Successfully preordered Oculus Rift!
by PhoenixGames on Jan.06, 2016, under Astral Realms, News, P-0, Spiritus Astrum
Although it was harder than I thought, Oculus claimed that they were experiencing “Massive” load on their servers, and it was overwhelming their payment processors. That’s a good sign for VR!
It did mean that by the time I managed to complete my preorder, my ship date had slipped from March to April.
Eventually, however, I managed to secure a preorder for the rift using Firefox and Paypal, that combination seemed to work better than chrome and a credit card.
The bad news is that the total price (including shipping) for European customers (or as least the countries in Europe that Oculus ship to, it’s not available everywhere) came to €740! A lot more than US customers had to pay, although even they had to pay more than expected, few prospective customers thought the price would be more than $500.
Several twitter users have expressed concern that this price, combined with the very high system requirements, will serve to price the Rift out of the market.
I see it more as the cost of the early adoption of high-end VR tech. In a few years, with mass production, the rift will be less expensive, and Rift capable PC’s will be a lot cheaper. So, for a high introductory price, you are getting early access to what could be a whole new way of living.
There are some Rift competitors out there, but most of them aren’t capable of the same kind of immersive, realistic experience as the rift. Some of them are intended for mobile devices, for example. The rift is intended for not just realistic gaming, but alternative reality experiences, such as virtual work places, virtual teleconferencing, etc.
I also ran the Oculus Compatibility tool, and as expected, my new PC is more than capable:
