The consumer version of Oculus Rift was a long time coming, and as you’ll see later, a long time waiting as well. After the successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2012, the company has been developing a final hardware for end users ever since. Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook in early 2014, and it was another two years of waiting until the company finally announced that the consumer version was available for pre-order on January 6th 2016, for US$599 (~RM2,355.60). The Rift is said to ship to 20 countries on March 28th (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States) with other select US retailers carrying the VR system in April. But that was the announcement; shipping dates have since been pushed back a few weeks for some.
Oculus Touch
Before we talk more about the delayed shipment, let us go through and appreciate the Oculus Rift package that end users will (and will not) be getting for their orders. During E3 last year, the company showed off a pair of unique-looking wireless Oculus Touch controllers that has a ‘Half Moon’ ring around each controller, that not only helps to track pitch and yaw, but also roll. Unfortunately, “perfecting” the Touch has been taking more time than expected, and the company will only be shipping it in the second half of 2016.
The Rift package
Because of that, during the January 6th pre-order, the package comes with four items but the Touch: the Rift headset itself with built-in on-ear headphones and microphone, the motion sensor, a newly-announced Oculus Remote, and an Xbox One gamepad.
The consumer Oculus Rift headset is the sleekest yet; not only does it have clean lines, it also comes with a built-in microphone and on-ear headphones, for better or worse. With the headphones, you don’t have to worry about carrying a separate pair, but problem comes if you have an audiophile-grade headphones you’d like to use instead, and the built-in ones are just getting in the way. Here are some of the specifications of the consumer Rift:
- Display: OLED, 2160 x 1200 resolution, 110º field of view
- Sensors: 360º positional tracker, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, 5’ x 11’ tracking area
- Connections: HDMI, USB 3.0, USB 2.0
- Audio: Built-in headphones and microphone
- Interface: Oculus Home
- Controllers: Oculus Touch, compatible with Xbox One gamepad
Since February, you could already pre-order bundles of the Rift with an Oculus-ready PC, with a starting price of US$1,499 (~RM5,867.76). These PCs are tested and certified by Oculus to work with the Rift. Below are some of the recommended PC specifications, and you could also run the compatibility tool to check if your existing system is supported.
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970- / AMD R9 290-equivalent or greater
- Processor: Intel i5-4590-equivalent or greater
- Memory: 8GB RAM or higher
- Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
- Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports and 1x USB 2.0 port
- Operating system: 64-bit Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or newer
Oculus Rift Development Kit’s motion sensor used to look like a webcam hanging on top of the computer monitor, but now it comes with a nice stand that immediately makes it more versatile.
Oculus Remote looks a bit like one half of a Steam Controller, since it has a circular touchpad for navigation. In reality though, the navigation disk and select button work more like the traditional iPod’s click wheel. The volume up/down, back, and Oculus buttons are also raised so that you could easily feel and select the correct buttons without having to look at it. Oculus says that the remote is the “easiest way” to introduce non-gamers to explore 360-degree videos or to explore VR games and other entertainment.
As for the gamepad, well, it is your good ol’ Xbox One gamepad. Because the Oculus Touch is delayed, this third-party controller will do for now. But this is a good indicator; since Oculus Rift works with an Xbox One gamepad, in theory, it should work with other third-party ones like from Logitech, for instance.
The package also comes with ‘Lucky’s Tale’ by Playful, a VR platformer game. In addition, pre-order folks also get access to ‘EVE: Valkyrie’ through Founder’s Pack, which includes exclusive in-game content, as well as a “founder” status in the game. Other games in the pipeline to be launched later in 2016 include ‘The Climb’ by Crytek, ‘Edge of Nowhere’ by Insomniac, ‘Minecraft’ by Microsoft and ‘Rockband VR’ by Harmonix.
VR games for the Rift
Once you get your hands on the Rift, you’ll be able to enjoy 30 VR games that were launched together with the VR system on March 28th. Of course, these games should work with the Xbox One controller, but Oculus said that with its Touch gamepads, more in-game interaction will be unlocked.
The new consumer version of Rift also comes with the Oculus Home interface that gives it an easy-to-navigate interface in the VR experience, so that users don’t have to remove the headset to switch games. Naturally, Oculus Home also comes with the Oculus Store for users to explore and acquire more VR content.
Delayed shipments
While some do get their Rifts on March 28th itself, many others who pre-ordered on the first day — January 6th 2016 — found their unit shipment dates pushed back by up to two months in some cases. One such example is voiced by man-about-the-internet Jeff Cannata, complaining that while his order was processed 12 minutes after the pre-order began, his new estimated ship date is now pushed to May 16th the soonest; that’s almost two months after the promised March 28th date.
Order processed 12 mins after Oculus went on sale. My new estimated ship date: 5/16-5/26, 2 months after “release” That’s a botched launch.
— Jeff Cannata (@jeffcannata) April 12, 2016
Even the initial Kickstarter Backers from 2012, that will each receive the consumer version of the Rift, had their ship dates changed to “TBD” instead of a fixed date previously. Some who weren’t so early and pre-order today, might find their ship dates pushed back to August or September. Oculus explained that they had an unexpected component shortage that had “impacted” their ability to produce more quantities of the Rift. The company promises however, that it has taken steps to address the component shortage, and has increased manufacturing capacity to allow it to manufacture and ship in higher quantities each week.
As a way to apologize for the delay, Oculus is waiving the shipping costs for every pre-order customers.
As an indication, since the Oculus Rift package is delayed, there is a chance that the shipping date of the already-delayed Touch controllers will be pushed back further. Speaking of delayed gratification, if you pre-ordered the Oculus Rift, you’re also securing a pre-order spot for the Oculus Touch as well.
Wrap-up
There are many other VR players today, but it is arguable that Oculus single-handedly made virtual reality (VR) cool again, something that the Nintendo Virtual Boy failed to accomplish two decades ago.
It took Oculus four years to finally ship a consumer version of the headset, and one of the reasons is to get partner developers to create enough VR content for the Rift. Previously, there were only short demo VR experiences for the Development Kits and unless you’re a developer, it gets boring really fast due to the shortage of content.
HTC also suffered similar delays, when it promised to ship by the end of 2015 but could only officially accept pre-orders for the consumer units of the Vive on April 5th 2016. While HTC Vive is technically more superior than the Rift, it costs way higher at US$799 (~RM3,127.65), not forgetting that both Vive and Rift require a powerful PC to run them. HTC Vive does have the backing of Valve, the folks behind the popular online game store Steam, and other AAA titles like Half-Life 2, to name just one.
Oculus’ delay in shipments does hurt the company as the competition like Sony is inching closer to release its own PlayStation VR as early as October 2016. Sony’s version is way more affordable US$399 (~RM1,561.99) for the PS VR headset and US$499 (~RM1,953.66) if bundled with PS Camera, but due to PlayStation 4’s (PS4) limitation, the VR experience will lack the fidelity seen on the Rift and Vive. However, Sony PlayStation VR’s strength lies in its massive PS4 user base of 36 million units as of March 2016.
Oculus Rift’s price, at US$599 (~RM2,355.60) sits right in the middle of both competing VR systems, and the company would hope that that alone is enough for it to have an edge over the HTC Vive, since both have similar PC requirements. Because it has such a huge headstart over the rest, there could be more VR games created for the Rift, not to mention a larger mindshare too. And then there is Oculus’ partnership with Samsung. While everyone is still figuring out where to go with this VR technology, Oculus has been gathering valuable experience from the Samsung Gear VR, at least in hardware design, to be incorporated to the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. Samsung Gear VR is also something that you can already buy today in Malaysia, but of course, you’ll also need a high-end Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
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