CES 2013: hands on with the Oculus VR Rift, virtual reality’s greatest hope
January 10, 2013
(Credit: Oculus VR)
A demo of the Oculus Rift device from Oculus VR. has convinced Will Greenwald of PC Magazine.that it can make first-person games immersive to an unforeseen extent.
“Oculus VR is getting ready to ship developer kits, but the Oculus Rift is a long way from hitting stores. While the technology is there, the combination of stereoscopic vision and head-tracking means games need to be built for the Oculus Rift with the device in mind, and that means experimentation and perfecting the interface.
“Things that work in standard first-person games don’t work when you have an immersive 3D picture with head tracking, and motion sickness is a problem that must be tiptoed around. Still, it’s an impressive display even at this early stage. If enough game developers get onboard, we could see a new resurgence of virtual reality as a ‘future’ technology thanks to the Oculus Rift.”
KurzweilAI covered an early version of the Oculus Rift last July, with more details here. — Ed.
Comments (26)
by Johnny
This is a very bad idea. I watch my daughter who is 18 transfixed daily to her laptop and mobile phone hardly ever leaving the lounge sofa, hardly ever going out, having very few real friends, a real sad life and nothing I can do about it. This is a real ADDICTION. Just like as sex addict they can never stop without professional treatment.
NOW YOU WANT TO DOUBLE THE PROBLEM with VR that finally might work. The addicts will end up in bed continually with their headset on and have to be on a dripfeed. Might as well be in a COMA. Is this the death we want? This technology ought to be BANNED now before it’s too late for the weak willed idiots that are all around us now.
by Gabriel
“Might as well be in a coma”? That’s how you feel about your daughter? That she’s a weak-willed idiot?
Every technology is a double-edged sword…for every abuser, their is someone who genuinely needs it, and the all sorts of different fields that can benefit from VR (not to mention the sheer economic benefits) make your wish pretty impossible. If you are really concerned for your daughter, talk with her…..more likely then not, she’s communicating with someone given how much time she spends on the phone and laptop apparently….spend more time with her, encourage her to be more social on a face-to-face basis (18? does she plan to go to college?), and so on…
Banning an entire technology simply because some people ‘may’ abuse it…you couldn’t ‘ban’ it anyway, unless we lived in a totalarian government or something….even if their were restrictions, people would find a way to get it, like almost anything else.
by Vincent Blas
YES! NEW TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL! WE MUST BAN IT!
by Cybernettr
Maybe another one of Kurzweil’s predictions is about to take shape…
by Gabriel
VR is definitely going to be one of the big things this decade, methinks.
by He lies in waiting
Must have virtual reality so I can finally get to the Sword Art Online’s world myself. :)
by Bri
I’m not a tamer so I see this just in VR terms. I’m very excited in reference to it’s educational potential. Through a device like this you could really experience history. The History channel is very popular. With this you could actually visit any time period and roam around in it. You could walk up to Micheal Angelo and ask him questions. It could give you virtual vacations to exotic locals that you might not want to actually go to. Say for instance Mt Everest, or the edge of an erupting volcano. In terms of military training or engineering it would greatly increase the speed of learning and the depth of comprehension. We recently saw a whole room covered in displays that is being heralded as instrumental to the comprehension of many different difficult to comprehend problems such as protein folding. Yes this might be being pioneered by the gaming industry, but it won’t take long till it’s adopted by many different areas of commerce. Even Internet shopping would be greatly benefited by a more realistic exploration of the product in 3D space. This will be a major game changer.
by Mr.X
“Through a device like this you could really experience history. The History channel is very popular. ”
You mean the one with all this **** about UFO’s!?
“This will be a major game changer.”
Yeah, the kind of games we will be able to play… jk.
by Bri
Nah! I don’t watch UFO shows on the history channel per se, I go to UFOTV.com for that. You do bring up a good point. I could have a VR close encounter of the third kind! It works for believers and unbelievers. In your encounter you can blast them with ray guns. I’d rather chat with the captain and maybe tool around the universe for a bit. To each his taste!
by Mr.X
@Bri:
“In your encounter you can blast them with ray guns. I’d rather chat with the captain and maybe tool around the universe for a bit. To each his taste!”
This blasting and killing everyone is not my thing.Throughout the world it is associated (as is violence in general) with people from a different culture than mine, with a big movie/tv industry in which almost every alien encounter will be unrealistically reduced to violence and/or sexuality (maybe this is connected to their “repression” of sexuality, derived from old, tribal values, proclaiming sexuality to be sinfull).
You know, the kind of movies in which patriots/cowboys of a certain country singlehandedly rescue the world after all fellow, and of course inferior,human nations have been beaten by the animalistic invader.
To each his taste!
Ps: Doesn’t change the fact that history channel docus are of a low quality.I once had a chat with some british fellow who described them fittingly as being “docu-trash”^^
by brandon
Bri, for not being a gamer, you just described something dangerously close to a game ;p. Kind of brings up a point anyways. Games are an evolving media, and stuff like this have the potential to change what a game can be a lot of ways. So I’d urge you to not dismiss games as just kid’s toys or something that’s not for you, because you might just be passing up a compelling experience.
by Ian
Hope this goes as well as it sounds…
by Puzzled
Where are the big companies with their billions of dollars *per year* budgets?
What about the defense research industries?
What about the top universities?
What about all the bored billionaires?
What are they all doing with their money, and expertise all these years, and couldn’t come up with this?
Sure, this is in part just integration of many technologies Oculus didn’t invent, but shouldn’t that make it even easier for those with unlimited resources to develop?
by brandon
It’s not that they *couldn’t* do it, it’s that they didn’t see VR as a useful or profitable market. This is primarily due to all the failed versions of the past, it’s hard to convince them they’ll make money. The creator of this product is a VR enthusiast who built the first prototype on his own. No research and development had to be done (other than his own hobby research) since all the “important” technology that makes this possible is being developed in tandem with smart phones.
He just happened to be intimately familiar with the subject matter and around at the right time to jump onto creating this, and then got lucky when John Carmack endorsed his project. Sometimes all it takes is one person’s idea (or wish), and this person happened to not work for a corporation. I don’t think even Palmer Luckey imagined how successful this would be, considering how fast the Kickstarter project took off.
by GatorALLin
….well said…..
by brandon
Yea! I’ve been so excited about this ever since hearing about it last summer. There are a lot of people who are hesitant to get excited about this because of all the failed attempts in past headsets, but this is nearly universally praised by those who try it, at least it seems. I really hope to get a chance to try it somewhere.
by izumi3682
Oculus Rift + “Second Life” = Good-bye rl… :)”"
by Heartland
:) Virtual Reality will indeed become the preferred reality for many people after this device comes out. I’ve heard several OR testers already reporting how disappointed they were to come back to “real” reality after taking OR off their faces. And that’s from pixelated SD video with primitive, unoptimized components. What will happen when they put 4K OLED panels per eye and photo-ralistic simulations on it and reduce latency to a single ms digit? Some even reported drug-like effects induced by the experience. I won’t be surprised if terms like “VR addiction” and “preferred reality” will be mentioned with increasing frequency, starting later this year.
by zotr
“second life” soon will be the same as pong-game from ’70 -)
also after release of this VR headset very soon should come additional devices like… just search google for “fufme” -)) and it was real! i personally saw it at the exhibition in late ’90 -)
by GatorALLin
More info here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game?ref=live
by matthew
Dear editor — a suggestion for you.
Please update this post with a link to the verge’s video interview with Palmer Lucky. Here is a link to the MTBS forum thread with many links of other websites which interview Palmer. Also, MTBS is the semi-official forum for oculus.
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=16076
by Heartland
Oculus Rift is the talk of CES 2013. This is going to be such a huge development this year, most people, even those who’ve heard about it, probably don’t realize how far-reaching this device will be, well beyond gaming and pure entertainment. This technology will quickly find applications in education, business, engineering and therapy, as well.
Beyond that, this particular audio-video VR by Oculus Rift will only whet global appetite for incorporating the other remaining senses into the simulation, which should hasten research into BCIs with in/out ports to our brains sans surgery. In the big picture, Oculus Rift, as compelling as it promises to become, serves as a fantastic catalyst for the real Matrix-like VR that’s coming up right after.
by Pommodore 94
cant wait till this hit the stores…..
by ChrisF
Can’t wait till my dev kit arrives in march :) There’s a lot of talk in the press about google glasses etc, but I think the Oculus is going to be the big hit of 2013. For the first time we’re going to be able to truly immerse themselves in virtual worlds, it’s going to be quite amazing I think….
by GatorALLin
….me too….
by John
The Verge editors seem very, VERY impressed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyUMUMtCqGY#t=34m5s