Though the big news lately has been about the Oculus Rift, Sony’s HMZ-T1 is still a solid HMD option thanks to its 720p resolution and incredible OLED displays. A few months back, Platige Image was brought in to create an immersive virtual reality setup to promote the game Datura, a PlayStation 3 exclusive title that was developed by Plastic Group for Sony’s PlayStation Move motion peripheral.
GameTrailers caught up with John Carmack, at QuakeCon 2012, who has been giving the media demos of the Oculus Rift since E3 in early June. This is essentially the same spiel we’ve heard from Carmack at E3 with the addition of some information regarding the development of Doom 4 with the Oculus Rift in mind, as well as a good amount of footage showing the pre-Oculus output that runs into the forthcoming HMD.
Silicon Micro Display’s ST1080 head mounted display has been on the market for a few months now. The HMD has been lauded for its high resolution 1080p display but shipped without the ability to scale up 720p content to fill the entire screen. Instead, 720p content would fill a smaller portion of the screen. Thanks to a new free update available from SMD, the ST1080 can now scale 720p content correctly.
The Oculus Rift Kickstarter continues to raise funds; check the sidebar on the right and you’ll find that it is currently sitting at $1.34 million, 536% of the funding goal. Given the excitement, and in an effort to get more developers on board, Oculus has added two new bulk-buy tiers which they say are “perfect for the established or indie game game studio interested in working with the Rift immediately.”
At QuakeCon this week there were two keynotes that are relevant to the VR world. These presentations were streamed live, but if you missed them they’re now available in their recorded form.
Tonight at QuakeCon a panel of VR experts will take the stage to talk about the future of VR and the Oculus Rift. Speaking of which, the Oculus Rift Kickstarter has passed $1 million in less than 36 hours and is now 440% funded!
We knew that the Oculus Rift was going to be big… but this big?! After only 3 hours or so Kickstarter contributors had backed about $130,000, about 56% of the $250,000 goal. At the time of writing (8:28pm EST), the Oculus Rift Kickstarter has been live for around 10 hours and is currently sitting at $580,000 which is 230% of the goal.
The Oculus Rift Kickstarter is officially live. Here’s the link! Read on for pricing and other details.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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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?
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.
