Oculus Rift VR June 2015 Live Blog Coverage
Join us at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 11th for coverage of Oculus VR's live event from San Francisco, California.
Oculus Rift--which Facebook bought last year for $2 billion--is perhaps the most hotly anticipated consumer virtual reality system around. But until now, we haven't known precisely what it would cost, or when consumers will be able to buy it. Now, Oculus is expected to reveal those details, plus more, from a live event in San Francisco.
Join us here Thursday, June 11th at 1 p.m. ET for live coverage and analysis, and you can watch Oculus Rift's live stream of the event here.
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And we're heading in. Those of us that are registered, at least. The Oculus "shuttle" was kind of a myth.
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Hi, everyone...Fast Company's Harry McCracken and I are here at the Oculus live event at San Francisco's Dogpatch Studios. This is a pretty cool venue where the Xbox team has hosted a lot of press events over the years.
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In case you missed it! Oculus has a brand new logo, check it out.
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This is a much smaller venue than the hall Apple used for its WWDC keynote on Monday. Probably room for 300 or so, rather than multiple thousands.
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Here's what we can expect today, I think: Oculus Rift availability, pricing, specs, final form factor, and probably some new partnerships.
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They've got a sign on the wall outside saying Q1 2016 availability. And we know from what Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said at the Code Conference last month, that it would cost about $1,500 for a Rift and a suitable PC to support it.
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I hope we'll get some hands-on demos. But one of the challenges with Oculus (and VR in general) is that the demos are amazing, but you can't quickly do them for hundreds of people.
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For non-hardcore gamers, Oculus is one of the first compelling reasons to buy a powerful desktop PC in many, many years.
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Agreed, @harrymccracken. The lines for Oculus demos, when they give them at various events, are always very long, and very slow.
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@harrymccracken, is that Bill Simmons in that picture?
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Here we go. Oculus CEO Brenan Iribe is on stage now.
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Three years ago, Oculus had its Kickstarter, to revolutionize gaming and transform entertainment, he says.
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Since the inception of video games, over 40 years, we've been on a journey of progress, he says. Pixels lighting up, sprites moving across screens, and rich 3D worlds.
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But there's been something missing, Iribe says. We've always been trapped by the limits of 2D.
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Nice to hear Iribe name-check Atari as well as Apple as helping to have created modern consumer tech.
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He makes the point that a picture of a giant 2-D T-Rex on the screen doesn't scare you. "Now imagine that that T-Rex came crashing into this theater....swooping down and making eye contact with you. I bet you'd feel a lot different."
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"That's the magic of virtual reality. That visceral feeling you get in real life."
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VR enables us to experience anything, anywhere...it's that powerful, Iribe says.
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Be skeptical when someone says, as Iribe just did: "This is going to change everything."
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I dunno, my wife and I jump and freak out watching even a mildly scary thriller on TV. Not sure we can handle VR.
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Even though Oculus isn't done yet, it comes way closer to living up to ridiculous hype than most of the things which are hyped ridiculously at events such as this.
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They're showing a video now of the final consumer form factor of the Oculus Rift. It looks much more polished, as you'd imagine it would, than the Dev Kit models we've all been trying out.
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Looks like a beautiful piece of hardware.
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Here it is, he says. "This is the Oculus Rift. It's light, you can hold it in one hand."
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It will deliver the magic of presence, that you're really there. Your brain will believe you're there, he promises.
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This live stream is so much better than the Apple one of a few days ago. The latency is seconds, not minutes.
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It's a fundamental shift. It's a paradigm change. #BuzzwordBingo
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The dinosaur which Iribe is referencing is part of the "Crescent Bay" demos, and it really is astonishing.
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Talking about the headset: it's able to achieve comfortable presence, with two OLED screens....no jutter, no pixels. "It feels like you can just put on a pair of glasses,'" Iribe says.
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He says visual clarity is extremely important, and Oculus delivers.
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It has low latency, refined over several years. "It's amazing. You put it on, and you're instantly on."
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Iribe just acknowledged that you might want higher resolution than Oculus will deliver at first. Unusual for anyone to mention a technical limitation in a presentation like this.
