Oculus Rift

[MaximusR3]

The consumer version is finally unveiled at the Oculus pre-E3 keynote and will be coming early next year (Q1 2016), here is the reveal trailer



they also released a game sizzle reel, including an exclusive game announced from Insomniac Games called "Edge of Nowhere"



Here is a dedicated teaser trailer for the Insomniac game




Interesting news from the keynote:

Partnership with Microsoft
As you no doubt probably noticed in the reveal trailer, there is an XB1 controller shown. They have announced that every Oculus Rift will come bundled with the controller and adapter for use on PC.

They also showed that XB1 will be able to stream to the Oculus, but before you get too excited, it's not quite as it sounds...
you will be seeing a virtual theater in which you are playing the XB1 game on the screen. Still a neat feature but not the experience people were hoping for when first hearing this news. So you will still play a traditional 2D game, its just displayed in a virtual 3D space. I think the main appeal here would be freeing up your tv for others to use while still enjoying the big tv experience despite being on a "small" screen.


Oculus Touch is revealed
as an alternative to the XB1 controller, Oculus also has their own (optional and likely far less popular choice because it will require a separate purchase) input device they're calling the Oculus Touch

there are analog sticks and buttons for "traditional" input functions, then there are the ring of sensors that can detect hand gestures such as pointing and giving a thumbs up. The sensors in the controllers in combination with the desktop sensor (that weird hammer/stand looking thing in the videos) will handle movement/position tracking. They said they wanted to design a controller made from the ground up with VR in mind and this is what the ended up with. I think it looks interesting and am looking forward to seeing how they play out. Only issue I see personally is potentially looking a bit like an idiot to the outside world...

...but whatever, I'll play behind closed doors. Besides, who cares how dumb you look to everyone else when you're in there doing barrel rolls?









for more reading, check out Gizmodo's report and IGN's Live Blog recap

[ssandersjr]

I have always thought this was an amazing project. I don't think I could ever use it though. I have played around with Google Cardboard, but it gave me a headache within about 15 minutes of using it.

[MaximusR3]

I'm in the same boat, I think it's a really fascinating direction to take gaming, just not necessarily something I'd see myself getting onboard with. I'm not sure if I'd have any negative side effects, my issue is the price of admission since these VR headsets are going to need a pretty beefy computer to support them on top of the actual costs of the hardware. Unless Sony's project morpheus somehow pulls off the same level of functionality and quality with a lower cost (I'm not holding my breath lol) I don't see myself getting into the VR world any time soon

[iamthesgt]

Yeah it looks sweet I just see more use with a multi monitor setup. Maybe one day I'll get into it.

[Starfoxy32]

The 3D gaming headset shown at E3 during the minecraft portion of the conference was freaking awesome. Where I work we have the Oculus Rift in our iLab and I played around with it for a bit but it's heavy and I wouldn't want to wear it long term.

[MaximusR3]

I thought it looked heavy but didn't have first hand experience to back my assumption so thank you for that input 😃
You have a dev model though, right? I've read the consumer model will be a little lighter but, despite how much they try to hide it in press releases, it is still wired and will need to drape over one shoulder

[iamthesgt]

Supposedly from what I've read they've taken a ton of input and madr it more comfortable and user friendly

[Starfoxy32]

I thought it looked heavy but didn't have first hand experience to back my assumption so thank you for that input 😃
You have a dev model though, right? I've read the consumer model will be a little lighter but, despite how much they try to hide it in press releases, it is still wired and will need to drape over one shoulder

Yeah we have the development model I hope they made it lighter for consumer use cause I only had the development one on for 30 min and I had to take it off.