hololens

May 6, 2015

Consumer Oculus Rift Not Due Until 2016

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Oculus has today announced that their long-awaited virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift, will not be made available to consumers until at least 2016. Reports over the last year have suggested the device would hit store shelves in 2015 but this new information confirms that isn’t the case. The company also declined to give a firm release date other than the first quarter of 2016, what specifications the consumer version will have or exactly how much it will cost. It’s been a busy 12 months for Oculus. In July of 2014 Facebook acquired the company for $2 billion in a move that was widely criticized by backers and fans who felt that the purchase could mean that the Oculus Rift headset might only be used exclusively on Facebook products. Executives from both companies went on record to confirm this would not be the case. In the same month, the second devkit of the product was shipped to developers who had backed the project. Known as the DK2, it featured a

January 21, 2015

Introducing the Microsoft Virtual Boy: Hololens

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The highlight of Microsoft’s Windows 10 conference this morning, besides the reveal that we get 10 for free, was the surprise demonstration of Microsoft’s take on the second wave of attempts at virtual reality. Project Hololens is the name of a proposed set of VR glasses that, unlike the other attempts at VR, does not entirely close you off from the world. Like a cross between Oculus Rift and Google Glass, Hololens projects virtual elements onto real objects you look at, allowing you to interact with them. It’s a more advanced version of the Augmented Reality trick available with the 3DS. We were all wondering what Microsoft planned to do with Minecraft. Now everything makes sense. The demo video showed a man virtually blowing up his living room wall and opening up a Minecraft world through the hole. He was shown playing in his living room with thousands of virtual blocks, creating cities and valleys and mountains with his hands. If I was eight years old, the sight of this