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"Virtual reality leader Oculus VR is, yet again, the talk of E3. This time around, however, the talk has moved beyond the marvel of its technology and onto new, exclusive content for the headset. We sat down for a group interview with CEO Brendan Iribe to hear more about the future of Oculus and\u00A0the new role Facebook will play \u2013 we also got to\u00A0try out Playful\u2019s \u201CLucky\u2019s Tale\u201D game, the first title published by Oculus.\r\nWhat follows\u00A0is a condensed version of our conversation.\r\n\r\nThe Dream Team\r\nFueled by Facebook\u2019s $2 billion acquisition, Oculus has been on a hiring spree. Last week, the company brought on Jason Holtman, one of the creators of Valve\u2019s Steam service, to build its platform. This week, Oculus announced that Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin will head up its first-party studio efforts.\r\n\u201CFacebook really supercharged our recruitment process,\u201D Iribe said. \u201CIt\u2019s great to get the person who built Steam. It\u2019s official, we\u2019re building a platform. Jason Rubin, as the head of worldwide studios, [is] going to be leading our first-party content development. We\u2019re going to spin up a few studios.\u201D\r\nWhen asked what made him want to come over, Holtman said:\r\n\r\nI put a headset on. I\u2019ve known these guys for a while. The moment you go and put one of these headsets on, it\u2019s apparent.\r\nIribe chimed in that simply trying out the headset has been Oculus\u2019s reoccurring recruitment method. he described the pitch as: \u201CHey, put this on, take it off, do you want to be part of building the future?\u201D\r\nOver the past few months, Oculus has hired over 40 people as Iribe assembled what he called his \u201Cdream team.\u201D The latest batch of hires is a dazzling list, drawing in folks from Google[x], ARM, EA, 343 Studios, Bungie, Nvidia and more.\r\nWhile some Oculus fans had complained that the Facebook deal might spoil its indie upstart roots, the amount of talent that Oculus has been able to sign because of the acquisition will almost certainly result in an improved and accelerated product.\r\n\r\nFeeling Lucky\r\nAt it\u2019s heart, Lucky\u2019s Tale is a plucky 3D platformer that uses the VR view as a third-person camera. It\u2019s cute and fun and the game includes a few features to show off the headset\u2019s capabilities, such as using it the head-tracking to aim when throwing an object. You\u2019ll also see other subtle touches throughout the game \u2013 Lucky will follow your gaze if you tilt your head while he\u2019s facing you.\r\n\r\nLucky\u2019s Tale is also a departure from many of the VR experiences we\u2019ve seen on Oculus, which have tended toward first-person point-of-view to heighten the immersive perspective of the headset. Lucky\u2019s Tale works because it skips some of the cheap gimmicks that can creep into VR games and focuses instead on bringing the same level of polish and care that you\u2019d see on a traditional game.\r\nPlayful and Oculus have been working together since almost the beginning. Words with Friends co-creator Paul Bettner started Playful after leaving Zynga last year and quickly turned his attention to VR. As a high-level backer of Oculus\u2019s original Kickstarter campaign, Bettner brought his team to the Oculus office to meet with the Iribe early on.\r\n\u201CWe had a lot of fun right from the beginning talking about VR,\u201D Iribe said. \u201CWe gave them early duct tape prototypes. In the end, we gave them 30 different experiences.\u201D\r\n\r\nProject Morpheus?\r\nAt E3 this year, Sony is coming up in Oculus\u2019s rear-view mirror with its own VR demo of its Project Morpheus PS4 accessory. When I tried the Morpheus\u2019s street luge demo at the show this week, I found the headset to be viable, but not quite as polished as Oculus.\r\nStill, even with Sony getting ready to jump into the VR space, Iribe doesn\u2019t seem too worried.\r\n\u201CWe don\u2019t look at Sony as a competitor. We really look at Sony as somebody who\u2019s jumping into the space to help evangelize it. Morpheus is an accessory to their console platform. We are solely focused on VR,\u201D he said.\r\n\r\nChallenges\r\nOculus is still some way\u00A0from its consumer release. Its Development Kit 2 [DK2] hardware is scheduled for release later this summer. With the latest version, Oculus has managed to overcome one of the key obstacles that held back its initial release.\r\n\u201CThe elephant in the room has always been simulator sickness, disorientation,\u201D Iribe said.\r\nHe credited Valve with building the first VR experience that \u201Cfinally cracked the code\u201D with regard to the motion sickness that accompanied earlier headsets.\r\n&amp;quot;Now [simulator sickness is] largely an addressable problem. We still have a lot of work to get there and we will,\u201D he added.\r\nAs for other challenges, Iribe said that Oculus is focused on improving the form factor, shrinking it down to be lighter weight, and driving the cost down. Content is also another hurdle for Oculus, as it needs to ensure that its platform has plenty of great experiences for consumers to try out when the headset finally goes to retail.\r\nThe question of input also remains an issue for Oculus. When the company demoes its technology now, it uses a traditional gaming controller as input, but that\u2019s one of the weakest links of the experience. One of the first things people do when they try on Oculus Rift is look for their hands. Oculus is currently working on solutions, but the company has yet to announce the primary type of input it will support when it ships the headset.\r\n\u201CWe have been R&amp;amp;amp;Ding input for a while. We\u2019ve been trying a whole bunch of stuff\u2026tons of different input devices. It\u2019s something we\u2019re not ready to talk about yet, we\u2019re still figuring it out.\u201D\r\n\r\nSlowing experiences\r\nAs Oculus and its partners have worked on creating experiences for the headset, experiments have shown that the company needed to start with simple, stationary environments before leaping ahead to fast-paced first-person shooters.\r\nEarly on in the development of the headset, iD Software co-founder John Carmack, who eventually became Oculus\u2019s CTO showed off a demo of Doom with the BFG rocket launcher and running down hallways in VR. While the experience seemed promising for gamers, the Oculus team realized that it was too much to start out with.\r\n\u201CWithin a few seconds of trying it, we thought, \u2018That\u2019s pretty intense and maybe we need to slow this down a lot,\u2019\u201D Iribe said. \u201COver the last two years, we\u2019ve been slowing down the experiences and making them more comfortable.\u201D\r\nWhile companies like Virtuix are making treadmills for VR use, Oculus wants to promote its headset as a \u201Cseated experience.\u201D\r\n\u201CWe felt it was better to message to the community to stay seated,\u201D Iribe noted. \u201CWe even joked that maybe we should be shipping seat belts with this.\u201D\r\n\r\nDevelopment Kit 2\r\nInterestingly, Iribe noted that the number of DK2 preorders has already surpassed the volume of DK1 devices Oculus shipped out during the version\u2019s lifetime. If you're ready to take the plunge, you can pre-order DK2 for $350.\r\n\r\nIribe promised that the consumer version will be \u201Canother really big leap\u201D from DK2 when it arrives. He\u00A0wouldn\u2019t provide an estimated shipping date for the consumer release, but he did say that it\u2019s hopefully \u201Cnot far away.\u201D\r\n\r\nFacebook\r\nThe Facebook/Oculus deal came as a surprise to many fans, who found a social networking company to be an odd fit for VR. However, Iribe said that no other company was as excited to work with Oculus as Facebook was.\r\n\u201CMark Zuckerberg stayed super enthusiastic. We didn\u2019t see that with Google or Microsoft,\u201D he said. \u201CFacebook will get fully behind us and back this as the next computer platform.\u201D\r\nAccording to Iribe, members of the gaming industry have approached him to say that the deal is going to be \u201Cvery meaningful to gaming.\u201D\r\nOne area where Facebook can lend its expertise is helping to build a Metaverse, the term for a social virtual world first pioneered by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash. Iribe continued:\r\n\r\n\r\nOne of the reasons we looked at this partnership was the infrastructure Facebook has. They have this incredible network that would take us a long time to build out. They\u2019ve been focused on security and privacy for a decade now.\r\nThey\u2019ve built out the world\u2019s largest social network. In general, they\u2019re people you know, people you\u2019ve met in life. In VR, if you take this step forward, you\u2019re going to go out and have this face-to-face experience, gaming in the Metaverse, you\u2019re probably going to do it with your friends to start, then maybe with some new friends that you meet in in the Metaverse. Having Facebook understand what that means, is going to be very, very meaningful.\r\n\r\nEven so, Iribe reiterated that the company is free to use and not use what it wants. \u201CWe\u2019re staying largely independent,\u201D he said.\r\n\r\nGaming first\r\nIribe noted that Oculus is focused first on gaming at the moment, in part because the best 3D engines have been created by the gaming industry. However, he does expect education to also be a significant area for Oculus use.\r\n\u201CWe have a big plan on supporting academia, universities, and going out to help evangelize virtual science in academia and research,\u201D he said.\r\n\r\nThe future of VR\r\n\u201CAs the technology gets really good, there will be a day, some decade, where all of this is possible in a pair of sunglasses,\u201D Iribe speculated. \u201CThere will be a billion plus people in there. It will be awesome; there will be a new set of worlds that we\u2019re able to enjoy. It\u2019s limitless.\u201D\r\nIribe compared VR to online multiplayer games that have become immersive for gamers even in 2D on a monitor:\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen you think about this pursuit of virtual presence, Eve Online and World of Warcraft, they\u2019re doing this incredible job trying to create this believable world. For some people, this world really exists. People are thinking about it and trying to convince their brain that it\u2019s a real place, but their brain is saying, \u201CNo, it\u2019s on a monitor, on a 2D screen, in a box.\u201D\r\nNow for the first time with VR, you\u2019ll put on a headset where you get the true sense of presence where your brain is saying this is real and you\u2019re there going, \u2018No, no, this isn\u2019t real.\u2019\u201D\r\nYou can only do it with VR. That is such a huge phase change. Now, getting back to it, a place like Eve Online can become a real place. Your brain remembers it as a real place. That\u2019s going to be incredible. I think that will have a really big impact.\r\nWhat really inspired me around VR, the very first demo, was the creative thoughts I had of what this was going to enable, what people were going to create. \u2018What if you made this? What if you made that?\u2019 I felt that way, and then, even more important and more powerful, I took it around as a duct tape prototype showing Unity, Epic, Valve, and suddenly every single person had the same reaction. Everybody had an idea that came out of the experience and it\u2019s only gotten even more compelling and even more powerful as we\u2019ve gone on and encouraged more creativity.\r\nWhen you put on Oculus, people are just streaming with ideas, dreaming about things. That\u2019s why I think this will be the most powerful platform of all time. I think everybody\u2019s got an idea about it.\r\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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