A hardware startup with a lot of funding and a lot of momentum has a lot less risk.
Brendan Iribe
I like to think of it as this new field. Instead of computer science, it's going to be virtual science.
A lot of times, the internal R&D doesn't pan out. You go down one route, you find that it doesn't work the way you planned, and you have to switch and go down another one.
Locomotion can be uncomfortable in VR, but a number of developers have figured out how to do some subtle locomotion.
We're always doing a lot of user studies on health and safety. We take it super seriously. But if you look back at the history of most new big technology breakthroughs, there is some element of controversy around what impact is it going to have.
We've spent a lot of time on ergonomics. That was something we found to be really important as we iterated on the headset, from developer kits to Crescent Bay to the Rift.
The elephant in the room has always been simulator sickness and disorientation. That's one of the biggest challenges.
I think people have an appetite for VR at $200, $300, $400. It's something so new and improves so quickly, people do have an appetite to buy that. If people are getting a new VR headset every two or three years that's incredibly improved, you want to go do that.
AirMech was ported, I guess, but they made a complete VR mode for it. It's a tabletop game. It's incredibly compelling. I find it a lot more compelling in VR.
In real life, that's how we're moving around. We look at things while we're walking and moving and turning around. We stare at objects in the world.
There are millions of sci-fi enthusiasts in the world, not just gamers.
We've been working with Paul Bettner and the Playful team since the beginning of Oculus. Paul was one of, I think, seven $5,000 Kickstarter backers.
A hardware startup with no funding is a risky venture.
Mobile VR will be a lot more accessible. It'll be easier to use; you'll be able to pass it along to your friends.
We imagine that some people will jump into the AR and VR space that are complementary. We look at Google Glass. It's very complementary. It's not competitive. It's a different experience. It's used for different purposes.
Essentially, we're always trying to reduce latency. As you try to reduce the latency of the experience, you can only get it down so far before we start running into the limitations of game engines, computing, the intensity of the experience you're trying to compute.
Think of the first Apple II being shipped in 1977. It took almost a decade for it to land in my school where I could see it.
When Facebook acquired Oculus, the game changed immediately. You saw big companies jumping in. You saw people like Google getting fully committed, and then Microsoft came along with HoloLens - there was a lot of stuff that people were doing before, but now the space really ignited.
When you put on the headset, you want to be tricked; you want your mind to believe you are actually teleported to this new virtual place.
At Oculus, we're now looking at eye specialists, people who really understand how the human eye works, and how that affects human emotion.
Replacing human vision is more than just a tool: we need to understand how that affects the brain.
When I saw how real virtual reality can be, and that we can replace human vision with virtual vision, this can be the ultimate platform.
The product cycle for the Oculus Rift will be between the rapid six-month cycle of cell-phones and the slower seven-year cycle of consoles. It's rare to see a phone not coming out every year.
Seeing other people is incredibly engaging, and that's one of the drivers that made us partner with Facebook - social communication. Not social newsfeeds, but actual face-to-face, seeing multiple avatars in a play experience, that's going to be a very big part of the future in VR.
If you don't have content, you don't sell hardware. We need a suite of content of really fun, compelling experiences that aren't just hardcore game-oriented, and when that's good enough, it'll be an easy decision to go to the consumer market.
Most big companies work in stealth until they think they have a consumer product ready to go.
Certainly, virtual reality headsets are behind in resolution, but it'll all catch up pretty quickly once there's a consumer market and there's demand.
Display companies, many of them that we've spoken to, are really excited about virtual reality because they're actually running out of innovation opportunities in other markets.
Oculus is a company that often does things differently. But we don't want to do things so differently that we start to get into trouble.
I was born and raised in Maryland and attended the public school system.
It just felt like the right thing to do to give back to a state school and public school. I'm a really big fan of public education.
When people take off the headset, they immediately have a creative idea about what they can make in virtual reality, and a lot of them immediately want to get involved.
We look at Sony as someone who's jumping into the space to help evangelize and build out VR. They're very centered around a console experience.
Whether it's developers or industry veterans on the business side, top talent likes to work together.
We want to make sure everyone has a great experience. When they buy the product and take home and plug it in, we want to make sure that first experience is comfortable and everything is there.
We're finally going to be free of the 2D monitor. It's been a window into virtual reality that we've all looked into for 30 or 40 years.
Internally, we're focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that's out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we've written and all the invention we've created has been focused on our own tech and our own products.
If you look back at when things like tablets and smartphones were first invented, or the Newton at Apple, that was the first attempt at VR. We didn't even have 3D GPUS, or were just getting them.
We are being super selective on who we bring in and really just trying to hire the very best.
With the headset and motion tracker and all kinds of different future tracking technologies that we are R&Ding, there is just a huge amount of intelligence that has to be created. So we are looking at hiring some of the brightest minds out there to tackle some of those challenges and deliver the very best experience possible for the consumer.
Ultimately, going into the consumer market, we really need outstanding content. That was the goal: if we can get the developer kit out at a low enough cost point, then hopefully a lot of developers would show up and start creating content.
You've got to stay super focused on shipping product. There isn't a version two or three if there isn't a great version one.
We designed a number of features from the ground up, like custom display and optics technology with very high refresh rates and pixel density. We added integrated 3-D audio, a built-in microphone so you can speak to friends inside virtual worlds, and precise mechanical adjustment systems.
As people are showing the Rift to friends, word will spread that VR can be that good. So I'm not so worried in terms of adoption of the Rift.
We continue to see more and more of that - games we didn't necessarily know would work in VR until a developer goes in and discovers the game mechanic that makes it come together. Sure enough, hockey can be a great VR experience.
Windows never planned for a VR device. When you plug a HDMI cable into the computer, Windows thinks it's a new monitor. The desktop blinks. It tries to rearrange windows and icons.
When you look at this and where it's all going, the hardware business requires a lot of investment. It's very hard, it's very expensive, and ramping up hard on any given platform, whether it's a console or any kind of PC or mobile device, going into the hardware business requires a lot of investment.
Oculus is actually more of a software company than it is a hardware company.
The University of Maryland was an inspiration for me, and the relationships I made there have lasted a lifetime.
This is a whole new world to explore as a developer to go in and learn these new gameplay mechanics, to learn what it's like to actually control a character from a top-down, 'God's eye' view, and to figure out how the game camera can be controlled by the player's head.
