News Jun 12, 2015 09:51 AM EDT

Oculus VR unveils consumer version of Oculus Rift headset

By Staff Writer

Oculus on Thursday unveiled its virtual reality headset, Rift, at a press event in San Francisco. The Rift, which is said to bring about a vast change in how you play your games today, will be shipped with wireless Xbox One controller. The Oculus Rift will be available to consumer by first quarter of 2016. 

The company is yet to reveal the cost of the virtual reality headset. However, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has assured game enthusiasts that the Rift will be priced at an affordable range.

According to TechCrunch, The Rift will work on Microsoft's Xbox One games and Windows10. 

Oculus was acquired by Facebook Inc back in 2014, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees virtual reality as the next major computing platform.

"Oculus Rift is going to deliver the magic of presence," said Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe. He added "This is going to change everything." 

The Oculus Rift comes with a small camera, which will be seated on a stand that will track your head movement. The virtual reality headset is light, comes with black housing case which wraps two OLED screen and removal headphones. People who wear glasses can also use the Rift; it also makes it possible for users to change distance between the eye lenses according to their face type.

Next week, at the Xbox E3 show, the company will allow people to tryout its virtual reality headset. Also Oculus' will show off prototype of its Oculus Touch handheld controllers. The announcement made about the controller was the biggest news, as Oculus never had their own controller, which is why gamers had to buy third-party controllers. 

With the controller, Oculus games like EVE Valkyrie can be played. The company has also called on small game developers to create games which can be played on Rift. Oculus is working with EVE's CCP Games, Gunfire Games, and Insomniac to create games for Oculus Rift.

Oculus head of developer strategy Anna Sweet said to accelerate the game development program, Oculus will invest $10 million, reported by Variety.

With the handheld motion sensor, people can wave, point and interact with virtual objects, said Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.

After the launch of the Rift, the Oculus Touch will be sold separately.

Oculus is set to ship its first product, but Zuckerberg's vision of Oculus making virtual reality into mainstream computing platform looks a distant goal. 

I think that's going to happen but it will just take time, Iribe told Quartz.


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