One Big Step for Virtual Reality

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A man in awe while using Oculus Rift (www.static.oculus.com).

Back in the ‘80s, many expected that, by 2016, we would have flying cars, robots, and virtual reality. We don’t have the first two, but virtual reality has now come into existence. Oculus Rift is the newest release in virtual reality technology and will officially be released in April of this year.

Oculus Rift costs a whopping $599, but it does include the Oculus Rift console, a camera designed to track movement, an Xbox One controller, the Oculus Touch remote, and two games, Eve Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale. Oculus Rift will run on the Xbox One without any issues, but on a PC, it’s a little bit more difficult. To run Oculus Rift on a PC costs a lot of money, requiring at least a $200 graphics card, a $200 processor, and 8 gigabytes of RAM.

Pre-orders opened on January 6 and are supposed to start shipping on March 28, but some orders have been pushed back to the end of June due to such high demand.

Oculus Rift itself is a new, fantastic piece of technology. The Oculus has one 2,160×1200 OLED screen split across both eyes, a pair of built in headphones, a black fabric wrapped frame, and will be designed to let users with glasses use the Oculus without any problems.

Oculus Rift is heavy but it is definitely smaller than older virtual reality headsets. Oculus Rift isn’t perfect but it’s the newest, biggest step in virtual reality technology.