as an "old-school" geek and general tech-head, virtual reality is one of those technologies that i have always had an interest in. at some point in the previous century, i had a stint in a game-store that rented, that's right *rented*, computer games for members to play overnight or by the week. this was well before the days of DRM or online verification/persistent connection and it was here that i got to sample some fairly cutting edge stuff. one of those gaming titles was packaged with a 3D HMD (and no, it was not the virtual boy). it took hours to get everything patched and working, consisted mostly of vector or texture-mapped graphics and made you feel sick if you used it for too long. yet there was something about strapping on a pair of "goggles" and becoming immersed in a game that took full advantage of the 6DOF as a game play element and vr experience (even if it was still controlled manually)
most of these HMD's cost anywhere from around a thousand dollars to well over $30k for even the most basic of models and they all have less-than-stellar FOVs, are bulky and are in no way really VR experiences. when Sony announced its HMZ-T1 - it was the first time i had seen real promise from a company offering a HMD that was not only under a thousand dollars, it also had high definition thrown in along with built in audio and adjustable focus. to be fair, Sony does sell these as an "immersive cinematic experience" and while it does make reference to playing games, in no way does it try to sell it as a virtual reality experience. unfortunately, the next-gen HMZ-T2's aren't a whole lot better based on early reviews, improving mostly on comfort factors such as weight, adjustability and so forth while retaining the first-gen's 45 degree FOV.
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| sony's HMZ-T1 oculus rift (dev kit) |
then, almost by chance, i came across palmer luckey's kick starter campaign for the oculus rift. here was a geek after my own heart... a tech-head who, unsatisfied with what was commercially available, decided to hack/build his own. i would never claim to be an expert in this field, yet the staggering 40+ HMD's palmer has eluded to owning (along with at least one omni-directional platform) seemed a little OCD to me. yet another geeks obsession in a niche field is quite often other people's gain, and from what i have seen of it - this rings true in every sense of the word. what makes this particular kickstarter campaign unique is the fact it was done not so much to raise money to develop the unit, but to get the dev kit into the hands of developers early so that when the commercial product is finalised and released (rumoured to be <$500 at launch) it will have an extensive library of games and community support for drivers and such. kudos to you mr. luckey, this geek thanks you.
while initially hesitant to commit to a developers kit, what ended up selling me was the already functional early prototypes which seemed to be nothing more than bits of tech, cardboard and duct tape - add the backing of john carmack (iD software), epic games, unity and many more industry heavyweights, throw in a low-latency 90 degree FOV and i was pledging along with indie studios and game companies wanting to start developing. whilst the commercial version of this amazing piece of tech is probably a year or more away from release, judging by the overwhelming response on kick starter (of the $250k goal - over $2.4million was pledged), this is the first time in a long time that i feel that VR has a real shot of success.... lets just hope i don't jinx it by saying so ;)
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