Good news, everyone! The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 is now available for preorder! It’s got a whole host of cool new features for game developers to tinker with. It’s something to be excited for on the consumer side of things, too – after all, it means better games.
With simulators and headsets like the Oculus Rift, the biggest problems are motion blur and judder (basically missing frames). They’re annoying enough on a standard screen, but with a headset like the Rift, they’re a very common cause of something known as "simulator sickness." Thankfully, this model of the rift effectively eliminates the problem.
Positional tracking, meanwhile, allows the Rift to detect where the player’s facing and how their head happens to be positioned. It’s pretty much a requirement for virtual reality – without it, the Rift is essentially just a glorified video headset. My understanding was that this was always a feature of the Rift – perhaps the new development kit simply provides enhanced tracking.
The most interesting feature of the new Development Kit is definitely the latency tester. Operated through built-in hardware, the tester allows developers to measure with remarkable precision how much visual lag is in their game. It’s pretty vital – after all, even a single second of lag can make it effectively impossible to operate. As such, it’s extremely important that devs do everything in their power to eliminate latency before they ship.
The development kit will include the Oculus Headset, an external camera, an HDMI to DVI adapter, a DC power adapter, international power plugs, nearsighted lens cups and a lens cleaning cloth. The Software Development Kit, meanwhile offers support for both Unity and Unreal Engine.
You can preorder the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 here. The SDK is available for free here(note that registration is required).
