This year, at least three major long-awaited virtual reality headsets will go on sale: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Sony's PlayStation VR.
But Facebook-owned Oculus VR already has a huge advantage over those rival products and companies: awareness.
Take a look at this chart provided by Google Trends, which measures the popularity of search terms on Google.
As you can see, the Oculus Rift is far and away the most popular virtual reality headset on Google, at least in terms of search volume.
Sony's PlayStation VR headset, formerly called "Project Morpheus," and HTC's Vive headset, are some of the lesser-searched headsets on Google — in fact, people apparently search for the Oculus Rift about 7.5 times more than the HTC Vive or the PlayStation VR. This is somewhat surprising, considering the overwhelmingly positive reviews for the HTC Vive and the massive popularity of Sony's PlayStation 4 game console, which will support PlayStation VR.
Obviously, this chart isn't an indicator of quality or potential sales. In fact, only one of these headsets — the Gear VR, which is super cheap to begin with — is available to buy right now, and it'll take some time before these other headsets are affordable or accessible enough for most folks. Still, it's interesting to see which VR headsets people search for the most. Facebook and the Oculus team should be very happy about the level of awareness surrounding their products so far.