Oculus Rift is the virtual reality headset from Oculus VR that’s managed to take the gaming world by storm even though it’s not officially on sale yet. It’s a Head Mounted Display (HMD) that lets you play your favorite games in 3D. Now the company’s CEO says that next-generation smartphones are a target platform for his device, according to Edge Online.
You wear the Oculus Rift on your head like a pair of goggles (though they’re much bigger than that), and inside is a pair of screens that render 3D images stereoscopically. The headset touts a gyroscope and accelerometer to figure out how you’re turning and holding your head, to help the software render the appropriate images – so you can look side to side, up and down and see what you’d expect to see if you were really standing there.
Oculus Rift first came to the public’s attention when the company tried to bootstrap its development by posting a Kickstarter project. Oculus VR hoped to raise $250,000 to get their project off the ground. Kickstarter users responded spectacularly, kicking in a total of almost $2.5 million by the end of it.
That effort netted the development of Oculus Rift “developer kits,” which began shipping late in 2012. Now the company is gearing up for a consumer-focused version of the headset which is expected to come out next year.
The bulk of Oculus VR’s attention has been to get the Rift working with PCs, though they’ve dabbled with consoles too. But Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe recently said that his company is “a lot more excited about where mobile’s going to go, and being able to plug right in to a next gen cellphone.”
He described the rapid pace of cellphone hardware development and said that the rate of improvement – specs doubling almost every year – makes “the next Galaxy or the next iPhone” a more favorable platform target than next-generation consoles.
