When Oculus manufactured through a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 and eventually released the virtual reality (VR) headset called Oculus Rift on March 28, 2016, the intention was clear – it was initially positioning the device in the video gaming market.
A few months earlier, during the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2016 in January this year, Taiwanese tech company HTC also launched its Vive VR headset.
Long-time or avid video gamers were the first to try and benefit from the Oculus Rift as the device and the new technology it carries give them a generation leap forward in experiencing a new way of playing games, reports the Metro of UK.
Oculus Rift is a little less expensive than the HTC Vive so it immediately got an advantage especially for gamers who are just trying to test the waters of VR gaming. In addition, the Oculus Rift does not occupy plenty of space as much as the HTC Vive requires.
Has a premium quality feel
While it may not be as expensive as the HTC Vive or other VR headsets in the market today, the Oculus Rift VR headset has a premium quality feel to it and it also looks quite sturdy too.
The headphones that come with the system can be used by the user as the main sound output or he can also opt to output through speakers and use the headphones separately.
Once the headset is worn by the user, there will be condensation around the screens which is an indication that someone is already wearing the VR headset and he is breathing through his nose.
It shall eventually calm down after the first five minutes of use. It may appear annoying at first but gamers would surely get past through it.
Once the gamer puts on the headset, he is already stepping into a virtual world. He needs to go through the initial setup steps and the Oculus Dreamdeck app comes very handy at such stage as it shall help walk the gamer through as it also comes with tech demos. In the tech demos, the head tracking acts as a mouse pointer.
Motion sickness on VR
There have been previous reports that some gamers are experiencing motion sickness wearing VR headsets or playing VR games. But it actually depends on person to person.
Some gamers have a high degree of tolerance for motion sickness while some others have a low tolerance for it and motion sickness could set into them quite early.
The good thing about the Oculus Rift is that it already comes with plenty of free game demos on the Oculus store and Steam that gamers could actually dabble into. There is also a range of demos and fully fledged games to boot on the system itself.
While VR may not become mainstream in gaming anytime soon, the Oculus Rift, and other VR headsets for that matter will have more uses in the near future both at an enterprise and educational level.
It can actually be used as a job simulator to teach the younger generation to make a more informed decision on the choice of their professional careers.
There would be plenty of scientific uses for VR but for the avid video gamers, they could only wish that more games would support the VR format in order to make it as close to mainstream as possible because it shall certainly raise the level of video game playing the world over.
Incidentally, Oculus has announced a few weeks ago that they could have shipped the Oculus Touch alongside the Oculus Rift but they have decided against it eventually.
Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus, disclosed during the Gamescom 2016 that hardware for Oculus Touch VR could have gone out of the door on day one. He added that it was possible for the company to release the first Oculus Touch device when they showed it, or around the time when everyone said that it was awesome, details Road to VR.