Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to ship with Xbox One controller – as it happened

This article is more than 8 years old

Facebook’s VR subsidiary reveals new games and hand-tracking Oculus Touch controllers ahead of E3 games show, as well as EVE Valkyrie demo

News story: Oculus virtual reality controller plans include Xbox One gamepad

 Updated 
Thu 11 Jun 2015 13.59 EDTFirst published on Thu 11 Jun 2015 13.04 EDT
Oculus Rift will have an Oculus Touch pair of hand controllers.
Oculus Rift will have an Oculus Touch pair of hand controllers. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian
Oculus Rift will have an Oculus Touch pair of hand controllers. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Live feed

Key events

You’ll be able to pick up virtual guns, manipulate virtual objects, make communicative gestures within games and virtual worlds, and have “hand presence” (so you’ll see your hands in front of you in the world). The controllers are wireless – no cables.

It can detect “finger poses” like pointing, waving or “giving a thumbs up”. Or flipping the bird or making wanker signs, although he’s too polite to say that obviously.

“This isn’t science fiction: this is reality, and it’s happening today,” says Luckey as a parting shot. And that’s a wrap.

Oculus Touch will be shipping H1 2016 - Preorders will open alongside the Rift.

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) June 11, 2015
Share
Updated at 

Oculus Touch hand-tracking controllers

Iribe is back on-stage. “Virtual reality is really unlike anything else, and Rift is simply the best way to experience it. And you’ll be able to get your Rift Q1 2016,” he says. So no more specifics on the launch date. On the plus side, it hasn’t slipped.

“But before we go, there’s just one more thing that we wanna show you...” IT’S A SPOTIFY KILLER. Oh wait, wrong event. No, it’s founder Palmer Luckey, to spring a surprise around virtual reality input.” We see virtual reality input coming in many different forms, depending on the experience you’re looking for,” he says.

Such as? Oculus Touch. “A pair of track controllers that we’ve created to take VR to the next level,” he says, stressing that they’re prototypes, codenamed Half-Moon.

Share
Updated at 

Sweet hands over to Nate Mitchell, VP of product at Oculus, to talk about the user experience. He shows off Oculus Home – a dashboard for the games you own, as well as a place to preview and buy the ones you don’t: “Your portal to everything Oculus, it brings all your Rift games together in one place,” he says.

“When you put on the Rift, you’re going to be dropped straight in to Home”. Including VR previews of games before you buy them. There’s also a 2D interface: “You can browse the store, stay in touch with your friends and manage your games and downloads without putting the headset on.”

Next, Anna Sweet, head of developer strategy for Oculus, who’s talking about the wider strategy with developer partnerships. “With the Rift, anyone can be a creator. A few simple clicks and you can build your own mountain in Unity and check out the view from the top in VR,” she says, showcasing partnerships with Unity and Unreal Engine.

But how will developers get their games to Rift owners? Sweet talks about plans to revamp the Oculus Share community in the coming months, before praising independent developers for their efforts so far in experimenting with the Rift.

“I am pleased to announce that we will be investing more than $10m toward developing these sorts of innovative, one-of-a-kind, independent games on the Rift,” she says.

Next up, David Adams from Gunfire Games to show a game called Chronos, an RPG set in a labyrinth that opens once a year to test the hero’s skills: you’ll play it at all stages of his life, from callow youth to old man.

Next, Insomniac Games’ Ted Price talking about an Oculus-exclusive: Edge of Nowhere. “It’ll twist you, and eventually, it may break you.” Like Candy Crush Saga. Alright, perhaps not.

“Edge of Nowhere has been designed for VR from day one: this isn’t an idea we had that we thought ‘hmm, maybe VR would work for this’,” he says, admitting to having been a sceptic about VR in the past, converted into a believer now.

Other games coming: Damaged Core by High Voltage. VR Sports challenge by Senzari. Esper from Coatsink Software. AirMech and Lucky’s Tale. They’ll all be shown off at E3 next week, and then released in 2016.

Share
Updated at 

Iribe: “I’m just thrilled to have that device in there. It’s a terrific controller, one of the best in the world... but a VR platform, the VR headset, the input, as it all comes together really isn’t worth that much unless there’s incredible content.”

He brings on Jason Rubin, head of studios at Oculus to talk about what owners will be doing with the Rift. Starting with Hilmar Veigar Pétursson from CCP, which makes EVE Online.

“It was really a surprise how much VR added to the experience,” he says of CCP’s early experiments with the DK1 Oculus Rift devkit. “We knew we had something special, and we showed it to our biggest fan gathering... the feedback was anonymous: ‘please make this game!’. EVE: Valkyrie is the closest thing you’re going to get to being a real spaceship fighter pilot... You get something that feels so real, it’s more than real.”

Share
Updated at 

Spencer talks about streaming Xbox One games to Windows 10 devices – PCs and tablets. “That same streaming capability will be available for Oculus Rift. People will be able to stream their Xbox One games – great Xbox One games like Halo, Forza, Sunset Overdrive... to the Oculus.”

Oculus Rift to ship with an Xbox One game-pad

Iribe is talking about VR input. “We wanted a device that developers and gamers understood, one that they’re familiar with... one that’s really robust, well made. We tested all of them out there, we built our own prototypes... Including a game-pad in this generation of the Rift was really important.”

“I’m incredibly excited to announced that we’re going to include a wireless Xbox One controller and adapter in the Oculus Rift.”

Xbox exec Phil Spencer is on-stage now, to explain what looks like a partnership between Windows 10 and Oculus VR. “The Rift will natively work with Windows 10 to make it easy to set up, jump in and have incredible VR experiences from day one,” he says.

Share
Updated at 

“Getting audio right is a critical part of achieving presence,” says Iribe, showing off the integrated headphones. But they’re removable, for people who want to use their own headphones with the Rift.

Iribe returns to the issue of weight. “The comfort of having this device on your head is very, very important. You don’t want it pulling against your face, so we’ve spent a lot of time working on the strap architecture... you can really be in there for a while enjoying the experience. The goal is you put it on, and it goes away... You’re going to put it on like a baseball cap. Toss it on, and you’re away.”

“We’ve evolved the form factor to better accommodate glasses. Something many of us have, including myself,” adds Iribe.

Share
Updated at 

“Here is is: the Oculus Rift. It’s light: I can hold it in one hand,” says Iribe, brandishing the device. “It is a fundamental shift: a paradigm change. And it all begins now.”

He’s talking up the tracking system of the model. “You have very precise low-latency movement,” says Iribe. “The same tracking system can actually be used for other real-world objects. We’ll get to that a little bit later.”

Back to the external sensor which you put on your desk, plug in to your PC and “you’re all set: it just disappears. We wanted it to be incredibly simple and easy to use,” says Iribe, who says Oculus experiences will be a mixture of seated and standing: “You’ll be able to move around a little bit.”

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe is on-stage: “We have a lot of great news to share with you,” he says, before reminding the audience that it’s only three years since Oculus VR took its first steps with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

He talks about existing gaming being “trapped behind a 2D display... your brain knows you’re sitting in a living room playing on a TV... it’s still just trapped into a screen.” He shows off a massive T-Rex to prove his point – a bit scary on a 2D screen, and terrifying (in theory) on a VR headset.

Brendan Iribe and scaly dinosaur friend.
Brendan Iribe and scaly dinosaur friend. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

“With the Oculus Rift we are able to cross that threshold. We are able to finally deliver on the dream of virtual reality. VR allows us to experience anything, anywhere... This is going to change everything.” Rhetoric level: defcon five.

Share
Updated at 

Step into the Rift

Facebook bought virtual reality startup Oculus VR for $2bn in 2014, and the company has since been doubling down on developing the first commercial model of its Oculus Rift VR headset.

It’ll be making a splash at the E3 games show in Los Angeles next week, but today Oculus is holding an event in San Francisco to talk... Well, it’s not entirely clear what it’ll be talking about. But we’re here live to find out, so stay tuned for updates.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed