Oculus Rift, the virtual reality gaming company started shipping early builds of final rift hardware and SDK kit to its developers to finalize their games and apps. The Rift is a virtual reality head-mounted display headset developed and initially proposed in a kick-starter campaign.
The Oculus Rift has a stereoscopic 3D headset that rests comfortably on your dome and connects to a rather capable Windows PC to access games, apps and other content and experiences. The Rift weighs only 380 gm and comes with an immersive headset that gives the user a full 360-degree view of the virtual world they inhabit.
Oculus in a blog post announced, “We’re shipping more Rift hardware out to developers every week in the run-up to launch. In the meantime, DK2 and SDK 0.8 continue to be the right platform for early Rift development — you only need SDK 1.0 if you’re imminently shipping.”
The consumer headset features two low-persistence OLED displays 2160 x 1200 (1080 x 1200 per eye), which are designed to eliminate motion blur. It has 90 Hz refresh rate and a wide field of view and integrated headphones, which provide a 3D audio effect.
The Rift has rotational and positional tracking, performed by a USB stationary IR sensor which normally sits on the user’s desk. You can also connect the gaming device to your personal computer (PC), that must be enabled the infrared tracking camera connected to it.
The Oculus team announced the consumer version of the Rift will be available in the Q1 of 2015. Though the company hasn’t announced the price of the device we guess the headset will roughly cost around $500. Once the device comes into the market in the first quarter of 2015 we’ll be able to know the actual price.
