{"id":20243,"date":"2016-03-29T08:01:05","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/oculus-rift-begins-shipping-reviews-suggest-waiting-is-ok\/"},"modified":"2016-03-29T08:01:05","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:05","slug":"oculus-rift-begins-shipping-reviews-suggest-waiting-is-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/oculus-rift-begins-shipping-reviews-suggest-waiting-is-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"Oculus Rift begins shipping; reviews suggest waiting is OK"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES<\/strong> \u2014 The first consumer-ready Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset was delivered to a real person over the weekend, and reviewers got their first taste. The initial feedback: It\u2019s a beautiful, wonderful device that immerses you, yet it still has a ways to go.<\/p>\n

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey hand-delivered the first Rift to software developer Ross Martin in Anchorage, on Saturday, kicking off a new era in virtual reality by putting the most powerful VR device yet into a consumer\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Martin, who had never tried VR before, spent a few hours on the Rift Monday morning. He watched a short movie, played a game and explored a virtual environment that included an up-close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t stop saying, \u2018Wow,\u2019\u201d Martin, a 33-year-old Web developer, said in an interview. But he said that he felt a touch of nausea at times and that the resolution could be better.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a gamer, this is right up your alley,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be able to forgive that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oculus has said it\u2019s sending the Rift to its first Kickstarter backers first, followed by those who ordered one in January for $600, or at least $1,500 with a high-end personal computer included. Oculus, which began crowd-funding through Kickstarter in August 2012, was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014 and has shipped two developer versions so far.<\/p>\n

Expectations for a consumer version have been high. There\u2019s a backlog of orders and if you order now, you can expect delivery in July. It\u2019s not clear, though, how many units Oculus made for the first round \u2014 and whether there will ultimately be much demand beyond gamers and hard-core technologists.<\/p>\n

Early reviews by journalists have been mixed.<\/p>\n

Steven Tweedie of Business Insider was glowingly positive in his review of the Rift, relishing the greater presence he felt in both games and narrative stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything feels like it means more: there\u2019s a heightened connection to characters, both in games and short films, and the action carries weight,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

But he noted its hefty price tag \u201cis undoubtedly the biggest thing keeping more people from getting the chance to try virtual reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time\u2019s Lisa Eadicicco called the Rift \u201cexpensive, complicated, and totally wonderful.\u201d She added, \u201cIt\u2019s brilliant. It\u2019s fascinating. It\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s only getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several reviewers, including IGN\u2019s Dan Stapleton, wrote that because the Rift doesn\u2019t come with controllers that allow for separate actions by each hand, the Rift will suffer compared with the HTC Vive, which will have such controllers included when it comes out next month. Oculus expects its \u201cTouch\u201d controllers to come out later this year.<\/p>\n

Wired reviewer Peter Rubin similarly bemoaned the lack of games using Touch.<\/p>\n

Nathan Olivarez-Giles of The Wall Street Journal wasn\u2019t wowed by all the 30 games that were available at launch.<\/p>\n

And he wrote that nausea, a consistent complaint among VR headset users, was real.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I pushed myself to play \u2018Valkyrie\u2019 for as long as 45 minutes nonstop, I took aspirin to fight off a headache.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 The first consumer-ready Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset was delivered to a real person over the weekend, and reviewers got their first taste. The initial feedback: It\u2019s a beautiful, wonderful device that immerses you, yet it still has a ways to go. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey hand-delivered the first Rift to software developer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20243"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}