I've played with a DK2. It was cool. But reasons not to be super-excited are:

1. Hardware requirements are steep (GTX 970 minimum), so plenty of hardware -- including plenty of hardware that's good for high-end gaming today -- won't be good enough for this.

2. Only Windows support. No compatibility with Linux, SteamOS, or even OSX means that the techie enthusiasts who'd play with it as a tech toy are going to be less interested.

3. But biggest of all: The games aren't there. It's become very clear, both from playing with the DK2, and listening to presentations by Valve and Oculus people, that VR games can't just be regular games with VR bolted on. "Skyrim, but with VR" sounds cool, and makes for a cool five-minute demo, but will just make you sick and be unsatisfying in the long term.

VR games need to be designed for VR in a really fundamental way. It's not clear that there are any interesting games that do this, or that there's a lot of effort going toward making games like this.

If this were a product that were coming out from Nintendo, I'd be confident that they had a good idea about how to adapt their franchises to take advantage of VR in a really cool way, and that there'd be at least a handful of games that made it an absolute must-have. But from Facebook... well, they're a tech company, not a gaming company, so they're depending on someone else to make the games that will justify this thing. Maybe that'll work in the long term, but right now, it doesn't seem like there's any must-have VR game.

Add that all up, and this is a product that won't appeal to most gamers yet, and won't appeal to a lot of tech geeks due to the Windows focus, so... yeah.

1) Yep. But not bad for a first generation product. Already plenty of guides about building a VR ready computer for <$1000.

2) Only windows. Agreed. But I'm glad they did so they could get one platform dialed in instead of chasing multiple rabbits. For now.

3) Games - copying part of this - do yourself a favor and try with Elite Dangerous or Assetto Corsa. And gaming doesn't scratch the service in terms of application - training, social interaction, SEX, therapy, etc, etc.

So part of what I'm saying is that 1 & 2 cancel themselves out. The people who would drop $1500 ($1K computer plus maybe $500 VR headset) on a first-gen thing are more likely to be the early-adopter types who are less interested in a Windows-only device.

As for 3: I played Elite for a bit. And then quit when I got motion-sick. I'm not particularly motion-sensitive, but DK2 got me there pretty quickly.

Maybe the retail one is better in ways that wouldn't make me sick in that case, but from what Valve people have been saying, the only reliable way to get rid of the sickness is to remove the disconnect between not-moving and seeming-to-move, aka make games that involve only your real-world motion.

If that's the case, it implies that what we need are radically different games than what we have. So I'd either want to see those games, or see some proof that you can do Elite-style gaming with no motion sickness even when playing for hours.

> The people who would drop $1500 ... on a first-gen thing are more likely to be the early-adopter types who are less interested in a Windows-only device.

I feel pretty confident in saying that the people who spend big bucks on computer gaming are mostly not giving two shits about Linux while they do it. SteamOS and general Linux gaming is pretty decent these days but still... if you are a hardcore gamer, odds are overwhelming that you are running Windows.

3. Games aren't there? Oculus funded a bunch of games studios and there are many studios investing themselves. Someone on reddit compiled a list of all of the games expected to come out. [1]

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/wiki/compatible_games

The games issue definitely seems like a chicken and egg problem though. Games are really expensive (perhaps even more so with this new paradigm), and it's hard for them to know what the market adoption for the platform will be until it actually hits the market at full price.

Oculus funded a bunch of games studios in order to bust the chicken and egg problem. Someone on reddit compiled a list of all of the games expected to come out. [1]

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/wiki/compatible_games

The hardware requirements are a marketing gimmick. They aren't "requirements". What works in AAA games to make "good" looking graphics often fundamentally breaks down in VR anyway. It's no different of an equation than we've ever had: set your polygon budget and stick to it. Compelling experiences will be had on lesser hardware. There is a lot more to the world than Call of Halo 15.

Or not. Give it a year and it won't matter. Today's top-of-the-line tech is tomorrows middle-of-the-road. And if you saturate the market in the first year, who will you sell to then?

There are a lot more tech geeks on Windows than you think. Get out of your bubble sometime and you might see that there are probably more of us than there are of you.

The games aren't there? The games aren't where? Where is this "there" you're talking about? I keep hearing people talk about this "there", but I've been playing games in VR for over a year now and been enjoying the heck out of myself. I think you mean to say "the games are here already, and only going to get better".

The hardware requirements are based on the 90 FPS requirement for good feeling VR. That extra 5ms of savings is quite difficult in a lot of experiences. And even without all the "good" looking graphics requires quite a serious amount of rendering hardware to get consistent, which is very important.

You're not going to get the standard AAA experience level graphics in VR, you're talking about a ~20ms difference in render time, with twice the amount of view to render (In polygon processing at least) But good VR is very sensitive to hardware performance.

>> 90 FPS requirement for good feeling VR

This is not a requirement. It's a nice-to-have. 60fps is good enough for most people. 75fps is good enough for the vast majority of people. And asynchronous timewarp largely makes the issue moot, too.

Regardless, Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion dollars. Zynga has a market cap of $2.4 billion. I think the era of AAA games like Call of Duty being your main cash-cow are over.

You don't need to spend anywhere near all of your cycles to make a good VR experience.

Actually, Elder Scrolls Online on the DK2, using Vorpx, is a lot of fun. It's not perfect, but it's much cooler than the game without it, and I've not had any sickness in it.

The biggest reason of all though(and what drives all technology)... porn. This will change porn forever and it will become a staple in homes solely for that fact.

There is some debate about whether porn will really drive VR technology.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/does-porn-still-ha...

I also recall reading a different article (can't find it now and don't want to do too much Google searching at work for it) about how almost all the most trafficked porn sites are owned by a single entity now. From what I remember of the article, it posited that their technology has fallen behind and they have little incentive to keep pushing tech forward given the razor thin margins they have on operating the sites.

porn games would be better than 360° videos anyway, so not much of a loss on that front...

Am I the only one that's still a little skeptical? I'm sure that it's a great technology and we will see interesting things come out of it, but statements like this

> Oculus + 3D audio + input + eventual tactical is going to completely blur the lines of reality in ways we can't yet imagine.

kind of just make me roll my eyes. We've been hearing things like that for decades. Is it really going to blur the lines of reality? You'll still be sitting a chair with a machine strapped to your face. People also think it will change video games forever, but I honestly don't see how. It improves immersion, but for me, immersion isn't even on the top 10 list of things that I care about in games.

Feel free to disagree, but I'm just saying that people are really hyping this thing up.

This sounds like the opinion of someone who hasn't tried VR in any measure. I could be wrong, and maybe you have.

I agree that there is a ceiling of how much VR as a technology can 'blur the lines' of reality, but as someone who has a DK2 - I fully believe that VR is going to be huge in the future. It doesn't feel like you're 'sitting in a chair with a machine strapped to your face'.

I tried to illustrate why I'm excited for this being the FIRST.

Just to challenge your thinking about what comes next:

> kind of just make me roll my eyes. We've been hearing things like that for decades. Is it really going to blur the lines of reality?

Tricking your vision is HUGE to changing your reality. We perceive up to 80 per cent of all impressions by means of our sight.

(1) https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

> You'll still be sitting a chair with a machine strapped to your face.

-=> Give the form factor a couple of years. Every sensor in there is being miniaturized by the day. Magic Leap (and others) are using tricks to project imagery directly onto your retina. Google's already filed

> People also think it will change video games forever, but I honestly don't see how. It improves immersion, but for me, immersion isn't even on the top 10 list of things that I care about in games.

-=> Ok I'll bite, on gaming - Go play Elite Dangerous + DK2 + Motion Sim and tell me that you don't believe you're flying in outer space. It's that good. More accessible, and I bet we see a lot of these, is VR coasters w/motion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcmQr2y5Z88 - another easy one to try is Assetto Corsa + DK2 + driving wheel.

Games are a popular idea about VR's application but doesn't scratch the service in terms of application - training, social interaction, SEX, therapy, etc, etc.

Indeed, games are a neat way to apply the technology, but flying a space ship in Elite Dangerous is the same on an Oculus as it would be on your monitor. The VR headset may be able to improve things like storytelling, gameplay and interaction, but I don't think I've seen how it does yet.

No, it's not. I've said this a few times before and it's a little romanticized, but it's the difference between playing a game, and being there - in the game.

You can look up and see out of the top of your spaceship. You look to your left and the holographic display of your ship appears. You look down and you see your body, wearing a cool spacesuit. But most of all, it feels like you're piloting a ship instead of watching a ship fly around on a screen.

I tried the HTC set a few weeks ago when they were touring it around the country. I was very skeptical. The resolution of the headset isn't even that great.

However, the final demo (a Portal 2 derived scene) freaked me out. I felt like I was being bullied by the robot. I've had nightmares about it since, for reals.

I'm a bit skeptical, maybe because I see the potential for some cool short-term stuff, but not so much long-term stuff. I can see how I would be entertained by this concept for awhile, maybe years even, but I'm not sure it would replace a simple big screen TV in the long run.

Others are free to disagree with me here, but I've seen 2 technological concepts in entertainment/immersion that became huge in the last decade and slowly died off as people became tired of the gimmick: motion-sensors and 3D. You have a lot of people very entertained by stuff like the Wii or watching Avatar in 3D, but over time I've noticed people don't really care anymore.

VR has the same challenge as those past technologies: how do you create something truly unique with this concept? Is this like the dawn of the television, or is it just another way of watching television?

> Zuck gets this to the degree that I suspect he believes Facebook & VR will be synonymous within a decade (1)

The vast majority of Facebook users has neither consoles nor PCs nor any interest in ever purchasing a peripheral in the targeted price range (even if it drops to 100USD).

I don't doubt that they can break even regarding development costs, but it won't be a cash cow.

Yep, that's why the Gear VR has seen such huge investment from Oculus. It offers a decent VR experience with mainstream phones and a cheap(ish) accessory.

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/

My impression is something like this is a big part of the future of the Oculus platform, and that the Rift is designed to deliver higher quality experiences until mobile catches up.

The Big Kahuna is going to be standalone mobile VR headsets. Expect to see a self-contained headset from Oculus for the price of a mobile phone within 5 years.

Zuck knows he failed with Facebook Home. He has surveyed the landscape and he knows he'll never be more than the most-used app on someone else's phone. But he's still salivating to own a platform, so he's looking to the future.

Think about this: if you're sitting on the train, or waiting in the Doctor's office, would you rather wait in VR, or in a waiting room with your nose in a mobile phone?

And if you remove all of the bored killing-time-in-spaces-you'd-rather-not-be uses of mobile phones, how much use is really left in them?

Think too, how many phone calls will you make when you can run around a virtual dinosaur park, or sit under a virtual night sky with your friends and family?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but it does seem like VR could put quite a lot of pressure on what is now the dominant category of computing devices. And Zuck is better positioned than anyone to be the pack leader.

Also consider that phones are fundamentally disconnected from remote friends. You don't really want your sister scrolling through the news with you when you're on the train. But you might be totally happy to have her sitting next to you in a flowery meadow in VR while you both catch up on your news feed. Or maybe she is on the surface of Mars and you are in a flowery meadow but you both feel like you are together. Maybe she's fighting aliens in a forest while you are collecting mushrooms, bantering back and forth about what happened at work.

VR is fundamentally more amenable to social than flat screens are. Look no further than social console gaming to see the start of this. I think the merger of Facebook and Oculus is fascinating.

> You don't really want your sister scrolling through the news with you when you're on the train. But you might be totally happy to have her sitting next to you in a flowery meadow in VR while you both catch up on your news feed.

You mean when she's not on the train too? That's not going to happen anytime soon, because mobile networks are far too crappy. On public transport in a major city in germany I regularly get latencies of 60+ seconds (yes, seconds) and a bandwidth of a few kilobytes/s max. There are also spots where you don't get any connection at all or you get a connection but it's so congested that you can't even make a DNS request that doesn't time out. Yes, I'm still talking about the middle of a big city. That's on the Eplus/O2 network.

> if you're sitting on the train, or waiting in the Doctor's office, would you rather wait in VR

Other than the added privacy, I'm having trouble imagining the advantages of that. I'm reading my facebook feed, but now nobody else can see it, oh boy!

But see, I already don't care if people see. So that doesn't help me. Being immersed might actually hurt me though. Honestly, the idea of being on a train and having no idea what's going on around me is kind of terrifying.

The major benefit to me would be being able to look up from my coding to see, say, a beautiful professionally captured sunset over Half Dome instead of glancing over at a horrible painting someone bought from Bed Bath & Beyond.

I'm super excited and will be preordering. I think a lot of the "meh" response is the pre-announcement of the announcement aspect of this. With almost no details.

Seriously! The complete lack of vision from people who self-claim to be "visionary startup leaders" is mind numbing! And if you can get them to think even a little on the problem, all they can come up with is pedestrian garbage like movie viewing apps.

I'm not enthused simply because there is no pricing info, and no ship date. Until those exist, this is just marketing.

Waiting to see exactly how high above their original ~$350 target price the thing will go for before I decide whether this is interesting/exciting news or not.

Pricepoint determines market adoption. It could be the "best thing ever" at $1k and no normal consumer would buy one, leading to a drying up of interest and market adoption, resulting in a dead product. Given who's supporting it, granted, that's not a very likely outcome, but it's still something to keep in mind.

I think the disappointment is the long and rocky road it has taken to get to this point, allowing multiple competitors (Valve, Sony, Microsoft) to be in position to leap-frog them.

I'm excited to see the future of VR, but I'm ultimately looking at a $1200-$1500 investment at least for a new computer and an Oculus. I simply don't have the money for that right now especially in the early consumer stages of a product.

I will say that I have tried DK1 and I was extremely impressed with it. That being said, I'll probably jump on this bandwagon in the next 3-4 years.

How do I try one without buying it? [serious]

If you mean the consumer rift you're limited to the big electronics shows for now, I'm sure that they have plans for broader consumer displays that we'll see in the near future.

But if you mean Oculus in general the Gear VR is an ok start (and widely available) but I'd recommend

(a) Get yourself to one of the many VR meetups that are fairly geographically distributed @ this point http://vr.meetup.com/

(b) Visit www.reddit.com/r/oculus and make a request for a demo in your area if you're in a less populated area.

Map of people with oculus setups willing to give out demos. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zOfhcB3uWEbI.k7yXLl...

I have no enthusiasm left for Oculus.

> But if you're browsing HN because you're a hacker / developer / dreamer you are crazy to discount how substantial this release is (especially if you haven't TRIED it yet!).

I bought a Rift DK2, because they said that they support linux. Their linux support was never complete and always pretty bad, especially mesa support was always buggy. So I haven't seen much in the DK2 until I sold it after oculus dropped linux support.

Enthusiasm for VR is still there, but for oculus? They didn't deliver what they promised for their DK2. The only good thing is that - unlike with the DK2 - linux users know for sure not to buy it now.

Maybe Valve will get it right with Steam OS.

Two words: Oculus Only

The last word I heard from the Oculus team is that the game releases would be restricted for use with the Oculus only. No morpheus, no holo-lens, no (insert startup here).

This has killed my desire to support Oculus.

Played with prototype -- found it was still not as high fidelity to be usable for what we were doing. I am afraid it was hyped enough that we had higher expectations. The roller-coaster demo was cool but it was still like looking through a screen-door (through mosquito net), the square pixels were too distracting.

Which prototype? It sounds like you used a DK1, where the SDE (screen door effect) was very pronounced. The DK1's resolution is 1280×800@60hz.

The DK2 is 1920x1080@75hz, and the CV1 (subject of OP) is 2160×1200@90hz. I'm sure the SDE is still perceptible in the CV1 if you look closely enough, but most reports say it is no longer an issue.

Yap it was DK1. Well, that's good to know. I didn't follow u after that much. We moved on from that project, and now I am at a different company altogether. But they'll probably revisit it next year or so. It was just an experimental "let's see what we can do with this" thing and we decided to wait till next generation.

    hacker / developer / dreamer you are crazy to discount
    how substantial this release is (especially if you
    haven't TRIED it yet!).

hacker, developer, dreamer? i feel you are overreaching here.. this is digital stereoscopy, and a consumer version at that which comes with all of the typical consumer shortcomings actively stunting hacking: price intimidates anyone from cracking it open and playing with the internals, where are the io pins?, circuit diagrams?, build instructions?

i know, i know.. i sound crazy

but, as far as your comment on 'release' one of my favourite things about hn is the communities' reliable response 'congrats on shipping'

i'd rather see more of that than people breathing this effluvium of delphi

so, congrats on shipping