Oculus

$600 USD for the Oculus Rift?  You are not in a virtual reality, but the real world.  Yes, you read right; you will have to take a second mortgage or sell your kidney to see a virtual character in 360, which has his.

I had a chance to try the Gear VR with a Samsung Note 4 few months ago and I was amazed.  The only thing I didn’t like was the pixels that were visible. Other than that, WOW.  Now that the Gear is at $99, why would you pay $600 to get into the VR?  Virtual interaction!

For the short term, the Gear VR will be for mobile users to watch content like movies or concerts, but will be limited with real-time interaction contents by the power of the mobile device.  As oppose, your PC will be able to provide interaction in real-time.

For your computer to draw nice graphics as you interact with your head moving in every direction, two things are important.  The first is the frame per second (FPS) to follow the refresh rate. The other is a lag-free input.  This is why you will want to have a powerful PC and buy the Oculus Rift.

Higher are the FPS, better it is.  It gives you smoother and sharper pictures.  The refresh rate of the Oculus Rift is 90hz and to avoid ghosting, your FPS needs to follow at 90FPS.  To make comparison, look at an LCD TV at 60hz versus one at 240hz.  You won’t go back to a 60hz for gaming.  90hz is not perfect, but it will improve with upcoming versions.  Same with the resolution, which is 1080×1200 per eye.  Of course we would like to see 4K right away so we don’t focus on the pixels, but as I said, it’s the first release for customers and there will be a Rift 2,3 and 4.

Input is no longer only your controller, keyboard or mouse while; it’s now all the sensors on your head.  So yes, for a lag-free experience, you want a good PC (or a good iMac with Bootcamp).

As many other people that ordered the VR glasses for reviews or just because they like or think they will like the virtual reality, I was disappointed to see that the shipment went from March to June 2016.  But I was excited for one reason and you should also be;  more Rift that sells means more developers to release contents.

What is the requirement  :

graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
memory: 8GB+ RAM
output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

The Oculus rift :

Display : OLED
Resolution : 2160 x 1200
Refresh Rate : 90Hz
Field of view : 110 degrees
Audio : Built-in audio and Built-in mic
Controllers: Xbox One controller and Oculus Touch

Conclusion

All new product comes at a price and I think we won’t regret our “real” first virtual experience!

We think that the Oculus Rift has the WINGS to fly!