Speaking at 2014’s Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe noted that the retail release of the company’s Rift virtual reality headset — which has sold more than 100,000 units so far, even though it’s still in active development — is less than a year away (via The Next Web).
“We’re all hungry for it to happen. We’re getting very close. It’s months, not years away, but many months,” he said.
The actual headset is said to be close to being final, which lines up with what we heard at June’s E3 2014 about Oculus already working with a consumer prototype behind closed doors in its offices. What’s holding up the Oculus Rift, in general, is the lack of a quality input device one could use to interact with whatever it is that’s being displayed on the headset’s two 960×1080 screens (per eye, based on the latest Dev Kit specs).
According to Iribe, your typical mouse-keyboard combination just isn’t good enough. Neither is a gamepad, nor any kind of gesture-based recognition system. The input has to have some kind tactile element to it, but Oculus VR just isn’t sure what that might be just yet.
Not only does Oculus VR wants to make sure that it gets everything right the first time, but it (naturally) worries that rivals might rush out and deliver an inferior product. “We’ve gone out there and set this bar and said, ‘We want to get it right,'” Iribe said. “We don’t want it to be four or five years. We’re eager for this to happen.”