Brendan Iribe
Just a few blocks away from the Hollywood Bowl at the Dolby Theater (the same theater that hosted the 2014 Academy Awards) in Hollywood, California, developers and journalists poured into their seats for a keynote address hosted by Oculus CEO Bredan Iribe.
Most of the first half of the keynote was dedicated to the $100 Samsung Gear VR headset set to launch in November. If you're not up to speed, the Gear VR uses a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6+, S6 Edge, or Note 5 smartphone as the display, and doesn't require a PC. At that price point, it makes VR more affordable for the everyday user. That is, if they have a recent Samsung smart phone. Nexus, iPhone, and OnePlus users are out of luck. Developer models are availble now for $200.
On the bright side, the Gear VR will have Netflix and Twitch streaming. It may be easy to scoff at, but that's a lot of content that the platform is getting as of today.
When it came to the Rift, there wasn't as much groundbreaking information to blow your hair back. We already know that the Rift will ship Q1, and that Oculus Touch will ship Q2. We already know the Rift's recommended specs, and we built a rig around them.
The main consumer-facing news for the Rift is the "Oculus Ready PC" program. PCs that meet or exceed the Rift's recommended specs will be deemed Oculus Ready, and the company has already partnered with Intel and Nvidia to certify systems. Don't worry, Team Red fans, Oculus said it's talking to AMD, too.
The first prebuilt Oculus Ready systems will be offered next year by Asus, Dell, and Alienware (Dell again), Oculus said. Each of the PC offerings will have Intel CPUs paired with Nvidia graphics and will be priced under $1,000.
While there's a lot of good content being developed for the Rift—like the awesome Eve: Valkyrie—the Rift had been lacking a huge title that would draw millions. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, came on stage clad in t-shirt, jean,s and sandals. He announced, enthusiastically, that Minecraft would be coming to Rift.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey announces Minecraft for Oculus.
Eight new games were announced for Oculus Touch as well: Final Approach by Phaser Lock Interactive, Moon Strike by Big Dorks, Pulsar Arena by ZeroTransformation, Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs, I Expect You To Die by Schell Games, Nimbus Nights by Otherworld Interactive, Dead & Buried by Oculus Studios Team, and Surgeon Simulator by Bossa Studios.
The keynote also nodded to creatives, by releasing two key features. Oculus made the assets used for the demo VR short film Henry available to developers, so those interested in telling stories in VR could see how it can be done. Additionally, Oculus announced Mediium, touted as it's "paint program for VR." Medium allows users to sculpt three dimensional objects using Rift Touch. Those objects can then be exported to .obj files for 3D printing or to be used as game or as film assets. Medium is slated to be released in Q2 along with the Oculus Touch.
There was a lot more news on the developers side, since Connect is a developer's conference after all. Oculus touted the release of the 0.7SDK, which will offer direct driver mode to Nvidia and AMD hardware for lower-latency commands. Oculus said that it is aiming to have version 1.0 of the SDK out by December.
For the last half hour of the keynote, Iribe ceded the stage to Michael Abrash, Oculus's chief scientist. Abrash's talk centered around the challenges in using VR to fool all of your senses (he said he'd happily leave taste to some future developer) into thinking the virtual environment is real. Abrash didn't give any new product news, but instead was a talk aimed squarely at the developers in the room.
"We are VR pioneers," he said to the developers in the theater, invoking names like Steve Wozniak. "These are the good old days."
From maximumpc
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