Palmer Luckey, the the man behind Oculus virtual reality goggles, is shockingly young. He may be responsible for one of the current hottest things in tech, but he’s just 21. And he says the kind of things people that age say when they’re bold enough to dream out loud.
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Oculus isn’t just supporting CCP Games from a distance in its creation of EVE: Valkyrie – the maker of the Oculus Rift VR gaming headset announced today that it will co-publish the game with CCP, making it an exclusive launch title when the Rift launches to consumers later this year.
Valkyrie originally debuted under the codename EVE-VR, and features space fighter gameplay with an in-cockpit viewpoint. Oculus has used Valkyrie as a showcase piece of software for its virtual reality gaming headset, both at E3 last year and again at CES in January, where it was used to demo the new, more user-friendly ‘Crystal Cove’ production prototype Rift hardware.
Getting in bed with CCP as a co-publisher guarantees Eve: Valkyrie prime placement for the Rift’s eventual consumer launch, but it also means that Oculus will have the equivalent of a top-flight ‘console exclusive’, so to speak, complete with established brand recognition. The EVE Online MMO still entertains a massive audience, even a decade after its launch, as evidenced by the scope of a recent in-game space battle.
With the gaming world reinvigorated by the introduction of two new consoles, Occulus has announced $75 million in funding to bring virtual reality headsets to the masses.
Meanwhile, AT&T’s CEO mentioned the end of smartphone subsidies, which ended up being a hot topic of debate this week.
And as we open our homes to friends and loved ones over the holidays, it’s worth looking at the next generation of home automation gadgets.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.
The road to immersive virtual reality has been a long and strange one — it was fodder for wide-eyed futurists and engineers for years before it became painfully clear that the sorts of experiences we hoped for were limited by the feeble hardware available at the time.
That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. It was revealed earlier this evening that Irvine, CA-based Oculus VR raised a whopping $75 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation|8 to help launch the consumer version of its oft-hyped Rift virtual reality headset. Sadly, the company has declined to talk about its valuation, but we’ve also learned that A16Z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon will be joining the company’s board.
Let’s put that hefty round in perspective: Oculus nabbed some $2.4 million from a Kickstarter campaign that saw over 9,500 backers earlier this year, and it locked up a $16 million Series A this past June. I’m told that there’s still a decent chunk of that Series A capital left over, by the way. The company felt that it needed to supercharge its widespread consumer launch as well as flesh out what CEO Brendan Iribe calls the “full platform” through developer outreach/support and content publishing.
To call this hefty round a vote of confidence in Oculus’ highly-accessible vision of virtual reality seems like an understatement, but Iribe doesn’t seem surprised. As far as he’s concerned, the Oculus headset is the right device with the right software support at the right time.
“Oculus has really invigorated excitement around VR,” he added. “This time it’s really going to work.” And it a lot of ways it really does. Even strapping on an early developer version of the device is like peering into a completely different world, and the consumer model that Oculus is aiming to push out the door soon has managed to do away with the sort of latency issues that kept the original version from feeling as immersive as it could. The end result? An Arthur C. Clarke-ian bit of tech that has the potential to feel downright magical.
It’s honestly a little hard not to get wrapped up in Iribe’s enthusiasm and surety, but the platform that the Rift stands atop is arguably more important than the components crammed into a hefty headset. After all, a pair of goggles that lets you experience 3D worlds isn’t going to be worth a whole lot if there aren’t any worlds available for it.
So far the Oculus Rift has been a hit among developers — 42,000 dev units have trickled out into the wild and the startup has repeatedly pointed to its close relationship with game developer Valve and its (relatively) new CTO John Carmack as proof of the Rift’s gaming bonafides. While the Rift has become somewhat synonymous with gaming, Iribe is quick to point out that the implications for a highly immersive device like this one extend far beyond just fancy new first-person shooters.
“This is not just a fun alternative game console,” he noted. “It’s going to apply to medicine, architecture, communications — way beyond just gaming and entertainment.”
So what’s next on that virtual horizon? Iribe was hesitant to point at specific potential partnerships, but he did indulge in a bit of sci-fi-inspired blue sky thinking: he thinks that in “a decade or two” we’ll be able to put on a pair of VR glasses and see other users as though they were right in front of you.
The Oculus Rift has been touted to be one of the more immersive virtual reality (VR) hardware that we have laid our eyes upon over the course of this year, especially when we spent some time with it at CES earlier this year. Well, the future for VR is bright, and it is exactly this very future that will undergo a fair amount of discussion at an event that is planned for sometime early next month. This particular event will be hosted by senior engineers over at Oculus this coming November 2nd. On that particular day, Oculus COO Laird Malamed will spearhead a day-long symposium that comprises of debates as well as demonstrations of virtual reality and game development.
There will also be other scheduled sessions at the Future of Virtual Reality with Oculus VR, where among them include technical Q&A sessions, developer and employment workshops in addition to the much looked forward to hands-on time with the Oculus Rift. The venue of choice for this particular event to take place? We are looking at the Microsoft Nerd Center in Cambridge, Mass., and while entrance will remain free, one is expected to make some charitable donations to the Boston Children’s Hospital for a good cause.
Oculus To Hold An Event In November original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Good news for everyone who’s been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to run in place. A fortnight after closing the door on a successful Kickstarter campaign, Virtuix is ready to open up Omni pre-orders. $500 will get you the massive Oculus Rift add-on, a price that includes the treadmill, a harness, those special shoes and the necessary tracking hardware and software. That price, however, doesn’t include a Rift, shipping or Gatorade. Still, for a limited time, entering the “VR50” coupon code at checkout will get you $50 off.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Virtuix
Much has been said and done about Oculus Rift, where the most recent project involved the Oculus Rift working alongside Kinect in order to create a “Paperboy” game, which is definitely one creative way of approaching the situation. Well, we have reliable word that the legendary John Carmack is set to join Oculus VR as the Chief Technical Officer, and to see him come on board the company behind the Oculus Rift headset would definitely send chills down the spine of those who know just how Carmack is a genius when it comes to introducing new technology or a different, revolutionary way of doing things in the world of gaming.
Fret not though, John Carmack will still remain at id Software, but he will be moving over to Oculus VR’s Dallas office in order to assist them in staffing the relatively new company with developers. Carmack shared, “I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming — the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”
Yes sir, it is definitely going to be awesome, and we cannot wait to see the result of your handiwork.
DOOM Creator John Carmack To Join Oculus VR As CTO original content from Ubergizmo. 
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The Oculus Rift: it’s not just for gaming. Erik Torkel Danielsson, one of the co-founders of Intuitive Aerial, decided to put his shiny new Rift through its paces this week by pairing it with his company’s Black Armor Drone. The hexacopter is designed for aerial photography, and the payload is pretty hefty — attached to the rig are two cameras simultaneously recording video and an onboard laptop. The video is encoded by the laptop and transmitted to the land-based computer via WiFi for display on the Rift. It all sounds pretty nifty, but it’s not quite a perfect system yet. There’s a latency of about 120 milliseconds, which is feasible for FPV flight, but not ideal. That being said, it’s still fun to see the Rift being put to new, innovative uses. To watch Intuitive Aerial’s first flight, check out the video after the break.
Filed under: Gaming, Robots, HD
Via: Hack A Day
Source: Intuitive Aerial
Current VR just can’t match our natural experiences — real life doesn’t have much lag, for example. However, Oculus has just published a pair of research posts showing the ways that it’s closing the gap between simulation and reality. Steve LaValle, Oculus’ Principal Scientist, explains how prediction minimizes the latency inherent to head tracking; coder Tom Forsyth, meanwhile, has advice on what developers can do to reduce motion sickness. Both studies dive deep, and may not be for the faint-hearted. If you’re willing to follow Oculus down the rabbit hole, however, you may learn a thing or two about VR’s future.
Filed under: Displays, Wearables
Via: Oculus Blog
Source: Oculus (1), (2)
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