Oculus has starting shipping its $599 Rift virtual reality (VR) headsets that will be on backorder until July. The VR device provides a high-quality immersive experience for which fans have been waiting years. However, the Rift headset needs a powerful gaming Windows PC to function and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey shares that the Facebook-owned company has no plans to make the unit available for Apple's Macs in the near future.
Luckey said in an interview that a Mac-compatible Rift headset would only be available if the company builds a good computer, according to The Guardian.
The New York Times reports that the Rift headset is a well-built device that has a lot of potential. Meanwhile, it is harder to set up than smartphones and tablets, and the first apps and games available for the device target serious gamers, according to NYT.
Oculus spokesman Emil Rodriguez explains that the headset is designed to transfer weight from the nose. That is why there is small space at the bottom of the unit.
Many of the Oculus games can take up to 30 minutes to download due to many VR games having over 6 gigabytes.
In the Oculus demo called Dreamdeck Rift users are placed in different environments. They include ones with a cruel-looking dinosaur, campfire surrounded by a deer and rabbit, and view from the top of a skyscraper.
Kickstarter backers who supported Oculus in 2013 will receive the first Rift VR units. The startup company raised $2.4 million on the crowdfunding site a year before the world's largest social network Facebook bought the company for $2 billion.
Luckey hand-delivered a Rift VR unit to the first pre-order customer in Alaska. The Oculus founder shared that he has been working on the VR headset unit since 2009 and at Oculus since 2012, so he did not want a "random delivery guy" to hand over the first Rift. He argued it was worth taking a one-day vacation to The Last Frontier.
Cheap VR headsets including Samsung's Gear VR and Google Cardboard have already hit the market, while Sony's PlayStation VR and HTC Vive will launch this year. However, some major problems with the early VR devices are that the images are unclear and shaky, and a limited amount of content is available. Oculus' Story Studio will attempt to deal with the second issue.
Here's a first look for Oculus Rift headset: