Hasta La Gadget!

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.

Irrational Games’ blockbuster BioShock Infinite and EA DICE’s Mirror’s Edge weren’t built with the Oculus Rift in mind, but both are part of a huge list of games supported by a new piece of software available today: VorpX. The still-in-beta, $40 application promises to convert a variety of games from monitor-exclusive experiences to Oculus Rift-ready VR games, including the aforementioned two and a lengthy list of others.

As none of the supported games are meant to work with the Rift, a variety of workarounds are implemented by VorpX. Clicking in and holding down your mouse wheel, for instance, allows you to “edge peek,” which allows users to look freely at the edges of their field-of-view instead of it moving with the headset’s movement. Additionally, since rendering two distinct views of high-def, modern games is taxing, VorpX uses a workaround called “Z-buffer,” which is apparently “the highest performing” of the two available options, but not as pretty. You can also choose “Geometry 3D,” which does render two distinct feeds and, well, we’re jealous of whatever system you’ve got that’s running that smoothly. Not every game supports both modes, but a fair number do (there’s a list right here comparing both). Head below for a handful of video demonstrations of VorpX in action, as well as the full list of supported games.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Wearables, Software, HD

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Source: VorpX

It turns out that Doom co-creator John Carmack is more than just a virtual reality fanatic — he’s joining the company that’s leading the most recent VR revolution, today announcing that he’s taking the reins as Chief Technology Officer at Oculus Rift. In an email from the folks at Oculus, Carmack was confirmed to be out at the company he helped found — id Software — and joining Oculus full-time as CTO. He will apparently still serve some role at id, as id’s parent company told Engadget, “The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected.” We’ve asked both Oculus and id’s parent company for clarification.

Carmack said in a prepared statement that the first time he wrote code for Oculus, it stood up to many firsts he’s experienced in modern gaming: “the intensity of the first-person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods and so on.” Additionally, he believes VR “will have a huge impact in the coming years” — Carmack is the first announced big new hire at Oculus. CEO Brendan Iribe said in the announcement PR that Oculus is, “putting together a team of the brightest minds.” Carmack, as it turns out, was at the very top of Oculus’ list.

Carmack got his hands on the Oculus Rift dev kit headset far earlier than most, spotting creator Palmer Luckey’s still nascent creation in a VR forum online. After getting in touch, Carmack asked Luckey if he could check out a prototype, which led to Carmack showing off a ported version of Doom 3 at E3; Doom 3‘s Oculus Rift version was supposed to ship with initial dev units, though that was later called off. Carmack also runs a rocket building company named Armadillo Aerospace, which he recently characterized as “in hibernation.”

Update: Bethesda Softworks (parent company to id Software) responded with the following statement to today’s news: “John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected.” We’ve followed up for clarification as to what that means for Carmack’s efforts at id. In the note from Oculus, Carmack is said to be heading up and working out of newly created Dallas offices for Oculus.

Update 2: Carmack tweeted a bit of clarity to his new role at Oculus among his other jobs, saying, “My time division is now Oculus over Id over Armadillo. Busy busy busy!”

Update 3: Oculus offered yet another statement, this time saying, “John is working full-time Oculus. He is fully-engaged at Oculus as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As you can guess from the title, CTO is never part time, it is a full time gig. John’s role at id is between John and id.”

Update 4: And finally (we think), id’s parent company Bethesda Softworks offered this final statement, “He’s still going to be working at id, in id’s offices.”

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD, Nintendo

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The Oculus Rift sure is super, super neat, but outside of mods to existing games, it’s still a bit light in the custom-made software department. And that’s exactly why Oculus is ponying up $50K in prizes and teaming up with IndieCade this October for a game jam competition specifically meant to bolster that software support. One lucky dev / team will snag the grand prize of $10K and a chance to debut their game at this October’s IndieCade Festival in Los Angeles — they’ll also head out to Orange County to meet with the team at Oculus, including wunderkind Palmer Luckey.

Should you wish to get in on the VR-centric action, you’ve got the following three weeks to get things going (starting August 2nd and ending on August 25th). And if you don’t have one of Oculus’ Rift dev kits just yet, you’ll have access to playtesting at various “playtest hubs” set up worldwide (NYC and LA locations are the only two confirmed thus far, with “more locations to be announced soon”). For the full stipulations on the contest, head below.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD

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The Oculus Rift company is barely one year old, but it’s already off to a strong start. Developers have kits from a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, said kit has support from the industry’s biggest game engine creators, and the consumer-friendly HD version is already being shown off to press (we loved what we saw at E3 2013 last week). And now the company’s got a solid $16 million in the bank backing up its next step: creating a virtual reality headset that’s significantly more mainstream than the $300 dev kit currently available. But don’t think that alters the young company’s promise of virtual reality on the PC platform; quite the contrary, as CEO Brendan Iribe told Engadget, “We’re really focused on the PC as the platform to bring this to market right now.”

He said that Oculus isn’t against bringing its VR headset to consoles, but that PC remains the primary platform. “We’re always looking at other platforms — looking at consoles, we’re also looking at Android and the mobile side in a big way — but right now we really are focused on the PC platform,” he said. Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida told us last week in an interview that, “We’ve got a couple of the development kits, and I tried it out and I love it,” though he wouldn’t outright say if the PlayStation 4 will support the Rift. We’re betting “yes.”

As for what Oculus is doing in the short-term with the new infusion of cash? In short, it’s being used to staff up (the company’s still under 50 employees right now, mostly engineers). “We’re using the funding to ramp up on hiring more smart people, the best and brightest that we can find,” Iribe said. “The dev kit as it is now, that we’re shipping, will stay the same, and the software side will just keep getting better.” The vast majority of those new employees will be engineers — one glance at the company’s careers page quickly confirms this claim. Outside of new employees, though, Iribe said little will change in the company’s ongoing goal to develop “the very best virtual reality platform we can create.”

Filed under: HD

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