of View Display & Screen Door Effect Light Ray Artifact Tracking Setup & Experience Plug and Play Experience Universal Menu & Calibration Tool Games & Launch Lineup Conclusion & The Virtual Elephant in the Room Setup & Experience Plug and Play Getting the Oculus Rift up and running was a buttery smooth process, especially compared to the tribulations endured by those of us who used the Rift DK1 or DK2. The Oculus desktop software walks you through a polished setup wizard which tells you what to plug in and when. The Rift has a single cable which ends with an HDMI and USB port, while the Sensor has a cable ending in a single USB port. The hardware setup is really just plugging in the Sensor and sitting it on your desk, then plugging in the Rift. Once that's done, you can immediately jump into VR using the Remote which is configured seamlessly, with no need to pair or install it. While the Remote is the easiest way to start poking around in VR, you will want to hook up the included wireless Xbox gamepad by plugging in the wireless dongle and syncing the controller. The controller is used for games that require more complex input, but a number of experiences will work just fine with the Remote. Once your headset is configured correctly, you'll be first taken into Oculus Dreamdeck which will tour you through a few of the Oculus-made experiences that we first saw back when the company revealed the 'Crescent Bay' headset prototype. Later, you'll be able to launch Dreamdeck from the library to see an extended set of vignettes. Experience The Oculus desktop app and Oculus Home in VR are your portal to using the Rift. Just like on Gear VR, Oculus Home allows you to browse and purchase titles while also acting as your content library, VR launcher, and friends list. [gallery type="square" td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="45248,45201"] Fresh from booting your PC, you can actually put on your Rift and in a few seconds you'll appear in Oculus Home, without having to launch a single thing on your computer first. Pretty slick. Taking the headset off freezes games automatically and turns off the display, thanks to an onboard proximity sensor. Universal Menu & Calibration Tool You can access the Universal Menu at any time by holding the Xbox button on the gamepad, or pressing the Oculus button on the Remote. Here you can access a simple calibration tool to help hone the sweet spot and get the sharpest image. [caption id="attachment_45255" align="alignright" width="325"] The adjustment on the bottom of the headset lets you dial in your IPD[/caption] The calibration tool shows a green plus sign and asks you to move your Rift up and down on your face the get the horizontal line as sharp as possible. Then you can use the IPD adjustment dial on the headset to get the vertical line equally sharp (you can also see a readout of the actual IPD setting in this tool which updates as you make changes). Games & Launch Lineup The Rift launch lineup is impressive in that there seems to be a little something for every gamer, even at this early stage, which I think is hugely important. From racing to dungeon crawlers to even pinball, the Rift launch lineup has something that you'll want to try. We'll be breaking out individual reviews soon, but check out the Rift launch lineup and our previews: Oculus Names 30 Rift Launch Titles and Their Prices Many of the games at this point go beyond the 'experiences' we've come to know from the development days of VR—those 5 to 10 minute demos that show something neat, but are just teasers. Many of the titles in Oculus' curated launch catalog feel like real games that you will want to spend time in (and money on). [gallery type="rectangular" ids="45249,45250,45251,45252,45253"] Oculus Dreamdeck, as mentioned earlier, is a series of VR vignettes which originally premiered at the introduction of the Rift 'Crescent Bay' prototype some time ago. This is an excellent introduction for first time VR users and even non-gamers as it's an entirely passive experience, but shows lots of different experiences which get the imagination juices flowing for newbies. Conclusion & The Virtual Elephant in the Room The Rift feels like a near-perfect execution of the device Oculus promised they would make back during their 2012 Kickstarter. It's a VR headset that lets us "step into the game" in a powerfully immersive way that's unlike anything you've seen before (assuming you've never tried VR). The user-experience so far is exceptional, which is especially impressive given the scope of today's launch (the product, drivers, the Oculus Home platform for desktop, 30 launch titles, etc). But a lot has happened in the world of VR since that 2012 vision—most notably the introduction of high performance motion input controllers which radically enhance the level of interactivity (and in many ways immersion) of virtual reality. [caption id="attachment_44928" align="alignright" width="325"] See Also: Hands-on – Oculus Touch 2016 Prototype Brings Refinements to an Already Elegant Design[/caption] Oculus will of course be shipping their own motion input controllers (called Touch) in the second half of 2016, but with the HTC Vive including motion controllers in the box right from the get-go (and launching next week), the Rift is left with what feels like a significant missing piece for anyone that has already experienced great motion input. The good news is that anyone who is getting into VR for the first time (not having tried motion input prior) will probably be blown away by the Rift even without Touch. And then when Touch joins the party a little further down the road, those new users will be further surprised at how much motion input adds to the VR experience. This review was produced by testing the Rift on the Road to VR Exemplar Ultimate, our top-end system designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications. The Exemplar Ultimate is the reference point for gamers who demand the best virtual reality experience. In celebration of the launch of the Oculus Rift and (soon) HTC Vive, you can save $150 off the Exemplar Ultimate using code 'VRLAUNCH2016' through April 8th. Disclosure: Oculus provided Road to VR with a loaner Rift and PC to facilitate this review.