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Oculus VR raises $75M

288 points by dm8 13y ago

jennichen 13y ago
I hope this really takes off. RIP Andrew Reisse (http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/andrew-reisse-in-memoriam/ http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/andrew-reisse-in-memoriam/)
thenmar 13y ago
After only a couple minutes with the low resolution dev kit, I was sold. I can't wait for this to hit the consumer market.
- brotchie 13y ago
  A friend of mine was an early Kickstarter backer and brought his Rift around to my place try out with a few friends. We tried out Half-Life 2 and as soon as I put the Visor + headphones on I was blown away. My brain's "location neurons" were 100% fooled into thinking I was in the HL2 world. Within a few seconds I had lost the "background" feeling of being in a small room, and accepted I was in a large, open-aired train station (HL2 intro). Unbelievable. The early Oculus DevKit certainly has some issues: no translational tracking gives me strong motion sickness, high persistence display makes the scene blur as I move my head, low resolution produces screen door effect. Regardless of these downsides, after 10-15 seconds of use I accepted that VR will be the "next big thing."
  - geoffschmidt 13y ago
    I was really skeptical about Oculus, but I had a chance to try out a demo by Amir Hirsh that combined an Oculus with simple Kinect-based limb tracking. I could look down and see my own hands and they really felt like my hands. I have no idea how this is going to work in practice (are we going to have to play games in large empty warehouses) but it is magical in a way that is hard to describe if you haven't had a chance to try it.
    - Anonymous823 13y ago
      > are we going to have to play games in large empty warehouses Large hamster ball on rollers. Infinite space to walk or run. Also, you don't need to track their motion or feet, you just feed in the data from the rollers, and you know how fast their character is walking or running, and in what direction.
      - jaxomlotus 13y ago
        Omni virtuix is a pretty good approach that doesn't require a hamster wheel. http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/
        tempestn 13y ago
        Yes! This stuff is incredibly exciting. With Omni + Kinect + OR, we're starting to get close to Otherland-style VR. It's going to be interesting.
      - Sikul 13y ago
        I saw a large hamster ball with oculus VR at IndieCade in Los Angeles earlier this year.
    - amirhirsch 13y ago
      The game was Sushi Warrior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBx3MIAaXTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBx3MIAaXTA A rar of the game is here, req kinect sdk installation + oculus rift. http://motionos.com/sw2.rar http://motionos.com/sw2.rar
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    I haven't tried it with that game, but I heard some very positive comments on people using it with Euro Truck Simulator 2 (already pretty realistic by itself on a screen). Occulus Rift is going to be awesome for all these games where you are supposed to be sitting in a cockpit. For FPS, not so much (unless you have a giant hamster ball and tons of sensors as someone else mentioned).
- AJ007 13y ago
  Emphasis on the couple of minutes, about how long a normal person can handle the Oculus being feeling nauseous. I had a friend lay flat on the floor for half an hour after a level of Quake 2. Brings back fond memories of my first days playing Wolfenstein 3D and experiencing motion sickness..
  - thenmar 13y ago
    I'm part of the happy few who have never gotten motion sickness from anything!
djkz 13y ago
I've used the low res dev kit and the immersion it provides it great. I believe this will have a ton of applications from VR conferencing to going to virtual concerts to even spectating sports with an isometric view of the field instead of the 2d projection.
flyinglizard 13y ago
I'm fascinated by the A16Z investment strategy. It looks like they will put in any kind of money into companies deemed as winners (GitHub, Oculus), with some small investments thrown in here and there just so they're still considered a VC and not a private equity fund of sorts. I think it's going to work very well for them in the long term, and possibly change the investment landscape for future VC funds. Either you go huge and buy a stake in the winners at all costs, or you go wide and super early like YC. It does leave a large seed/series A financing gap someone will need to close, and I suspect their returns won't be as stellar as those in the extreme ends of companies financing.
- cdixon 13y ago
  We invested in Oculus after we saw a demo of the new prototype. For me, it was up there with the first time I saw Apple II, Mac, the web, Google, iPhone etc.
  - adventured 13y ago
    At first I glanced over the "new" in there. Now I'm jealous.
  - flyinglizard 13y ago
    I have no doubt about Oculus - I just wonder how the startup landscape will look if your model proves successful and other large VCs begin implementing it, instead of their more traditional returns model. Being that only the largest, most successful funds can partake in this huge money game, this may significantly reduce the overall market capital available for Series A investment and create an even narrower funnel.
    - deleted 13y ago
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    - pmarca 13y ago
      I'd argue you're actually seeing the emergence of a "new series A"/"first money in" investor category. Often angel investors who raise seed funds or small venture funds fit in this category. These include (but not limited to) Mike Maples/Floodgate, Aydin Senkut/Felicis, Hunter Walk/Homebrew, Aileen Lee/Cowboy, Michael Deering/Harrison, and several others. Also see Heavybit for a recent category-specific innovation. Also Union Square, Foundry, Upfront (Mark Suster) do a lot of this. I think there may be more high quality investors at the early Series A tier than ever before, but many of them are new.
bprater 13y ago
John Carmack coming in as CTO probably added $25M to that figure. Regardless, Oculus's concept is the future of gaming -- anything that can trick the brain so substantially is going to be a winner.
- mathattack 13y ago
  At least that. And much more on the valuation. These are bets on teams, and with leading (bleeding?) edge technology, the CTO is the most important person in the room.
julianpye 13y ago
As a 3D-fan and owner of so many different displays since the VR-32, this one really makes me excited. They got that the studios are not the king of content, but the games engines are. Field of view trumps resolution when it comes to immersion and most other companies always tried to go for something that was focused on movies. I hope that this investment leads many companies to create true immersive experiences and lets 3D games break out of the 1st person shooter trap.
- pmarca 13y ago
  Part of our bet is that we are not that far away from not having to trade off field of view vs resolution.
  - julianpye 13y ago
    In the long run, both will come together, as we have seen with the development of Retina displays on Ipads. In the short term, your eyes will never be fooled by the current levels (even retina) of resolution at the yellow spot of your eyes, but your brain will always respond to field of view which does not need highest resolution.
cup 13y ago
Oculus Rift is a paradigm shift not just for computer gaming but for a host of other industrial and technical services. I for one can't wait to incorporate the oculus rift when preforming invasive experiments on animals using an endoscope.
- deleted 13y ago
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anakanemison 13y ago
Pushing pixels to a high resolution display, under tight latency constraints, is going to stress even today's high-end systems. If they succeed at appealing to the mass market, I bet there will be a significant effect on the rate of system upgrades.
- inDigiNeous 13y ago
  Just got my devkit and this was the first thing I noticed, I started to wish my 3 year old MacBook Pro had a faster GPU. First time in a really long time that I actually had the urge to update my system, haven't felt something like that since the 486/Pentium days.
- pmarca 13y ago
  I think there's the potential for a renaissance of super-high-end gaming-class PCs for sure. As well as a reason to radically enhance the 3D graphics computational power of smartphones and tablets.
deleted 13y ago
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staunch 13y ago
My only fear is the Oculus management/investors. They could be great, but they seem not so great so far. An investor took over as CEO already and started calling himself a co-founder? That's a huge red flag. The real founder Palmer Luckey seems like the prototypical hacker-founder. Naive and noobish maybe but probably less so than most and obviously super passionate. I wonder if John Carmack wouldn't be better off just launching a competitor to Oculus. Wherever he goes the magic will follow, and it'd be nice if he was the ultimate boss like he was at id Software. I'd just really hate for him to get bogged down in a bad environment, kind of the way Linus did with Transmeta, and be forced to resign at some point and start over after wasting years of productivity. The A16Z guys can probably help avoid any massive stupidity, so that's a nice benefit to this investment.
- untog 13y ago
  A "prototypical hacker-founder" may well need someone to come in and help with the business stuff. Scaling a hardware business is a lot different to a software one. And I'm not convinced Carmack likes being in charge. He might well he happy if he can just hack.
  - ENGNR 13y ago
    It's actually an important question, where should your smartest and most creative employee go; CEO or CTO? I think for a lot of companies (is tech startups) CTO would be the right answer. So long as the CEO stays the hell out of the way
  - druidsbane 13y ago
    Don't forget their COO is Laird Malamed who helped with the Guitar Hero hardware. They have already been able to do the right thing with their initial batches and it looks like this is the right step forward for mass-producing the hardware for the consumer version.
- deleted 13y ago
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- angersock 13y ago
everettForth 13y ago
I'm ready to ditch my LCD at work and use this. I hope the higher resolution version is good enough to code on. I'm happy to see that there are already some window managers: http://hwahba.com/ibex/ http://hwahba.com/ibex/
- malandrew 13y ago
  The higher resolution one is all I'm waiting for before I pull the trigger and buy one. I want to use this when I'm in bed. My girlfriend will be able to sleep without the light from the computer screen bothering her. I'll probably also be able to switch to using my Kinesis Advantage keyboard as well since I will no longer be married to the laptop because of the screen.
  - bdickason 13y ago
    I have the developer prototype and I am hugely excited for the short term gaming and entertainment potential. However, as a working device, something needs to be solved to reduce eye strain. After using it for 5-10 minutes, I feel like I've been in A Clockwork Orange. My eyes are spread wide and incredibly tired after that short period of time. Until you try it, it's hard to explain how close the lenses are to your eyeballs. I accidentally poked my wife in the eye by adjusting the distance improperly. I'm all for the idea of something like this for long term work, but I believe a different approach will need to be taken, or a significant amount of work needs to be done to make it sustainable for 2-4 hour long shifts.
- deletes 13y ago
  I'm not sure what kind of effect that might have on the eyes. Tempted to try it but I'm scared that after a couple of months I would get +5 glasses.
- kayoone 13y ago
  i doubt its really designed for non stop use. It might not weigh much, but for hours on end it will strain your neck and eyes i would think.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
To get an idea of the raw power of the Oculus, check out this guy playing a horror game with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OrANjgeYe0#t=3m55s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OrANjgeYe0#t=3m55s (Kind of loud. But be sure not to miss his awesome reaction at 4m20s.) I have the original devkit, and it's amazing. You can even interface it with Google Street View. There's nothing like typing in "Eiffel Tower," tilting your head back, and staring up in awe. In fact, I'd say no one here has experienced Street View until you've seen it with an Occulus. It simply cannot be described how incredible it is to look around with your head instead of dragging your mouse! EDIT: Okay, if you're unhappy with that particular video, then this one might be more to your liking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4#t=15m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4#t=15m30s EDIT2: Wow, that Dreadhalls game is terrifying. You actually don't even need an Oculus to get the full effect, just headphones. https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3404 https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3... (Windows / Mac)
- RobotCaleb 13y ago
  To be fair, that guy is pretty widely known as being an idiot.
  - deleted 13y ago
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- iamshs 13y ago
  ... I would not be able to bear someone playing a game like that in the house. It will be obnoxious. (I am aware can be used outside gaming environment.)
- enneff 13y ago
  His "awesome reaction" is the same reaction he has made hundreds of times to various scenarios in many games. It's his schtick. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the Oculus device. (Although I do hear that they are fantastic.)
  - 13y ago
mentos 13y ago
I really think we're moving into a VR/Augmented reality renaissance. If you've got 10 minutes to thumb through this 20 minute video this shows off whats possible with augmented reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA If we can get that into a pair of sunglasses in the next 10-20 years I'm pretty sure we'll be living in a wildly different world than we are today
- kayoone 13y ago
  wow, thats really impressive and from a technical standpoint its not even that hard, just clever combination of existing technologies.
- tempestn 13y ago
  There was an interesting comment on that youtube video too. (Shocking, I know.) When watching content for the OR on a monitor, you can actually see it in 3D by crossing your eyes so that the two pictures overlap. It's a bit taxing and obviously... rather less immersive than the Rift, but it does work and is fun for a few seconds. Edit: experimenting with it a bit, I've found an easy way to do it is to full screen and sit a good ways back from the screen. (I went about 5' from my 27" monitor.) Then hold your hands up in a sort of window about a foot in front of your face. The idea is that looking through a window between your hands, each eye can only see the picture opposite it. Not seeing the other picture makes it a lot easier to focus on the composite one.
- patrickk 13y ago
  That's an amazing demo. I thought the multi-monitor simulation setup was very impressive, you can imagine all kinds of non-gaming applications for this! Any environment where you need to be utterly focused and shut off from distractions (turning a potential negative of VR into a massive plus), with multiple monitors (e.g. Trading floors in wall street, coders) would benefit hugely from this. The company could make an absolute fortune solely from selling to wall street, and replacing traders 2,3,4+ screens with a single VR headset.
benched 13y ago
Crowds are so funny. I swear there was one HN thread recently where the majority of comments declared the Oculus a mere substitute for ipecac syrup. In this thread, it's the coming of the New Earth. As someone who luckily doesn't experience motion sickness at all, is greatly looking forward to the hi-res Oculus, and frankly to a time when I can spend more time in VR than not, the optimism in this thread makes me happy.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Have you tried the Oculus? I think Oculus is amazing, but I've never really been motion sick until I tried Oculus. Reading books in the backseat of a car driving through winding mountains, no problem. 5 minutes in Oculus Rift and I want to vomit. It definitely depends on the game/demo though, so it may just be a matter of very careful game design. Or maybe reducing latency will help.
  - anxman 13y ago
    Like you, I have a strong stomach but I also couldn't use the Oculus Rift past 15 minutes before wanting to puke. I wonder if the new prototypes solve this problem.
    - pmarca 13y ago
      I'm personally very sensitive to this, and the new version they're working on seems to have completely solved the problem as far as I can tell.
  - nabeel 13y ago
    i've spent well over an hour in the latest prototype with no sickness, and in the dev units I can last 5 minutes tops.
    - BobCat 13y ago
      Have you tried castAR? Thousands of people have tried it and no one got motion sick.
ivarious 13y ago
I wonder what does this mean to the Kickstarter backers. Sure, by legal means they donate to the cause rather than investing in it, but I think it's not really fair if they get nothing from this VC funds.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  My understanding is that the kickstarter was for development kits, so, a significant portion of the backers were developers. Isn't this investment by A16Z the most incredible reward possible for these developers who've put time and energy learning the platform and technology? At the very least, Oculus is going to be a major player in this field, if not the major player for the next couple years, so the opportunities for their products, and skills, just took a big leap today.
tmslnz 13y ago
Considering the incredible effectiveness of the current low-res dev kit, give it 3 years or so and the Rift will be second nature to most: 2 or 4k display, wireless, better optics, lighter, even lower latency, etc. If I had the money to invest I'd do it in a whim.
laichzeit0 13y ago
Please support ordering with Bitcoin as a payment method.
- laichzeit0 13y ago
  Amazing how this gets downvoted. I was on the order page thinking "man it would be so awesome if I could just send them Bitcoin for this instead of having to link in my new credit card to PayPal". Yesterday Coinbase gets $25 million in funding supposedly able to make this trivial for merchants and vendors. Today another startup gets funding. HN supposedly the startup community has great animosity towards the one and not the other. Hilarious.
rl3 13y ago
I was worried that the 4K Oculus Rift wouldn't see the light of day in consumer markets. http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852496/oculus-rift-4k-display-in-the-works http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852496/oculus-rift-4k-dis... Now with John Carmack fully committed, and this massive round of funding, 4K has to be all but certain. I imagine the prospects for 8K and 12K in the distant future are better now as well. http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/oculus-ceo-teases-future-oculus-rift-features-including-support-for-8k-and-beyond-1199232 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/oculus-ceo-teases-futur...
- Segmentation 13y ago
  I think 4K will be the minimum necessary to have a real VR experience. I mentioned it in another comment: suspension of disbelief is everything, but currently my eyes focus too keenly on the scanlines and my immersion is ruined. It doesn't help that all my consumer devices have retina-like quality, so I'm used to nearly flawless clarity in my displays. When I'm using the 720p Oculus Rift it just bugs me too much. 1080p will be better, but still not great.
dharma1 13y ago
is it worth buying the dev model now or wait for the consumer model (if it really is months away, like they say?)
- druidsbane 13y ago
  Buy both if you're a developer. If you're a consumer and have money to burn then buy both, otherwise wait for the 2nd dev kit/consumer version. As a developer it is one of the most exciting platforms to work on and watch your creations come to life.
dharma1 13y ago
I'm interested in using Oculus Rift for telepresence (FPV RC vehicles, teleconferencing) purposes - anyone got any experience with this, or recommendations for stereo 1080p camera solutions?

288 points by dm8 13y ago

I hope this really takes off. RIP Andrew Reisse (http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/andrew-reisse-in-memoriam/ http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/andrew-reisse-in-memoriam/)

thenmar 13y ago

After only a couple minutes with the low resolution dev kit, I was sold. I can't wait for this to hit the consumer market.

brotchie 13y ago
A friend of mine was an early Kickstarter backer and brought his Rift around to my place try out with a few friends. We tried out Half-Life 2 and as soon as I put the Visor + headphones on I was blown away. My brain's "location neurons" were 100% fooled into thinking I was in the HL2 world. Within a few seconds I had lost the "background" feeling of being in a small room, and accepted I was in a large, open-aired train station (HL2 intro). Unbelievable. The early Oculus DevKit certainly has some issues: no translational tracking gives me strong motion sickness, high persistence display makes the scene blur as I move my head, low resolution produces screen door effect. Regardless of these downsides, after 10-15 seconds of use I accepted that VR will be the "next big thing."
- geoffschmidt 13y ago
  I was really skeptical about Oculus, but I had a chance to try out a demo by Amir Hirsh that combined an Oculus with simple Kinect-based limb tracking. I could look down and see my own hands and they really felt like my hands. I have no idea how this is going to work in practice (are we going to have to play games in large empty warehouses) but it is magical in a way that is hard to describe if you haven't had a chance to try it.
  - Anonymous823 13y ago
    > are we going to have to play games in large empty warehouses Large hamster ball on rollers. Infinite space to walk or run. Also, you don't need to track their motion or feet, you just feed in the data from the rollers, and you know how fast their character is walking or running, and in what direction.
    - jaxomlotus 13y ago
      Omni virtuix is a pretty good approach that doesn't require a hamster wheel. http://www.virtuix.com/ http://www.virtuix.com/
      - tempestn 13y ago
        Yes! This stuff is incredibly exciting. With Omni + Kinect + OR, we're starting to get close to Otherland-style VR. It's going to be interesting.
    - Sikul 13y ago
      I saw a large hamster ball with oculus VR at IndieCade in Los Angeles earlier this year.
  - amirhirsch 13y ago
    The game was Sushi Warrior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBx3MIAaXTA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBx3MIAaXTA A rar of the game is here, req kinect sdk installation + oculus rift. http://motionos.com/sw2.rar http://motionos.com/sw2.rar
- ekianjo 13y ago
  I haven't tried it with that game, but I heard some very positive comments on people using it with Euro Truck Simulator 2 (already pretty realistic by itself on a screen). Occulus Rift is going to be awesome for all these games where you are supposed to be sitting in a cockpit. For FPS, not so much (unless you have a giant hamster ball and tons of sensors as someone else mentioned).
AJ007 13y ago
Emphasis on the couple of minutes, about how long a normal person can handle the Oculus being feeling nauseous. I had a friend lay flat on the floor for half an hour after a level of Quake 2. Brings back fond memories of my first days playing Wolfenstein 3D and experiencing motion sickness..
- thenmar 13y ago
  I'm part of the happy few who have never gotten motion sickness from anything!

djkz 13y ago

I've used the low res dev kit and the immersion it provides it great. I believe this will have a ton of applications from VR conferencing to going to virtual concerts to even spectating sports with an isometric view of the field instead of the 2d projection.

flyinglizard 13y ago

I'm fascinated by the A16Z investment strategy. It looks like they will put in any kind of money into companies deemed as winners (GitHub, Oculus), with some small investments thrown in here and there just so they're still considered a VC and not a private equity fund of sorts. I think it's going to work very well for them in the long term, and possibly change the investment landscape for future VC funds. Either you go huge and buy a stake in the winners at all costs, or you go wide and super early like YC. It does leave a large seed/series A financing gap someone will need to close, and I suspect their returns won't be as stellar as those in the extreme ends of companies financing.

cdixon 13y ago
We invested in Oculus after we saw a demo of the new prototype. For me, it was up there with the first time I saw Apple II, Mac, the web, Google, iPhone etc.
- adventured 13y ago
  At first I glanced over the "new" in there. Now I'm jealous.
- flyinglizard 13y ago
  I have no doubt about Oculus - I just wonder how the startup landscape will look if your model proves successful and other large VCs begin implementing it, instead of their more traditional returns model. Being that only the largest, most successful funds can partake in this huge money game, this may significantly reduce the overall market capital available for Series A investment and create an even narrower funnel.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - pmarca 13y ago
    I'd argue you're actually seeing the emergence of a "new series A"/"first money in" investor category. Often angel investors who raise seed funds or small venture funds fit in this category. These include (but not limited to) Mike Maples/Floodgate, Aydin Senkut/Felicis, Hunter Walk/Homebrew, Aileen Lee/Cowboy, Michael Deering/Harrison, and several others. Also see Heavybit for a recent category-specific innovation. Also Union Square, Foundry, Upfront (Mark Suster) do a lot of this. I think there may be more high quality investors at the early Series A tier than ever before, but many of them are new.

bprater 13y ago

John Carmack coming in as CTO probably added $25M to that figure. Regardless, Oculus's concept is the future of gaming -- anything that can trick the brain so substantially is going to be a winner.

mathattack 13y ago
At least that. And much more on the valuation. These are bets on teams, and with leading (bleeding?) edge technology, the CTO is the most important person in the room.

julianpye 13y ago

As a 3D-fan and owner of so many different displays since the VR-32, this one really makes me excited. They got that the studios are not the king of content, but the games engines are. Field of view trumps resolution when it comes to immersion and most other companies always tried to go for something that was focused on movies. I hope that this investment leads many companies to create true immersive experiences and lets 3D games break out of the 1st person shooter trap.

pmarca 13y ago
Part of our bet is that we are not that far away from not having to trade off field of view vs resolution.
- julianpye 13y ago
  In the long run, both will come together, as we have seen with the development of Retina displays on Ipads. In the short term, your eyes will never be fooled by the current levels (even retina) of resolution at the yellow spot of your eyes, but your brain will always respond to field of view which does not need highest resolution.

cup 13y ago

Oculus Rift is a paradigm shift not just for computer gaming but for a host of other industrial and technical services. I for one can't wait to incorporate the oculus rift when preforming invasive experiments on animals using an endoscope.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

anakanemison 13y ago

Pushing pixels to a high resolution display, under tight latency constraints, is going to stress even today's high-end systems. If they succeed at appealing to the mass market, I bet there will be a significant effect on the rate of system upgrades.

inDigiNeous 13y ago
Just got my devkit and this was the first thing I noticed, I started to wish my 3 year old MacBook Pro had a faster GPU. First time in a really long time that I actually had the urge to update my system, haven't felt something like that since the 486/Pentium days.
pmarca 13y ago
I think there's the potential for a renaissance of super-high-end gaming-class PCs for sure. As well as a reason to radically enhance the 3D graphics computational power of smartphones and tablets.

deleted 13y ago

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staunch 13y ago

My only fear is the Oculus management/investors. They could be great, but they seem not so great so far. An investor took over as CEO already and started calling himself a co-founder? That's a huge red flag. The real founder Palmer Luckey seems like the prototypical hacker-founder. Naive and noobish maybe but probably less so than most and obviously super passionate. I wonder if John Carmack wouldn't be better off just launching a competitor to Oculus. Wherever he goes the magic will follow, and it'd be nice if he was the ultimate boss like he was at id Software. I'd just really hate for him to get bogged down in a bad environment, kind of the way Linus did with Transmeta, and be forced to resign at some point and start over after wasting years of productivity. The A16Z guys can probably help avoid any massive stupidity, so that's a nice benefit to this investment.

untog 13y ago
A "prototypical hacker-founder" may well need someone to come in and help with the business stuff. Scaling a hardware business is a lot different to a software one. And I'm not convinced Carmack likes being in charge. He might well he happy if he can just hack.
- ENGNR 13y ago
  It's actually an important question, where should your smartest and most creative employee go; CEO or CTO? I think for a lot of companies (is tech startups) CTO would be the right answer. So long as the CEO stays the hell out of the way
- druidsbane 13y ago
  Don't forget their COO is Laird Malamed who helped with the Guitar Hero hardware. They have already been able to do the right thing with their initial batches and it looks like this is the right step forward for mass-producing the hardware for the consumer version.
deleted 13y ago
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angersock 13y ago

everettForth 13y ago

I'm ready to ditch my LCD at work and use this. I hope the higher resolution version is good enough to code on. I'm happy to see that there are already some window managers: http://hwahba.com/ibex/ http://hwahba.com/ibex/

malandrew 13y ago
The higher resolution one is all I'm waiting for before I pull the trigger and buy one. I want to use this when I'm in bed. My girlfriend will be able to sleep without the light from the computer screen bothering her. I'll probably also be able to switch to using my Kinesis Advantage keyboard as well since I will no longer be married to the laptop because of the screen.
- bdickason 13y ago
  I have the developer prototype and I am hugely excited for the short term gaming and entertainment potential. However, as a working device, something needs to be solved to reduce eye strain. After using it for 5-10 minutes, I feel like I've been in A Clockwork Orange. My eyes are spread wide and incredibly tired after that short period of time. Until you try it, it's hard to explain how close the lenses are to your eyeballs. I accidentally poked my wife in the eye by adjusting the distance improperly. I'm all for the idea of something like this for long term work, but I believe a different approach will need to be taken, or a significant amount of work needs to be done to make it sustainable for 2-4 hour long shifts.
deletes 13y ago
I'm not sure what kind of effect that might have on the eyes. Tempted to try it but I'm scared that after a couple of months I would get +5 glasses.
kayoone 13y ago
i doubt its really designed for non stop use. It might not weigh much, but for hours on end it will strain your neck and eyes i would think.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

To get an idea of the raw power of the Oculus, check out this guy playing a horror game with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OrANjgeYe0#t=3m55s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OrANjgeYe0#t=3m55s (Kind of loud. But be sure not to miss his awesome reaction at 4m20s.) I have the original devkit, and it's amazing. You can even interface it with Google Street View. There's nothing like typing in "Eiffel Tower," tilting your head back, and staring up in awe. In fact, I'd say no one here has experienced Street View until you've seen it with an Occulus. It simply cannot be described how incredible it is to look around with your head instead of dragging your mouse! EDIT: Okay, if you're unhappy with that particular video, then this one might be more to your liking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4#t=15m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4#t=15m30s EDIT2: Wow, that Dreadhalls game is terrifying. You actually don't even need an Oculus to get the full effect, just headphones. https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3404 https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3... (Windows / Mac)

RobotCaleb 13y ago
To be fair, that guy is pretty widely known as being an idiot.
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iamshs 13y ago
... I would not be able to bear someone playing a game like that in the house. It will be obnoxious. (I am aware can be used outside gaming environment.)
enneff 13y ago
His "awesome reaction" is the same reaction he has made hundreds of times to various scenarios in many games. It's his schtick. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the Oculus device. (Although I do hear that they are fantastic.)
- 13y ago

mentos 13y ago

I really think we're moving into a VR/Augmented reality renaissance. If you've got 10 minutes to thumb through this 20 minute video this shows off whats possible with augmented reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA If we can get that into a pair of sunglasses in the next 10-20 years I'm pretty sure we'll be living in a wildly different world than we are today

kayoone 13y ago
wow, thats really impressive and from a technical standpoint its not even that hard, just clever combination of existing technologies.
tempestn 13y ago
There was an interesting comment on that youtube video too. (Shocking, I know.) When watching content for the OR on a monitor, you can actually see it in 3D by crossing your eyes so that the two pictures overlap. It's a bit taxing and obviously... rather less immersive than the Rift, but it does work and is fun for a few seconds. Edit: experimenting with it a bit, I've found an easy way to do it is to full screen and sit a good ways back from the screen. (I went about 5' from my 27" monitor.) Then hold your hands up in a sort of window about a foot in front of your face. The idea is that looking through a window between your hands, each eye can only see the picture opposite it. Not seeing the other picture makes it a lot easier to focus on the composite one.
patrickk 13y ago
That's an amazing demo. I thought the multi-monitor simulation setup was very impressive, you can imagine all kinds of non-gaming applications for this! Any environment where you need to be utterly focused and shut off from distractions (turning a potential negative of VR into a massive plus), with multiple monitors (e.g. Trading floors in wall street, coders) would benefit hugely from this. The company could make an absolute fortune solely from selling to wall street, and replacing traders 2,3,4+ screens with a single VR headset.

benched 13y ago

Crowds are so funny. I swear there was one HN thread recently where the majority of comments declared the Oculus a mere substitute for ipecac syrup. In this thread, it's the coming of the New Earth. As someone who luckily doesn't experience motion sickness at all, is greatly looking forward to the hi-res Oculus, and frankly to a time when I can spend more time in VR than not, the optimism in this thread makes me happy.

tlrobinson 13y ago
Have you tried the Oculus? I think Oculus is amazing, but I've never really been motion sick until I tried Oculus. Reading books in the backseat of a car driving through winding mountains, no problem. 5 minutes in Oculus Rift and I want to vomit. It definitely depends on the game/demo though, so it may just be a matter of very careful game design. Or maybe reducing latency will help.
- anxman 13y ago
  Like you, I have a strong stomach but I also couldn't use the Oculus Rift past 15 minutes before wanting to puke. I wonder if the new prototypes solve this problem.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    I'm personally very sensitive to this, and the new version they're working on seems to have completely solved the problem as far as I can tell.
- nabeel 13y ago
  i've spent well over an hour in the latest prototype with no sickness, and in the dev units I can last 5 minutes tops.
  - BobCat 13y ago
    Have you tried castAR? Thousands of people have tried it and no one got motion sick.

ivarious 13y ago

I wonder what does this mean to the Kickstarter backers. Sure, by legal means they donate to the cause rather than investing in it, but I think it's not really fair if they get nothing from this VC funds.

ghshephard 13y ago
My understanding is that the kickstarter was for development kits, so, a significant portion of the backers were developers. Isn't this investment by A16Z the most incredible reward possible for these developers who've put time and energy learning the platform and technology? At the very least, Oculus is going to be a major player in this field, if not the major player for the next couple years, so the opportunities for their products, and skills, just took a big leap today.

tmslnz 13y ago

Considering the incredible effectiveness of the current low-res dev kit, give it 3 years or so and the Rift will be second nature to most: 2 or 4k display, wireless, better optics, lighter, even lower latency, etc. If I had the money to invest I'd do it in a whim.

laichzeit0 13y ago

Please support ordering with Bitcoin as a payment method.

laichzeit0 13y ago
Amazing how this gets downvoted. I was on the order page thinking "man it would be so awesome if I could just send them Bitcoin for this instead of having to link in my new credit card to PayPal". Yesterday Coinbase gets $25 million in funding supposedly able to make this trivial for merchants and vendors. Today another startup gets funding. HN supposedly the startup community has great animosity towards the one and not the other. Hilarious.

rl3 13y ago

I was worried that the 4K Oculus Rift wouldn't see the light of day in consumer markets. http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852496/oculus-rift-4k-display-in-the-works http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/18/4852496/oculus-rift-4k-dis... Now with John Carmack fully committed, and this massive round of funding, 4K has to be all but certain. I imagine the prospects for 8K and 12K in the distant future are better now as well. http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/oculus-ceo-teases-future-oculus-rift-features-including-support-for-8k-and-beyond-1199232 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/oculus-ceo-teases-futur...

Segmentation 13y ago
I think 4K will be the minimum necessary to have a real VR experience. I mentioned it in another comment: suspension of disbelief is everything, but currently my eyes focus too keenly on the scanlines and my immersion is ruined. It doesn't help that all my consumer devices have retina-like quality, so I'm used to nearly flawless clarity in my displays. When I'm using the 720p Oculus Rift it just bugs me too much. 1080p will be better, but still not great.

dharma1 13y ago

is it worth buying the dev model now or wait for the consumer model (if it really is months away, like they say?)

druidsbane 13y ago
Buy both if you're a developer. If you're a consumer and have money to burn then buy both, otherwise wait for the 2nd dev kit/consumer version. As a developer it is one of the most exciting platforms to work on and watch your creations come to life.

dharma1 13y ago

I'm interested in using Oculus Rift for telepresence (FPV RC vehicles, teleconferencing) purposes - anyone got any experience with this, or recommendations for stereo 1080p camera solutions?