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When the Oculus Rift first launched it was game-changing. It introduced the world to truly breathtaking (and occasionally nausea-inducing) virtual reality. But shortly after it came out the HTC Vive was launched, and the Oculus has been living in the shadows ever since. Being first meant the Oculus shipped in a state that wasn’t quite ready.
The Xbox controller that came in the box felt at odds with the immersive nature of the medium, and there were no sensors to gauge where you were in a room, so you were effectively limited to sitting in a chair while you used it.
There have been some good developments since its launch – the Touch controllers are much more comfortable and intuitive, and additional Oculus Sensors improve the size of its playspace.
Neither of these developments have been integrated into the Oculus package though, so each of them comes at an additional cost – not ideal when the headset itself has set you back £499 ($600, AU$859), and needs to be plugged into a powerful computer before you can do anything with it.
Oculus is aware of its shortcomings, though, and will hopefully be working to rectify these problems for any potential successor, an Oculus Rift 2 if you will.
Here you’ll find all the rumors currently doing the rounds, as well as all that we’re hoping the Oculus Rift 2 will be.
Check out our existing Oculus Rift review
Cut to the chase
What is it? A follow-up to the Oculus Rift VR headset
When is it out? No hardware has yet been announced
What will it cost? We’d hope that it’s less than the Oculus Rift
Release date
With no official announcement about the release of Oculus Rift 2 yet, it’s unclear when we’re going to see the follow-up to Facebook’s VR headset.
As we’re on the first generation for VR headsets there’s still speculation about which update model Oculus, and the industry in general, will follow – something like the phone model, with yearly updates, or something closer to the console model, with updates every six years or so.
One line of thinking puts the answer somewhere in between the two, with a possible 2019 launch of the Oculus Rift 2. Facebook revenue forecasts reported by IR.net show a slowing down of revenue from sales of the Oculus Rift in 2018, but then a massive uptick in 2019.
While there’s no mention of what causes this uptick, a release would make sense – although as this is just a revenue prediction from an analyst it’s a tenuous thing to base a prediction on, which is why we’re not calling it.
The original Oculus Rift was released in March 2016, so if the Rift 2 does come out in 2019 that could potentially see the start of a three-year cycle for VR headsets. We currently don’t know when the HTC Vive 2 is being released either, so it will be interesting to see how the two relate to each other.
Hand tracking
The sensation that arguably takes you out of the VR experience more than anything else is looking down and not seeing your body, and this is further compounded when you try to use your hands and they don’t appear – we’re so used to being able to physically interact with our surroundings in real life that having our hands suddenly taken away from us is seriously unsettling.
As previously mentioned, using the Xbox controller that comes in the box feels completely unnatural, and while the Touch controllers are a vast improvement, being able to use your own hands as controllers would be ideal. As sci-fi as the idea seems, there is a chance this could become a reality, as Oculus has been steadily buying up companies that specialize in hand-tracking technology since Facebook acquired the company in 2014.
Below is the Kickstarter video from one of these companies, Nimble…
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Source: techradar