Since the company’s inception in 2012, Oculus VR has been at the forefront of the virtual reality portable devices innovation.
Already the company has released a prototype and two developer kits of their Rift device, the first in 2012 and the second in 2014, each with its own updated version, coming up to a total of 5 devices over the past 3 years. And they now feel they are ready for the finished mass produced device.
The production of the first DK was founded through a Kickstarter campaign and all backers that contributed with a minimum of $300 would receive a set to start developing software for it. The platforms supported are Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The second DK launched in March 2014 and it prompted Facebook to make an offer and finally acquire Oculus VR for $400 million in cash, $1.6 billion in Facebook stock and another $300 million depending on specific met requirements.
Oculus VR even worked together with Samsung to launch the Gear VR head set meant to work with a Galaxy Note 4.
All this past experience gives them the confidence to set the shipping date for the final version of the Rift in the first trimester of 2016.
It is expected to be better in every way if compared to Crescent Bay, the previous Rift DK version, that has a resolution of 1920×1080pixels (960×1080 for each eye), six degrees of freedom (6DoF), 360 degree tracking, built- in audio and a screen refresh rate of 75Hz, all in a lighter package at 0.97lbs.
The software developing kit supports the Unreal Engine 4, and the Unity 4 game engines, making the game development as easy as it gets.
Image Source: ttuhive