The Oculus Rift has been on the market for just over six months, and even its top executives admit it had a slow start. High price, very demanding technical specifications, strong competition, shipping problems and an unexpected political scandal left Facebook's subsidiary in a tough position. The immediate plan, however, is to regroup with a series of announcements, including the intention to develop a new generation of the Rift that does not depend on a computer, completely eliminating any physical tether.
Disappointing sales and mounting challenges
Initial sales projections for the Oculus Rift spoke of half a million units in the first year. Six months after launch, most agree Oculus VR will be lucky to end 2016 with 180,000 headsets sold. What happened? It was actually a mix of factors. Both HTC and Sony are making a lot of noise with their own virtual solutions, the "confusion" over the Rift's price dampened user enthusiasm, as did its high hardware requirements, the platform still lacks a "killer app", a parts shortage that Facebook confirmed in April delayed shipments, and if that weren't enough, the apparent "pro-Trump" stance of Palmer Luckey started an internal war with several developers.
A wireless Rift takes shape
However, that doesn't mean the Oculus story is over. Even though these are significant stumbles, the race is long, Facebook is a titan on the web, and at its latest Oculus Connect conference we already saw some striking details. The most important? A version of the Rift without a computer connection. The keynote only devoted a couple of minutes to the prototype dubbed "Santa Cruz", about which a short video was published, though it was enough to confirm that the technology is on its way. With this announcement, Facebook acknowledges what is probably the biggest weakness of the Oculus Rift: the physical link that keeps it tethered. For now, it is logical to assume the prototype will make certain sacrifices in quality, but I'm afraid there's no more information available.
Lighter requirements with asynchronous spacewarp
A notable step in that wireless direction is the reduction of the minimum requirements of the Oculus Rift, courtesy of a new API called "asynchronous spacewarp". It's a very colorful name for what we know as "reprojection": two frames at 45 FPS are analyzed, and from them an artificial new frame is introduced, allowing the headset to be fed with 90 FPS without raising hardware parameters. The difference is that "asynchronous spacewarp" goes a step beyond traditional reprojection, as it only applies to rotational changes, for example, when we move our head. If we add to that reduction the work of Nvidia, which seeks to bring its 10-series chips to laptops, Oculus is already in good shape to expand its "Oculus Ready" certification to new models. To close, another piece of news many were waiting for: the Oculus Touch controllers will debut on December 6, with a price of $199.
