Items tagged with Oculus-Rift
Owners of the Oculus Rift VR headsets who tried to play a game yesterday found that the headsets weren't working. The reason for the non-functioning devices was unknown at the time. The error that users were seeing on their headsets stated, "Can't Reach Oculus Runtime Service." Oculus admitted there was an issue not long after complaints started rolling in and stated that it was working on a fix. It turns out that the problem was that Oculus forgot to renew its security certificate. That expired security certificate caused the Rift app to crash and prevented access to the VR software. The fix involved the issue of a new security certificate from the Oculus Rift website that wasn't expired. Oculus...
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Black Friday is tomorrow, the day when people around the country scurry around to buy stuff at a discount. If you want to get someone on your Christmas list or even yourself into VR gaming as cheaply as possible, the Oculus Rift just got a new price cut that might be appealing. Back in July the Oculus Rift with touch controller got a price cut to $399 for a limited time, making it much more affordable but this Black Friday sale cuts another $50 off that price. The deal can be had directly via the Oculus store from now until November 27 and you will get the Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch controllers and two sensors for the price. There is a "while supplies last" caveat, but third-party retailers...
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Who is selling the most VR headsets? Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney claims that the HTC Vive is outselling the Oculus Rift by a two-to-one margin. Sweeney offered this speculation in an interview with Glixel’s Chris Suellentrop regarding the future of VR. Oculus and HTC have not confirmed these numbers, and Sweeney did not provide a source for his information. Some have estimated that half a million VR headsets have been sold to date. Why would the HTC Vive, however, be outperforming the Oculus Rift? According to Sweeney, Oculus’ “walled garden approach” to software is deterring potential consumers. He stated, “When you install the Oculus drivers, by default you can only use the Oculus store....
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Virtual reality and augmented reality have invoked some mixed reactions from the tech industry. Some, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, believe that the AR will “happen in a big way”. Oculus’ Chief Technology Officer John Carmack, however, argues that VR is merely “coasting on novelty”. Oculus’ CTO spoke last week at the closing of Oculus Connect. He insisted that VR developers, "need to be harder on ourselves." He also argued that VR software currently does not offer the same value and quality as non-VR experiences. John Carmack Carmack remarked, “We are coasting on novelty, and the initial wonder of being something people have never seen before. But we need to start judging ourselves. Not on a curve,...
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If you’ve been waiting patiently for your Rift VR headset preorder to arrive or have been hesitant to place an order due to the production delays, Oculus has some good news for you. The company announced today that all preorders for the Rift have finally been fulfilled and that all new orders will ship within 2 to 4 business days. That last point puts the Oculus Rift on equal footing with the competing HTC Vive, which began boasting a shipping window of 2 to 3 days back in early June. “We want to apologize for the delays in getting Rifts to doorsteps,” wrote the Oculus team in a blog posting. “We appreciate that without your support, VR wouldn’t be where it is today. Thank you for your patience...
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The Oculus Rift hype train is just getting rolling but is already checking its brakes. We reported yesterday about privacy concerns that have been raised by early recipients. Now, it looks like some preorder customers have a little longer than anticipated wait time before delivery. The Rift has already seen a few delays since its original Kickstarter campaign back in 2012. However, as the first preorders are shipping, production hangups are evidently still persisting. Oculus has been reportedly sending out emails notifying customers of an unexpected component shortage which has impacted shipping dates for some customers. John Cena shirt not included - Credit: Wikimedia The email includes...
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Whether you’re disgusted by the prospect of Facebook owning an exciting grassroots-type product like the Oculus Rift or believe, like John Carmack and Michael Abrash, that combining Facebook’ big moneybags with Oculus’ know-how will make possible all the promise of VR technology, Facebook’s blockbuster deal to acquire Oculus VR is now complete. Several months in the making, the $2 billion deal which included $400 million in cash has cleared all regulatory and practical hurdles. In a joint statement, Facebook and Oculus said, “We’re looking forward to an exciting future together, building the next computing platform and reimagining the way people communicate.”...
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Months after first announcing the availability of the $350 Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, the new device is now shipping. More to the point, some 10,000 DK2s are shipping from the factory this July, and a Team Oculus post on Oculus’ developer forums stated that more than half of the units will be through distribution centers by the end of the month. Oculus Rift DK2 The earliest devs can expect their DK2s is July 14th. Oculus says it received about 45,000 preorders, but it’s already behind on manufacturing; even though some people were told their shipments were landing in July, most won’t come until August. “We have a team in China working on continued ramp of production at our...
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To the surprise of few, Samsung is reportedly working on a VR headset that would compete with the Oculus Rift (now a Facebook joint) and Sony’s Project Morpheus. (And, for that matter, dark horses like GameFace Labs.) According to Engadget, this isn’t just a vaporware project; Samsung already has early units in developers’ hands, and a project launch is expected by the end of the year. The device will act as a peripheral paired with Samsung’s high-end smartphones and tablets. Oculus Rift There’s not much information about the guts of the VR headset, but it should have an OLED screen and run Android games, and it does not use the Tizen OS. Samsung is reportedly looking...
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When Facebook bought Oculus VR, there was an uproar from the community, with serious concerns that the heartless, data-hoarding behemoth run by Mark Zuckerberg would ruin the amazing potential of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Facebook countered by hinting that it had huge plans for the Oculus platform far beyond mere gaming. It’s humorous, then, that one of the first new uses for the virtual reality headset announced since the merger is as a gimmick in a Chuck E. Cheese game. It will be used in that ticket-grabbing booth thing, called the Virtual Ticket Blaster. Lucky kiddos will don the Rift headset, and a cloud of tickets will blow up around them. In this version of the game,...
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Armed with Facebook’s deep pockets and strong backstop, Oculus VR is much better able to poach talent from big companies than when it was just an exciting startup (John Carmack notwithstanding). The big get for this week is Adrian Wong, who left his post as a lead electrical engineer at Google[x], where he worked on Google Glass, to join the Oculus team. Credit: Brandon Chan via TechCrunch As reported by TechCrunch, Wong announced on Facebook (oh, I get it now) that May 2nd was his last day at Google, and now his LinkedIn profile confirms that he’s moved over to Oculus. Wong worked on the systems, camera, and RF for Glass, and on the Explorer Edition of the specs he was in charge...
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You surely know about Parrot and its drone quadricopters, but the company is releasing a new version called the Bebop that comes loaded with impressive features, including the ability to experience POV flight via the drone’s HD camera and an Oculus Rift headset. (Incidentally, we sort of did the same thing with a Nokia Lumia 1020 and a different Parrot drone. Fun stuff.) The Bebop comes equipped with a 14MP Full HD fisheye lens camera with 3-axis image stabilization and horizontal curve correction, and if you connect an Oculus Rift headset to the optional Skycontroller that controls the Bebop, you can see what the drone’s camera sees. You can even pan the camera by moving your head....
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John Carmack’s former employer, Zenimax, went after the industry veteran last week claiming that important code that he used in helping to build the Oculus Rift VR headset is actually IP owned by Zenimax. The company also stated that it provided VR technology to Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey and others over the past couple of years in support of the Oculus Rift’s development. Carmack fired back on Twitter and Oculus VR denied the claims at the outset, but the company now has an official response. We present it in bulleted form because that’s how Oculus VR sent it to us. -There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products. -John Carmack did...
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If you were one of the early believers in the Virtuix Omni virtual reality treadmill, your faith will finally be rewarded when the company ships a unit to your front door starting in July. The earliest adopters who secured their treadmills back during the halcyon Kickstarter days will be the first in line, but even if you preorder now, you’ll get yours as early as September. Virtuix has missed its initial planned ship date of March 2014, but considering what the company is trying to do with this VR treadmill, that’s not such a bad miss. The device promises to let you run, jump, squat, and otherwise move through virtual worlds, and it’s designed to be paired with the Oculus Rift...
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This isn’t about cool virtual reality games anymore. When the news first broke of Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR, the knee-jerk reaction from many fans of the Oculus Rift was to feel betrayed that this grassroots tech company, funded in part by its individual supporters, was going to be part of a huge, lumbering entity that mines data and sells it. People were worried that the Oculus Rift would no longer be “cool”, like if your favorite band signed up to exclusively write commercial jingles. But with some time to process things more, it’s clear that although the above is still true to an extent, this is about ideology in the age of data more than...
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The announcement that Facebook bought Oculus VR felt like a suckerpunch to the gut for many ardent fans of the Oculus Rift and all the amazing work that the Oculus team has been doing, and even more people have bemoaned the acquisition as a death knell for the once-promising VR project. However, you can count Valve veteran Michael Abrash among those who believe that this move is actually very much a good thing. Abrash has left Valve and gone to work for Oculus VR as its Chief Scientist--this, just days after the acquisition was announced. In a lengthy and fascinating blog post, Abrash discussed his reason for leaving Valve and joining Oculus VR by way of his personal history with VR and those...
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Facebook is snapping up Oculus VR, maker of the hotly-anticipated Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset. For those immediately worried that Facebook will ruin Oculus Rift, fear not: Mark Zuckerberg assured the world in a post that not only will Facebook be accelerating the Oculus Rift gaming platform, it will be leveraging Oculus VR’s technology into other spaces, as well. Zuckerberg calls Oculus VR a communication platform, and he sees the technology expanding in powerful new ways. “After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or...
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There’s a new member in the small-but-growing virtual reality headset club, and it’s from a major player, as Sony announced that’s developing Project Morpheus, a VR headset that will rival the likes of the Oculus Rift. “I have long dreamed about VR and the possibilities it brings in regards to game development”, wrote Sony Computer Entertainment president Shu Yoshida in a blog post. “This new technology will deliver a sense of presence, where you as the player actually feel like you’re inside the game and your emotions feel that much more real.” Project Morpheus is designed to work with the PS4’s DUALSHOCK 4 Wireless Controller, and the PlayStation...
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Although it’s as gimmicky as they come, the Jerry’s Place VR project is simply terrific: Seinfeld superfan Greg Miller, who also happens to be learning to develop for the Oculus Rift, decided to virtually recreate Jerry’s iconic apartment from the popular 90s show. “Television is virtual reality in some ways. We make believe that Jerry's place is actually a Manhattan studio and Monks Cafe is just down the street. We suspend the reality that his apartment is just a set in Hollywood, with tons of cameras and lighting dangling overhead,” he wrote. “I thought it would be a novel virtual reality experience to take a place that only exists in Hollywood magic, and...
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Sometimes a company has an idea that hits everyone right in the zeitgeist. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter are terrific indicators of what people will be interested in buying, because they speak volumes with their support. We’ve seen it in the recent past with projects like Pebble, OUYA, and the Oculus Rift, and smartphone camera lens maker Moment is enjoying some of that same grassroots success. Moment was looking to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter, but it blew way past that amount right away, netting $100,000 in just 28 hours. Currently, with 25 days to go in the campaign, Moment has raised over $208,000, and it’s a virtual certainty that the number will be higher than that by...
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It’s a matter of days now until Valve’s “Steam Dev Days” developer conference, and a juicy bit of information that the company announced could portend an exciting dev conference, indeed: Steam now supports an experimental VR mode for the Oculus Rift in its Steam Client Beta. “If you own an Oculus Rift dev kit you can try it out by starting Steam with ‘-vr’ on the command line. Then press the Big Picture button to enter Big Picture + VR mode,” reads a Steam Community post. The full set of instructions are: The first time you run you may need to do the following: 1) Run Steam in the desktop client without the -vr option 2) Find "SteamVR" under "Tools"...
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We’ve been following the development of the Oculus Rift for some time, and for as exciting as the device has been in theory, glowing reports from CES about the new Oculus Rift “Crystal Cove” prototype and its improvement on the last prototypes makes the headset downright tantalizing. There are still big questions left answered, notably how much the Oculus Rift will cost at retail and when we can all go buy one, but Forbes reporter Jason Evangelho did some sleuthing and has an idea: $499, coming this summer. The Oculus Rift will be sold (at least in some instances) with the equally amazing Virtuix Omni gaming treadmill and software from the Virtual World Web (the package will...
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