I have been working on virtual reality technology for years. Starting in a garage, prototyping new hardware, and collaborating with other virtual reality enthusiasts was a blast long before anyone thought VR was poised for a comeback. Hackers, makers, and enthusiasts live on the bleeding edge of tech not because it makes financial sense, but because it is a thrill that you cannot get anywhere else.

I got into VR because it seemed like the obvious path to the best possible gaming experience, but never expected it to take off so quickly. In less than a year, incredible game developers all over the world are building games designed explicitly for virtual reality, and people are beginning to understand that the tech is finally viable. Even with “next generation” consoles on the horizon, VR still came away with dozens of awards and accolades at E3.

We were fortunate enough to be able to pick investors who we thought would be a great fit. They really believe in our vision for the future of VR. These are people who have taken companies from startup to mass market many times, entrepreneurs who have a ton of meaningful experience building hardware and software consumer technology.

As I mentioned before, the funding opens up all sorts of doors for Oculus. It helps us hire the best and brightest minds in VR from around the world. It lets us experiment and prototype with more cutting-edge tech. And it allows us to build a badass, consumer VR gaming platform, the likes of which the world has never seen.

Virtual reality will be one of the most significant technologies of the 21st century. It has the potential to drastically alter the way we play, communicate, and learn. I think that VR can (and will) be as widely used as Facebook or Twitter, and the societal implications will be far greater!

I want to thank everyone for their support. None of this would be possible without you, the people who supported Oculus when it was nothing but a rough prototype and a dream of changing gaming forever!

– Palmer

E3 is officially underway, and we’re here meeting with developers and media.

Last year, the Oculus Rift was officially nominated for Best Hardware of E3. This year, we wanted to do something special to celebrate the first anniversary of its public debut.

We generally develop features for the consumer Rift using top-secret prototypes that are kept under lock and key at Oculus HQ. But for the first time, we’ll be sharing one of these prototypes with the public: a 1080p HD Oculus Rift.

HD VR

Raising the resolution for the consumer Rift has always been one of the highest priorities. The dev kit is an incredible device that demonstrates the potential for VR. High definition virtual reality (HD VR) realizes that potential in full.

Mike and Nate working with one of the early HD prototypes.

The prototype’s 1080p display increases the number of visible pixels by more than 2x, greatly reducing the screen-door effect seen in the development kit. The brightness, contrast, and color are also improved. All of these changes come together to ratchet the sense of immersion to an entirely new level.

A screenshot of Epic Citadel (Unreal Engine 3) in the 720p development kit (left) and in the 1080p prototype (right).

The 1080p prototype isn’t a product — this isn’t necessarily the display (or even the resolution) that we’ll use for the consumer version — it’s simply a taste of what’s coming. Developers can continue building Oculus-ready content with the development kit; the Oculus SDK will automatically handle the resolution and distortion changes for the consumer version.

Chris building the set of 1080p HD Rift prototypes for E3.

HD is one of the many features and improvements we have in development for the consumer version of the Rift. We’ll continue to share prototypes like these with the community as they enter that state where we’re happy with them.

Matt putting the finishing touches on one of the 1080p prototypes.

We’ll have 1080p prototypes on hand at upcoming shows so you can try the HD experience for yourself. For many of us, trying HD VR for the first time was even better than the first trip inside the Rift. It’s truly that good, and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Unreal Engine 4 + Oculus VR

We wanted an incredible experience to showcase HD VR. Over the last few months, we’ve been quietly collaborating with Epic on the Oculus integration for UE4. With Epic’s help, we converted the UE4 Elemental demo into an explorable, immersive, and interactive VR environment.

Simply put, when you combine HD VR with UE4, you really feel like you’re stepping into next-gen gaming.

We’ve also officially joined the UE4 Integrated Partners Program, which means that the engine includes out-of-the-box support for Oculus VR. With UE4, Epic has raised the bar again with an incredible platform for next-generation game development. We’re excited to be a part it. Starting today the Oculus – UE4 integration is available to all Unreal Engine 4 licensees.

An enormous thank you to the team at Epic Games, especially Nick Whiting, Alan Willard, and Nick Penwarden, for all the help making Oculus + UE4 such an awe-inspiring experience. Nick W. wrote up a great blog post on Gamasutra about the integration process that you can read here.

The Oculus – UE4 integration and Oculus Elemental demo were two of Andrew Reisse’s final projects and they came together brilliantly. Thank you, Andrew. We miss you dearly.

VR Cinema

We have one other small surprise that we’re tossing into the show: 3D VR movies.

Lately, the team has been enjoying the VR Cinema3D app built in Unity by Joo-Hyung Ahn at UXGround. Cinema3D allows you to step inside a virtual movie theater, find the perfect seat, kick back, and enjoy your movie in immersive, stereo 3D. A few of us have already watched feature-length movies in it. The size, scale, and sense of immersion is all there. It’s very, very cool.

Imagine when those seats are packed with fellow Rifters!

If you haven’t checked Cinema3D out, you can download it here. The demo still has a few bugs, but Joo-Hyung has been releasing updates to the community frequently. This is just one example of the incredible experiences the indie community is putting together with the Oculus SDK and Unity 4.

While the development kit’s resolution is a bit low for movie watching, HD VR makes all the difference. Watching 2D and S3D movies in virtual reality is something that we’re getting more and more excited about with the consumer version of the Rift.

Quick Shipping Update

We’ve delivered roughly 99% of the Kickstarter rewards including the Rift development kits, t-shirts, and posters. Where’s that last 1%? We’re still missing a couple hundred Kickstarter addresses! If you haven’t received your reward, log in to the Oculus Order Manager and update your account information. You can always email support@oculusvr.com if you need more help.

We’re in the process of transitioning to post-Kickstarter pre-order fulfillment. Hang with us — we’ve run into a few duty/customs snags that are holding up shipments to NA/EU, but we hope to have them sorted out soon.

As previously stated, duties and taxes are the responsibility of the customer for pre-orders taken through the website (ie. all post-Kickstarter dev kits) but we’re working on minimizing delivery charges.

Thanks for your patience!

Building a Next-Gen Platform

We want to thank you again for making all of this possible. We wouldn’t be where we are without the community’s continued support. Keep your comments, suggestions, and feedback coming. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be working with you on the Rift and next-generation virtual reality. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Thank you.

Stay up to date on the latest Oculus news by following @oculus3d on Twitter or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/oculusvr.

Here’s to a great E3!

– Palmer and the Oculus team

Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer(1) and hiker who loved nature, and a loyal friend. Andrew was unique in so many interesting ways. He was extraordinarily kind and utterly selfless. He was a mentor and an inspiration to everyone around him.

Some of us have known Andrew since college, and have worked with him at multiple companies beginning with Scaleform in Maryland which he helped start at age 19, then at Gaikai in Aliso Viejo which brought him out to California, and finally at Oculus where he was a co-founder and lead engineer.

Andrew’s contributions span far and wide in the video game industry. His code is embedded in thousands of games played by millions of people around the world.

Before Oculus
While studying Computer Science at University of Maryland College Park, he ended up sharing a dorm room with Michael Antonov second semester of his freshman year. He loved games, but even more, he loved the technology behind them. Just for fun, he made his own 3D rendering engine that could load Quake maps. That same year, the two met Brendan Iribe and set out to make a UI system for game developers, which was first used in Civilization IV and would later become Scaleform GFx – used by thousands of video games.

Andrew was a freethinker and stood by his opinions and ideals. He was against corporate agreements that restrict an employee’s ability to contribute to open source side projects. When pushed by Autodesk to sign such an agreement, Andrew opted instead to join Brendan at Gaikai, the cloud streaming company, in California. Michael and Nate joined Andrew and Brendan a week later, where the team worked on Gaikai’s cloud gaming platform and SDK until they started Oculus. Andrew continued his work on open-source projects all the while.

At Oculus

He believed in what we’re building and always pushed the team to be better than we thought we could be.

Andrew was taken from us long before his time. Words cannot express how sorely he will be missed or how deeply our sympathy runs for his family.

Andrew, you will always be in our thoughts and never forgotten. We love you, Reisse.

(1) Andrew’s photography can be found at www.reisse.net.

Letter From Andrew’s Family

Behind the Scenes at GDC 2013

Back in March as we geared up for GDC, we had an idea: “What if we could share our experience at GDC with the community that made it possible (especially everyone that couldn’t make it to the show)?” We decided to pack up a few video cameras and run with it.

A lot of moving parts came together simultaneously at the show (even if it was a little crazy):

– Thousands of Rift developer demos
- 100+ meetings with game developers from all over the world
- Hawken VR shown for the first time
- 2 talks on making VR games
- Oculus Developer Center and Oculus SDK launch
- The first Rift development kits hit doorsteps!

Here’s the ‘behind the scenes’ look at Oculus @ GDC 2013. Thank you again for making all this possible!

Now that all the developer talks from GDC are available online, here’s a quick recap, including the talks by Joe Ludwig and Michael Abrash at Valve.

Valve’s Joe Ludwig @ GDC 2013
Valve’s Michael Abrash @ GDC 2013

We’re looking forward to seeing you at GDC 2014 next year!

Oculus-ready Demos and Games

With the majority of the development kits now in the wild, the community has already started sharing creative, made-for-VR experiences. We thought we’d share a few of our favorites:

Blue Marble — enjoy a soothing space experience. A great introduction to VR.
Proton Pulse — play breakout with your face!
Museum of the Microstar — badass GPU required!
VR Cinema 3D — watch .avi movies in a virtual theater.

If you have your own great game or demo in the works, share it with the community over on the Developer Forums.

Oculus @ E3 2013

The team here is heads-down, getting everything ready for E3. The latest demos are still coming together, but we’re hoping to have a sneak peek for you soon.

Thanks again,

– Palmer and the Oculus team

Today, we’d like to introduce you to two of our newest heavy-hitters: Tom Forsyth and Steve LaValle!

Tom Forsyth, Software Architect

If you follow Tom Forsyth on Twitter (@tom_forsyth), you already know of his world-class software engineering and architecture skills. Tom’s last two decades found him working at some of the industry’s most innovative companies including Valve, Intel, and RAD Game Tools. Tom just recently left Valve, where he was working on Team Fortress 2 in VR with Joe Ludwig and Michael Abrash.

A few words from the man himself:

“The Rift is a great bit of kit and combines a bunch of different technology together in a very clever package. It was amazing working with it on Team Fortress 2 and seeing the extra immersion people felt inside a game they already knew so well. I’m really looking forward to helping other developers work with this tech as we go towards a consumer version.”

Tom has his own blog (http://eelpi.gotdns.org/blog.wiki.html), where you can read up on some of his recent research. At Oculus, Tom will be focused on the SDK, along with a few top-secret VR R&D projects. Please join us in welcoming him to the team!

Steve LaValle, Robotics Scientist

Steve LaValle Ph.D, a world-renowned researcher in the areas of robotics, sensor fusion, planning, and control, joins us from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Steve has has been collaborating with the team on the Rift’s hardware and software since last September, but he just recently took a break from his research projects to join Oculus full-time as our principal scientist.

Steve’s leading research and development on some of the toughest VR challenges including sensor fusion, magnetic drift correction, and kinematic modeling.

Professor LaValle in action.

Even better — Steve started a blog where he’ll share his thoughts on virtual reality, computer vision, robotics, and other Oculus research.

Steve’s first post is a deep-dive on the math behind the sensor fusion for the Oculus Tracker. Curious about how all that sensor data comes together to track the Rift’s orientation? Dig in and learn from the Professor. Here’s a short excerpt:

“One overriding theme throughout our development has been to keep the method simple so that it is easier to understand its behavior, to optimize its performance, and to make future enhancements. We could approach the problem using standard sledgehammers, such as the Kalman filter [4] or particle filters [1], but these require significant modeling assumptions and adjustment to reach their theoretical benefits. For example, the Kalman filter is the optimal estimator for linear systems with linear measurements and Gaussian noise, but their performance outside of that range is not guaranteed.”

If your interest is piqued, you can read the the rest of the post above at http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/sensor-fusion-keeping-it-simple. You can let Steve know what you think by leaving a comment on the blog.

Steve will update the blog regularly with more about his research, so stay tuned!

If you want to be a part of this team building the next generation of VR, reach out to us! We’re still looking for the best and brightest in a variety of fields. You can always check out the Oculus Careers page for the latest details.

Nate’s Talk @ GDC 2013

The final chapter of Oculus at GDC 2013: Nate’s talk, “Running the VR Gauntlet”. In case you missed it, here is the video from his portion of the talk, where he dives into a few of the nuances of VR game design and development.

Unity Trial Extensions

Unity Pro trial extension codes are available now on the Oculus Order Manager for all orders marked ‘Shipped’.

You can claim your trial extension by logging into the Oculus Order Manager, locating the Unity Pro trial extension section, and clicking the ‘Claim Code’ button. You can redeem the code within the Unity Pro editor by following the instructions here: http://unity3d.com/unity/activation

To all the Oculus developers with an expired Unity Pro trial: Sorry it took us so long to get these out to you. Go forth, and build the Unity VR content of the future!

Onward

We’re close now — All Rift development kits from Kickstarter are marked as ‘Processing’ or ‘Shipped’ in our system. The remaining units should ship soon.

As always, hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or the Oculus Forums with your latest questions, comments, feedback, and latest Oculus-ready content. We want to hear from you!

– Palmer and the Oculus team

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 everyone who’s already received their Rift: Thank you for your patience! We hope you’re enjoying it.

If you’re developing samples, demos or full ‘Made for VR’ games, please share them with the community on the Oculus Forums.

Replacement Rewards

The replacement rewards for Kickstarter development kits are available now via the Oculus Order Manager. If you’re eligible for a replacement reward, just login to the Oculus Order Manager and click the “Claim Code” button.

If you claim your Oculus Store Credit code today, it can be applied to purchases in the Oculus Store (including the upcoming Latency Tester) starting June 1.

Oculus SDK Update – v0.2.2

We just released Oculus SDK v0.2.2 on the Oculus Developer Center. Highlights of the release include:

- Added magnetometer drift correction support to Unity integration.
- The Unity sample’s HUD is now rendered in 3D with proper distortion.
- Added gamepad support and OculusWorldTiny sample on Mac OSX.

If you’re interested, you can read the full build notes for the release here.

Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meet Up

The Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) meet up held their first meeting last night, featuring organizers Karl Krantz, Cymatic Bruce, and the Sixense team. We snuck in to join the crowd of over 60 VR enthusiasts at the Computer History Museum in San Jose (which includes one of Ivan Sutherland’s original experimental 3D headsets from 1968) to check out a few of the community’s latest projects.

Photo by MarinoAlperon from www.reddit.com/r/oculus

It was awesome to see developers sharing their demos (and their Rift dev kits), discussing their work, and providing feedback to one another. A huge thank you to Karl and Bruce for organizing the event. We look forward to hearing about other meet ups around the world!

Half Life 2 (VR Beta) Officially in the Rift

Joe Ludwig dropped into the Oculus Forum to share the news — Valve has officially released beta Oculus support for their groundbreaking classic, Half Life 2 (including Episode 1, Episode 2 and OSX support)!

Just like Team Fortress 2, this port is intended as a testbed for Valve’s future VR projects. Joe mentioned that it’s “…a bit more raw than TF2,” but we’ve been having a blast playing it around the office.

If you’ve never played Half Life 2, or maybe it’s just been awhile since your last go, now’s your chance to step inside Ravenholm like never before. It’s pretty incredible to have Dr. Gordon Freeman’s story, arguably one of the best interactive experiences ever made, as a VR developer showcase. We can’t thank the team at Valve enough (again).

We have more good news queued up for next week, so stay tuned!

– Palmer and the Oculus Team

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 the documentation and samples as well. If you’re interested, you can read the full build notes for the release here.

Michael’s GDC Session

Michael, chief software architect and co-founder of Oculus, gave a talk with Nate at GDC entitled ‘Running the VR Gauntlet’. It’s a great primer for tackling the technical challenges behind developing games for VR, particularly around rendering and performance.

Last-minute Address Changes

We receive quite a few support emails from backers asking to change/update their shipping address after we’ve shipped their rewards.

Once your order status has advanced to “Processing”, you can no longer update your shipping information via the Oculus Order Manager. “Processing” means we’ve allocated your rewards and we’ve started the shipping process. At that point, there’s no turning back — your rewards are headed straight for that doorstep.

If your order isn’t “Processing” yet, please take a few minutes to verify and update your shipping information via the Oculus Order Manager right now. We can’t stress this enough. Changing your address after your order has begun “Processing” will cause your rewards to be delayed. Sorry for the inconvenience, but please, update your shipping information now.

Quick Shipping Update

As of May 1st, we’ve shipped roughly 3,700 development kits backers worldwide (and we have more units in transit from the factory to our global warehouses).

The breakdown thus far:
~500 to Asia and Oceania
~700 to Europe
~2,500 to North America

Our production rate continues to improve, and we’re currently building around 1,250 development kits each week. We’re now setup with new fulfillment centers in Europe and Asia, which should reduce delivery times for international backers.

We’ve also finished signing the t-shirts and posters, which have already begun shipping to backers. If you haven’t received all your rewards yet, hang tight — they’re coming soon!

EVE Fanfest 2013

We continue to be blown away by the creativity and enthusiasm of the developer community.

The latest ‘made-for-VR’ game comes from our friends (and Kickstarter backers) at CCP Games. EVR is a multiplayer space dog-fighting game based in the EVE Universe. The entire demo was built in just 7 weeks using the Oculus Unity integration by a small team of CCP devs working in their spare time. You can check out the trailer below:

With gorgeous visuals, engaging sound, intuitive controls, and a well-thought-out cockpit, it’s hands-down one of the best demos that we’ve played yet. The EVR dev team at CCP designed the whole experience exclusively for VR, and it really shows.

Over 1,000 pilots had the chance to try it at EVE Fanfest 2013 last weekend, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. A few people waited in line 5+ times for a chance to dominate the space battle. CCP hasn’t announced what they’re doing with EVR going forward, but we’re hoping everyone has a chance to try it soon.

6v6 space dog-fighting in VR null-sec. Photos by Arnaldur Halldórsson.

We’re really looking forward to seeing what the community comes up with next. As always, keep us posted on your new projects and demos.

We’ll see you in the game!

– Palmer and the Oculus team

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 kit after the Kickstarter campaign but before April 1, 2013, you’ll be able to claim your hat as soon as your dev kit has shipped.

Now that Rift development kits are out in the wild, we thought it was time to bring Oculus developers together for a Team Fortress 2 VR throwdown. With that in mind, we’ve opened an official Oculus TF2 VR server!

You can connect to the Oculus server starting today using the address ‘tf2.oculusvr.com’, or by searching for “Oculus” in the TF2 Server Browser. You can also connect using the TF2 console with the command ‘connect tf2.oculusvr.com’.

We strongly encourage you to play using the Rift! The Oculus team will be in there from time to time to defend our VR turf. Palmer’s most-played Steam game is TF2, so be ready for some stiff competition.

To celebrate the Oculus server’s grand opening, we’re hosting the first (of many) Oculus VR Gaming Night this Friday, April 19th from 6 – 9pm PDT!

We’ll square off with the community in Capture/Payload gametypes, all in virtual reality using the Rift development kit. This could be your chance to blow up Palmer with a rocket launcher as a Soldier or save him from near-death as a Medic! We’ll also be streaming the event on TwitchTV so you can watch the mayhem live.

Even if you don’t have your dev kit yet (sorry!), don’t hesitate to jump in and show us what you’re made of!

“Holy Mackerel!”

And just in case you missed it, “My 90 year old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift.”

We’ll see you (and grandma) in the game!

– Palmer and the Oculus team

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 Recap

Phill Ryu, GDC attendee, tries the Oculus Rift for the first time at GDC.

For Oculus, GDC 2013 was nothing short of incredible. Virtual reality made a huge splash — you could feel the excitement in the air. We loved every minute we spent brainstorming the possibilities for the next generation of VR gaming with some of the best game developers in the world. It was really special to be a part of.

Photo from the front of the Oculus booth looking back at the line.

An enormous thank you to everyone who waited in that line just to get a glimpse of the Rift or to meet the team. It means the world to us.

It’s hard to capture that same excitement and energy from GDC in words, but here are a few of our favorite pictures, videos, and articles from the show:

“Piloting a Mech in Hawken in virtual reality is a very different experience; you are acutely aware that you are a person inside a large piece of thudding, heavy, violent machinery… The illusion of actually being there, inside the Mech, was hard to shake.” – Ben Kuchera, Penny Arcade Report

Palmer demoing Hawken VR with the Rift dev kit.

“Oculus VR's Oculus Rift virtual reality headset was the runaway star of GDC… The line to test drive the mech combat game Hawken on the Rift was at least a hundred strong for the entire show—two-hour wait times were not uncommon and I personally witnessed people literally running to the Oculus booth to get a head start on the line when the exhibition floor opened…” – Damon Poeter, PCMag

The additional line area for the Oculus booth. People waited through this (thank you!), then moved to the line around the actual booth. Shout-out to the amazing GDC CA staff who helped us throughout the show.

Patient fans waiting for a demo, drawing on the booth’s walls.

Between the crowd at the booth, media, developer meetings, our GDC talks, remotely launching the Developer Center, and shipping the first batch of dev kits, GDC was a thrilling week. Special thanks to all the backers who came out and shared a few drinks with us at the Thirsty Bear.

We recorded both of our GDC talks, which we’ll be posting online soon. Palmer’s “Virtual Reality – The Holy Grail of Gaming” will be available early this week, then Michael and Nate’s talk on the challenges of designing great VR games should be ready in the next week or two.

Palmer during his talk, “Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming.”

Michael and Nate discuss the challenges of building a great virtual reality experience in their talk, “Running the VR Gauntlet.”

Thank you to everyone who came up and spoke with us during the show. It was a pleasure meeting all of you! And again, a special ‘Thank you’ to our backers for making this possible. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Shipping Update

The Oculus logistics team is 100% focused on getting dev kits to your doorstep. Here’s the latest on our progress:

We’ve shipped roughly 1,850 development kits worldwide so far (~500 internationally). Up next, we have another ~2,000 arriving around April 26th, but it could be a few days earlier or later depending on international customs.

Of the upcoming ~2,000 unit batch, ~500 will be EU, ~500 will be Asia/Oceania, and the rest will be the Americas. These units will also be the first delivered via our new EU/Asia/Oceania fulfillment network, which should help reduce delivery times and costs.

Nirav laying claim to a few of the units delivered to Oculus HQ.

If you’d like to learn more about our international shipping plans, Nate provided a detailed breakdown over in the official Oculus Forums, which you can read here.

A handful of international backers have reported a few speed bumps with European and Canadian deliveries related to customs and tax charges. Sorry for the inconvenience, we’re working on sorting these issues out now. If you have any problems with your delivery, please let us know by emailing support@oculusvr.com!

If you’re one of the generous backers who has received their Rift and shared the experience with your friends, neighbors and community: Thank you! Keep spreading the word and sending us your feedback. We’re really looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

T-Shirts and Posters

The ever-elusive Oculus Kickstarter t-shirts and posters are finally ready! These will be shipping worldwide starting next week.

Oculus-ready UDK

The Oculus-ready Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is now available from the Oculus Developer Center! A handful of developers have already started exploring UDK scenes in VR. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can grab it here.

Unity Trial Extensions

The Unity Pro Trial Extensions aren’t available yet, but they will be soon. We’re just nailing down the details on how to deliver the extension codes to you. As soon as we have that figured out, we’ll let you know.

Building for the Future

While the logistics team manages moving 10,000+ Rifts around the world, the engineering team is heads-down on the Oculus SDK and the future of the Rift.

Team meeting, plus a birthday celebration for Andres, Peter, Lee, and Nikolay (note the delicious Oculus-themed cupcakes).

If you’ve received your development kit and you’d like to send us feedback, talk to other Oculus developers, or just discuss virtual reality, head over to the official Oculus Forums! The team reads and replies to questions/discussions there whenever they can. It’s also the best place to keep up to date on all things Oculus.

Thanks for the continued support!

– Palmer and the Oculus team

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 day has been a long time in the making. We’d like to thank you again for your patience, support, and enthusiasm for virtual reality! We couldn’t have gotten here without you.

It’ll take time for us to ship 10,000+ development kits. Hold fast — they’re coming. When you do receive your Rift, let us know what you think @Oculus3d on Twitter!

Oculus Developer Center Now Open

With development kits on their way, it’s time to open up the Oculus Developer Center. You can dive in right now at https://developer.oculusvr.com.

You’ll find everything you need to start building VR content with your Rift development kit including the Oculus SDK, Unity and Unreal Engine integrations, samples, documentation, videos, the developer wiki, and community forums.

The dev center is the place for Oculus developers to come together and collaborate on virtual reality. There are plenty of tough problems to solve, which is why it’s so important for the community to come together to really bring virtual reality to life.

We wanted to empower the community to build the next generation of gaming. All of the source code for the core Oculus SDK is available under the Oculus License and full source for the samples is available under Apache 2.0! This also makes the Oculus SDK much easier to integrate, debug, port, and build on.

Go forth, developers, and seek out our virtual future.

Developer Showcases

Once your Rift arrives, we recommend that you download the Oculus SDK from the Developer Center, and try the World Demo, a simple Tuscany-esque environment we showed at SXSW.

After that, the possibilities are endless. Play Team Fortress 2’s “VR Mode” in the Rift. Experiment with world building in Unity and Unreal Engine. Share game prototypes with the community. Or, build a “Made for VR” game that defines a new genre.

The Rift lets you experience games in completely new ways. Whatever you decide, have fun.

Looking for a little inspiration on where to begin? The full recording of our SXSW panel, “Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming” with Cliff Bleszinksi, Paul Bettner, Chris Roberts, and Palmer is online now:

Day Zero

We want to hear from you. Remember, the Rift, the SDK, and the Dev Center will be shaped by your feedback. If you have suggestions, please let us know!

This is just the beginning. Virtual reality, as a technology and as a medium, is still in its infancy. It will improve in all aspects, opening up even more ways to be immersed in virtual worlds. With virtual reality, the possibilities really are limitless.

Thank you for joining the revolution.

We’ll see you in the game!

– Palmer and the Oculus team