Finally... Virtual Reality is Coming to a Head Near You

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A screen grab from 1992’s Lawnmower Man

This week’s Games Developers Conference in San Francisco saw the introduction of the Oculus Rift DK2, a second-generation developers’ kit for a virtual reality headset – a device that Irvine, CA-based Oculus VR is positioning to become the next great consumer electronics craze.

The development of virtual reality (VR) has been stumbling along since the introduction of the first headset goggle/motion-tracking gauntlet systems in the late 1980s, until recently remaining largely in the realm of science fiction. But Oculus VR is hustling virtual reality hardware toward consumer-market reality at a meteoric pace common to that target industry – where subsequent product releases are measured over months, not years. Since its introduction in March of 2013, they’ve shipped an industry record near-40,000 units of their original Oculus Rift Developers Kits, at an eye-popping price of only $300 apiece.

20 year-old Palmer Luckey is the man behind Oculus VR. “I had always dreamed of being able to play video games using VR technology,” says Luckey. “(But) even in the professional market, where headsets cost many tens of thousands of dollars, they weren’t even close to the performance I wanted. So I started tinkering in my garage, hoping that I could make something better. I wanted something that made it feel like you were inside of the game, not just looking at a screen strapped to your head.”

In June of 2012, Luckey took his sixth prototype – then dubbed “Oculus” – to the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, and there loaned it to John Carmack, an American video game programmer known for his innovations in 3-D graphics. Carmack ran a demo of his game, Doom 3, with the Oculus, demonstrating it to the press. Per Luckey, the response was “massive.” The resulting Kickstarter campaign raised $2.6 million dollars – over 10 times what Luckey had asked for. Oculus VR has since raised another $16 million, and Carmack is now the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

The trick with developing a satisfying VR experience has been to affordably minimize lag between head movement and video image, and to obtain a wide field of view. Oculus VR product lead Joseph Chen candidly acknowledges competition in the smartphone market as driving the company’s breakneck breakthroughs. “Those guys are tearing each other apart trying to get the next best thing,” says Chen. “That has basically driven the costs down to where they’re affordable: displays and sensors that used to be hundreds of dollars now cost pennies.”

Another hurdle has been the side effects of disorientation and nausea common to new users. But as Luckey points out, “The device itself is not always the root cause. Even if the hardware perfectly replicates how humans view reality, there will always be situations that make users feel poorly. VR does not change the fact that a roller coaster or fighter jet ride are liable to make some people feel ill. But one positive thing our user testing shows is that even people who suffer side effects tend to acclimate themselves over time; people who use the Rift on a regular basis are much less likely to have problems.”

Luckey accounts the problem of technology integration as his greatest outstanding challenge. “With some technologies, a single advance is enough to build a product on. VR requires many complex technologies to work together flawlessly, and if you don’t get it right, everything falls apart and the immersion is lost.” More than any single factor, this is perhaps what’s kept Luckey’s team from announcing a firm release date for the Oculus Rift.

In the meantime, Rift test subjects can attest to the reality of the Oculus product experience – at least if this compilation video is any indication:

So to all you Tron and Lawmower Man fans, your day may be right around the corner. Back to the Future Part II devotees will have to wait, though. Unfortunately, despite the high hopes of those duped by the recent elaborately-crafted and convincing viral video below, Marty McFly’s hoverboard is still in the sci-fi stage.

But maybe Palmer Luckey’s got some other prototypes lying around his garage.