In another update to Oculus Rift Kickstarter backers, Oculus have announced that a 4 month free trial of Unity Pro is to be supplied as part of the soon-to-be-shipped Developers Kit. However, many early adopters have been disappointed by the revelation that there’s now to be no Oculus Rift support in the free version. We take a look at the details and Palmer Luckey’s response to the criticism.
The hotly anticipated Oculus Rift developer kit is set to ship on March 29th, said Oculus VR, Inc. in their latest update.
We hope you’re ready– Dev kits should start shipping out to the earliest backers on March 29th (we may slip a day or two in either direction depending on customs). When your kit ships, you’ll receive confirmation info so you can track your Rift as it makes the journey from Oculus to your front door.
The company says that they expect to ship 1000 – 1500 Oculus Rift developer kits per week until everyone’s orders have been fulfilled. Oculus says they’re shipping around 7500 units (which would correspond to Kickstarter orders, not direct website orders). At 1500 units per week, the last unit would be delivered the week of April the 28th. However, they say that “weekly shipments will ramp up as we go,” so it’s possible that those on the tail end of the queue won’t have to wait that long. Orders through their website will start shipping after all of the Kickstarter orders have been fulfilled.
“Shipping 7,500+ development kits will take time, especially for the international backers out there. Just know that we’re moving as fast as we can to get great hardware out the door. No one wants the dev kits to arrive at your doorstep more than we do. Thanks for your patience!” read the latest update.
Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey and CEO Brendan Iribe took the liberty of unboxing the first unit from the factory. We detailed what was in the box earlier this week, but we’re happy to now have confirmation that there are not one, but three international power adapters. Kudos to the Oculus folks for that! The company says that nearly 50% of Oculus Rift orders came from outside of the U.S.
The official contents of the Oculus Rift developer kit are as follows:
For those who backed Kickstarter tiers which awarded shirts and/or posters, the company says that they’ll begin shipping “within the next two weeks.”
Last month Sergey Brin took to the stage for a Google Glass TED talk. Reports of Brin’s 13 minute talk were readily available on the web, but TED never released a video. Why? Today Brin’s Google Glass TED talk video has finally hit the web, but not through any official source. A YouTube channel called ‘tedleaks’, which also hosts a controversial TED talk by Sarah Silverman which was never posted, is responsible for making the video available.
So why can’t you find Sergey Brin’s Google Glass TED talk on TED.com or the official TEDtalksDirector YouTube account?
Brian S. Hall of ReadWriteWeb, who called the talk “pure promotion” might have some hints to offer. He wonders whether or not TED was the right place for a Google Glass talk which didn’t quite speak to TED’s mission.
Sergey Brin’s Google Glass presentation at last week’s TED2013 conference came off as little more than a product pitch. Wearing his “Google Glass” throughout the presentation, Brin begins by noting that “when we (Brin and Larry Page) started Google 15 years ago, my vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn’t have to search query at all.”
The implication to all in attendance at TED2013 was clear: Google Glass delivers on the lofty Google vision. Is that the right approach for the TED Conferences?
For the most part I agree, but maybe not for the reasons you suspect.
I think Google Glass, and similar devices, has significant things to offer the world. It has the potential to change how we communicate with computers and with each other. If Brin had crafted his Google Glass TED talk to explain the ways that such devices might change our lives, it would have made for a much better talk, and one that I would have been happy to see up there on stage.
In its current form though, the Google Glass TED talk fell flat. We saw nothing new about Glass, and there was very little info about the impact the device would have. Maybe Brin was just being humble?
What do you think, should this talk have gone up on TED.com like all the others?
Valve has provided the first high-res glimpse of the unique TF2 Oculus Rift hat that users of the HMD will be able to wear. A patch for TF2, which enables ‘VR mode‘, rolled out yesterday alongside the news. Valve created an ‘Oculus Rift User Guide’ page in the Team Fortress 2 wiki which details exactly how to use the Rift with the popular FPS.
Hats are an odd obsession in the world of TF2. The game currently offers over 250 hats which can be traded freely among players. While some hats can be purchased for real money through the game’s online store, it’s unlikely that the Oculus Rift TF2 hat can be bought. With only around 10,000 dev kits currently ordered (and not all of those people will actually play TF2), the Rift hat is likely to be a coveted rarity, perhaps at least until the consumer version of the HMD launches.
Yesterday the patch that enables VR mode for the Oculus Rift went live. The top bullet in the changelog reads, “Added support for running VR mode on the Oculus Rift,” among other changes. Full patch notes here if you’re interested.
Additionally, Valve has put together a page in the TF2 wiki titled ‘Oculus Rift User Guide‘ which contains a surprisingly detailed list of info about using the Oculus Rift with TF2.
To launch TF2 in VR mode, right-click on Team Fortress 2 in Steam, select Properties > Set Launch Options, then add ‘-vr’ to the command-line (without the quotes, of course). The wiki page notes that “you can also create desktop shortcuts with and without the “-vr” option to let you easily switch between VR or normal monitor modes.”
Following this initial setup, Valve recommends that you use the developer console to initiate calibration:
They also have recommendations for reducing any potential motion sickness induces from using the Oculus Rift with TF2:
There are some tips for running the game as quickly as possible, thereby reducing latency between your commands and the Oculus Rift:
Valve has also built a number of experimental VR control schemes into TF2. They say that the default scheme is what most people seemed to like in their testing, but encourage users to play with the settings to see what works best. A console command let’s you toggle through the different VR control modes:
There are tons of other options to play with and a list of known bugs which will likely change over time as Valve continues to update TF2 for the Oculus Rift.
When we backed the Oculus Rift Kickstarter back in August, $300 for the Rift alone felt like a steal. Oculus has said that they’re making almost no margin on the Kickstarter. Knowing this, we’re impressed to learn that Oculus has stretched our cash to make sure that kits are delivered with everything a developer might need. After a visit to Oculus, The Verge reports that the Oculus Rift developer kit will be delivered with the SDK and more.
Upon opening their package, developers will be happy to learn that every cable is included. There will be no need to run out to your nearest electronics store to pick up an overpriced cable for the instant gratification of playing with the Rift.
The contents of the Oculus Rift dev kit package includes two HDMI cables, DVI cable, an HDMI to DVI adapter, MicroUSB cable (for power), an international power adapter, and three sets of ‘eyecups’ to help those with less than stellar vision. And it all comes in a carrying case which is styled after the Oculus Rift HMD. The Verge called the case “somewhat cheap”; even so, you won’t find us complaining.
Even bigger news is that the SDK will ready from the moment the box reaches the developer. The kit includes instructions to download the Oculus Rift SDK from the official Oculus website. Until this point Oculus has been quiet about the Oculus Rift SDK release date.
Once the package arrives, developers can load up the SDK and jump straight into some pre-made virtual reality environments (not to mention Team Fortress 2).
All of this info comes from The Verge’s visit to Oculus, go check it out to learn more! Enagdget also has a great Oculus Rift hands-on with the final developer kit:
Soon you could be roaming your own virtual reality Earth. Outerra is an in-development ‘world rendering engine’ which is literally capable of rendering a geographically detailed world — your own personal planet. The engine uses an impressive combination of real-world data and procedural terrain generation to create detail all the way from the perspective of an orbiting satellite, down to the blades of grass at your feet. The developers of Outerra ordered an Oculus Rift developer kit early-on and plan to support the HMD.
Outerra is a unique 3D rendering engine, a world rendering engine capable to seamlessly render whole planets from space down to the surface. It can use arbitrary/varying resolution of elevation data that it further dynamically refines using fractal algorithms. The fractals try to mimic natural processes, generating fine, believable terrain with high resolution. The world is also being dynamically textured and populated with vegetation using predefined land type material sets and the computed terrain attributes.
The engine’s scale is truly amazing. We’re talking about a 1:1 virtual reality Earth — like Google Earth on steroids. The engine is capable of rendering even larger planets if the developers are so inclined. Here’s Outerra in action:
Combining Outerra and the Oculus Rift would literally give you your own immersive virtual reality Earth around which to frolic. Lonely? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.
We’re happy to learn that the Outerra developers have purchased an Oculus Rift developer kit and are investigating integration. It’s likely that they’re waiting on their dev kit like the rest of us, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing some preliminary work.
Just a few days after the Oculus Rift Kickstarter launched back in August, one of the lead developers began testing anaglyphic stereoscopic 3D in Outerra, noting that “side-by-side [3D] will come as well in order to support Oculus Rift.”
Currently the virtual reality world supports a manually adjusted field of view, as well as three different types of distortion — a necessary component of rendering games for the Oculus Rift. With these systems are already built into the game, it could be a quick matter to integrate Oculus Rift support.
Now before I hype you up, let me make it clear. Outerra is still in alpha. Yes there’s already a demo where you can roam the Earth. Yes you can drive a truck (and fly a plane if you purchase the alpha). Yes you can fly from space right down to a cozy shoreline. But at this point there’s no real gameplay. However, the developers are continuously developing the engine and regularly deploying updates. The concept for the game based on the Outerra engine sounds pretty cool too:
Anteworld is a world-building game on a massive true-to-life scale of our planet. Returning aboard an interstellar colonizer ship built in the Golden Age of Mankind, players arrive on the planet earth to discover civilization and humanity vanished. They will have to rebuild the civilization – exploring, fighting, and competing for resources while searching for clues to the disappearance of humanity.
Things might not have to be lonely on the desolate planet for long. The developers say that multiplayer is in the works, which means you could find yourself among the first pioneers in history to colonize a virtual reality Earth.
I’ll be watching Outerra closely; I’ve got a feeling that the next few patches for the game will be quite pertinent to the Rift.
Did I mention that you can live out your Lord of the Rings fantasies with the Middle Earth version of Outerra?
Valve Software’s hugely popular, free-to-play online FPS, Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is to get Oculus Rift support! Oculus Rift users will also be gifted a unique in-game hat. A news release provided by an anonymous source details Valve’s first foray into the world of virtual reality. We take a look at the details and briefly recap the company’s journey to official Oculus Rift supporter.
In a recent update to Kickstarter backers, Oculus VR Inc. has announced that the much anticipated Doom 3: BFG, the game that John Carmack used to help catapult the Oculus Rift’s fame, will not ship alongside the Oculus Rift Kickstarter rewards as originally intended. The company has offered a few options as compensation, including a full refund should you desire. Along with that unfortunate news comes an indication that Oculus Rift developer kits will begin shipping in the very near future.
Back in August 2012, when the Oculus Rift Kickstarter began, Oculus offered multiple tiers for backers willing to part with their own money in order to support the fledgling VR HMD project. All the reward tiers that included an actual Oculus Rift Developer Kit (the HMD itself) also included a copy of the then yet-to-be-released Doom 3: BFG. The title had been used by John Carmack himself in the now famous ‘Magic Hat’ demos given at E3 back in 2012 and was for a time the new HMD’s ‘killer app’. Doom 3: BFG launched in October 2012 without Oculus Rift support. It was expected that an update would be issued when the Rift launched to add virtual reality support.
But today, thousands of Kickstarter backers were left disappointed by the latest update from Oculus HQ stating that:
When we launched the Kickstarter campaign, we said we’d bundle a copy of DOOM 3 BFG Edition with each development kit as an extra “Thank you.” Unfortunately, we’ve been informed that DOOM 3 BFG Edition will not support the Rift development kit by the time we begin shipping.
No further details as to why the game was so very suddenly unavailable, nor if/when it would be ready for the Rift.
Perhaps the BFG team were unhappy with the implementation and felt it wasn’t ready for even developer consumption? Perhaps the sheer number of Doom 3 copies required to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards became too much for publisher Bethesda to fulfill (although why now)? Perhaps the commercial promise of owning the IP to the most famous Oculus Rift enabled title was too tempting to resist? Frankly, we may not know for some time, if ever.
To Oculus’ great credit (and we suspect substantial financial debit) they’ve given Kickstarter backers three options to compensate for this unexpected turn of events:
– $20 Steam Wallet credit, perfect for buying your next game on Steam (including DOOM 3 BFG Edition without Rift developer kit support if you still want it).
– $25 Oculus Store credit, which can be applied to future purchases at the Oculus Store including Oculus Latency Testers, new Oculus t-shirts, and more Rift development kits.
– A full refund for your pledge. If you’re unhappy with the options above, we completely understand. Email us at support@oculusvr.com, and we’ll be happy to discuss your specific order or refund your pledge in full.
Again, the advise to early Kickstarter backers that you choose your alternative reward as soon as possible as every indication is that Oculus are due to begin processing these orders imminently.
On the bright side however, the update email also urges early Kickstarter backers to ensure their shipping address details are up to date and complete:
Assuming you’re in the first batch of development kits to ship out, the next 24 hours are your absolute last chance to update your shipping address.
Please visit https://oculusvr.com/sales/ one last time to make sure everything’s up to date! Once we begin processing your rewards, your shipping address will be locked.
There is speculation as to exactly how many units this ‘first batch’ comprises. Current best guesses (based on previous Kickstarter updates) is around 5000 Oculus HMDs. Thanks to some fairly painstaking stats gathering by the community, order numbers do indeed seem to be relative to when the pledge was made. Establishing whether your order number guarantees you a unit from the first batch is, at best, an educated guess. The latest Oculus Rift shipping schedule is as follows:
Either way, it now seems certain that Oculus’s promise to have dev kits in at least some developer’s hands by the time GDC 2013 rolls around will be fulfilled. The Oculus has hinted that GDC will see new developer showcases for the Rift. We know Valve intend to discuss VR development this year, specifically regarding Team Fortress 2, as to who else has existing announcements up their sleeves, we’ll have to wait and see.
If you’re a Kickstarter backer, come and tell us all about your Oculus rift shipping stories over on our forums.
The University of Southern California’s ‘MxR’ Lab today launched an ‘open source’ DIY virtual reality website. The lab is making freely available many of their innovative virtual reality hardware and software projects. Users can download schematics to 3D print virtual reality hardware and follow the provided guides to put together head mounted displays and more. The lab is also making available several hardware modifications for the Oculus Rift which can be 3D printed, including a forward-facing stereo camera mount and an eyecup modification to allow users to get closer to the display.
The goal of the DIY VR site is to further the development of virtual reality by getting hardware and software freely into the hands of anyone that wants to build with it.
One of the projects available is the Socket HMD, a 90-degree field of view head mounted display which the Oculus Rift is largely based on. A housing for the Socket HMD, which has been employed by Project Holodeck, can be 3D printed with plans from the site. Instructions from the site tell you which additional components to purchase, and how to put the HMD together.
Three interesting modifications for the Oculus Rift developer kit are also available:
The first of which is a mount that attaches to the front of the Rift. The mount makes it easy to attach stereo cameras, like the Microsoft Kinect, which can be used for optical tracking, spatial mapping, and more.
Second is an unofficial eye-cup which you can construct with 3D printing. The eye cup fits into the Oculus Rift and allows the user to get closer to the display, thereby increasing the field of view.
The third modification is a software utility that sends the Rift’s head-tracking data over a virtual reality peripheral network (VRPN) allowing other applications to make use of it.
The lab is also making available its VR2GO low-cost immersive viewer. This is a 3D printed HMD case in which you mount your smartphone, to utilize its display and motion sensors, to turn it into a low cost head mounted display. Currently VR2GO schematics are available for the iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, and iPod Touch (5th generation), though anyone is welcome to modify the existing design to fit other smartphones.
If the above wasn’t enough, the good folks at the MxR Lab are even offering up a custom Unity package full of scripts, scenes, and more to assist in virtual reality software development, especially for iOS and Android devices. With it you can quickly create stereoscopic 3D scenes, enable distortion, access smartphone sensor data, and more, all without having to write you own code from the ground up.
Furthmore, you can download the ‘Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit’ (FAAST):
FAAST is middleware to facilitate integration of full-body control with games and VR applications using either OpenNI or the Microsoft Kinect for Windows skeleton tracking software. FAAST includes a custom VRPN server to stream up to four user skeletons over a network, allowing VR applications to read the skeletal joints as trackers using any VRPN client. Additionally, the toolkit can also emulate keyboard input triggered by body posture and specific gestures. This allows the user add custom body-based control mechanisms to existing off-the-shelf games that do not provide official support for depth sensors.
You can see a prototype game based on FAAST in action here:
Mark Bolas and David Nelson of the USC’s MxR Lab are two of the folks behind this excellent DIY VR resource, which they are calling the “Open Source Initiative”
Bolas is the director of the MxR Lab as well as an Associate Professor at USC. Prior to MxR, he founded Fakespace Labs which made the famous Wide5 head mounted display (an impressive but cost-prohibitive unit). He spends much of his time at the lab developing hardware and software to enable immersive virtual reality experiences. Previously we’ve seen him using perceptual illusions to create infinite virtual spaces. Bolas was also featured in the Oculus Rift Kickstarter video (a homage to the origins of the Rift in the MxR Lab, and Bolas’ involvement in project) noting that “the Rift is taking years of virtual reality research and putting it into a package that everyone can use.”
“We went open, because it was the only way to truly disrupt the HMD marketplace. We believe it has just gotten started and can not wait for people to take all these designs we have on our site to see what they will do with them,” Bolas said about the open source initiative.
David Nelson is the Special Project Manager of the MxR Lab and has a background in narrative and documentary film production. He keeps projects on track and helps manage the lab.
Bolas and Nelson are attending the IEEE VR conference this week in Orlando, Florida and have a 3D printer on hand to print hardware for attendees and showcase the newly open sourced projects.
In addition to pushing to get these projects into the hands of the public, both have made significant contributions to the projects that you’ll find on the site. Go check it out!
The first Oculus Rift developer kits are but a few weeks away from landing in the hands of eager developers. Oculus continues to build excitement for the release; this week they were at the annual SXSW and held a virtual reality panel with developers Cliff Bleszinski (formerly, Epic Games), Chris Roberts (Star Citizen), and Paul Bettner (Words With Friends). Oculus VP of Product, Nate Mitchells narrated the panel.
The Verge shot follow-up interviews to talk Oculus Rift and virtual reality with each of the developers on the panel:
The Oculus Rift is an upcoming head mounted display (HMD / VR headset) for virtual reality gaming. In August 2012, a Kickstarter campaign pulled in an impressive $2.4 million in support for the developer kit. The company is hard at work building up the Oculus Rift SDK and no doubt working on the Oculus Rift 2.0 consumer version due out hopefully in 2013. The first batch of Oculus Rift developer kits are expected to reach developers by the end of this month.
Thanks to Rod Furlan, we’ve got a great DIY Oculus Rift guide to share with you. Inside you’ll find a parts list and all of the steps necessary to build your own Oculus Rift head mounted display / VR headset.
Rod is an investor, artificial intelligence researcher, quantitative analyst, and Singularity University alumni. You can learn more about him at his blog, Bit Cortex.
Guide Discussion: See this thread in the forums to for questions and discussion about this guide
The Oculus Rift is a low-cost, high-performance virtual reality headset that is well positioned to usher VR into the mainstream. It is by all measures a remarkable product with an ambitious agenda – which is to change the way we relate to the games we play by completely immersing us into the game world.
If you have never used a head-mounted display (HMD) / VR headset you are in for an experience you will not easily forget. Basically, the Rift presents you with a very large screen that covers most of your field of view while blocking all light coming from the real world. The Rift is also equipped with a high-performance tracker that measures your head movements to update what you see accordingly – for example if you turn your head to the left, the image updates to show what is to your left in the virtual world. In essence the experience of wearing the Rift is similar to having your head surrounded by a spherical screen.
What most people don’t know is that the Oculus Rift started as a do-it-yourself project by Palmer Luckey, a single talented individual with a vision for a future where virtual reality is both accessible and pervasive. His remarkable journey is a great example of what happens when passion meets determination towards realizing an idea whose time has come. After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, the developer version of the Oculus Rift is on track for an initial delivery this month!
If you missed the Kickstarter, you can still order the Oculus Rift development kit here.
Or if you are like me and would like to carry on the DIY virtual reality torch, you can follow the instructions on this guide to build your own VR headset inspired by the Oculus Rift.
The goal isn’t to compete with the Oculus Rift in any way. The Rift developer kit is very fairly priced and you will not save any money by building your own. This DIY HMD is also unlikely to be directly compatible with the official Rift so if you want something that “just works”, you should opt for the official model instead.
Speaking frankly, the Oculus Rift is the best thing to happen to VR in decades and the short-term future of VR is somewhat coupled with the future of the Rift. If the Oculus Rift succeeds, we may soon live in a world where VR is pervasive. If they fail, this short renaissance may end up being yet another false start for mainstream VR.
If you don’t want this to happen we must do whatever we can to support the Rift. Here are a few things you can do:
So why should you build your own HMD?
No prior experience with electronics or VR hardware is required to build your own Rift-inspired HMD following the instructions you will find in this guide.
If you are an experienced maker, you could complete this project in as little as two hours. If this is going to be your first attempt at building something, this is best seen as a fun weekend project.
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The Google Glass interface has been detailed on video at the annual SXSW event for the first time. The company also showed off early native and third-party Google Glass apps including Gmail, Evernote, New York Times, and more.
SXSW Interactive (South by South West) is festival that’s been held yearly in Austin, Texas since 2007. It is a well known showcase for interactive technology, startups, and social media.
Google held developer presentation yesterday to detail the Google Glass interface and third-party apps in public for the first time. I’ve tracked down some footage of the demo which you can see below.
Google Glass is an exciting forthcoming wearable display produced by the company’s semi-secret ‘Google X’ lab. Units first became available for pre-order to attendees of the Google IO 2012 conference for $1500. Recently Google ran the #ifihadglass contest where they asked what people would do if they had Glass. That contest is now closed and winners will be picked soon. The Google Glass consumer release date is expect to be toward the end of 2013.
See also: 100 Google Glass Pictures, Everything We Know About Google Glass
The duration and angle of the available videos makes me think that Google didn’t officially sanction any video recording.
Timothy Jordan, who is a Senior Developer Advocate at Google, gave the presentation using a development version of Google Glass which was hacked to allow video output. He says that the Google Glass interface output that you see is much more smooth on Glass itself. Jordan showed off some basic Google Glass features like taking photos, dictating an email, translating text through Google, and navigating the interface by swiping the side of the unit.
Google Glass appears to arrange much of its content chronologically. If you took a picture 10 minutes ago, you swipe back on the ‘timeline’ to find the photo’s ‘timeline card’, rather than looking through a photos app. Once you find it you can bring up a number of card options like share, delete, or send to a third-party app. Jordan showed how you can send a photo to an Evernote app call Skitch which sends the photo through Google to the Skitch app on your tablet, allowing you to then annotate the photo on the tablet.
Some timeline cards can be organized into ‘bundles’ which are stacks of cards that you can dig into. Jordan showed the weather card as an example. Tapping into the bundle allows the user to see a three day forecast. Swiping down returns to the timeline.
According to CNET, Google also showed off The New York Times, Evernote, Skitch, and Path apps on Google Glass.
While virtual reality control schemes are still being explored, many developers have turned to the Razer Hydra as an effective input for use with the Oculus Rift. The Hydra uses magnetic tracking to determine the absolute position and orientation of two Wiimote-like controllers held in the player’s hand. The controllers also have joysticks and buttons which make for a highly flexible virtual reality input system. Today-only you can buy the Razer Hydra for $40 from my favorite deal-a-day site, Woot.com.
Can’t get enough Google Glass? After combing the depths of the web, I bring you a Google Glass gallery of 100 unique pictures for your enjoyment. Ok maybe it’s not every Glass photo, but definitely all of the good ones! I painstakingly sourced every photo (where possible), roll over the photo to see the source link. Click then click again on the next page to get high resolution versions of each photo (some are higher than others).
Have a photo to add or want a picture removed? Send me link at ben at roadtovr.com!
Looking for Google Glass Specs?
Google Glass is an exciting forthcoming wearable display produced by the company’s semi-secret ‘Google X’ lab. Units first became available for pre-order to attendees of the Google IO 2012 conference for $1500. Recently Google ran the #ifihadglass contest where they asked what people would do if they had Glass. That contest is now closed and winners will be picked soon. The Google Glass release date is expect to be toward the end of 2013.
Here’s a pretty funny parody about how guys will use Google Glass. Reminds me of another video showing a bleak augmented reality future.
Funny stuff aside, there’s a lot to be discussed about what it will mean to have such quick access to information. A few generations after Glass we’ll likely have instant access to Wikipedia which will extend our knowledge beyond our own brains… but that sounds like a topic for another day!
In the mean time, how do you think girls will use Google Glass?
