Oculus Rift

(Work in progress)

About

Oculus Rift is a virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) being developed by Oculus VR. After a protype debuted at 2012’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the first batch of developer systems were initially funded through a Kickstarter campaign.

History

Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey^[1] had been collecting HMDs for years, seeking one that would fit his needs.^[2] After getting a Virtual Research V8^[3] and learning that its 60 degree field of vision was one of the best on the market, Luckey realized that he would have to develop his own model. As a moderator of the Meant to Be Seen 3D (MTBS3D) forums for stereoscopic gaming enthusiasts, Luckey began working on his own HMD project. He named the organization Oculus and HMD itself “Rift,” based on the idea that a HMD unit creates a breach between actual and virtual realities. On April 15th, 2012, he announced to the MTBS3D forum that he had completed the optics, display panels and interface hardware for the project, with the hopes of launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first batch of systems on June 1st. As of July 2013, this thread has generated more than 4,200 posts.

E3 Debut

By June 2013, Id Software founder John Carmack (shown below) had signed on to support the project and brought a prototype demo to that year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). This demo showed a Rift with a 90 degree horizonal view and a 110 degree vertical view, offering a wider field of view than anything on the market. The system was playable with a version of Doom 3. Carmack asserted that they could have consumer-friendly versions of the system within a year. The journalists that tested the system had rave reviews^[4], calling it “a level of immersion genuinely unlike anything else [they] have ever encountered.”

Kickstarter Campaign

On August 1st, 2012, the Kickstarter^[5] fundraiser for Oculus Rift launched, looking to raise $250,000 within 30 days. With support from big-name developers including Valve’s Gabe Newell, the project was completely funded within 24 hours.^[6] Just over two weeks in to the campaign, more than 5,000 development kits had been sold^[7], causing Luckey to remind consumers that this version of the Rift was directed at developers and would not be a consumer-ready product. Despite that, the Kickstarter campaign closed on September 1st, 2012 with 9,522 backers pledging a total of $2,437,429, making it the most funded Technology Kickstarter project at the time. As of July 2013, it is now the second-most funded, beaten by the Form 1 3D printer, which raised more than $2.9 million in October 2012.