Rift.

Games are something I’m really passionate about and even more than playing games I’m

passionate about bringing games to the next level.

What we’re doing at Oculus is trying to create the world’s best virtual reality

headset designed very specifically for gaming.

Where this all started was in my parent’s garage in Long Beach, California. And I was

interested stereoscopic displays, I was interested in head mounts, and the problem was there

was nothing that gave me the experience I wanted, the Matrix, where I could plugin and

actually be in the game. And I was sure that somewhere out there was something I could

buy, and the reality is there’s nothing.

I set out to change that with the Oculus Rift.

The magic that sets the Rift apart is immersive stereoscopic 3d rendering, a massive field

of view, and ultra-low latency head tracking.

John Carmack is one of the best developers in the world. DOOM, Quake, Commander Keen...

Carmack saw some of my work, that’s originally when he reached out

to me.

We’re getting involved in Oculus now because we see an incredible opportunity for game

developers to experience something new.

The Rift is taking years of virtual reality research and putting it into a package that

everyone can use.

So I recently had a chance in person to check out the Oculus headset and needless to say,

I’m a believer. Even as a prototype, what I saw was extremely promising we’re extremely

excited here at Epic Games to get the Unreal Engine integrated with Oculus and I think

the possibilities for the games are extremely exciting and I’m thrilled for the whole

project.

Well I gotta say I just tried the Oculus prototype and it was such an immersive, amazing experience,

that we pretty quickly, like within an hour, decided to get behind this project.

I got to meet Palmer Luckey and try out the Oculus and I have to say it was a very exciting

moment. Could be the beginning of a whole new industry that leads us eventually to having

true augmentation, all the time, every place. I’m really looking forward to having a chance

to program with it and to see what we can do.

It looks incredibly exciting. If anyone is going to tackle these set hard problems, we

think that Palmer is going to do it. We’d strongly encourage you to support this Kickstarter.

In the past I’ve looked at these headsets and head mounted displays, and this was the

first one that I was truly impressed with.

There’s a lot of great head mounted displays out there, but they’re all really, really

expensive, up to over $100,000. What the Rift does, is that it makes a high end virtual

reality experience available to the average gamer.

So most consumer head mounted displays have a field of view of about 30 to 40 degrees.

You see a really small image way off in the distance and it doesn’t make you feel like

you’re there. With the Oculus Rift, you get a diagonal field of view of 110 degrees.

That means you’re not looking at a screen anymore, you actually feel like you’re inside

of the world.

You don’t see the screen when you put it on your eyes, and that just changes the whole

ball game.

One of the biggest problems with virtual reality up to this point is latency. The benefit of

the Rift is that it’s designed to really, really low latency. So rather than looking

like this, and you turn your head and then it follows; it actually follows with your

view no matter what you do.

There are two reasons why this is possible now with Oculus is that the displays are very

high density and very lightweight and are very small and the sensors that sense your

head position and your turning in your virtual environment are also very low cost.

The reason we’re using Kickstarter is so that we can get these dev kits into the hands

of developers as fast as possible. That way they can try it for themselves, and start

integrating support into their games and engines.

We really need developer feedback so we can make the consumer version even more incredible

than it already is

A great SDK is about a great developer experience where they get a really functional piece of

software which is efficient and scales with their needs.

So for indie developers, doing this Kickstarter, really getting it out there early not waiting

until we have a consumer version, allows them to get started as well.

If you want to be one of the first to try the Rift, grab a dev kit. We’ll provide

access to our SDK, Unreal and Unity engine integrations and DOOM 3 BFG Edition, the first

Oculus-ready game.

So join the revolution, make a pledge, and help us change gaming forever.