GDC 14: Closing the rift in Oculus rift: Hands-on with the Dev Kit 2

here was one goal that I had this year in mind aside from Press Pause Radio’s modus operandi with indie games showings, one particular rodeo I was eagerly anticipating the return to at GDC 2014: the Oculus Rift.

The team that chased the idea of consumer-friendly virtual reality has been hard at work addressing all of the feedback they received within the last year. In response, they created a reworked build humbly titled “The Dev Kit 2.” I approached the seat where the upgraded goggles laid, strapped in, and completely and experienced an entirely new Oculus; the line between developmental stages and (forgive the pun) reality have now been blurred, and Sony will have some serious competition on their hands.

Eve Valkyrie, a first-person space flight shooter, was the game chosen to demo the kit, and it’s one that’s been optimized to utilize everything the Rift has to pump out. I sat there observing the launch deck around me and my cockpit as my craft was preparing launch; within seconds, I was able to grasp the enhancements of the Oculus’ performance, and was able to achieve what I could not with the headset before—I acclimated to it.

The angled field of perception has seen both a leap of focus and a leap of range, this factored into accentuating mechanics like the missile targeting within Valkyrie that’s completely dependent on head tracking. Aligning the reticle over the bogeys sighted was able to match a one-to-one sight that other shooters like Hawken for example, that haven’t utilized the amenities of the Rift quite like this. Where the once perceived cone that regulated what was able to be seen peripheral observation was practically non-existent, seamless transition between what I was able to see within scope and what I turned my head I saw.

These updates to the output made an astronomical bit of difference, the disorienting shift of visuals resolution blurring in and out of focus from head movement has been reduced to a scale of little or no occurrence, and the little was negligible at most. The process involved with translating momentum and the various speeds was now authentically captured; being active in my flight patterns and shifts in my inter-stellar dog-fight portrayed right kind artificial of Saccadic masking we experience in real-world sight, and the resulting immersion actually achieved an organic reflex to my brain where I shift my body in tune to the gameplay; I didn’t have to move around to see if I was buying into the gimmick right.

What’s more astounding is that the developers behind OCR have reached a level of fidelity in transmitting a connected real-time display that’s cognizant to your vision without scaling back the graphics engine. The details within the textures of the flight crafts to the fabric of my pilot gear were crisply displayed across every inch of the goggle’s field of view.

The Dev Kit 2 is available for preorder still off of their site, and while I should mention that these devices aren’t consumer ready yet, the team isn’t too far off between the increase in adoption from developers, both veteran and new, to the market friendly price of $350.00—the revolution that Oculus Rift has set out to Pioneer is no longer a goal, but an imminent eventuality.