Oculus Rift

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Oculus Rift pre-orders will begin on Wednesday 6th Jan 8am Pacific Time 8-)
I've always fancied one of these :drool: any of you guys thinking of looking into one of these sometime soon?
Oculus Rift count down

Oculus still won't say how much the final unit will cost till then but it's likely to be around the $350 mark :o :shock: but it will include an official Xbox One wireless gamepad. 8-)
It is also rumoured that it will need quite a powerful PC to get the most out of the games. :party: [attachment=0]rift.JPG[/attachment]
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All you need next is a touch suit and interactive gloves. :loll:

I won't get one. Wearing a ski mask for long time while gaming can be annoying. But it can be an outcome for those with small living space.

As soon® as 2x4K screens can be fitted into one, it might become more interesting. With a tiny screen that close to your eyes, you need "retina" density of the pixels.
I see more use for professional applications. Like for designers, who can virtually walk through a digital environment.

In addition to that, it is probably not very good for your eyes to have a screen that close. Certainly not for longer periods of time.

I think the MS solution will become the better option. :whistle:

And Facebook is EvilCorp 2.0 :twisted:
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Not sure if I ever will buy into this technology. Never was interested in being a test subject an early adaptor. Prefer to let others work out the bugs. Have to see how this all shakes out first.
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They charge 699€ in pre-sale for it.
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MadManCK wrote:They charge 699€ in pre-sale for it.
Yes I clicked on the link earlier to check the price but have been in shock ever since so couldn't post it. :eeek: :loll:

Think I will pass for now. :scaredhide:
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The say they do not make any profit with a selling price of 699€ or 599$.

I tend not to believe that. ;)



Q: The price is what it is, I understand bleeding edge electronics is expensive.. My question is "why was the messaging about price so poor? $599 is not in the ballpark of $350 when your target audience is the mainstream".

A: I handled the messaging poorly. Earlier last year, we started officially messaging that the Rift+Recommended spec PC would cost roughly $1500. That was around the time we committed to the path of prioritizing quality over cost, trying to make the best VR headset possible with current technology. Many outlets picked the story up as “Rift will cost $1500!”, which was honestly a good thing - the vast majority of consumers (and even gamers!) don’t have a PC anywhere close to the rec. spec, and many people were confused enough to think the Rift was a standalone device. For that vast majority of people, $1500 is the all-in cost of owning Rift. The biggest portion of their cost is the PC, not the Rift itself.

For gamers that already have high end GPUs, the equation is obviously different. In a September interview, during the Oculus Connect developer conference, I made the infamous “roughly in that $350 ballpark, but it will cost more than that” quote. As an explanation, not an excuse: during that time, many outlets were repeating the “Rift is $1500!” line, and I was frustrated by how many people thought that was the price of the headset itself. My answer was ill-prepared, and mentally, I was contrasting $349 with $1500, not our internal estimate that hovered close to $599 - that is why I said it was in roughly the same ballpark. Later on, I tried to get across that the Rift would cost more than many expected, in the past two weeks particularly. There are a lot of reasons we did not do a better job of prepping people who already have high end GPUs, legal, financial, competitive, and otherwise, but to be perfectly honest, our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations. Another problem is that people looked at the much less advanced technology in DK2 for $350 and assumed the consumer Rift would cost a similar amount, an assumption that myself (and Oculus) did not do a good job of fixing. I apologize.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t make money on the Rift. The Xbox controller costs us almost nothing to bundle, and people can easily resell it for profit. A lot of people wish we would sell a bundle without “useless extras” like high-end audio, a carrying case, the bundled games, etc, but those just don’t significantly impact the cost. The core technology in the Rift is the main driver - two built-for-VR OLED displays with very high refresh rate and pixel density, a very precise tracking system, mechanical adjustment systems that must be lightweight, durable, and precise, and cutting-edge optics that are more complex to manufacture than many high end DSLR lenses. It is expensive, but for the $599 you spend, you get a lot more than spending $599 on pretty much any other consumer electronics devices - phones that cost $599 cost a fraction of that to make, same with mid-range TVs that cost $599. There are a lot of mainstream devices in that price-range, so as you have said, our failing was in communication, not just price.
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I have my doubts on how this will play out long term. Certainly there will be people who enjoy this tech but not sure if it will catch on with a wider audience. Read this article today about the pricing and about VR in general. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/oculus-rift-price/
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/colu ... b26f71d4b3
At CES this week, Oculus announced starting taking preorders on its highly anticipated $599 Oculus Rift VR system. Early demand has been strong, with preorders already pushed weeks past the March 28 date when the first units will be shipped. At the core of Rift is a headset with a microphone and speakers, but Rift also includes a sensor and Xbox One controller.
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After reading a few articles and listening to all the hype I guess I would still like one of these things but the price conversion from $ to £ is virtually none existent as usual :roll:
I guess they think we are more gullible in the UK :orcs-buttshake:

Maybe when the other big boys like Sony release later this year the price will drop to something more acceptable.
As for the question will it last, who knows I guess a lot will depend on how easy it is to use and the quality of the games that are compatible with it.

But at the moment it dose remind me a little of all the hype around 3D TV when it came out with everyone saying it would change the face of television for ever, that clearly hasn't happened. :|
( I recently paid over £1500 for a 4K TV and it doesn't even have 3D )
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A hands on short review from PC Magazine. There is a lot of potential outside of gaming for this technology too as noted in the article about using it for virtual sculpting. This other story is about using VR to save a baby with Google Cardboard, very interesting stuff.
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