An update on something I’ve been eagerly looking forward to — Oculus Rift Minecraft support. While the game’s creators have hinted at official support, one modder is taking things into his own hands and has released an early mod.
In an MTBS3D thread, started by Jademalo, user StellaArtois has been making steady progress on a mod for Minecraft Oculus Rift support.
One of the reasons this has taken so long is that Minecraft uses the OpenGL API rather than DirectX (which already has several mods for Rift support). Over at the thread, it was suggested that there might be an avenue to Oculus Rift Minecraft support with the use of GLSL which can give developers more control over rendering.
In it’s current state, StellaArtois’ Oculus Rift Minecraft mod is still very much a work in progress. That said, warping and headtracking are working, though there’s more tuning to be done. StellaArtois doesn’t have access to the Oculus Rift yet and is tweaking the mod based on feedback from other Rift users.
The mod for Oculus Rift Minecraft support is being updated regularly with tweaks and is not yet an easy install. While I’d love to link you directly to an installer, a better route will be to read up on the thread for the latest developments and builds.
Official Minecraft Oculus Rift Support?
Mojang is clearly interested in virtual reality as they were one of the biggest backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter, and one of the earliest to receive their developer kits.
We’ve been following Mojang closely to see if Minecraft will ever get official Oculus Rift support. We know that Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft, has promised Oculus Rift support for his next game, ox10c.
In an interview with The Verge at the end of March, Notch said that the Oculus Rift was one of the things he was most excited about for the future of gaming. When asked about Minecraft Oculus Rift support, Notch said that it wasn’t his call. Notch handed the Minecraft development Reins over to Jens “Jeb” Bergensten back in December, 2011. So far, Jeb seems to be silent on the matter.
Earlier today, another Minecraft developer, Nathan “Dinnerbone” Adams tweeted:
It would be great to see an official implementation, but with Mojang promising a modding API years ago and still having not delivered one, I won’t hold my breath.