Facebook’s Oculus is the first fully immersive VR product available for individual purchase. At 399$, it is not yet an affordable product to be integrated into the mainstream, but it opens the doors for future innovation, individual experimentation, and of course, inspiration for competitions to produce a more affordable option. It being on of the only complex VR options on the market, I thought it would be a good idea to give brief overview about what it is, and why it matters.
What can it do?
If you purchase the Facebook Oculus, you will get not only a pair of VR goggles, but also two gaming controllers that will help you navigate the virtual worlds you now have access to. The gaming can look different depending on what you are interested in, but users report that no matter what, the experience is ridiculously beyond gaming “traditionally” on a console or PC. You can climb mountains, dodge obstacles, fly planes and have a wealth of fully immersive experiences without leaving your own home. This ad tells us a bit more about how it looks visually:
Why does this product matter?
This product is one of the only fully fledged VR experience products on the market, available to everyday consumers like you and me. VR as a whole is an emerging topic, one classified as both new media and technology, which makes the products slow to roll out into the everyday marketplace. I believe in ten years, we will be able to head to our local Target, or the 2030 version of such, and pick up a very similar device at an affordable cost. That being said, the tech is not yet there to regulate that cost to a mainstream price point. The real importance of this product is that it bridges consumers to this brand new technology, much like first Mac did in 1984 with releasing the first personal computer. That tech was revolutionary then, just like how Facebook is releasing (or, rather, buying) the Oculus,
