The Oculus Rift is the fist commercially viable VR (virtual reality) display. Its Kickstarter campaign came about at a perfect time, when the technology is affordable enough to produce, there is a large enough developer base to tweak and perfect it, and there is a large enough market to justify going forward. This is why their Kickstarter campaign received three times the desired pledge goal on the very first day.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the device, I can’t really show immersive images of the experience, but the response from those who have tried it is overwhelmingly poisitve, with industry leaders such as John Carmack of Id, Doom, Quake etc and Michael Abrash and Gabe Newell of Valve getting behind the project. While it is not ready for commercial release, you can get a developer’s kit, assemble it yourself, and use it. There are still some user-issues to work through, with one user describing it as “amazing until it makes you want to hurl.”
Obviously this opens a whole new doorway to game development and that’s exciting but one thing that personally excites me is that the Oculus Rift is being developed and tested using Doom 3: BFG Edition. I’m a huge Doom fan and the idea that I could actually experience such worlds in a VR environment is really enticing. The developer’s kit ships with a copy of Doom: BFG.
Here John Carmack talks a little bit about the project:
I think that designing for immersive experiences will be a necessary and interesting part of the future of design and interactive experiences, not just for games but for other types of simulations as well. I, for one, am ready and willing to hurl.
Eric Chamberlain 