Oculus Rift Interview with Unity’s Emil Johansen (video)
Back at GDC 2013 I had a chance to speak with Unity’s Emil Johansen about the Oculus Rift.
Project Holodeck Shows Latest Wild Skies Gameplay at USC Demo Day (video)
Project Holodeck is an ambitious project out of the University of Southern California to create a low-cost fully embodied virtual reality environment with the help of the Oculus Rift, Razer Hydra, and other hardware. The team showed off their latest progress on their first game, Wild Skies, at USC’s annual ‘Demo Day.’
Among the Sleep Horror Game Kickstarter Reaches Oculus Rift Stretch Goal
Among the Sleep is a forthcoming horror game by Krillbite Studio which, thanks to passing its $225,000 stretch goal, will be developed with Oculus Rift support.
Exclusive: VorpX Teaser — Crysis 3 on the Oculus Rift [video]
We were lucky enough to recently get our hands on the latest beta of the soon-to-be-released vorpX DirectX injection drivers, similar in aim to the community supported Vireio Perception offering, which adds Oculus Rift head-tracking, stereoscopic 3D, and pre-warping support to vanilla games not built with the Rift in mind. The commercial product is due for release very soon and the extensive play-testing we’ve done so far shows it to be an impressive package.
(Update: video) Google IO 2013: First Photos of Google Maps with Oculus Rift and Leap Motion
Earlier today we noted that Google had mentioned some sort of Google Maps integration with the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion. A source on the ground at Google IO 2013 gives us the first photos and early details.
Google IO 2013: Oculus Rift Support Coming to the New Google Maps?
This week is Google IO 2013, the company’s annual developer conference. While we expected to hear about Google Glass, it turns out Google may be bringing Oculus Rift support to their new version of Google Maps.
Razer Hydra 50% off Sale Extended to End of May
The Razer Hydra motion gaming controller has become the defacto virtual reality input device for many developers working with the Oculus Rift. Razer has extended their 50% off sale to the end of May, giving you a few more weeks to nab the controller for a great price.
VRcade: A Look into the Future of the Virtual Reality Arcade
VRcade looks like the next logical step for immersive video gaming: With full body & weapon tracking, haptic feedback, a large motion capture arena and realistic graphics, the system offers everything needed to get closer to the virtual reality most of us know only from movies. Road to VR takes a look at VRcade and the exciting future of virtual reality gaming.
The Tantalizing Possibilities of an Oculus Rift Mounted Camera
It’s one of the more obvious mods for the Oculus Rift, but also potentially the most useful. Strapping a camera to the Rift let’s you see the outside world, which could be used for much more than just finding your way to WASD.
Ibex Oculus Rift VR Desktop Environment Beta Download for Windows and Mac
We’ve been watching Ibex, a virtual reality desktop environmental for Oculus Rift, closely over the last few months. The latest beta features full head tracking, video playback, and is now available for Windows and Mac.
Welcoming Dominic Eskofier to the Road to VR Team
Hey there VR fans. A bit of meta-news today. I’d like to welcome Dominic Eskofier to the Road to VR team. Dominic joins in as a news contributor. He’s well versed in the world of online journalism, works in the games industry, and shares our enthusiasm for virtual reality! Eagle-eyed readers out there will have already noticed that he’s authored a number of articles:
- Mechwarrior Online Oculus Rift Support On the Way?
- Oculus Rift USB Power Hack Eliminates Need for a Wall Adapter
- First Google Glass Unboxing Video Appears as Early Adopters Begin Receiving Units
- Second Life Developers Confirm Oculus Rift Support is on the Way
- EVR Oculus Rift Demo Steals Thunder at Eve Online Fanfest
I asked Dominic to share a bit about himself:
Hi, I’m Dominic and it is my pleasure to greet all readers of Road to VR from behind the news desk!
Not too long ago, I was a simple user myself and it still feels a little unreal to be writing for the site that I regard so highly in all things VR. But here I am and I will try my best and use my skills to make the site even better! So, what’s to say about me? I’m 28, live in Germany and when I’m not writing for Road to VR, I use my spare time for rock climbing, web surfing, beach volleyball, moderating subreddits like /r/oculus and just chilling with friends.
Another chunk of my time goes into video games. Me and my two brothers owned computers and consoles from a very early age on (Anyone remember the Sony MSX?), so I’ve always regarded video games as the medium of our generation. I think that video games are only in their infancy and that technologies like the Oculus Rift or the upcoming new consoles will propel our medium forward in the near future. I’m very lucky to be able to use my passion for video games at my workplace, since I’m a Product Manager in the games industry right now.
After studying Electrical Engineering, I decided to pursue my passion and started my career in 2008 as an intern at one of Germany’s largest gaming websites. After my bosses liked my work, I was offered an editor job, both writing for print magazines and managing content on community-focused websites. As Product Manager, I don’t spill out sentences in such a regular basis now, so being able to write for Road to VR is both an honor and a good outlet for my writing-itch.
So, why am I interested in virtual reality? To be honest, I completely missed the 90’s VR craze and maybe it was better that way. My first entry into a virtual space was via the Oculus Rift. After reading so much about it in the MTBS3D forums and seeing John Carmack demo the Rift at E3, I was offered the chance to try Palmer Luckey’s mysterious duct-taped device myself, at Gamescom 2012. I still vividly remember the feeling after my 20 minutes in a spacestation on Mars: despite my slight nausea, it was one of the most profound gaming experiences I ever had – the implications of the technology are just huge.
I couldn’t get the experience out of my head, daydreamed about VR Arcades and virtual wing suit flying and all the other possibilities. I soaked up every piece of information available about the Rift, cared about the growth of the Oculus subreddit and now, here I am at Road to VR, writing for one of the major outlets about virtual reality. As I said, it still feels unreal – but I sincerely hope all of our readers will like my upcoming articles. I had the chance to play around extensively with an Oculus Rift Dev Kit, so more information directly from the source will be coming soon – stay tuned!
Looking forward to amazing times with you,
Dominic
Oculus Rift Shipping Update — All Kickstarter Orders Delivered by End of May
Palmer Luckey, creator of the Rift and founder of Oculus VR Inc, stopped by reddit the other day to give an update on Oculus Rift shipping. According to Luckey, the company is on track to deliver all Kickstarter orders before the end of May.
Luckey said in a post on reddit that, “production is going well and getting faster as we go along.” Recently the company said that they had shipped 3,700 units and were sending out around 1,250 per week. As production continues to increase, the company hopes they’ll be able to ship out more units weekly.
Luckey wrote that, “we’re on track to deliver all the Kickstarter orders before the end of May.” The Kickstarter, which ran during August, 2012, raised 2.4 million dollars — 974% of its stated goal. 7,408 Oculus Rift VR headsets were ordered through the Kickstarter.
Oculus VR Inc opened pre-orders for the Oculus Rift on their website at the end of September, 2012. Around 10,000 total units are estimated to have been ordered through the Kickstarter and online pre-ordering before the Rift started to ship at the end of March, 2013.
“We’ll start fulfilling website pre-orders in late May / early June,” wrote Luckey. “It’s impossible to give exact dates/numbers when we’re dealing with so many moving parts, but if you ordered in 2012, we expect you’ll have your kit in June.”
With the VR headset popping up all over the web and in mainstream media, pre-orders continue to flow in through the site. “Our order rate keeps going up, we had a lot more orders last month than previous months,” Luckey wrote. If you are ordering today, Oculus says you should expect your developer kit to ship in August.
Based on the available info, we recently put together this estimated Oculus Rift shipping schedule:
| Unit # | Shipment Date |
|---|---|
| 3,700 – 4950 | May 1- 7 |
| 4951 – 6201 | May 8 – 14 |
| 6202 – 7452 | May 15 – 21 |
| 7453 – 8703 | May 22 – 28 |
| 8704 – 9954 | May 29 – June 4 |
| 9955 – 11205 | June 5 – 11 |
| 11206 – 12456 | June 12 – 18 |
After 10,000 orders, the company changed their order number schema — if your order number is over 20,000, subtract 10,000 from it to find your unit number.
You can check on your Oculus Rift shipment status here.
How to Configure Half-Life 2 Beta for your Oculus Rift
A couple of days ago, Oculus announced that Half-Life 2 now has official support for the Oculus Rift, albeit in an early beta form. Compared with unofficial mods and hacks, the experience (once working correctly) is incredibly compelling and impressive. However, getting the game working optimally is currently a minor challenge, for those of you unwilling to pour time into config tweaking we run through the basics.
VR and 3rd Person: An Unexpected World of Possibilities?
Hi everyone! Cymatic Bruce here with yet another gameplay exploration. This time, we look into some third person experiences in VR, and try to make some tentative conclusions about what works and what does not.
Half Life 2 Gets Early Official Oculus Rift Support
Gordon Goes Virtual
Oculus have just announced via their Developer forums, that they’ve ‘shipped’ support for Half Life 2 in beta form at least. The update can be obtained via Steam, and you need to follow the below instructions in order to activate the new VR support:
To get it, open the properties for HL2 in Steam, set your command line to “-vr”, and opt-in to the SteamPipe beta. This should ship to everybody in a few weeks.
This is an early beta for VR support, as such the list of known issues are as follows:
The zoom UI shows up in a quad in the middle of the screen instead of on the edges of the screen.
The HUD is dim and hard to read.
It’s exciting to see official support for AAA titles (albeit older ones) starting to appear, certainly having an excuse to re-play this particlar classic, this time in VR is most welcome to this gamer.
Here’s some footage of the official implementation in action, thanks to YouTube user Tejnop:
