The team at Oculus Rift scored a huge amount of funding, a total of $16 million from investors, to make the virtual reality technology a widely available consumer product.
Two of the main investors, Santo Politi of Spark Capital and Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners, have taken seats on the Oculus board of directors to ensure their investment begins to make its way to the mass market.
"What Palmer, Brendan and the team are building at Oculus so closely matches the Metaverse that we had to be part of it. Working with them to get this platform to market at scale will be enormously exciting," said Rodriguez.
So far only those who have supported the original Kickstarter campaign (which netted an approximate total of $2.5 million) and those who have bought the $300 developer kit have had access to the technology.
The Oculus Rift has presented such an incredible breakthrough in virtual reality development that it has inspired developers in all sectors to work with the technology and move forward with virtual reality.
The first development we heard of was the Oculus Rift - Tuscany Demo created by Sixense using their Razor Hydra control. The demo debuted at the 2013 Game Developers Conference and sparked a tremendous amount of interest.
Not long after this Virtuix came out with their complementary device, the Omni Treadmill. The Virtuix allows players to have a fully immersive experience by being able to walk, run and jump in virtual space. It was made with Oculus Rift and Razor Hydra compatibility in mind. Virtuix has their own Kickstarter campaign running at the moment which has already exceeded it's financial goal of $150,000 and is currently sitting at $906,701 with 26 days left to go.
At FanFest 2013, held in Iceland, CCP (creators of EVE Online) debuted their proof of concept demo, EVR. This demo is a space jet pilot, dog-fighting virtual reality game which was well-received at the show.
Hot on its heels came news that VRcade in Seattle, a long time virtual reality developer, had grabbed themselves an OR developers kit and had made a lot of progress with their first person shooter and large scale systems,developing three demos - Target Practice, Crate-Physics Simulator and Visit the Zombie Apocalypse.
Earlier this month, we got news of another development called the Virtuashpere. The giant sphere, often described as a 'human hamster ball', is a 10 foot (diameter) hollow ball which allows a single user to walk or run in all directions on one spot.
And more recently we have heard about two new developments: one from Inition and another CXC Simulations. Inition delivered some special cirtual reality experiences for the 2013 Digital Shoreditch Festival. The experience was created with the help of the Omni Rift technology and is called the 'Virtual Vertigo Challenger'. The experience invited volunteers to walk along a wooden plank across two tall derelict skyscrapers and all guests agreed it was physically and mentally challenging, fully engaging and completely unique. Watch the video below to see visitors attempt to cross the virtual chasm.
CXC Simulations is the latest group to get their hands on a developers kit and have been working on a VR driving game called iRacing. This fantastic concept uses the Oculus Rift headset on a arcade driving machine with a full motion seat to create a unique driving game experience unlike any other. As you can see in the video below there is little to no discernible difference between real time motions (steering, bumps and jolts) and the virtual response, which creates a highly immersive and engaging experience.
The progress that has been made recently in regards to virtual reality has left the social and home gaming industry gobsmacked. Developers and insiders are looking toward 2014 as the year of release that will see these developments out in the consumer market, but only time will tell.
News on CXC Simulations and Inition via the DNA Association.
