
New Oculus Rift dev kit goes on sale for $350 today, likely ships in July - amelim
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5524336/new-oculus-rift-dev-kit-price-july
======
aculver
I can't help but laugh with glee a little when watching the video at
[http://www.oculusvr.com/dk2/](http://www.oculusvr.com/dk2/) , specifically at
the part where John Carmack comes on.

I'm _still_ so excited that he joined Oculus VR. When I see him in a video
like this, it's like a giant "100% Guaranteed" stamp that this whole thing is
going to eventually be everything we could possibly hope for.

~~~
nacs
I had a similar reaction.

They say in the video that they brought together the "best developers in the
industry" which sounds like generic marketing embellishment until they cut to
Carmack. Hard to argue that statement at that point.

------
tibbon
A (likely terrible) idea that just occurred to me-

How cool would it be to use a VR headset to help you navigate a vehicle? Yes,
I mean to say wearing this while driving essentially.

Given a fast/good enough sensor/input system, you could scan your environment,
know the dimensions of your vehicle (I'm mainly thinking boats and huge trucks
here) and be able to "see through" massive blind spots on your vehicle to
enable for tighter maneuvering.

Imagine a boat. Sometimes with a large enough boat it can be hard to see all
around it. And frankly, its almost impossible to see under it. But given depth
finding/scanning and sensors, you could make it so you could see the virtual
hull of the boat and anything under the water, making navigating through areas
with dangerous stumps or other things under the water much easier.

Anyway, this is kinda silly... but neat to think about. Also, ordered one :)

~~~
Crito
My understanding is that this _" see through the vehicle"_ capability is built
into at least some helmet-HUD/Helicopter combinations that the military has.

If it suffices for an attack helicopter, I'd say that the idea probably has
serious potential for automobiles as well. I wouldn't expect to see it come to
standard consumer cars yet, but for commercial drivers (particularly truck
drivers who have _massive_ blindspots) this could be invaluable. Imagine being
able to see through the back of your box truck while backing up!

~~~
tibbon
Yep, that's pretty much what I'm thinking. It started all with thinking how
terrible of an idea it would be to wear this while motorcycling...

Someone at Google with access to one of the self driving cars should see what
this would 'look like' from a passenger perspective with the data.

~~~
3lit3H4ck3r
Feasible to cross dev with glass? Hmmm... I think I have a new project to work
on!

~~~
tibbon
I've joked that the ultimate tech hipsters need to use the Rift + Glass at the
same time to look at a virtual Pebble watch on their arm...

~~~
catshirt
what purpose does Glass serve?

~~~
tibbon
So you can see your tweets ;)

~~~
partomniscient
It's so other people can watch you seeing your tweets without being able to
actually see your tweets.

------
Arjuna
Awesome news... on a related note, John Carmack had a couple of recent, Sony-
related Tweets with regard to their Project Morpheus announcement:

"Trivia: I had suggested to Sony that they try to hire Palmer Luckey before
the Oculus kick starter." [1]

"Calibrate PS4 VR expectations: a game that ran 60 fps on PS3 could be done in
VR (stereo 1080 MSAA low latency 60 fps) on PS4." [2]

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/446122463747776512](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/446122463747776512)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/446271995668217857](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/446271995668217857)

~~~
mortenjorck
Could anyone with more background elaborate on what you think Carmack means
with the second tweet? The PS4 already outputs 1080p with (varying algorithms
of) antialiasing for several of its launch titles. I'd expect some rendering
pipeline shortcuts to cut down on the latency that some operations incur and
to achieve a constant 60 FPS, but a generational drop in graphical fidelity
seems steep.

~~~
necubi
Stereo rendering requires rendering the scene twice, once for each eye. Off
the bat, this is almost twice as computationally intensive as rendering it
once.

~~~
mortenjorck
It's rendering it twice, but at only half the resolution.

Thinking about this more, the closest analog to stereo rendering would seem to
be games with a split-screen mode. Which, in my experience, often does entail
a performance hit (though certainly not a generation-sized one).

My guess is that how much a second viewport affects performance is highly
engine-dependent. Ironically, the one game I remember having the biggest delta
from single-screen to split-screen is the Dreamcast version of Quake III: I
distinctly recall the sharp drop in poly-count on the otherwise curvy rocket
launcher.

~~~
modeless
Rendering the scene twice has overhead, so it would take extra time even if it
was the same number of pixels total. But that's far from the only reason VR
requires more power.

Due to the distortion caused by the lenses the scene must be rendered at about
1.4x the normal resolution. Then there's a warping step that performs the
inverse of the lens distortion, which is an additional cost. Also, good VR
requires rendering at 90 Hz, not 60 Hz, so that's another 1.5x. Furthermore,
frame tearing artifacts and FPS hiccups are much worse in VR, so you need
extra headroom to eliminate them even in worst-case scenarios.

~~~
jo_
I remember being surprised that the bottleneck for some modern devices (like
cell phones) wasn't the number of vertices one could push, but rather the fill
rate and number of draw calls. Do consoles these days hit performance bounds
as a function of the number of draw calls rather than the number of
polygons/vertices?

I ask because I can completely understand how doubling the number of draw
calls could be problematic in a VR situation.

~~~
modeless
Mobile devices are often limited by memory bandwidth, and by OpenGL driver
overhead. Consoles have very little driver overhead, so number of draw calls
is not as big a problem, but state changes are still costly, so doubling the
number of state changes hurts performance. I could imagine some clever
techniques to avoid doubling the number of state changes (perhaps a geometry
shader that duplicates triangles to render both eyes at once) but I don't know
how well that would work. VR rendering is still mostly unexplored!

------
kjhughes
Fresh new Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 FAQ is here:

[https://support.oculusvr.com/hc/en-
us/articles/201835987](https://support.oculusvr.com/hc/en-
us/articles/201835987)

Here's an excerpt:

    
    
      Q: What is the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2, its features,
      and what does it come with?
    
      A: The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2) is a development
      kit meant for developers that want to create virtual reality
      content for the upcoming consumer version of the Oculus Rift.
    
      New features:
    
      - Positional Tracking
    
      - Low Persistence OLED Display
    
      - Built-In Latency Tester
    
      What’s included:
    

[...]

~~~
morsch
Apparently it supports the "Linux 12.04 LTS operating system"!

~~~
nrp
Good catch. I've let the web team know.

------
plainhold
Tested.com got their hands on one at GDC 2014. They interviewd Nate Mitchell
and did a short review in this video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3Wli7s6KY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3Wli7s6KY)

------
nicpottier
For those that have the first dev kit, how appropriate is this for a curious
engineer who wants to play with Alpha titles? It is hard for me to imagine a
scenario where I would actually have the time to develop something, but man,
playing with it seems well worth $350.

Am I going to be disappointed in what is available?

~~~
axefrog
I think you'll find a large proportion of people who have ordered the dev kit
have done so just for a taste of what's to come. And I'm sure OculusVR don't
mind at all because the sales generate additional revenue and PR without all
of the responsibility that comes with shipping a consumer product.

------
dm2
Does the latest versions make people sick after prolonged use?

How similar does it feel to looking at real far away objects? Is it easy to
tell it's not 3D and the screen is flat?

If I tied a passed out "friend" up and put on the Oculus Rift glasses and
played a movie of them being thrown out of a helicopter from 1st person, would
they be able to tell that it was fake or is there a perceived feeling of it
being real?

~~~
itcmcgrath
I got the chance to play with it a few weeks ago, along with several others in
our office.

1) It didn't make any of us sick, but I could see how it still would for
users, particular if they didn't try to move their body in roughly the same
direction as they would if it was IRL. If you have ever sat in a vehicle and
watched the outside via a mirror - it's like that.

2) For me, while it was immersive (we had several users scream at things and
dance around), it is still nothing like real vision. It still gives you one
real focal point (or lack of one at all), which immediately makes it different
from real life vision - particularly over long distances.

3) Unlikely. It would probably severely freak them out. Perhaps the rapidness
of it would leave enough confusion that they worked it out, but it is still
obvious it is computer generated graphics. See the focal issue above as an
example.

Having said that, it was amazingly fun and I wish I had one now. I'd love to
experiment with a 'Virtual Programming' environment. I'll leave what that
means as an exercise for the reader :)

~~~
cLeEOGPw
I wonder if it would be possible to detect from user eyes where he is focusing
and adjust the focus point accordingly. Would you think that would add another
level of immersion?

~~~
erikpukinskis
From what I've heard from the Oculus folks, it won't happen any time soon.
Your eyes move way too fast for a VR system to react to them.

It will happen eventually, but it seems like we need cameras/computer vision
systems/drawing pipelines with an order of magnitude lower latency for that to
actually work.

~~~
cma
It's pretty close to happening; they can already track your eyes fast enough
to render at higher resolution at the fovea area as your eyes move around:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/fove...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/redmond/projects/foveateddisplay/foveated_display_siggraphasia2012.mp4)

Also, your eyes are very slow to focus relative to your eye movements, so it
is probably doable now. It still will not feel like real life, just sort of
eye tracked depth-of-field. Your eyes will still be focused at infinity, but
near things will blur when you look in the distance, and vice versa.

------
jtms
Ordered! Being as this is a developer kit and I am a developer I guess I
better develop something for it :-)

Just super happy to be getting my hands on one... I think this thing is going
to change the world.

------
stickydink
No doubt it's going to be fantastic.

I used my DK1 to death, tried every demo I could. Palmer is a pretty frequent
poster on Reddit (they even got an early DK2-order heads up, before the e-mail
went out), and it became fairly obvious a big announcement was coming at GDC.
On that, offloaded my DK1 for $500 here in the UK just last week.

The positional tracking and the low-persistency display have what we've all
been screaming for, and IMO is what's made, most people I've seen, feel sick.

------
berberous
Maybe a stupid question, but: I'm not a game dev nor even a gamer, but I kind
of want to buy a dev kit. How well will it work with a rMBP, and are there
lots of fun demos already available?

~~~
varkson
Judging from my experience with the dev kit, even on my gaming rig there was a
little bit of trouble running some of the games fast enough.

Your machine needs to be capable of running your game at 1080p 60fps. Not sure
how the rMBP stacks up, but for most of the demos you should be able to play
on low.

I found the best demos were more about an experience then games. The novelty
wears off after a while, but I think when the real games come out, that's when
things are going to get interesting.

------
31reasons
Do you guys think the consumer version will launch this year or in 2015 ?

~~~
marknutter
All signs are pointing to 2015.

~~~
icpmacdo
2015 would make sense. People that really want it can get it now and regular
consumers will have there socks blown off when/if the gen 3 comes as a
consumer version.

~~~
31reasons
I hope so! I really want to get the Dev Kit but don't want to spend that much
money if consumer version is released in just couple of months after that.

------
incision
Generally not an early adopter, but after backing, using and being blown away
by the original kit this was an easy decision.

Interestingly, the checkout page reflected my Oculus Store Credit discount,
but the confirmation email I received did not.

Can't wait.

~~~
ezarowny
How much was your discount?

~~~
cma
kickstarter purchasers got around a $30 discount because it was supposed to
include Doom 3 BFG with VR support, which didn't end up being ready in time.

------
DonGateley
It's beyond commendable that Palmer et.al. seem to have no problem at all
employing people smarter than he is wherever they can be found and enticed
away from what they are doing. I've gotta wonder, though, if he's looking up
at everyone around him and seeing not only stellar talent but stellar ambition
and ego how he'll stay on top of it.

I've got a DK1 and had a whole lot of fun with it despite its laughable
resolution but as much as I want to play with the DK2 and follow application
development (which is all I'm capable of) I'm going to await the store shelf
version. I think. :-)

~~~
pjspycha
I don't know if you are praising Luckey or calling him just a figurehead.
Don't underestimate his intelligence, he is a really smart guy.

~~~
DonGateley
Praising, for sure. I was afraid my comment might be taken as an
underestimation. Not so, I'm just blown away by the extraordinarily
accomplished people he has brought on board and know that, smart though he may
be, many of them have accrued far more impressive technical track records.

His early work demonstrated potential with contemporary, off the shelf
technology along with a visionary template. His growing team is taking it so
much further. I consider that kind of talent acquisition and management a form
of genius.

I just expect it to be a really tough herd to manage in a collective fashion
and for it to get increasingly difficult as time makes room for the inevitable
ego expansions and the elbowing for power, influence and credit. But then it
also appears that he has placed some very alpha managers at the top of the
executive team.

------
Pxtl
My dream device:

Take the Razer Edge - a little 10" gaming tablet. Create a keyboard peripheral
that can be attached to the Edge at any angle - it can be used as a laptop or
a tablet, or:

Put the keyboard _next_ to the tablet, laid flat. Then emulate a mouse-input
with the touchscreen - a full 10" mouse-pad-like area for your fingers to
simulate a mouse - your middle-finger is the mouse-position and you can
l-click and r-click with your ring and index fingers a-la magic trackpad.
Boom, we've got a lapboard keyboard/mouse.

Then use the Rift with that. The ultimate _portable_ PC gaming experience.

------
techwatching
Dev Kit in the news:
[http://techwatching.com/page.php?i=22975](http://techwatching.com/page.php?i=22975)

vs Sony:
[http://techwatching.com/page.php?i=22780](http://techwatching.com/page.php?i=22780)

Oculus' focus is on latency; Sony's looks like its on packaging. At least Sony
has cut its lead time on cloning other's products, compared to Sony's "Move"
following the Wii.

~~~
good_guy
sanitize GET variable!

------
notproductive
This is one of those rare moments where reading hacker news is not just worth
while but makes me really really happy. I ordered mine!

------
jibberia
Does anybody have experience using the Rift with the Ibex window manager[1]
(esp. on OS X)? Or another similar solution? I'm very interested in using it
as a gigantic monitor!

[1] [http://hwahba.com/ibex/](http://hwahba.com/ibex/)

------
Crito
> _" you now connect the headset to your computer using a single cable that
> includes an HDMI and USB connection"_

My computer only has a mini-displayport port. Does anybody know if a
minidp->hdmi adapter would be suitable for this HDMI/USB pairing?

~~~
amelim
I was able to get the DK1 working using a hdmi -> regular displayport adapter
for my Thinkpad X220 on Ubuntu 13.04

------
pasbesoin
I don't know what the center of gravity is for that thing, but at a glance,
what about the idea of less (or less tight) strap, more counter-weight on the
back?

P.S. Although that would represent more mass to accelerate/decelerate with
head movements...

------
onmydesk
Oculus, pah!

[http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-illusions-
aims-f...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/02/technical-illusions-aims-for-low-
cost-augmented-reality-glasses-with-castar-interview/)

~~~
aidenn0
> Fortunately, Gabe [Newell, Valve's managing director] just let us have it
> all. It wasn’t exactly easy to get it past the lawyers, but we were able to
> negotiate, free and clear, all the technology

That was really nice. Not many companies would do that.

------
Kiro
Am I the only one who thinks the motion sickness is something good? Like, "it
feels so real that you get motion sickness" and that the new version feels
less realistic. I hope I'm wrong though!

~~~
shawabawa3
I'm pretty sure the motion sickness is caused by conflict between what you see
and how your brain knows your head is moving.

Even a slight delay between your head moving and eyes seeing a reaction can
cause nausea

------
JanezStupar
This is the moment I have been waiting for, for more than a year!!!

------
alexeisadeski3
Any info as to what the input lag on the latest dev kit is?

------
stesch
I guess a lot of people won't buy a VR system if they get forced to set up a
camera for it.

~~~
talmir
I guess they wont "need" to set up the camera. But it is recommended as it is
there to help with head-tracking. So your movements inside the 3d environment
will feel more natural with more degrees of freedom.

~~~
stesch
Too bad it's a camera by Facebook now. No, thanks.

------
tsenkov
Has anyone used it for coding?

~~~
grandmaster789
The DK1's resolution is way too low for reading large amounts of text, and I'm
somewhat skeptical that the DK2 is good enough to be used as a monitor
replacement.

Different applications that place less emphasis on text may be a better fit
for VR - think photoshop and autocad for a start.

~~~
pjspycha
This. There is an article by Michael Abrash that goes into good detail about
this:

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/when-it-comes-to-
resol...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/when-it-comes-to-resolution-
its-all-relative/)

quoted:

"Given which, the obvious question is: how high does VR resolution need to go
before it’s good enough? I don’t know what would be ideal, but getting to
parity with monitors in terms of pixel density seems like a reasonable target.
Given a 90-degree field of view in both directions, 4K-by-4K resolution would
be close to achieving that, and 8K-by-8K would exceed it."

------
morsch
Plus 55 USD shipping and about 80 USD VAT when shipping to Germany -- ouch.

~~~
TillE
Not too bad if you have any remotely serious plans of developing for it.

Personally, I'll be waiting for the second generation public release before
seeing how my badly unbalanced far-sighted vision handles the experience. I'm
happy to give them plenty of time to sort out all the little problems and
upgrade the hardware.

------
brador
What's this missing that the consumer version will have?

~~~
frooxie
From what I've heard, at least a higher resolution, 90 Hz display.

~~~
leoc
They'd indicated that they working on some kind of integrated audio as well.

------
alanpca
Anyone successful in using paypal checkout? Failing for me.

~~~
daheza
Failed for me as well, decided to just put the credit card in.

~~~
nrp
There were some issues in the order processing system earlier this morning,
but PayPal should be working now.

------
mrfusion
Any idea why they charge sales tax? (just curious)

~~~
yeukhon
Some companies cover sales tax for their customers or they do some trick to
avoid sales tax, some don't. Some states require sales tax over online order.
See
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512)

------
alexeisadeski3
Is DK2 shipping in July or consumer?

Not entirely clear.

~~~
MartinMcGirk
DK2 is expected to start shipping in July, no date has been set for consumer
release but people seem to expect a consumer product release date either at
the very end of this year or sometime in 2015. Any dates around the consumer
product release date is pure speculation at this point though.

------
hydralist
any particular languages that you should be good at to deal with this dev kit?
my dad codes a lot in c/c++, i want to buy him this as a surprise gift

~~~
metastew
If I recall correctly, a devkit comes with a limited license key (1 year?) for
Unity 3D. That was the case for DK1.

~~~
daheza
From the FAQ: [https://support.oculusvr.com/hc/en-
us/articles/201835987](https://support.oculusvr.com/hc/en-
us/articles/201835987)

Q: I received a Unity Pro Trial code with my purchase of the original Oculus
Rift Development Kit. Will I receive another code after my purchase of Oculus
Rift Development Kit 2?

A: There are no plans to offer a Unity Pro Trial code with Oculus Rift
Development Kit 2 purchases at this time.

------
notastartup
so how many % off is the sale?

~~~
freehunter
I can see the confusion of "on sale" versus "for sale", but they're both
commonly used terms to represent the ability to purchase.

------
bambam12897
So is selling stuff before it actually exists the new norm?

I get it when you have a kick-starter, but when you're already established
doesn't it come off as a bit shady and scummy?

Are they low on money and desperately need to cash-in asap? Are they worried
their product will be poorly reviewed b/c they aren't confident in the quality
- so they're trying to lock-in buyers?

EDIT: I'm just putting out the question "Why do they have a preorder system?
What's the rational behind it? Why just announce it when it's available?"

Preorders are a way of locking in buyers. You can trick a few people into
buying it, that may have otherwise not bought it when it was actually released
(maybe due to negative reviews, or a change in their financial position).
Except... why would you ever want to do that with developers? So why are they
trying to do that? I don't get it

~~~
deelowe
It's a dev kit. Things have always been done this way. Nintendo, Sony, and
Microsoft do it too. It just typically costs thousands of dollars and you have
to already have a business relationship with them. So you rarely hear about
it. Most PC guys hate this model, hence this...

Example:
[http://www.retrotrader.com/catalog/product_info.php?products...](http://www.retrotrader.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2667&osCsid=d9ba8afc8ac3dd9f1887ad92a83d2a1a)

If consumers want to be dumb and ignore everything that states very clearly
that this is a product for developers, that's their business.

