Oculus Rift Kickstarter is Live Starting at $275!
The Oculus Rift Kickstarter is officially live. Here’s the link! Read on for pricing and other details.
Oculus Rift Kickstarter Watch: Palmer Luckey Spotted With Valve’s Gabe Newell and Michael Abrash
If you needed any convincing that Valve is serious about the Oculus Rift, check this photo for some evidence. Pictured left to right is Michael Abrash, Valve’s VR/AR researcher, Palmer Luckey, the brains behind the forthcoming Oculus Rift HMD, and Gabe Newell, Valve’s managing director and recognized head honcho.
Oculus Rift Kickstarter Watch: Prototype, SDK, and Other Updates
The Oculus Rift Kickstarter is due to start any day soon and the VR community couldn’t be more excited. The man behind the promising wide field-of-view head mounted display / VR headset, Palmer Luckey (AKA PalmerTech), has shared this photo of an early Oculus Rift prototype. Recall that this is a prototype of a non-consumer oriented device. Yes, it looks a bit rough around the edges; since the beginning of the project Luckey has made it clear that the first Oculus Rift is going to be a DIY kit and aimed at developers and VR enthusiasts. As long as it works half as well as the reports I’ve read, I’ll be happy regardless of what it looks like! Luckey stresses that this is not what the final device will look like. In addition to the impending Kickstarter for the Oculus Rift I’ve learned that an Oculus SDK (software development kit) is in the works which will assist game in adapting their games to this virtual reality head mounted display.
Project Holodeck Seeks to Create a Low Cost Full-motion VR Gaming Environment with the Help of the Oculus Rift HMD
A team of 25 members is working at the University of Southern California to create a full-motion virtual reality gaming environment, they’re calling it Project Holodeck. By ‘full-motion’ I mean that the playspace allows the user to actually walk or run around the environment; their movement is tracked and used to control their navigation within the game. Players will don the Oculus Rift head mounted display / VR headset, which has head tracking and a high field of view, to give them the appearance of actually being inside a virtual world. I spoke with the producer of Project Holodeck, James Iliff regarding this exciting project.
Here’s CliffyB With an Oculus Rift Prototype (and other updates)
Need proof the Palmer Luckey (AKA PalmerTech) wasn’t teasing when he said he was working on the Oculus Rift HMD with some big names in the game industry? Here’s Cliff Bleszinski (AKA CliffyB), checking out a prototype of the Oculus Rift.
Welcome to the New Road to Virtual Reality
Hi and welcome to the new Road to VR. If you’ve been a regular reader, you’ll notice that things look at bit different. Fear not, looks are indeed the only thing that have changed. This refresh of the site represents my commitment to continue covering all things virtual reality. As you can see I’ve added some ads to help fund this site a little (I don’t expect it to earn more than pocket change). Regardless, I started this blog back in October of 2011 and have wrote in my free time for 10 months purely because I’m enthusiastic about the topic, and that hasn’t changed one bit. You can continue to expect the same quality coverage that you’ve seen from me. There is some very exciting stuff about to happen in the field of virtual reality gaming and I will be here every step of the way to keep you up to date on the developments. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to get involved in the conversation!
A note to email subscribers: If you were previously subscribed to the www.roadtovr.com, you’re email has been automatically subscribed to the new site. All you have to do is accept your confirmation email.
Oculus Rift 2.0, 1080p+ High FoV HMD / VR Headset by 2013 Under $1000?
Much has happened since the Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display / VR headset started picking up steam in May. Palmer Luckey has been teasing that he was in discussion with some big names in gaming, and today he’s ready to do some name-dropping. Can such strategic partnerships lead to high-speced Oculus Rift 2.0 in 2013 as Luckey says?
Oculus Rift Kickstarter Coming July 19th, Even Cheaper Than Before
Finally an update on the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. The head mounted display that’s been… er… turning heads… has been teasing us with an upcoming Kickstarter campaign. The original plan was for it to go live in the middle of June but some exciting developments have happened since then. The Kickstarter was delayed due to these developments, but it’s actually been thanks to good news rather than bad — one bit of which is a lower price.
The Latest on Google Glass: Early Technical Details, Pre-order Units Made Available to I/O Attendees for $1500
Yesterday I showed you Google’s incredible live Glass demo where they took Project Glass on a skydiving adventure. Today I want to compile all of the Project Glass info that came out of Google I/O 2012 in one place. Below is the very latest info about Google Glass.
Google Goes Skydiving with Glass, Live [video]
Since Google’s announcement of Project Glass, the company has remained quite silent on their augmented reality glasses project. We saw Project Glass in an interview with Charlie Rose back in April, but that was nothing compared to Google’s latest demo. At the annual Google I/O conference, the company decided to take things to the extreme by equipping a team of skydivers with Google Glass.
Oculus Rift Units to Arrive Earlier than Planned, “Really Big Names in the Game Industry” Getting Involved!
The VR community seems to be holding its collective breath to see what impact the Oculus Rift head mounted display will have on the future of virtual reality gaming. Patiently folks are waiting for the Kickstarter funding round to start and I’ve learned today that it has been delayed two weeks. Don’t fret though; Palmer Luckery, the brains behind the project, says that the delay “is not actually bad news at all.”
Condition One Working on a Standard Way to Shoot and Embed Immersive 180 Degree Video, Content for the Oculus Rift?
Condition One aims to achieve a standardized way of capturing and displaying immersive 180 degree video. The company is a startup founded by noted photographer Danfung Dennis. Currently the product takes the form of an iPad app in which the user can tilt the device or pan using a finger to look around the 180 degree view; Condition One’s work could provide a standard way for capturing high field of view content to be played back on high field of view head mounted displays like the Oculus Rift.
Virtual Reality and Oculus Rift E3 2012 Interview with John Carmack [video]
One of the reasons why I’m so excited about the Oculus Rift is that John Carmack, founder and technical director of Id Software, is demoing the unit to people within the gaming industry and is building full support for it into Doom 3 BGF which is due out later this year. CVG / PC Gamer has a great 3 part interview from E3 2012 with Carmack who has clearly done his homework on HMDs and is hoping to push them into mainstream gaming!
Early Oculus Rift Specifications and Official Site, Confirms $500 Target
Right now the Oculus Rift project is at the center of my attention. If you haven’t read up on it, see here. In short, I’m hoping that this is the first major step in bringing virtual reality to mainstream gaming. With that in mind, I wanted to point out the first glimpse of specs for the Oculus Rift as well as an official site made by Palmer Luckey (aka PalmerTech) who is responsible for the project.
Oculus Rift HMD Kickstarter to Begin no Later than June 14th
I’m away from a full blown computer this weekend, so please excuse the brevity of this post. I’m writing from my phone because I wanted to share some brief but exciting information regarding the Oculus Rift that I wrote about the other day.
