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Oculus sales are booming despite stock shortages
The Oculus Quest and coronavirus pandemic helped grow Facebook non-ad revenue by 80 percent.
BBC releases free ‘Doctor Who’ VR short
Doctor Who fans who can't bear the long wait for the twelfth season are in for a treat. The BBC has released Doctor Who: The Runaway, an animated short VR film based on the classic British sci-fi series and voiced by its own Jodie Whittaker, who reprises her role as the show's time-traveling protagonist. Based on the BBC's description, The Runaway throws you into the topsy-turvy universe of Doctor Who right away. You wake up inside the TARDIS after being in a collision with a teenage space bomb named the Volta. In a race against time, you and Doctor Who must get Volta home to his parents before he falls prey to some dangerous distractions.
This week in tech history: Three years of Oculus figuring out VR
At Engadget, we spend every day looking at how technology will shape the future. But it's also important to look back at how far we've come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us every weekend for a recap of historical tech news, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-recent past. This week, we're looking back at a number of key events in the history of Oculus VR. Late March has historically been a huge time for Oculus VR, a company that you can credit for ushering in the modern virtual reality era. Just last week at GDC, Oculus unveiled its second-generation VR headset, the Rift S. But that new product is mostly just an iteration on the original Oculus Rift, which was released just over three years ago, on March 25th, 2016.
Facebook is closing nearly half of Oculus pop-ups in Best Buy stores
Facebook is shutting down 200 of its 500 Oculus VR pop-up stores from Best Buy locations around the country due, in large part, to underwhelming interest from the public. Per pop-up workers speaking to Business Insider, some of these kiosks would "go days without giving a single demonstration."
Oculus' next big move is to make VR a social experience
VR turned me into a movie character -- a tiny, bright yellow firefly. But here's the best part: I got to experience it with someone next to me, both literally and virtually, in a dark room with headsets strapped to our heads. For Oculus Story Studio, arguably the Pixar of virtual reality, this is the first step in making the medium more social. And it's using its short film Lost, introduced earlier this year at Sundance, as a test bed. Still, whether we're talking about a cute movie or a fun game, most VR activities so far have one thing in common: They're solitary experiences. Oculus wants to change that.
Daily Roundup: the first VR live broadcast, 'Rock Band' makes a resurgence and more!
How would you like to travel the world without worrying about the tedious tasks of packing a bag or buying a plane ticket? When Next VR's live broadcast goes mainstream, doing so could be easier than you thought. We're also taking a look at the tech taking over Sundance film festival, and testing out Sling TV's beta service. Read on for details in today's roundup!
With Story Studio, Oculus VR embarks on its Hollywood takeover
Around the time Oculus VR began experimenting internally with the creation of tech demos, investor Marc Andreessen, impressed with what he'd seen, urged Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR's CEO, to show them off to Hollywood. Andreessen believed the medium was a perfect fit for that industry. Iribe, in turn, showed his company's prototype Rift technology to an unnamed, major Hollywood director. That director, responding the way most do when they first encounter modern-day virtual reality, enthusiastically implored Iribe to join forces and create a feature film with it. Iribe immediately balked and shot down the offer. "I don't know the first thing about movies," he says of that initial conversation. That was then. Today, Oculus VR plans to figure out the entertainment industry in a big way. With Story Studio, an in-house innovation lab focused on exploring and sharing tools and techniques to craft entertainment experiences within VR, the Facebook-owned company is embarking on a different path. Outside "guest directors" will be brought in to work with the studio and lead Creative Director Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar director, in what is essentially a VR workshop. And along the way, Oculus hopes to refine what it means to inhabit VR on a cinematic level, beginning with its first animated short, Lost, which will debut at Sundance.
Leap Motion lets Oculus users switch between VR and reality
Picture the scene: You're watching a documentary with an Oculus Rift headset, when suddenly you need a drink or receive a text. You have to stop the film, rip off the goggles and give your eyes a second to adjust, only to reverse the entire process when you're done a few moments later. Leap Motion, the hand-tracking accessory that can be used in parallel with Oculus VR hardware, has a solution. A new 'Quick Switch' demo lets you alternate between VR and a video passthrough simply by waving your hand in front of your face. It's a quick gesture and the proximity required from the headset (between one and three inches) means you're unlikely to trigger it by mistake. The company says Quick Switch will soon be available as part of its 'Unity Core Assets: VR Edition' toolkit and could be added to any Unity app. Video passthrough is already available with Oculus VR and Samsung's new Gear VR headset, and we suspect it'll come as standard in the final Oculus Rift consumer model. In the meantime, Leap Motion's offering could prove useful, especially if you're exploring the Large Hadron Collider and accidentally knock over a mug on your coffee table.
Sound Off! What's the best virtual reality experience right now?
There's no way around it. Virtual reality gaming is heading our way (despite some folks' opinions to the contrary). A ton of companies are currently working on fancy head gear and we've seen announcements about the Carl Zeiss VR One, Samsung Gear VR, Sony Morpheus, Oculus Rift and even Google's crazy cardboard experiment. For those of you lucky enough to have one of these rare devices, head over to the Engadget forums and tell us the best VR gaming experiences you can have right now. [Image credit: Neilson Barnard / Getty Images]
Oculus CEO: Consumer VR headset 'months, not years away'
Humanity might be exploring virtual space sooner than expected as Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe claims his company's Oculus Rift headset is now months away from being released to the public. "We're all hungry for it to happen," Iribe said at Dublin's Web Summit 2014. "We're getting very close. It's months, not years away, but many months." The biggest issue facing the device currently, according to Iribe, is a proper input system. Standard keyboards, mice and gamepads aren't up to the task, Iribe claims, and gesture-control is still too primitive a technology to complement an immersive virtual space. Despite whatever failings may cling to the Oculus Rift headset at the moment, Iribe is equally worried about other companies rushing products to market and damaging the future of VR in the eyes of the general public. "We're a little worried about bigger companies putting out [VR products] that aren't ready," Iribe stated. "Disorientation and motion sickness is the elephant in the room. We're encouraging big companies not to put out a product before it's ready." [Image: Oculus]
James Cameron thinks current VR technology is 'a yawn'
Coming from the man who created Terminator and Avatar, two of the most highly recognized sci-fi franchises, you'd think James Cameron would be excited about the rise of virtual reality in the past couple of years. But not so fast. Yesterday, during an interview at the WSJD Live conference, Cameron expressed that he isn't really impressed by the current stage of VR technology. "There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly," said Cameron when the topic of virtual reality was brought up. "What will the level of interactivity with the user be other than just 'I can stand and look around'? If you want to move through a virtual reality, it's called a video game. It's been around forever."
Facebook's Zuckerberg offers his long view on Oculus VR
In a recent quarterly earnings conference call (report on Gamasutra), Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg touched on his plans for the future of Oculus VR, the recently acquired virtual reality headset company that Zuckerberg describes as "a long-term bet on the future of computing." "Every 10 to 15 years a new major computing platform arrives ... Virtual reality and augmented reality are an important part of this platform," Zuckerberg stated. "Our efforts here will take longer to achieve their full impact, but we will prepare for the future by continuing to invest aggressively." By "future" Zuckerberg means a timeline spanning the next decade. "[The Oculus Rift VR headset] needs to reach a very large scale - 50 to 100 million units - before it will really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform, so I do think it's going to take a bunch of years to get there," he said. "[W]hen I'm talking about it as a 10-year thing, I'm talking about building the first set of devices, and then building the audience and the ecosystem around that, until it eventually becomes a business." While Zuckerberg offered no specifics on his plans for Oculus VR, it's clear that Facebook is taking a careful, long-term approach to what is simultaneously the potential future of computing and a largely unproven technology. That's smart, but it also means that the average person won't be immersed in virtual reality for at least a few more years. [Image: Facebook]
Oculus now an official platform, build target for Unity 5
Oculus is now an official platform and build target for Unity 5, Oculus VR's VP of Product Nate Mitchell announced during today's Oculus Connect event. A related press release notes that Unity will "now fully support Oculus and the Rift with a dedicated add-on that includes stereo imaging optimizations, 3D audio support, and other features specifically for virtual reality." [Image: Oculus VR]
Oculus VR reveals new prototype, Crescent Bay
Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe revealed Crescent Bay during today's Oculus Connect event, the latest virtual reality prototype from the hardware manufacturer. Crescent Bay boasts a higher resolution, refresh rate, 360 degree tracking, LEDs on its back, and removable integrated audio. Iribe stressed that while Crescent Bay is still not the consumer version of Oculus' vision, Crescent Bay's improvements over the Crystal Cove are comparable to the advancements made from DK1 to DK2. [Image: Oculus VR]
Palmer Luckey looks years out, sees Oculus doing software
Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey compares the future of virtual reality to the current television industry – the money isn't in manufacturing TVs, it's in creating content for those TVs. "It's going to be the same thing with VR," Luckey said during an interview at Gamescom. "Eventually, it's going to be commoditized and the hardware differences between all the different vendors are going to be meaningless. It's all going to be about the content and the software. So I think we're actually – in the long haul, looking years or decades out – probably more on the software side." Luckey has a clear vision for the final Oculus hardware – higher resolution, higher framerate, 1080p, 90Hz, smaller, lighter and more comfortable. Get all of Luckey's specs in our video interview.
You can now build Oculus Rift VR apps for the Mac
Now that the new Oculus Rift is in customers' hands, the Facebook-owned VR company has been working even harder on things like its SDK. With the latest release, version 0.4.1, the SDK now officially supports OS X computers. In other words, this means Oculus Rift owners can start using their Mac desktop or laptop to take a trip down virtual reality lane -- aka build/test applications. Oculus' SDK release notes do point out that Macs currently don't include a display driver, but that "it always works in Extend Desktop mode." You'll find all the nitty-gritty details at the source link below, and don't forget to let us know in the comments about how your experience on the Mac is going.
Peek into Oculus Rift dev kit 2, see a Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Want to get a preview of the Oculus Rift as it exists in Dev Kit 2 state, but don't have $350 to spare (never mind waiting for the retail version)? Try heading to your nearest electronics retailer and hold a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 right up to your face. Oh sure, it won't give you the 360 degrees of stereoscopic 3D that the full headset offers, but according to a teardown by iFixit, the Rift DK2 nonetheless uses the Note 3 screen to display a resolution of 1080 x 960 in each eye. This isn't the same type of screen or same screen technology, by the way. The screen appears to be literally the same; camera holes, button hole, Samsung logo and all. Oculus even left the touchscreen controller attached. The screen is being overclocked from its usual refresh rate of 60 Hz to 75 Hz, so even though it's the same tech, it's being pushed and used in a way different from the smartphone it comes from. But hey, we'll take what we can get until Oculus and ZeniMax sort out their legal feud. [Image: Oculus]
Facebook's acquisition of Oculus is now official
Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR closed today, officially cementing the deal that was announced in March. Oculus and Facebook are as inseparable as a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. Or a tech company and another tech company targeting a slightly different market. To celebrate their unity, Facebook and Oculus released a single, joint statement regarding today's finalization: "We're looking forward to an exciting future together, building the next computing platform and reimagining the way people communicate." We discussed the Facebook deal with Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe at E3: He said that Oculus always planned to reach a mass market, and Facebook, with its 1.2 billion users, helps the company reach that goal. [Image: Oculus VR]
Oculus halts Rift pre-orders for suspected resellers
If you've pre-ordered a second-generation Rift headset, don't expect to sell the gadget on eBay. Oculus VR has begun canceling orders for anyone hoping to turn a quick profit. The Oculus Rift developer community was recently outraged by an eBay listing which promoted a pre-ordered Oculus Rift Developer's Kit 2 for $5,000 - a sizeable markup over the gadget's $300 base price. Oculus VR quickly investigated the seller and canceled the pre-order. The listing vanished a short time later. This then prompted a deluge of community members reporting online auction listings, and numerous pre-orders were canceled as a result. Though its hammer of justice is swift, Oculus assures community members that the company performs due diligence before canceling any pre-orders. "Just so everyone is clear, the information provided alone was not enough to take action," Oculus stated, according to a TechCrunch report. "We perform our own investigations with tools at our disposal to make sure that there isn't a false positive." [Image: Oculus VR]
Oculus cracks down on Rift scalpers reselling hardware on eBay
Yes, we're all excited to get our hands on the consumer version of Oculus' VR gear, but that doesn't mean that the company doesn't take too kindly to scalpers offering dev kits ahead of time. After banning any orders from China after resellers tried to buy them at extreme rates, the Facebook-owned business has now turned its attentions to individuals who were trying to make a fast buck on eBay. When the community spotted one of the forthcoming DK2 development kits being listed for $5,000 and reported it, Oculus found the pre-order and swiftly cancelled it. The VR firm has also reminded would-be buyers that second hand sales don't come with a warranty, so even if you did spend that sort of cash but the hardware was faulty, it'd be hard cheese.
