Although Oculus has revealed the design of the consumer Oculus Rift (the so called ‘CV1’), there’s still some crucial facts that we’ve yet to learn about the highly anticipated VR headset.

Price

What will it cost? This has been part of the Rift discussion since the early days. One of the major breakthroughs of the company’s first development kit headset (the DK1) was its performance (or experience) to cost ratio. The DK1 was not the first VR headset to have a wide field of view or high quality rotational headtracking, in fact, there were a number of contemporary and even preceding headsets that exceeded it in all of those aspects. But the DK1 was the first VR headset to package a solid immersive VR experience at a price point that was attractive to the everyday tech consumer—just $300—and that made all the difference.

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The Oculus Rift DK1 (left) and DK2 (right) development kits.

After the DK1, Oculus revealed the Rift DK2 which was a huge step up in performance. The DK2 featured a higher resolution display with better characteristics, and most notably, equipped the headset with a positional tracking system that allowed the device to track translation (movement of a player’s head through 3D space, also known as positional tracking), in addition to rotation. The upgrades brought the unit up to $350.

Oculus has yet to commit to a price for the consumer version of the Rift. Early on, the company said that they were aiming for the same $300 price point as their original Kickstarter cost for the DK1, but as time has gone on and the company has changed its scope, they’ve shied away from making specific price claims.

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It’s very hard to gauge where the headset’s price will fall. On the one hand, the company has achieved a level of scale that could reduce manufacturing costs. But from the DK2 to the CV1, there’s been a number of upgrades that could negate any bulk-manufacturing benefits; there’s the dual 1080×1200 OLED displays, custom lenses, a more robust strap system with additional tracking hardware on the back of the headset for 360 degree tracking—not to mention more complex mechanical elements to facilitate the physical IPD adjustment function.

oculus-rift-cv1-e3-2015

However, we also have to factor in an important milestone that happened during Oculus’ growth. Facebook bought the company in March 2014, bringing a number of possible advantages; Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey said about the acquisition that “This deal specifically lets us greatly lower the price of the Rift.” Just prior to the announcement of the acquisition, Oculus said at E3 2014 that they hoped to be able to initially sell the headset “at cost”—with no profit margin.

One of the most recent indications of price came back in May when Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said that the price combined with the purchase of a capable computer, “…should be in that $1,500 range.”

Given that the company’s recommended computer specifications can be built for around $1000 (currently), a $500 price for the Oculus Rift CV1 may not be out of the question. If we’re to assume that the current ~$1000 price for the company’s recommended computer specs will drop by the time the headset launches later in 2016… the company could be setting a price expectation even higher.

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Field of View

oculus-rift-cv1-lenses-e3-2015

Another spec that Oculus has shied away from with the approach of their consumer release is the field of view (FoV). FoV specifies how much of your natural vision is overtaken by the headset’s view. While Oculus has specified that the Rift DK1 and DK2 have a diagonal FoV of 110 degrees and 100 degrees respectively, the company has actively dodged the question with regard to the Rift CV1.

At E3 2015, I put the question to Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey as the first order of business. “Field of view?” I asked at point blank.

“…that’s a complicated question,” Luckey said. He went on to explain perhaps one reason why the company isn’t saying—that field of view can vary for each individual and that the measurement itself can’t be compared to others without an explanation of how it was determined.

“We could just make up a number. There’s various methodologies… we could put out a number but it’s really hard to compare between our methodology and someone else’s methodology, which may perhaps be inflated or biased,” said Luckey. “There really needs to be a standard way to measure field of view for those numbers to actually mean a lot.”

He did make it sound like we’d be hearing an official CV1 FoV from the company eventually, saying, “We’re not giving any numbers because we don’t want to be specific right now, but it is no less wide than anything that we’ve shown before.” So it seems likely that the measurement will be revealed—hopefully along with the methodology—prior to the unit’s release.

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At very least, in my experience with the headset, the field of view seems noticeably larger than that of the DK2, and on-par with the Valve/HTC Vive and Sony’s 2015 Morpheus prototype.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • kalqlate

    Oculus Rift won’t be the first out of the gate, and they probably won’t be the best. However, being the recommended device to experience Facebook VR services (whatever those will happen to be) will assure that the Rift will eventually be the top seller BY FAR.

  • Don Gateley

    With the recent announcement that there will be no in-house content developed for it and the statement that content distribution will be unrestricted one has to wonder exactly how they will make any money on it if sold remotely close to cost. Too much double talk for continued credibility.

    • Don Gateley

      When I click the box “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” and post a comment I am sent an annoyance email that I must respond to titled “[Subscribe] Comments on Road to VR – please confirm.” I must click on a link which takes me to https://subscribe.wordpress.com/?option=comments&update=activated which responds with considerable delay and eventually tells me “Your subscription has been activated!”

      Please find a way to stop sending that annoyance email which simply disrupts work flow with no useful purpose and activate automatically instead. Checking the box should suffice as it does with all other sites I use which have such a box.

      • Ben Lang

        We’re working on it! Sorry for the annoyance, Don.

    • kalqlate

      Please point me to a link to that announcement, Don. All that I’m seeing is stuff like this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2927073/Facebooks-Oculus-forms-house-virtual-reality-film-studio.html. Besides content, to doubt that Facebook would not endeavor to create a realtime telepresence app for its billion users is to doubt that Facebook is a communications company. With such, Facebook will be the king of VR ad placement. THAT’s one way that they’ll make money.

      • Don Gateley

        http://vrfocus.com/archives/18459/oculus-favouring-funding-developers-over-owning-them-for-rift-launch-ceo-suggests/

        No more in-house development. Providing funds to outside companies is not in-house. You may interpret it otherwise but that’s what I get from it.

        Exactly what I fear is that Oculus is going to become a Facebook content channel and that’s about all. Indeed, it could make them money (or they wouldn’t have put it in their pocket) but Facebook being Facebook and Zuckerberg being Zuckerberg they will want and they will get complete control over it. If not immediately, certainly eventually.

        • kalqlate

          Thanks, Don. That’s definitely contrary to prior news. Still, I’ve often commented that real-time telepresence, which encompasses all live broadcasts from intimate two-party VR chat to live VRogging to thousands of onlookers to live sporting events and concerts for a few fans or millions at a time, is the killer app for VR. It, more than any play-at-your-leisure content, is what will fuel high adoption rates for VR. Controlling the ad space of Facebook Telepresence will eventually be a gold mine for Facebook.

          • kalqlate

            Live online gaming is itself, in a way, interactive telepresence. However, even excluding live gaming, I project telepresence will be the most used app… as soon as 360 capture and live streaming is perfected and cheapened, and Whatsapp and other chat services make it an available option.