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Next year, you’ll be able to experience Virtual Reality with the commercial version of the Oculus Rift.
They unveiled the consumer version of the Oculus Rift during a pre-Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) conference.
The Oculus Rift VR headset comes with a tracking sensor and an Xbox One Controller.
You read that right: an Xbox Controller. Since Sony came out with Project Morpheus, their VR gear, it’s only natural that they’d use their Sony PS controllers.
We don’t think it’s a good idea to use Nintendo Wii U’s controller because it just doesn’t make sense so they used the Xbox.
There is an Oculus Rift Controller and it looks radical. Check it out.
Launched three years ago, the Oculus Rift has gone through many improvements. According to the developers, the Rift now offers the sensation of presence. Like you’re actually inside the gaming world or whatever world you’re exploring. It’s all thanks to its advanced display technology and low latency constellation tracking system.
The Rift is currently earmarked for playing games such as EVE: Valkyrie from CCP Games and Chronos from Gunfire Games.
EVE: Valkyrie is a multiplayer dogfighting shooter game set in the Eve universe. We’ve played space fighter simulations on a PC and the first person experience is pretty heady.
Now imagine playing a space fighter sim with a VR headset.
It’ll give you the sense of being there, in the center of the action, in a real dogfight. You’ll be turning your head side to side and even try to turn around to see if there are enemy fighters on your tail. Couple it with a surround sound THX or Dolby Digital supported headset and it’s gaming nerdgasm.
Check out the video below:
Chronos is an atmospheric, third-person fantasy RPG game.
Chronos is an RPG game that you can play with Oculus Rift.
Judging from what we’ve seen, VR will play a role in exploring the labyrinth that your character is going through.
That means, you’ll need to move your head side to side to check for clues, objects and perhaps even incoming enemies.
We just wished we had more to reveal.
But as we said earlier, the Oculus Rift will be available next year and it’ll cost you a lot. While the company didn’t say the exact price, estimates put it at less than $1,500. That’s P67500 for a piece of gaming hardware.
And here are the PC specs you’ll need to run it:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- 8GB+ RAM
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture
But the VR headset isn’t just for games. Facebook bought Oculus and they plan to integrate it with social networking. Maybe social networking VR games, or perhaps a super immersive video chat. We don’t know and Facebook isn’t talking yet.
Maybe we’ll see a VR version of our favorite movies like Jurassic World where you can look from side to side and see if a raptor is going to eat you.
But we do know that VR is a great tool for education so we’ll likely to see VR-enabled educational tool in the future.
At least you won’t be using the Oculus Rift not just for games or watching.
To find out more, visit the Oculus web site or click here.
