Oculus Rift Will Be Affordable For Nearly Everyone

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So what will consumers be paying in theory? $300? $500? $1000?
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From everything they've said right along, it looks like they're going to try for sub-$300, possibly sub-$200. Like the article says, they're trying to make it affordable.
 


I don't think you understand how hard something like this is to perfect for every person that uses one. You have to get latency down to extremely fluid levels, not even input latency, just basic things like the refresh rate of the monitor has to be perfected. If you have even the smallest amount of ghosting or slightest bit of input lag, its not going to be a fun experience. Even things down to the sensors have to be ridiculously sensitive to get the minor movements that all humans do when standing idle. Otherwise your gonna get some weird nauseous feelings.

About the games: Skyrim, Minecraft, Mirrors edge, Portal, HL2, TF2, etc. Honestly I'd buy it if its was 300 bucks.
 

I understand that making it work is not an easy process. But they should test it way before the launch and get some paper from some medical organisation that it can be used. What they did was unrespectful to the customers. Whether i will or won't use this tech in the future they're the bad guys here and i won't defend them.

None of those games are hardware demanding, well maybe except Skyrim that went from Bugrim to Modrim, still non heavy moded version isn't demanding. What i try to say is that you can't play any game you want with it. And unless you tone down alot of settings(and who want to look at low res textures right in front of himself?) or buy few top rated cards you won't enjoy the tech even in the slightest. And in this case it doesn't matter how much Oculus cost $300 or $400, only the ones with 4930k + 2xTop cards will enjoy it(if sli/cros profiles will be out for the games ofcourse). So saying "we want to make Oculus cheap" means nothing really when system requirements are high.
 
I understand that making it work is not an easy process. But they should test it way before the launch and get some paper from some medical organisation that it can be used. What they did was unrespectful to the customers. Whether i will or won't use this tech in the future they're the bad guys here and i won't defend them.None of those games are hardware demanding, well maybe except Skyrim that went from Bugrim to Modrim, still non heavy moded version isn't demanding. What i try to say is that you can't play any game you want with it. And unless you tone down alot of settings(and who want to look at low res textures right in front of himself?) or buy few top rated cards you won't enjoy the tech even in the slightest. And in this case it doesn't matter how much Oculus cost $300 or $400, only the ones with 4930k + 2xTop cards will enjoy it(if sli/cros profiles will be out for the games ofcourse). So saying "we want to make Oculus cheap" means nothing really when system requirements are high.
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Umm.. they haven't released it yet. Only a dev -version and they've been very open and clear about it, but yes, it will quite demanding hw-wise, but nothing a $200 gpu of 2015 can''t handle.
 


The product is not released yet, so they are hardly using the general public as lab rats. The dev kit available to developers is a version that is ~1 year old now using much higher latency screens, and most of which don't have the best head tracking model. The Crystal Cove version that they were showing off last winter, and the new version they are showing off right now are MUCH improved, and they say that the version they are using internally is leaps and bounds better than either of those. By the time the product is released things like nausia and disorientation should not be any more of an issue than playing a game on a normal screen.

As far as hardware requirements are concerned, the final product should be a 1080p screen... you can do basic 3D games at 1080p using integrated Intel graphics these days, and if you have a $50-100 GPU you can often play such games a medium to high settings. OR is not going to have unreasonable hardware requirements by *TODAYS* standards, and when it is released a year or so from now it will be even less of an issue.

As far as games go... what are you expecting here? Have you ever tried playing older games designed for a CRT monitor on a high resolution widescreen flat panel monitor? It does not work well and often requires some amount of modifications or emulators to get them to work right (if you can get them to work right at all). That is a much simpler transition from moving to a single screen to a custom stereoscopic rendering method. It is going to take time for games to be designed to work with the new technology properly. Considering OR is not even available to consumers yet, it is an unreasonable expectation to think that all of the bugs would be worked out already for every '3D' game currently on the market.

Also, I bet there are tons of products on the market that you have no interest in. I will personally never drive a high-end lambo, but that does not mean that I want the high-end car market to dry up. I am a guy and do not shave my legs, but that does not mean that I think leg shaving companies should go out of business just because it is a product I personally don't use (though I do get some benefits from it even if *I* don't use it). I find things like haggis and blood pudding to be pretty gross, but I don't care if other people happen to like it. Fact of the matter is that if it is not for you, then don't buy it... but don't go thinking that the product should not exist either. I personally am horrified at how VR technology is going to absolutely ruin the social lives of people, but at the same time I am absolutely going to get one of these things on the 2nd generation if they cost under $400 because it will be an incarnation of something I have dreamed about throughout my entire childhood. But if it is not for you, then don't worry about it. Surely you have better things to do in life than be a nay-sayer about new technologies over trivial reasons that you clearly have no understanding about.
 


As others have said. Devkit.

And buddy, that "its not available on every game" thing is lame as hell. Freakin' controller support isn't even available on every game, I don't really think that argument is a valid reason to hate it. Kinda like physx, not used much, but when used, its cool.

But really what your saying is, "Games with good graphics (subjective) don't use the oculus, and when they do I STILL don't want to buy it because playing games with good graphics would require me to shell out more money to upgrade my PCs hardware"

Its like buying a 4k monitor right now with only a 760 or 260x and complaining 4k is lame and asus/samsung/etc are mean and this product is stupid.

Just know what you are getting into. I don't know about you but my 6870 still handles 1080p quite nicely. Its not bad enough for me to justify the 300 dollar price tag on a new gpu.
 
Affordable, maybe, but for most not desirable. This thing is a classic example of a highly hyped niche product. But hey, at least it'll be cheap so it won't fail outright.
 


the first electricians had a over 50% percent death rate, People working on the rail road died a ton, people working on sky scrapers died a ton. Could all of these technologies and developments been more carefully and safely done, I would say yes but. People don't do things in a healthy fashion always. During the gold rush an egg was worth its weight in gold because nobody brought any food and nobody knew how to cook in a mostly male population. Many miners literally starved to death because they didn't know how to cook. A lot of people are pretty self destructive, its not issolated to technology, people kill themselves and hurt themselves with pretty much everything. What will happen is the victims/careless will be held up as an example of what not do or else that will happen to you. Then everybody will behave real good after u rub there nose in their stupidity like some dumb dog. Basically don't be a early adopter in life because that's where a lot of the bad things happen. Until the status is something a bit less like buy 6 smartphones back to back each at 600 dollars a pop because of stuff like the headphone jack was on the bottom. I am gonna try not to be an early adopter until a time when people do do things in such a fashion to produce slightly less negative outcomes. My personal take now is people may deserve a warning and after that it isn't my problem and I don't care, live and let die.
 
The price they said they're aiming for is $299 for consumers. I've been a PC gaming enthusiast for about 20 years now and I have to say the oculus rift dev kit is one of the coolest devices I've ever owned.

I will be pre-ordering the consumer model for sure and I feel sorry for any gamer who doesn't do the same.
 

Obviously people are not going to be literally killing themselves with VR technology, so it is not nearly as bad as all of that.
I am very much a textbook nerd. Well, maybe not quite overweight enough to be textbook, but still; I am the kind of person who (if given the opportunity) would shut the door on the world and pretty much never care to look back. I simply don't require the same amount of social contact that most people seem to need (a trait that I imagine I share with many people on this site). My childhood was a constant war of me attempting to retreat into games, movies, books, or whatever I could to escape from the requirements of the real world, and my parents continually throwing me back into reality. Point being that I had to learn to find value in being sociable, and while it is still a bit of a struggle, I have gotten to a point now where I am (surprisingly) running a business that constantly works with some of the more difficult parts of the general public, and (for the most part) enjoying it.

But the thing is that most of us introverts have this as a learned skill. We learned to take off the headphones. We learned to turn off the TV, or remove ourselves from the computer, or put down the book. We learned to face someone and hold a conversation. It took years of monumental effort, but we learned to get past it. Meanwhile, the rest of normal society that trained us to be this way has finally discovered technology over the last 5-10 years, and they are not taking it so well. Friends and family who use to be able to hold conversations about anything and everything can now barely express themselves for more than a few sentances. While they have more 'friends' than ever, none of their relationships have any depth to them whatsoever. The same people who poked and prodded me into being a sable and relatively successful human being who can face the real world now cannot seem to spend more than 30 minutes without retreating to their cell phones to respond to a silly comment or update a game designed to waste time.

My fear (as rational as fears tend to be) is that normal people who have not had to fight the urge of escapism our who lives will end up turning into hermits. For introverts like myself this is not such a problem because we don't need as much social contact to stay happy and grounded... but from what I have seen of the smartphone revolution and the proliferation of 'social media', normal people are not nearly as happy when they have a lack of social contact, or fail to develop deep interpersonal relationships. People in general simply don't seem to be as happy, or motivated, or productive as they use to be before they had the ability to hide behind technology. Some blame it on the economy or other factors, but I think those are all symptomatic of widespread dissatisfaction of life due to a lack of relationships. I mean, without deep relationships then why bother putting your best efforts into something? It is fine to use any number of mediums to relate to each other, the issue is that with the growing number of mediums we simply aren't relating to each other as effectively. People in general need lessons on how to be social again, otherwise they are going to turn on the VR and wake up a few years later when the power is cut because they lost their job and can't pay the power bill anymore. Obviously I am being overly dramatic here, and it certainly won't be THAT bad... but we are certainly coming to a time where the introverts need to teach the extroverts how to be social again... and that is just all sorts of wrong.
 
I like the sound of this. I the dev kit is $300, I see the final product coming in at roughly $99-129, if it compares at all to dev kits for consoles, etc.Some console dev kits have been 3-4 times the final product price.
 
People are getting too emo in here. The Oculus rift is just a better gaming display than a monitor for (some) games.

You're not getting your mind shot into the matrix. It's just a nicer screen to play some games on. If you can unplug from your 27" monitor or your 50" tv when gaming, you'll be able to take off the oculus rift as well.

Calm down kids.

As for the price, again, you're going to be disappointed if you're waiting for a $129 model. They're aiming for a consumer model of $299 with a 1080p screen, which is extremely well priced considering it's half or a 3rd of the price of any decent gaming monitor.
 
The day when I can plug this thing into a gaming laptop to completely replace the screen is the day when I'll buy the Oculus. So it has a 1080p screen... can I use it to watch movies and browse the internet and manage UEFI and use it for windows and linux without having to install special drivers or emulators without turning on head tracking? NOPE. I would buy this product if it was a HMD first- that is, native support for all operating systems (like almost all regular monitors have)- with toggle-able, accurate head tracking being an added feature for games that support it and under $1300 (the price for a non-head mounted non-3D 30" gaming monitor today).
 


Totally. Once people started acting like it was the end of the world, I kinda backed away. It's not even released hardware yet, and anyone actually using that is well aware of what stage of the process they're in. As for what games work on it, of course they're using older games with established engines - those are going to be the ones that are least likely to give them any software issues when they're trying to work on the hardware side of things.

As for these leading to people ceasing to talk to each other anymore and further isolating us....I have no words.
 


You can plug it into a laptop.

Movie watching and web browsing has already been prototyped.

It has Linux support and is constantly improving.

Head tracking is toggleable.

Consumer model will be about $299.

I guess you'll be first in line to get one after all.



 
So did i get it right? Using devs as lab rats is ok because they're not human beings, right? They're releasing potentially dangerous tech without prior testing under THEIR closed doors not someone elses.

About tech it needs to run. I based my understanding from THEIR words, not mine. THEY said that consoles won't be able to run it because they're too weak. Both consoles have GPU that is between 7850 and 7870 as far as i remember + close to metal programming. I also have 7870 Ghz and this is pretty much the middle line from AMD. So its logical to assume that i won't be able to use it. And thus back on topic. It doesn't matter how much oculs costs if it needs something even more powerful to run it thus their words about how affordable oculus will be are meaningless.
 


Please, read this:
Luckey's biggest knock on the consoles is one that should be familiar to any PC gamer: the living room systems are stuck at a set power level for years. "The problem with consoles in general is that once they come out they're locked to a certain spec for a long, long time," Luckey said. "Look at the PCs that existed eight years ago. There have been so many huge advances since then. Now look at the VR hardware of today. I think the jump we're going to see in the next four or five years is going to be massive, and already VR is a very intensive thing, it requires rendering at high resolutions at over 60 frames a second in 3D."

On that last score, Luckey was also concerned with recent reports that launch games on the PS4 and Xbox One are already scaling back resolution in order to hit 60 FPS on a 2D display. "It's hard to imagine them running a VR experience that's on par with PC," he said. "And certainly five years from now the experiences and the technology for virtual reality that will be available on PC is going to be so far beyond anything that a console can provide."
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And the dev kit wasn't finished, it needed polish, it had issues. Everyone knew this.
 


Okay, at this point, you've got to be trolling. I mean, you just have to be. You know what "dev" is short for, right? Developer. As in, they work with technology that still needs developing, as in, "Not finished." And, as people are repeatedly telling you, the product is not released yet. The developers can buy developer kits so that they can assemble and work with new, unfinished technology that still needs testing and developing. There is not one single person who has bought the hardware that thinks, "Hey, this box of parts that I need to put together myself and tweak software for is totally ready for prime time." (Or, if there is, they have no one to blame but themselves, because everyone involved with the product has been very clear about what they're releasing.)

So, I guess in answer to your question, no....no, you did not get it right. You, in fact, got it very, very wrong.
 
Eh, keep the hardware and develop a neural interface where I see, hear, smell, touch and taste the gaming environment by jacking in. All senses are electrical anyway...Its just a matter of time before it's developed. Just not in my lifetime.
 
There's a difference between a game dev and oculus dev. If your job is to make radio for a car, do you need to think of whether the car engine might be wrong and may cause a crash? You're the same user as everyone else who will buy this car.

I am tired of this already. May i give you all an advice? Do not use this tech until a half year from release or so. Who knows maybe you'll thank me afterwards.
 


Thats not even a good comparison. The oculus devkit isn't reflective of the main consumer oriented product at all. Its the same idea, thats it. Pretty much everything else is up for change. Its a cheap buggy developer version that all it needs to do is make sure your code is actually working for the main consumer product.

This is like getting into the alpha of a game and consumers being mad that they are getting bugs and that the motion blur hurts there eyes.
 


Don't go using logic. Next thing you know, one of us will post, from their site, the thing you have to click before even being able to buy one of the things:

"I understand this hardware is intended for developers and it is not a consumer product."

 


I think you're ignoring the stance of the article, and the cost of the dev kit. If the dev kit is $300, why would a less capable retail model be the same price? I'll predict $199 max, right now and you can come back and tell me if I'm wrong (when it's actually released).

It's a peripheral, not a monitor replacement. It's far more limited in use than a monitor. Comparing it to semi-fancy peripherals like mechanic keyboards and gaming mice, being in the $100-200 range is pretty reasonable.

Being on par with a mid-level GPU is not. It's also not "affordable for nearly everyone", which includes people who think that spending more than $300 every 10 years on a gaming system is too much.
 
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