The Oculus Rift is a modern virtual reality headset series that rejuvenated public interest in VR after it had failed to catch on in The '90s, largely owing to improved field of view that established a sense of presence in the user, low-latency head-tracking, higher resolution, and general instances of Technology Marches On over the past few decades.
It is generally used for gaming, but there are productive uses for the Rift as well, particularly when paired with the Oculus Touch hand controllers.
It had a very successful Kickstarter in late 2012, followed by the release of two Development Kit iterations and several internal prototypes in between the public Development Kits to allow developers to work on VR software prior to the consumer version's eventual release in March 2016. The demand for the the DK1 and DK2 vastly outstripped supply, in part due to attention on social media garnering a fanbase well before the Rift hardware was finalized.
On March 25, 2014, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion, making many people worry about both privacy issues and ads in spite of the Rift developers' insistence that nothing would change. (These fears would prove a degree of validity later.)
Finally, on March 2016, the final iteration of the Rift, often referred to by enthusiasts as "Consumer Version 1" or simply CV1 to differentiate it from the earlier Development Kits, released to the public. Reception was good among those who didn't have their pre-orders delayed by several months, but at this point, the Rift already had competition on the horizon in the form of the HTC Vive, which included tracked motion controllers of a sort that the Rift would not have until Oculus Touch's release on December 6, 2016 - a good eight months after the Vive's initial release.
The whopping $599 price tag revealed on pre-order day also tempered excitement, as did the reveal that the Touch controllers would add another $199 to the price several months later. Nevertheless, it has garnered a significant enough userbase to warrant more efforts in VR software development.
On March 1, 2017, the Rift had a significant price cut, with the base HMD being $499 and Touch being halved to $99 after three months, with additional sensors for reliable room-scale tracking now being $59 instead of $79. The software update released the day before also fixed some irksome tracking issues Touch users had to deal with.
On March 20, 2019, the successor to the Rift, the Rift S, was released. It was followed 2 months later by the Oculus Quest, a stand-alone device with inbuilt hardware and games (though supporting PC play through link cables after release) and Oculus and later Facebook (later rebranded as Meta) have been focusing on standalone VR experience since then. The Rift S would later discontinued in September 2020.
Technical Specifications
Rift HMD- Dual 1080x1200 OLED panels with 90 Hz refresh rate, one for each eye; their spacing can be adjusted to account for user IPD.
- Integrated microphone and supra-aural headphones, which may be replaced with IEMs sold by Oculus for $49 or removed altogether if the user prefers to use their own headphones or headset.
- "Constellation" IR tracking system, extendable up to four USB 3.0 camera sensors. (The Rift includes one sensor, the Touch controllers add a second sensor, and additional sensors may be purchased separately for $79 each.)
Rift S HMD
- Single 2560x1440 LCD panel (1280x1440 per-eye) with 80 Hz refresh rate. IPD range is 58-72 mm.
- Integrated microphone, intergrated speakers and an 8mm jack.
- Inside-out markless tracking unlike the original Rift.
Touch controllers
- Two analog triggers - one main trigger, one "grip" trigger for the middle finger used to grasp objects.
- Two face buttons per controller.
- One clickable analog stick per controller.
- Capacitive sensors on all the aforementioned controls that help detect the user's finger positions and allow for gestures such as pointing and thumbs-up to be made, allowing for "hand presence".
- "Constellation" IR tracking system, same as the main Rift HMD.
- Rumble feedback.
- Proprietary wireless interface with the Rift HMD, no additional USB adapter necessary. This means that Touch requires a Rift HMD to function.
- One AA battery per controller; estimated battery life is 20 hours.
Games with Oculus Rift support:
- A-Tech Cybernetic
- ADR 1 FT
- Archangel
- Arizona Sunshine
- Asgard's Wrath
- Battlezone (2016)
- Battle Talent
- Chronos
- The Climb
- Dance Central (a new game, fan-called as Dance Central VR)
- Dead And Buried
- Descent Underground
- Edge Of Nowhere
- EVE Gunjack
- EVE Valkyrie
- Elite Dangerous
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Fantastic Contraption
- Farpoint
- From Other Suns
- Half-Life: Alyx
- Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades
- Gorn: Visceral Reality
- House Of The Dying Sun
- I Expect You To Die
- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
- Lone Echo
- Job Simulator
- Luckys Tale
- Minecraft (Officially supported in Bedrock Edition; Game Mod needed for original Java version)
- Onward
- Pinball FX 2 VR
- PAYDAY 2 (No Console or Linux Support, free to all base players on the Windows version of the game. Requires downloading the free VR-specific DLC addon to use.)
- Project CARS
- Propagation: Paradise Hotel
- Red Matter
- Robo Recall
- Rock Band VR
- Rez Infinite
- Serious Sam
- Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope (wave-based shooter)
- Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter
- Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter
- Serious Sam 3 VR: BFE
- Sprint Vector
- Stormland
- SUPERHOT VR
- Surgeon Simulator ER
- Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge
- The Unspoken
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR
- Vox Machinae
- We Are One
