Editor’s Note: After we ran our massive interview with Nate Mitchell, VP of Product behind the Oculus Rift VR headset (read part one here, and part two here) we were contacted by Neil Schneider from Meant To Be Seen 3D, the core developers behind the open source Vireio Perception drivers that many gamers have been using to turn games into VR-capable 3D experiences.

He asked us if he could issue a statement to clear the air around the issue of Vireio drivers vs. native Rift support, and we agreed. So without further ado, take it away Neil…

In part two of our interview with Nate Mitchell, VP of Product at Oculus Rift, we discuss upcoming resolution improvements to bring the tech into HD, how the reaction has been from both indie and major developers, and how they’re dealing with simulation sickness issues.

Nate Mitchell is the VP of Product behind the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset turning heads and stomachs with its impressive technology and affordable entry-level pricing. Bennett Ring sat down with Nate to talk all things VR, what’s in store for the Rift, and whether or not the PS4 will be powerful enough to run their tech.

A modder by the name of StellaArtois has released some very rough and completely unofficial but totally working drivers to enable you to play Minecraft through the Oculus Rift VR headset (even though he currently doesn’t even have one of his own to test it on!).

The mod is very clearly in alpha state and requires quite a few steps to get it to work successfully, including opening your .jar files and mucking around with the contents, as well as changing Windows environment variables. But you’re a proud PC gamer! Don’t let that stop you.

Our forum user Mekon has already got it running on his machine, and says that head tracking works fine, “although I can’t recommend strongly enough that you turn mouse sensitivity down to at least 30% or lower, or you will blow chunks – the simplest nudge of the mouse at 100% seems to spin you around 720 degrees in a nanosecond”. Good advice!

Download the mod and get the instructions here.

Source: Thanks, Mekon!

An enterprising modder has used the open-source Vireio Perception driver to turn Mirror’s Edge into an Oculus Rift game, with startling (and impressively bug-free) results. The video below shows both what the user is seeing as well as reaction cam so we can watch the user as he plays. Check it out.

If you’re after more Oculus Rift VR stuff, I can’t recommend this video highly enough, where a 90-year old grandmother flips out at how amazing virtual reality is. It’s the best.

Source: PC Gamer

Valve’s flagship war-themed hat simulator Team Fortress 2 has been revealed to be gearing up for Oculus Rift support, with a VR patch expected shortly.

“This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in,” revealed Valve programmer Joe Ludwig to Endgadget.

Mac and Linux players will miss out however, until the Oculus SDK for those platforms is supplied to the company. “We don’t have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet,” said Ludwig, “but once we get those, we’ll get it ported over to those other platforms.” A patch for PC players is expected “sometime in the next couple of weeks” that will bring Oculus support.

Meanwhile, Oculus Rift’s site has revealed that the goggles will not ship with a VR-enabled copy of DOOM 3 as promised due to it not being finished by id Software in time. More details here.

Source: Endgadget

Our very own Cas Bitton gently chided me today for not mentioning the Oculus Rift more on this fine site, and you know what: he’s right! The Oculus Rift is, in case you’re not down with the cool kids, a virtual reality headset that blasted through its Kickstarter goal and is now being supported by all sorts of industry big names, including Epic, Valve and Notch.

Now its creator, 20-year old Palmer Luckey, has been hitting the streets of CES to talk about his plans for the device and where he sees it going — including his belief that they’ll be able to build a new kit with double the resolution of the current model within the year.

“I do think resolution needs to be better for the best VR, but even at low resolution you can get a good experience,” he said in response to Valve engineer Michael Abrash’s comments on VR.

“I’m not going to say that this is the best experience, or that resolution isn’t important; it’s a really critical factor and this is good as it gets today. We’re going to be building one at double this resolution within a year and even more after that, so there’s a lot of other things to work on besides resolution. We can’t just sit around and wait for 4K displays to hop around.”

Luckey also revealed that delays on the unit were due to an unavoidable problem where the screen panel manufacturer didn’t reveal the screen they were selling the Rift team was an end-of-life product, and thus could not meet the unforeseen demand of the Kickstarter.

For more on the Oculus Rift, check out this excellent hands-on from The Verge (skip to about 19 minutes for Rift action) or hit up the official site.

Source: PC Gamer

You might have seen the Oculus Rift VR headset floating around at E3, when John Carmack blew people’s minds by showing it off running Doom 3 in it. Now the developers want to take it a step further, and so they asked Kickstarter for $250,000. Now, 24 hours later, they’ve got $688,000. And there’s still 30 days to go.

The Oculus Rift is a VR headset designed specifically for games. With 6 degrees of freedom, a 110 degree FOV, and two separate screens at 640×800 each, it’s an impressive piece of tech – especially since you can get one for as little as $300. If it sounds like your thing, click here to check it out.