We thought we’d share a short and sweet Oculus update to help kick off the weekend. Shipping Update Since our last update (May 1st), we’ve shipped roughly 2,500 dev kits, bringing the total number of dev kits in the wild to just over 6,000. We’re on track to ship the remaining 1,500 Kickstarter kits before the end of May. Palmer, Nate, Michael and Brendan signing Rift dev kits for backers. To everyone who’s still waiting for their Rift: Thank you for your patience! We’re almost there. To...
Oculus SDK Update – v0.2.1 We’ve released a new version of the Oculus SDK, v0.2.1 on the Oculus Developer Center. Highlights for this release include: - Basic drift-correction using the magnetometer. - Platform support for OS X. - Chromatic aberration shader sample. The drift correction is still very much in beta as we continue to tweak and improve it. Also, the Unity and Unreal integrations do not include these new features yet, but they will in the next release. We’ve updated...
For those of you that couldn’t make it to Palmer’s talk and Q&A session at GDC, “Virtual Reality – The Holy Grail of Gaming,” we’ve posted the recording for your viewing pleasure! Team Fortress 2 in the Rift The exclusive Team Fortress 2 Rift development kit hat (TF2VRH) is now available to Kickstarter backers via the Oculus Order Manager. You can claim your hat right now by logging into www.oculusvr.com/sales and following the instructions there. If you pre-ordered a development...
Now that Rift development kits are in the wild and the Oculus SDK is live, game developers have started creating amazing VR experiences. We’re really enjoying checking out the community’s latest samples and demos. Keep them coming! If you have an awesome, new VR experience to share, let us know via Twitter, Facebook, or the Oculus Forums. We’d love to try it! With all the energy in the community, this weekend felt like the right time to put together an update on all things Oculus. GDC...
Rejoice fellow VR pioneers: the day has finally arrived. Oculus Rift development kits are officially shipping! In fact, the very first kits have already started arriving. We actually started shipping on Wednesday, but we haven’t shared tracking information yet because the team is still tied up at GDC in San Francisco. Sorry about that! This means the earliest backers may actually find Rift’s on their doorsteps beforethey receive tracking numbers. A little surprise to keep things interesting. This...
The Oculus team will be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, Wednesday, March 27th through Friday, March 29th. You’ll find us at booth 218 on the GDC Expo floor (South Hall). Joe has been working on the booth non-stop since he arrived and it’s starting to look great. If you have a chance, come check out a demo and say Hi. On Virtual Reality We’re giving two talks on virtual reality while we’re here: the first on the challenges of designing and implementing great...
We thought we’d kick GDC 2013 off right, starting with some great news for Oculus developers. Today, we’re announcing that we’ve partnered with Epic Games to release a custom, Oculus-ready version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 (UE3). The Oculus-ready UDK will be available to all Oculus developers. We’re also releasing an Oculus integration for UE3, available to the full source Unreal Engine 3 licensees out there. The Unreal Engine...
The Unity – Oculus World Demo, a VR tech demo included with the Oculus integration. With delivery of the Rift imminent, we’re putting the finishing touches on the first cut of the Oculus SDK. One big focus for the launch is the out-of-the-box Oculus integration plugin for Unity 4. Unity is a great platform for game developers (especially for people who may be completely new to creating games). Versatility makes Unity great – Shadowgun, The Room, Year Walk, and Guns of Icarus are...
We’re so close now. We’ve been integrating all the hardware/software feedback from the developers in the Partner Preview over the last few weeks. Changes include tweaks to calibration settings in firmware and stronger adhesive for the foam. Photo by Engadget We hope you’re ready– Dev kits should start shipping out to the earliest backers on March 29th (we may slip a day or two in either direction depending on customs). When your kit ships, you’ll receive confirmation...
Yes, it’s true: Valve announced today that Team Fortress 2 will have a new “VR Mode” that supports the Oculus Rift, available this week! Team Fortress 2 is one of our absolute favorite games (it’s Palmer’s most-played game on Steam!), and we’re really looking forward to playing it in VR with you. We couldn’t ask for a better developer showcase. Engadget has all the details, including a great interview with Joe Ludwig, one of the engineers at Valve who led TF2′s...
