Oculus VR is gearing up for the much-awaited consumer release of its Rift virtual reality headset, which is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2016.
The company, which is now owned by Facebook, promises to release more details as the targeted release period nears. These include retail availability, pricing and games.
Oculus was the brainchild of Palmer Luckey, who is a fan of virtual reality himself. Prior to the company's establishment in 2012, virtual reality was seen as one of the highlighted features in Hollywood movies beginning in the early 1990s. One example of such a film is The Lawnmower Man.
"We're incredibly excited to announce that the Rift will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016!" tweeted Oculus.
The Oculus Rift was first launched as a project at Kickstarter back in August 2012. Offering kits worth $300 directly to developers passionate for virtual reality, the company managed to successfully raise over $2.4 million dollars through the project.
"Really excited about this, I think it could be the kind of thing that jumpstarts a bigger VR community," said Luckey a few months prior to the Kickstar project.
Oculus VR received a few rounds of funding. In 2014, it became one of Facebook's acquisitions for the price of $2 billion. During this period, the company had only sold development kit versions of their Oculus Rift headset to those who share their passion in virtual reality.
"The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this," says Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook after the acquisition.
Other companies are also trying to create a name in the exciting world of virtual reality. Sony, on its part, announced that it is launching its own headset, which will be paired with the PS4 video game console. It will be called Project Morpheus.
Microsoft, Samsung, HTC and Google are also joining the virtual reality bandwagon and have their own headset devices.
"In the weeks ahead, we'll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift," says the Oculus Team on a blog post. "Next week, we'll share more of the technical specifications here on the Oculus blog."
