The Oculus Rift was first launched as a kickstarter project on August 1, 2012. Since then, Oculus have shipped two developer kits, lined up a myriad of AAA launch titles, was acquired by Facebook and finally has begun accepting pre-orders. The pre-order costs 599$ plus shipping and comes with the headset, sensor, an Xbox One controller, and the Oculus remote. Included with the pre-order is a copy of Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale.
The Oculus Rift requires some serious hardware to run, something that many people outside of the enthusiast market do not have access to. The recommended minimum specifications can be viewed here:
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer
Oculus Rift will also be selling special “Rift Ready” PC’s starting in February for 1499$, including the Rift. That gives a total budget of 800$ for the PC which is around the price point you would be looking at if you built it. The Rift’s two screens both aim for 90+ FPS to provide a smooth experience. Any less than that can be disorientating, break immersion and possibly contribute to motion sickness – already an issue for the Rift.
The Oculus is not the only VR device coming out in the near future. Project Morpheus for Playstation, Samsung VR and the HTC Vive are all poised to be hot on the heels of the Rift to compete for the mainstream consumer market. One thing that sets Project Morpheus and Samsung VR apart from the Vive and Rift is the fact that they do not require a gaming computer to run, instead relying on consoles and smartphones. CCP will also be releasing Eve: Valkyrie on the Project Morpheus and Eve: Gunjack will be available to play on Samsung VR.
As someone who has had a chance to demo Eve: Gunjack, I can definitely say that it runs well and considering the widespread reach of Galaxy smartphones to run it on it has a very good chance of becoming the quintessential mobile game of the future like Angry Birds, Clash of Clans and Tetris have done.
The high price point of the Rift is a turn off to many users, especially considering Palmer Lucky, founder of the Oculus had stated that being acquired by Facebook would help reduce the price point to around 300$.
Will you be an early adopter? What do you thing VR technology holds for the future? Let us know in the comment section below.
