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...
Continue reading..Oculus at GDC 2013
March 26, 2013 - 10:28 PDT by Oculus VR
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...
Continue reading..Oculus-ready Unreal Development Kit Coming in April
March 25, 2013 - 07:30 PDT by Oculus VR
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...
Continue reading..4-Month Unity Pro Trial for Oculus Devs
March 22, 2013 - 07:04 PDT by Oculus VR
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...
Continue reading..Unboxing, Shipping Update, and FAQ
March 21, 2013 - 08:05 PDT by Oculus VR
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...
Continue reading..Team Fortress 2 in the Oculus Rift
March 18, 2013 - 04:45 PDT by Oculus VR
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...
Continue reading..Update on DOOM 3
March 16, 2013 - 08:33 PDT by Oculus VR
When we launched the Kickstarter campaign, we said we’d bundle a copy of DOOM 3 BFG Edition with each development kit as an extra “Thank you.” Unfortunately, we’ve been informed that DOOM 3 BFG Edition will not support the Rift development kit by the time we begin shipping. Since DOOM 3 won’t be available, we’d like to try and make it up to you. Replacement Rewards If you were supposed to receive a DOOM 3 BFG Edition, we’ll replace it with one of the following rewards: - $20 Steam Wallet...
Continue reading..Ernest Cline Visits Oculus VR HQ
March 7, 2013 - 07:44 PDT by Oculus VR
Every day people ask us, “Have you read Ready Player One?” If you’re unfamiliar with the critically acclaimed novel, Ready Player One is about the exciting power and possibilities of virtual reality. Around Oculus, Ready Player One has become required reading. We can’t recommend it highly enough. In February, we were lucky enough to have Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, by the office to check out a demo and meet the team. If you haven’t had a chance to read Ready Player...
Continue reading..More Tools for Great VR
February 27, 2013 - 07:08 PDT by Oculus VR
The last few weeks have been incredibly busy at Oculus HQ while we put the finishing touches on the entire platform: the Rift development kit, the Oculus SDK, and the Developer Center. As we close in on the much anticipated launch, things really couldn’t be more exciting. There’s plenty of good news to share, so let’s dive right in. Latency – VR’s Nemesis This past Friday, John Carmack, legendary technical director at id Software, published an excellent write-up detailing the challenges...
Continue reading..Behind the Scenes of the Pilot Run
February 4, 2013 - 07:19 PDT by Oculus VR
After a long, exciting week at CES, we packed up and flew directly from Las Vegas to Hong Kong to oversee the pilot run at the factory. We lived on the factory floor for just over two weeks setting up production, assembly, and QA for the developer kits. The result? We produced over 40 complete Oculus Rift “pilot run” developer kits and we’re on schedule to start shipping the full kits in March. The first unit from the developer kit pilot run. None of this would have been possible...
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