The Oculus Rift Kickstarter project opened its doors to financial backers on August 1. In less than 24 hours, the team surpassed its goal of $250,000 USD. And, the project still has 28 days to go.
"All of us at Oculus are in awe of the support we've received. Surpassing our goal so substantially in less than 24 hours is very humbling," said Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus. "We're attending a few upcoming trade shows including QuakeCon, Siggraph, and Unite to chat with developers and gamers about the Rift and show off the latest prototypes."
The Kickstarter project was established to build development kits of the VR headset and get them into the hands of developers faster. All kits include and early prototype of the headset, and access to the Oculus Developer Center which provides the SDK, technical support, and serves as a community for Oculus developers. The SDK itself will include clean well-documented code, samples, and tutorials.
"We’re also working on out-of-the-box engine integrations for Unreal Engine and Unity, so that anyone interested in working with the Rift, including indie developers, can get started right away!" the Kickstarter page reads.
According to the FAQ, system requirements include a computer with an HDMI or DVI output port -- currently there's no VGA support. Otherwise, there's no set minimum hardware requirements although "any standard gaming computer should be sufficient."
Those who pledge $300 or more will get the early Rift developer kit and a copy of id Software's Doom 3 BFG Edition for the PC. Pledge $500 or more, and you will receive a developer kit, a copy of Doom 3 BFG Edition, access to the Oculus Developer Center, a T-shirt and a poster -- all signed by the Oculus team. Those who pledge $5000 or more will also be flown out to the Oculus lab where visitors will spend the day with the team.
"What I've got now, is, I honestly think the best VR demo probably the world has ever seen," says id Software's John Carmack.
"Needless to say, I'm a believer," says Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director at Epic Games. "We're extremely excited here at Epic Games to get the Unreal Engine integrated with Oculus."
"It looks incredibly exciting, if anybody’s going to tackle this set of hard problems, we think that Palmer’s going to do it. So we’d strongly encourage you to support this Kickstarter," says Gabe Newell, President and Owner of Valve Software.
For more information about the Oculus Rift Kickstarter project, head here.
