It appears Oculus has decided to treat its network of developers with a gift for the holidays. The company announced that it will be shipping final hardware to developers working on titles that will be shipping in the first quarter of the year. Oculus said that developers will need access to the full retail hardware to finalize their games.
Along with the hardware, developers will receive Oculus SDK 1.0 and runtime 1.0. Oculus had previously been targeting November for a public release of the full SDK, but the company must have reconsidered that idea. Though developers that receive the hardware will also receive the full SDK, it is not yet being released to the public nor to the development community as a whole.
We already know a lot about the Oculus Rift and what consumers will get, but there must be some surprises left in store for us. Oculus said the SDK and runtime “include features tied to the consumer product, so we’ve currently limited the release to developers putting final touches on launch titles,” implying that there's something in the SDK still being kept from the public.
Oculus said that development of projects that won’t be shipping “imminently” should continue on SDK 0.8 and Rift DK2 hardware. It’s necessary to get early access only if your product is ready for the final touches. Oculus said if you are planning to release a launch title and don’t have hardware yet, you can submit your game to the Oculus submission tool, and the company will be in contact.
There was some speculation on Twitter about the support for the Rift DK2 hardware with Oculus SDK 1.0, but Oculus’s Tom Forsythe cleared that up quickly. The full SDK does still support the old hardware, so if you had plans of keeping your dev kit running, it should be possible.
Oculus said it will be shipping Rift hardware to developers every week from now until the consumer launch next year, so if you’re building a game and don’t get your Rift for Christmas, there’s a good chance you’ll have one soon after.
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