The creator of the Oculus Rift is engaged on a mysterious new VR headset
If you don’t acknowledge the identify Oculus, it’s the corporate that kicked off the fashionable VR period. Facebook (now Meta) was so impressed by the Oculus Rift developer equipment and sudden revival of curiosity in VR that it acquired the corporate in 2014. Now Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is again with plans for one more VR headset.
While Luckey shared no particular particulars and even the identify of the gadget, the announcement will little question create a buzz within the business. The X (previously Twitter) put up got here as a reply to VR analyst Brad Lynch’s response to Luckey’s X put up in regards to the ModRetro Chromatic, an upgraded reinterpretation of the wildly popular GameBoy Color handheld console.
Luckey disputed the suggestion that he’d misplaced curiosity in growing a VR headset by breaking the information of the upcoming announcement at Augmented World Expo (AWE) that he was engaged on a brand new head-mounted show (HMD).
I’m going to be saying the truth that I’m engaged on a brand new HMD at AWE!
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) June 3, 2024
The Oculus founder hasn’t at all times agreed with Meta’s method to VR. The two parted ways in 2017 for a variety of reasons. Luckey’s 2018 weblog put up “Free isn’t cheap enough” didn’t particularly point out Oculus, however urged low-cost headsets weren’t one of the best ways to advance digital actuality.
In 2019, Meta’s first Quest VR headset launched for $300 and noticed reasonable gross sales, failing to interrupt by way of to mainstream players. The 2020 Quest 2 introduced important upgrades and stored the attractive $300 price ticket. While it’s nonetheless the world’s hottest and one of the best VR headsets to begin with, gross sales have been nonetheless surprisingly low.
Luckey’s prediction that low-cost headsets wouldn’t encourage ongoing use proved to be right and Meta has but to launch one other price range mannequin. The popular Quest 3 starts at $500 and options a way more compelling mixed-reality expertise and higher-resolution shows, together with higher consolation.
Perhaps Luckey had a greater understanding of what the general public wished from VR within the early days. It stays to be seen whether or not the Oculus founder can achieve at present’s market with competitors coming from the ultra-premium Apple Vision Pro, the inexpensive Meta’s Quest 3, Sony’s console-supported PSVR2, and the midrange HTC Vive XR Elite, none of which existed when Luckey was growing the Rift VR headset.
