All Mode
Just over a year ago, the Oculus Rift was released to the market after years of speculation, crowd funding, and hype. Once the sole wonderchild of virtual reality, Oculus is now a big player in a market crowded with competitors like Samsung, Google, HTC, and many others. As a result of this fierce competition, Oculus’ place in the market and in consumer minds is very different than it was before release.
Is the Oculus Rift still a VR leader? Where is the development of the Oculus Rift going? To answer these questions while providing an up-to-date picture of where the Oculus stands, I will be discussing the issues, problems, technical developments that are making a new future for the Oculus Rift.
Why is the Oculus Rift Important?
Early Oculus Prototype. Image credit: Oculus
The release of the Oculus Rift has been very important for the virtual reality industry as a whole, because, in many regards, the Oculus Rift is the symbolic wonderchild of the VR industry. The Oculus Rift showed the industry, developers, and consumers that amazing virtual reality experiences are not only possible but enjoyable and, even more importantly, affordable.
Still commonly regarded as a poster-boy or industry leader, the Oculus Rift has weathered its fair share of problems over the past year. This includes poor sales, market rivals, and managerial losses. Despite these issues, Oculus’ owner, Facebook, has shown no signs that they are abandoning Oculus Rift anytime soon. Instead, Facebook appears to be in for the long haul.
No Oculus 2 Anytime Soon
Image credit: Facebook
As for where Oculus is going, Facebook is keeping a tight lid on its plans but a few thing have slipped out. Brendan Iribe, the head of desktop VR, has said that there is a ton of new development for the new Oculus Rift.
Noting the progress, Iribe said, “Everything we’re doing is still research-oriented,” and “the future of VR, the [generation] of VR that we call second-gen, is going to be a very big leap from where we are today.” This is great news! We can take a few things from this statement. Although the Oculus Rift is a great piece of kit, some elements like the display, have some people begging for upgrades.
Oculus Rift has some stiff competition, Image credit: Toms Hardware
As for when upgrades will come, we might be waiting longer than we like. Discussing the potential Oculus Rift version two, Iribe has gone on record to say that consumers will be waiting “at least the next two years” before a new headset supersedes the old one. This bit of news was disappointing for me. I want an Oculus Rift without screen door effect dammit! That said, if you were hoping to get your money’s worth as a first-gen adopter, this is good news.
Instead of a yearly upgrade cycle, it appears that Oculus is going to be following a longer cycle of upgrades. Speaking on this, Iribe hints that first-gen headsets will be supported for quite a while. Speculating on the release of the Oculus Rift Two, Iribe said: “I think you’ll see even beyond that, a lot of people will be using this first [generation].”
Check back later this week for a discussion about Oculus’ future, its position in the market, and more…
Though Oculus is enjoying some prime space today, i believe it has to certainly keep up with the rapid VR developments to gain edge over others especially looking to the fast arrival of Windows MR headsets and Google’s standalone headset tipped to be coming by this year-end
Oculus is still a major player, but the competition is fierce. They used to be the favorite as the OS of VR, but with Google and Daydream, that future is far more uncertain.
Yes indeed oculus still the best out there because google daydream is still not available.
Daydream is already available. Google Pixel and some others have it.