Sony made a big splash at GDC when the company announced Project Morpheus, its own virtual reality headset. However, OculusVR is looking to make gaining developer support difficult for Sony by making the new version of the Oculus Rift developer kit that only cost a cool $350.
The pricing is not the only great thing about the new Oculus Rift developer kit. Apparently, the device does a better job and rendering scenes smoothly, and best of all, it does away with the motion sickness problem that has been plaguing earlier versions.
The new system also includes a camera that is designed to track the physical movements of players, and convert these movements into in-game actions. This sounds a lot like what Sony plans to do with Project Morpheus and the PlayStation Camera.
Those who were hoping for an increase in resolution are in luck since the new Oculus Rift developer kit supports up to 960 x 1080 per eye. This could be due to the addition of a new OLED display that helps with the cutting down of motion blur and shaking effects.
OculusVR placed the icing on the cake by adding a USB port, optimizations for Unity and Unreal Engine developer tools, along with tools to test latency.
"The second development kit features many of the key technical breakthroughs and core elements of the consumer Rift including a low-persistence, high-definition display and precise, low-latency positional head tracking," according to OculusVR.
"DK2 isn't identical to the consumer Rift, but the fundamental building blocks for great VR are there. All the content developed using DK2 will work with the consumer Rift. And while the overall experience still needs to improve before it's consumer-ready, we're getting closer everyday - DK2 is not the Holodeck yet, but it's a major step in the right direction."
All the hard work to get this far with the Oculus Rift is not yet over. The company plans to increase the resolution in later versions, along with the underlining software. Furthermore, plans are in place to make the Rift more comfortable to wear, which is probably one of the most important aspects right now.
