Oculus Rift dev kit enables anywhere, anytime VR
The team behind Facebook-owned Oculus Rift has announced that Gear VR Innovator Edition, the first development kit for Gear VR, is now available for purchase from Samsung online, for developers in the US (with additional regions to follow). It’s still early days for mobile VR, but budding developers can use Gear VR to begin building inspiring experiences now.
Gear VR enables virtual reality anywhere, anytime, and it’s the most integrated VR system developed to date. Working closely with Samsung, Oculus Rift expanded the Note 4’s native performance by developing a highly optimised VR graphics path with integrated system software.
This is just the first step toward true consumer mobile VR. Though it’s missing several key components for comfort and presence, OR is working with Samsung to improve in every vertical including optics, distortion, heat, weight, ergonomics, tracking, and display tech.
Alongside Innovator Edition, the Oculus VR Store, an integrated discovery and distribution system for VR content built for Gear VR, is also due to be launched. The VR store is very basic in terms of functionality today, but OR says it's the the beginning of a true made-for-VR content distribution and discovery platform for Oculus developers everywhere.
All of the initial content is currently free, which makes for a unique opportunity to experiment, iterate, learn, and grow the mobile VR fanbase. Early next year OR plans to introduce commerce to the platform, allowing developers to monetise their VR games and applications.
Over the last few months, Oculus has asked a small group of developers to create content for Gear VR using prototype hardware and pre-release builds of the Mobile SDK. The Gear VR platform will launch with a collection of high-quality sample experiences that show off what Gear VR is capable of, and highlight a range of comfort options from stationary to locomotion.
You can swim with blue whales, pilot arcade fighters through asteroid fields, dungeon crawl, use extrasensory abilities to solve puzzles and a lot more with these first experiences. Oculus Rift extends a huge thank you to all the developers who helped make this possible, continuing to say that “Innovator Edition is just the beginning for great mobile VR, but we can’t wait to see what you build with it!”