Specifications

1.1 Why support the Rift?
There are really two questions here. The first is whether you should support VR in general, and
the second is whether you should support the Rift specifically.
1.1.1 The call of virtual reality
If you’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek and imagined what you could do with your own
personal holodeck, or wished you were the greatest swordfighter in the Metaverse, then this
book is for you. Or perhaps you’ve flown a flight simulator and wished you could just look out
at the mountains to your left by turning your head, or maybe you have wished you could build
cities with a wave of your hand. If so, you’ve felt the call of VR and this book is for you.
Maybe you have more practical interests; saving money or increasing safety. For years, VR
has been used in specialized niches where immersion in an environment, without actually being
in the environment, was critical. The canonical example is the flight simulator. When you’re
training a pilot to operate a piece of machinery that costs tens or hundreds of millions of
dollars, spending a few hundred thousand, or even a few million on creating an artificial
environment in which to train without the risks associated with a real aircraft can be a pretty
wise investment and this book is for you.
1.1.2 But what about the Rift?
What’s special about the Rift is that it can deliver nearly the same level of immersion as
existing commercial setups costing orders of magnitude more, but at a price that makes it
available, if not to the average consumer, at least to the average consumer who would already
have the kind of computing or gaming system that can support the Rift.
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Immersion and Presence
Two key terms we use to describe VR are immersion and presence.
Immersion is the art and technology of surrounding the user with a virtual context, such that there
is world about, below, and all around you.
Presence is the visceral reaction to a convincing immersion experience: when immersion is so good
that the body reacts instinctively to the virtual world as though it is the real one.
When you turn your head to look up at the attacking enemy bombers, that’s immersion; when you
can’t stop yourself from ducking as they roar by overhead, that’s presence.
The appeal of applying VR to the field of gaming should be obvious, and indeed gaming is
the area which will almost certainly drive mass market adoption. But the really exciting thing
to us is the potential the Rift brings. By democratizing the use and development of VR, it has
the potential to radically alter the world in ways we can’t yet imagine. .
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The first development kit was sold for $300, a price comparable to high-end video cards. Oculus has repeatedly said they’re
trying to hit the same price point for the consumer version, albeit with vastly improved specifications.
©Manning Publications Co. We welcome reader comments about anything in the manuscript - other than typos and
other simple mistakes. These will be cleaned up during production of the book by copyeditors and proofreaders.
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