Oculus Raises $75 Million To Make VR Headset

An anonymous reader writes "The company making the VR headset that has John Carmack and many others in the gaming industry excited has just received another $75 million in funding to make it happen. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is joining the company's board, along with fellow investor Chris Dixon. Dixon had seen a prototype earlier this year, but it wasn't good enough to spark his interest. After recently seeing how the device has progressed since then, he was blown away, comparing it to early demos of the iPhone. 'The dimensions where you need to improve this kind of VR are latency, resolution and head tracking, and they have really nailed those things.' Now that the device is in good shape, Oculus is going to work on turning it into a product they can produce and ship for gamers."

Comments

But will it give me a headache?

[sandytaru]

That's what killed the 3DS for me. Fine tune the latency, resolution, and head tracking all you want, but if I can't play it for more than twenty minutes, I'm not interested.

Re:But will it give me a headache?

[mythosaz]

Being an adult ruined it for me.

*shrug*

Re:But will it give me a headache?

[i kan reed]

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
--C.S. Lewis

Re:But will it give me a headache?

[Anrego]

I find I get almost a form of sea-sickness (which others have dubbed "VR Sickness"). Logically it makes sense as your eyes are seeing stuff that doesn't line up with what your bodies balance mechanisms are telling it, and for whatever reason the response to that is to make you feel like shit.

For me I find it hits me all of a sudden. Like I'm fine, then I get a weird kind of combo mild nausea and head pressure. The first time it got me I literally closed my eyes, took the thing off, and went to lay down for a bit.

Like seasickness (which surprisingly I don't suffer from, despite having been aboard ships at high sea-states), I imagine it effects people very differently and for varying degrees of time. Also I imagine like seasickness, enough exposure and you "get over it". I'm at a point now where I can comfortably use the thing for hours.. though occasionally some jittery/poor perspective game will bug me.

I see this as a major hurtle for mass adoption. Sure, us geeks are willing to tough it out.. but a toy that gives you a pounding headache and nausea after a half hour or so is gonna be a touch sell for the masses.

Re:Invest in nausea medication

[i kan reed]

Wow... MTFU! You motion sickness people make me sick with your faint-hearted constitutions. I bet you can't read in a car either!

People started complaining when I ran them over.

Re:You readers are lame

[i kan reed]

the nausea and vomiting parts are laughable,

As an owner of one, I have to disagree. You can come over and use mine. If you can beat the first 2 chapters of half-life 2 without taking it off or vomiting, I'll be staggered.

Re:You readers are lame

[Anonymous Coward]

They're like vampires. Next thing you know you'll be up to your eyeballs in MyCleanPC and ass tickle trolls.

Re:Invest in nausea medication

[Antipater]

Obviously you're doing it wrong, or they wouldn't be complaining.

Re:You readers are lame

[vadim_t]

Yep, I agree. HL2 is a bad fit for the Oculus.

My findings so far is that anything that's like a FPS where you have to run around like mad and turn around constantly is going to make you very sick, very fast. And HL2 also has things like the screen freezing when the next area is being loaded, which is absolutely vomit inducing.

What seems to work best is constant linear movement, like the roller coaster. The next best thing is slow, reflexive games, where you move at human speeds and have time to gawk at the environment.

I think FPSes are going to need something like the Virtuix Omni. With that, you can turn around completely without forcing the camera to move out of sync, and that should fix most of the problem.

Re:You readers are lame

[CanHasDIY]

They're like vampires. Next thing you know you'll be up to your eyeballs in MyCleanPC and ass tickle trolls.

No worries, just invite apk over to update your hosts list and you'll be good to goatse.

Should have parterned with MS/Sony/Nintendo

[timeOday]

The new next-gen consoles are all a bit lackluster, if you ask me. And Oculus Rift, though probably usable with existing games and GPUs, would really benefit with a big raft of new games and hardware made just for it. Sony, or Microsoft, or Nintendo, should have partnered with Oculus Rift and built their new generation of consoles around it.

How about for work?

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Forget about gaming, how about a HUGE virtual desktop for work?

--PM

Re:How about for work?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Excuse? I dunno, having production runs spoken for by other companies and until recently having an order of magnitude less cash to work with are pretty good excuses. High DPI displays haven't been around very long yet, and it took Apple to kick the display manufacturers in the ass to make it happen. They were perfectly happy making low res displays with really nice yields. Apple demanded higher res and you can bet the yield on them is noticeably lower. So they're harder to make, and meanwhile Apple wants millions of them, while Oculus wants thousands. Guess who gets the contract.

$75 million means Oculus moves up in line and starts being a real contender for getting the new pixel densities.

Of course this wouldn't be such a problem if there hadn't been so much consolidation in manufacturing. There's, what, 4 display manufacturers left in the world? Not as bad as hard drives yet, but getting there.