With all the great press the Oculus Rift has been receiving recently, I’m getting really excited about the developer model that should be showing up on my doorstep sometime later this month.
For those who haven’t heard, the Oculus Rift is a new, consumer grade virtual reality headset that is currently being developed by Oculus LLC. A Kickstarter campaign for the Rift brought in almost $2.5M, and it has been endorsed by some major names in the industry – John Carmack, Gabe Newell, etc . An early run of developer kits should be shipping soon, with the goal of getting the hardware and an early SDK into the hands of eager developers to see what applications are possible. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and I can’t wait to get mine and start tinkering with it. (I have a couple ideas for simple Unity games I would like to try out – stay tuned for more details)
On a related note – I’ve been reading Ready Player One, which is amusing considering that the author (Ernest Cline) just visited the Oculus headquarters and made comments comparing the Rift with the ‘OASIS’ VR from the book (think Matrix meets the Second Life). The book is worth checking out – so far I’m really enjoying it, and it is only making me more excited about the receiving my new Oculus headset.