Finished Oculus Rift Comes To Consumers In 2016

The Facebook acquired Consumer Rift shall come to the consumers in 2016 for better VR experience.

The wait is finally over. The latest Facebook news is that the Oculus Rift’s release date has been unveiled. The Facebook owned company announced that the finished version of the Rift which is a virtual reality headset will be coming to the consumers in the first quarter of the year 2016. However, the preorders will be open for all in later this year.

There have been several iterations that Oculus Rift has come across since the time it had been launched on Kickstarter in 2012 summer. The product has experienced two development kits and also more than one prototype among which the most recent one was Crescent Bay design. This design had appeared last year. The prototype uses two displays which are small in size, a camera with external tracking functionality and also very carefully designed software which helps creating the illusion of 3D space. Specifically after it had been acquired by Facebook in 2014, Oculus had begun de-emphasizing on the hard technical details but the blog post by the company expressed that few specifics for the Rift being launched for consumers are going to be unveiled next week.

There are some other intriguing promises that Oculus made. The post said, "In the weeks ahead, we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift.” It has been said by the company that consumer Rift will be similar to that of Crescent Bay. There have been few games that have been announced for the Consumer Rift, it include CCP’s EVE Valkyrie. The unannounced titles could come as big news.

Facebook news reports that mentioning the input could possibly be even bigger news. Last year, the company bought Nimble VR, a hand tracking company. There had been the speculation that it will announce some custom controller. The input could refer to the third party controller’s work with Rift. One thing that has not been mentioned is the price. The second generation of the Rift had been on sale for $350 last year but for the consumer Rift, company hopes to stay in between $200 to $400. The Oculus wants to see the Rift in the real world stores and expects the VR to be the next big thing in the Virtual Reality phenomenon. The company has single handedly revived the interest in the consumer VR and is unarguably more willing as compared to the competitors such as HTC and Sony. While there had been many Oculus Rift developments over the past years, the consumer release is the big test for the company.

Is Facebook's Oculus Rift VR expected to be delayed?

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says VR headsets to be next computing platform after mobiles

According to recent reports released providing latest Facebook updates, it was notified that the acquiring social media giant doesn't seem to be shipping Oculus Rift this year any soon. On providing updates in that matter, the chief financial officer David Wehner said, "Oculus is very much in the development stage, so it's very early to be talking about large shipment volumes." 

Howeever, previously founder of Oculus and inventor of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, Mr. Palmer Luckey has previously reportedly said that something would have to go "horribly wrong" to prevent the device from an official launch in 2015.

Following suit, Google Inc. is working to build a virtual reality version of Android headsets, as companies such as HTC and Facebook, which have come up with their VR headsets, Google also has its team of engineers working on its own Android version of VR headsets, which will power the applications that will power VR apps.

Google has indulged itself into a few experiments, such as the driver-less car on which the company is working: therefore, this news is no surprise as the company wants to ensure that its mobile operating systems are lucrative.

VR headsets have been the latest trend nowadays, with companies making heavy investment in them. Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire Oculus Rift. Every big company is busy in making their own VR headsets. A recent example  is Sony Corp.'s (NYSE:SNE) Morpheus, which was launched at the Game Developers  Conference recently.

There hasn’t been a news on an operating system for these wearable gadgets, and this is the gap that Google has identified.

In its last years' developers conference, the company showed several applications that were exclusively made for VR headsets. Moreover, a short film, which was drawn by former Disney animator Glen Keane, was also there along with the apps. Google's technology and project teams converted the drawings into a 360 degree film, which could be viewed on the phones.

Although Google will not be getting any results in the short to medium term as the VR headsets haven’t been shipped, but in next two to three years, it will surely get good gains from it. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has regarded VR headsets to be the next mobile platform after mobiles.

Android is already a very popular platform that accounts for around 80% of the market. If Google is able to make it an operating system for VR headsets, the popularity of this platform will further rise.