To this journalist, the advent of both the Oculus Rift headset and Sony’s Morpheus Project are two of the most innovative new pieces of technology currently coming down the pike. But does everyone out there agree with me?
Probably not, unfortunately. I’m awaiting with bated breath the day a consumer grade version of the Rift headset is made available (so I can snatch it up on day-one). However, its creator Palmer Luckey feels it may take several years before it catches fire in the mainstream. “…it might be five years from now. Maybe VR doesn’t really take off for consumers for some time. But the good news at having such a big backer behind us is that we can now afford to play that long game. Rather than having to make money now or we stop existing and someone else takes over, we can think about the best thing to do for the long-term of virtual reality.” He said in a recent interview.
He also touches on the idea of unplugging us from our PC all-together, as using a controller tends to hamper the immersion of the experience (which is obviously the opposite effect the Oculus is trying to achieve). Lucky states “Controllers are a necessary abstraction right now, but a controller is not the ideal VR input. You want something that’s able to track your body movements, by haptic feedback and all these different things. But it’s very challenging to do that, because people have been designing games for traditional controllers for a long time. So it’s something that we’re actively researching and developing…”
We’ll bring you more on Facebook’s newly acquired piece of hardware, as 2015 looks to be the likely launch-year.