Slashdot Mirror
60,000 Oculus Rift DK2 Orders, 20,000+ Units Shipped, New Orders Ship In October
An anonymous reader writes The much lauded Oculus Rift DK2 is in high demand. Shipping began at the end of July and Oculus says they've already shipped more than 20,000 of their 60,000 orders. The company recently updated their order page to indicate that new units are expected to ship starting in October. The Oculus Rift DK2 is the company's second development kit which offers a number of major improvements over the original kit, called the DK1, which was the result of a successful Kickstarter back in August, 2012. Although the DK2 is intended for developers, the company openly offers the VR headset up for sale to anyone interested for $350. The Oculus Rift DK2s most notable enhancements are a higher resolution display and positional tracking capability as well as a number of other under-the-hood enhancements make the DK2 a huge improvement over its predecessor.
I got mine a week ago. I couldn't get it to work on Linux, and it has been sitting in the box since then. Version 3.2 was just a black screen, so I tried rolling back to 2.5c and got something but it was skewed in a weird diamond pattern.
The real suckers are the people who gave Palmer $2.4 million but didn't demand an equity stake.
60,000 Oculus Rift DK2 Orders, 20,000+ Units Shipped, New Orders Ship In October!
Sweet! Keep this up and they'll never have to hit alpha.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
So the flawless ultra low latency positional head tracking, the low-persistent display and the SDK with time warping and all other optimizations that will likely come from Oculus mean nothing, right? Good luck with your Durovis Dive and your Cardboard box HMD.
While I'm not a fan of the system, what you are paying for is mostly the motion tracking system. I do have the first generation dev kit and it's rather nice compared to similar prior systems (Virtual-IO for example). But it is also majorly over hyped and Facebooks involvement was a death blow for me. But that's just me...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why would one need any other reason to hate now that it's owned by Facebook?
My friend and I were playing around with his DK2 last night. We fired up Half-Life 2 (and later Half-Life 1 Source).
That big room with all the crates hanging from the ceiling that you have to jump your way across? That was just about the most intense gaming experience I've ever had. The vertigo feels completely real and you feel actual panic if you fall.
My friend fell down that elevator shaft in "Unforseen Consequences" and his brain just about melted. An hour later, his real-world balance was still fucked up and he had to go to bed.
They need higher-res, but other than that the illusion is pretty damn convincing. You completely forget that the screen is redrawing itself based on your head movements... it just feels like you're looking around inside a virtual space. (To the point that when the head-tracking effect pauses, like on loading screens, it feels BIZARRE)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
DK2 rocks for any game with a cockpit -- space sims, driving sims, and some Mech Warrior like games.
FPS'... no so much. It's real easy to get queasy (for me anyway, YMMV). I'm hoping this becomes less of an issue over time but since there are other experiences out there that really excel with the Rift I'm not too concerned.
Oculus also has to come up with an standardize input system to enable more complex experiences. Something that is also positionally tracked (like the headset it) would be ideal since once you have your headset and headphones on fishing around for your mouse/keyboard or game controller is a pain.