Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 Announced, Available for Pre-Order
At last year’s Game Developer’s Conference, Oculus VR introduced the first development prototype of its virtual reality gaming headset, the Oculus Rift. It was a $300 kit that allowed developers to start updating their games with VR capabilities.
And as of today, the company has unveiled the long-awaited second prototype, aptly titled Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2). It’s launching in July for $350, and is available for pre-order starting today.
As expected, this update to Oculus’ mind-boggling, futuristic, head-mounted display comes packed with a bevy of improvements and new features that set it high and above DK1. Firstly, the internal screen is now a 1080p, low-latency, high-framerate-capable OLED screen that reduces blurring and motion sickness evident in DK1.
DK2 now also comes packed with a custom-built webcam-like camera that adds positional tracking to the device, allowing you to lean around in 3D space in the game you’re playing. This improvement was first showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show this year with the company’s internal prototype, Crystal Cove. However, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has stated that the tech has improved even since then, with the team using more advanced resin to increase image quality across your field of vision.
This is also the final development kit from Oculus, as the next shipping version of the device will be the long sought-after consumer version. As far as a release date and price point goes, Luckey and his team aren’t 100% sure.
“We’re much closer,” says Luckey.
“The last year we’ve spent researching and developing what consumer VR needs to be… we didn’t know before, and we do now. We know what we need to ship, we know what parts we need to do it, we know where we can get those parts, and now it’s just a matter of playing the waiting game and putting it together.”
The consumer version and DK2 will be very close in tech specs and design, Oculus indicates, though a slightly higher resolution is promised in the final shipping version. This DK2 has enough of the components of the final version, though, to let developers get their products finalized and prepared for Oculus’ eventual launch.
If you simply can’t wait for the consumer version, you can head to the Oculus VR website and pre-order one right now. Just don’t expect it until at least July.