Seems that Oculus’ Palmer Luckey is doing his best to answer as many questions as possible these days, especially after that ‘$349’ price fiasco for the Oculus Rift. In his latest Reddit AMA, Palmer explained what is considered Oculus Exclusive, the quality of the Oculus Rift’s displays, as well as how important the actual content is for the Oculus Rift.
As Palmer said, the Oculus Rift will feature the most accurate displays for a VR headset you’ll find in 2015.
“Our OLED displays and control over the viewing environment make it one of the most accurate displays you can get. In the near future, VR displays are going to surpass traditional displays in almost every way.”
Palmer then said that the displays are calibrated out of the box, meaning that PC gamers won’t have to manually calibrate them in order to get the best results, and that ever user will be getting the same image.
But what about a virtual desktop? That does sound like a cool idea, right? Well, although there is nothing officially announced for it yet, Palmer did say that there are several people building virtual desktop applications right now.
“There are several people building virtual desktop applications. The biggest limitation is resolution per degree and lack of 1:1 pixel mapping compared to traditional displays. You can do it, but applications like PS and Maya are better on a normal monitor for now.”
Palmer also wanted to make it crystal clear that the games/applications that are listed as exclusive to Oculus are not exclusive to the Oculus Rift. Other VR headsets will be able to run these games/applications (provided the companies making those headsets allow Oculus to support them). Oculus does not intent to lock its software to the Rift. However, these games/applications will be available exclusively from the Oculus Store.
“When we say “Oculus Exclusive”, that means exclusive to the Oculus Store, not exclusive to the Rift. We don’t make money off the Rift hardware, and don’t really have an incentive to lock our software to Rift. That is why the Oculus Store is also on Samsung’s Gear VR. Gear VR and the Rift are the first consumer VR devices coming out, but in the future, I expect there will be a wide range of hardware at a variety of price and quality points, much like the television and phone markets.”
As Palmer noted, Samsung’s GearVR headset supports Oculus’ software.
“Currently, the only headsets that run content from the Oculus Store are Samsung’s GearVR and the Rift. If and when other headsets come out in the future, and if and when the companies making those headsets allow us to support them, you might see wider support, but we have to focus on launching our own products right now.”
Last but not least, Palmer claimed that PC gamers will be able to download and run games from outside the Oculus store, and explained how important the actual content is for Oculus.
“Currently, a large one. Remember that a few years ago, we were the only players in the VR game. We had to make sure there was content for our device, and we have invested a lot of our resources into making that happen through both Oculus Studios and third parties. In the long run, though, I hope that the VR market is successful enough to not require huge content investment from us – if that happens, our risk goes down, and our profits go up. In the meanwhile, anything we make is going to go through our store. That way, the distribution cut also goes to us instead of someone else, which helps us pay our employees, give financial and development aid to game devs, and keep the price of our hardware as low as possible.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Sounds sensible, you put millions into making the thing I wouldn’t expect you to just flush your investment down the toilet. You gotta get something back.
Look VR headsets as graphics cards, there aren’t AMD or Nvidia exclusive games but they have different pricepoints, features etc. Exclusivity is cancer and completely unnecessary.
OLED displays do have almost zero motion blur last time i heard.. so this should be perfect for VR. No more headaches or puking i imagine?
Still that price.. as badly as i want one, it is super expensive. A monitor or a TV would be a better buy for gaming at this price point. Reduce it to 300-400 and we have a deal, heck.. even 450 is pushing it here. Thats just me however, im sure there will be people that will get it even if it was 1000 lol.
“A monitor or a TV would be a better buy for gaming at this price point”, absolutely not. Once you’ve played around in VR, going back to a regular screen is almost impossible, despite better image quality. VR is just on a whole different level; the next level, to be more precise.
People have been saying that about 3D for over a decade now too.
It really depends on the person. Personally I find 3D is horrifying, & VR still needs work. Until they really “get there”, Multi-Monitor still beats out anything else for me.
Just curious, have you tried a 21:9 monitor yet? I ask because a lot of folks say it’s better than multi-monitor due to the lack of bezels.
I’ve seen 21:9 Monitors at Tech Shows, & I got to sit in front of a 21:9 TV for an hour once. 10 years ago I’d have probably bought a 21:9 TV just to get rid of the black bars on so many movies, but today with the rise of IMAX, I can only see 21:9 getting even more sidelined. Plus you get black bars every time you watch actual TV.
For Gaming & Gaming alone, it’s great, though I found the curved ones work better for immersion. Unfortunately you can’t do much else with them though, like watching a movie on one screen & typing into a browser with the other 😛
That’s where bezel separation comes in useful, as the moronic Multi-Monitor software we’re still stranded with actually recognizes the bezels, & understands how to stop an image there. Well, 90% of the time at least. Windows Photo Viewer does take over everything in fullscreen mode, annoyingly enough.
Standard 3D kind of sucks because, though you see all those convexities and concavities, it only works at one angle. No wonder people found it unnatural and tiring, and virtually dumped this technology as a result.
VR is way cooler. Moving your head works like in real world, and we all are perfectly accustomed to this activity.
How about multi-monitor in VR!
Yeah, a VR display will yield more excitement, that’s true. Despite of that, it’s not even remotely as versatile as a classic monitor. It supports relatively few games, it is unsuitable for web surfing, it requires a strong PC. I’d rather buy a high-end monitor for that price.
I mean for me. I got a family and friends, and getting a huge TV would be both great for my friends/family and for working. 4k gives me a lot of space if i sit next to it, and i do sit pretty closely actually. Sure, for gaming VR might be really amazing, but as good as it is.. it will just cost too much when you add the motion controls too. I imagine it will cost like 750-800 with shipping and everything.
I don’t think i can spend that much money purely on a gaming part/gadget. For a bit more i can get a good laptop,good phone, good TV,good 144hz monitor,best video card and the list goes on and on. Not that i will buy any of those great things. The day i get the best card, the best phone or whatever is the day i lost my mind. Usually once i buy something top of the line, on the next day they announce a price drop, and a brand new better phone/card.
Anyways. It just cost too much imho(the RIft), but obviously it will come down in price eventually, then i shall buy one! I think i want the Vive, and that will even cost more than the Rift.
Just giving my opinion, i know people that spend 500 $ on video cards and 2000 on laptops. Heck a friend of mine just got that new G-sync monitor from Asus for 800.
Personally, I won’t be investing in a headset until it has a variable refresh rate display (e.g. G-Sync/FreeSync). Considering how powerful of a PC you need for VR and how high the frame rate has to be, I imagine most people will be dropping frames a good amount; tearing/stuttering is probably a nightmare on a display that’s inches from your face.
You cannot have variable framerate in VR.
Wow, adding G-Sync will make the sets crazy expensive. Hot damn. I don’t even wanna imagine the cost. I wonder if they will ever think about adding things like that :O
Yeah, “Oculus Exclusive” isn’t as scary as it was anticipated to be. The best info from this news.
$100 exclusives sounds right.
I’m thrilled to hear that they’re not trying to lock software to their headset exclusively. It’s already a pain in the ass that we have variable refresh rate displays locked behind Nvidia/AMD and I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it’d be with several of these headsets on the market. The only time this’ll be a problem is Playstation VR exclusive games, and even that shouldn’t be much of an issue if it flops as spectacularly as I think/hope it will.
This is extremely good news If I decide to cancel my pre-order for a VIve later on.
you wont say that if the games are $100 now will you?
No I wouldnt, so its a good job they arent isnt it…
vr exclusive games you know your going to pay more for
They are already priced the same as regular games on the Oculus store so no. Plamer Lucky also said in one of the AMA’s that they are the same as a regular game.
just like the head set is in the same ball park as $350 price they said a while ago.
The headset is the latest and potentially greatest innovation in hardware while video games are software -big difference.
I’m not buying the Occulus until we see how “Occulus Exclusive” plays out in practice. Sounds like Facebook is working on injecting console exclusivity cancer on top of its own brand of Facebook cancer.
To people about to say “You didn’t read the article. He said that wasn’t the case.” Yep. Don’t believe it.
That’s what it sounded like, now it looks like some uplay-tier garbage they’ll try to force on games, not good news, but not as bad. I’m still very skeptical about the Facebook Rift and it’s very low on my list.
yep id rather get a ps4 and ps4 vr instead it would still be cheaper..lol
Not that the PS4 will be able to provide a decent VR experience, remember that they mostly show a VR enviroment with a screen in it where the game was actually played, pretty pathetic.
$100 a game is my bet
cant wait for valve vr enough said..lol
Probably really similar, as expensive etc.
valve wont lie about price like the Oculus rift did.i bet vr games if they charge $600 for the rift the games are $100 a piece.i bet they are.
Valve never stated a pricepoint so they really can’t ”lie”. But why would game prices suddenly go up that much for VR? Eve valkyrie is even free with the headset and many games will not be exclusive to VR.
yes if you say its in the ball park of $350 the sell it at $600 its was a lie.use some common sense.
Read my comment again, valve hasn’t stated a price point. Oculus did and it wasn’t even close.
What if the games are $100?
no one will buy