Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has hand delivered the first Rift VR (Virtual Reality) headset to a customer.
Advertisement
“The Oculus has some advantages here: first to market never hurts, and Oculus still seems to retain a significant mindshare advantage by being the first of these modern VR headsets to go public”, the publication wrote. He watched a short movie, played a game and explored a virtual environment that included an up-close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Many reviews of this first-generation Rift, such as the review by the New York Times, said reviewers eagerly await better content and future generations of the device. Unless you’re a gamer, there isn’t much for you to do. After all, it’s less of a window than it is a wormhole; the more you remember it’s there, the less you’re able to lose yourself in everything happening inside it. The first units are going out to the fans who backed the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that raised $10 million for the startup back in 2012, before Facebook bought the company in 2014 for $2 billion. While the consumer version of that head mounted display (HMD) will not arrive for a few more days, this makes sure all of the early adopters will be ready. There’s a backlog of orders and if you order now, you can expect delivery in July. Reviewers at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Digits blog (but not the newspaper itself), and gaming website IGN (among others) agree with my assessment.
Oculus Rift is launching with 30 games this week. She added, “It’s brilliant”. The VR headset starts shipping today.
Several competing devices are expected to arrive later this year.
Advertisement
And Wired’s Peter Rubin praised the Rift hardware: “This is an astonishingly well-made device”. Instead of spending $500 on a game console, $700 on a TV and owning a separate computer, users may end up spending their tech money on reality-altering headsets. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
