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New Oculus Rift coming in January, won't make you sick

A new version of the virtual reality headset is in the pipeline, with improved motion tracking that won't make you ill, the company promises.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
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Joe Svetlik
2 min read

There's a new version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset due next month, and this one won't make you sick when you turn your head. Oculus VR confirmed to The Verge that it'll unveil the new device at CES, which starts in the second week of January. And it sounds pretty special.

"For me, it was up there with the first time I saw Apple II, Mac, the web, Google, iPhone," according to Oculus investor Chris Dixon. That's pretty illustrious company he reckons the Rift is keeping, but then the new version sounds a big improvement on the original dev kit it started selling last year.

For a start, the motion blur is a thing of the past. Which means no more motion sickness when you turn your head. John Carmack, Oculus VR's chief technical officer, previously called the Rift "one of the easiest ways to make yourself sick", so it's welcome news that it's managed to fix this for the second version.

Other improvements include lower latency, higher resolution, and it incorporates full positional motion tracking so it knows where your head is. This will mean you can lean forward to examine objects, and actually move around a 3D environment, with the Rift responding as you go.

Legendary games company -- and the firm behind the Steam platform -- Valve has leant some of its expertise to help improve the experience.

Oculus VR recently raised a whopping $75 million in extra funding, which it'll use to finalise the model of Rift that us average Joes can actually buy. Not bad for a company that started on Kickstarter just last year.

The Rift might have uses beyond games, too. Oculus VR told The Verge that the headset could be used to give virtual tours, or educational trips for schools, complete with animated dinosaurs roaming the environment. It's in talks with movie studios too, which could produce special virtual reality versions of hit films for you to explore. Add to this the fact John Carmack wants it to run on Android, and eventually become a standalone system that doesn't need to be tethered to a mobile device or a PC, and you've got quite a proposition on your hands. Or strapped to your face, rather.

Roll on January.

Are you excited about the Oculus Rift? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.