The Oculus Rift

(Back View)

(Front View)

(Control Box)

The Rift is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display, being developed by Oculus VR. During its period as an independent company, Oculus VR raised US $2.4 million for the development of the Rift. The consumer version of the product is expected to become available in April 2015.

Videos of the Rift featuring both impressions and gameplay have been broadcast on YouTube by a number of popular video game content providers, with home video titled "My 90-year-old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift" going viral, with over 2 million views.

Games and game platforms must be specifically designed to work correctly with the Oculus Rift. Oculus is producing a software development kit (SDK) to assist developers with integrating the Oculus Rift with their games. The SDK will include code, samples and documentation. Since its introduction, many developers have been working on integration.

Team Fortress 2 was the first game to add support for the Oculus Rift, and is currently available to play with the Oculus Rift dev kit by use of a command line option. The second title to support the Oculus Rift was the Oculus-only version of Museum of the Microstar which was released in April 2013. Half-Life 2 was the third, and Hawken is likely to be the fourth game to support the Rift; it was prominently featured in the Kickstarter, and Oculus used it to demo the Rift at the GDC.