Oculus (brand)

Oculus Rift DK2 worn at a research showcase (Leap Motion sensor attached to the front)

As a head-mounted display (HMD) designer at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, Palmer Luckey earned a reputation for having the largest personal collection of HMDs in the world and was a longtime moderator in Meant to be Seen (MTBS)'s discussion forums.[11]

Through MTBS's forums,[12] Palmer developed the idea of creating a new head-mounted display that was both more effective than what was currently on the market and was also inexpensive for gamers. To develop the new product, Luckey founded Oculus VR with Scaleform co-founders Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov,[13] Nate Mitchell and Andrew Scott Reisse.[14]

Coincidentally, John Carmack of id Software had been doing his research on HMDs and happened upon Palmer's developments as a fellow MTBS member.[15] After sampling an early unit, Carmack favored Luckey's prototype, and just before the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), id Software announced that the BFG Edition of Doom 3 would be compatible with head-mounted display units.[16]

During the convention, Carmack introduced a duct-taped head-mounted display, based on Palmer's Oculus Rift prototype, which ran Carmack's software. The unit featured a high-speed IMU and a 5.6-inch (14 cm) LCD, visible via dual lenses that were positioned over the eyes to provide a 90 degree horizontal and 110 degree vertical stereoscopic 3D perspective.[17][18] Carmack later left id Software as he was hired as Oculus VR's Chief technology officer.[19]

Lenses inside an Oculus headset

Following the demonstration of the Oculus Rift prototype at E3 in June 2012.

On August 1, 2012, the company announced a Kickstarter campaign to further develop the product. Oculus announced that the "dev kit" version of the Oculus Rift would be given as a reward to backers who pledged $300 or more on Kickstarter, with an expected shipping date set of December 2012 (though they did not actually ship until March 2013).[20]

There was also a limited run of 100 unassembled Rift prototype kits for pledges over $275 that would ship a month earlier. Both versions were intended to include Doom 3 BFG Edition, but Rift support in the game was not ready, so to make up for it they included a choice of discount vouchers for either Steam or the Oculus store.[21] Within four hours of the announcement, Oculus secured its intended amount of US$250,000,[22][23] and in less than 36 hours, the campaign had surpassed $1 million in funding,[24] eventually ending with $2,437,429.[25]

On December 12, 2013, Marc Andreessen joined the company's board when his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, led the $75 million Series B venture funding.[26] In total, Oculus VR has raised $91 million with $2.4 million raised via crowdfunding.[21]

Although Oculus only released a development prototype of its headset, on March 25, 2014, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, Inc. would be acquiring Oculus for US$2 billion, pending regulatory approval. The deal included $400 million in cash and 23.1 million common shares of Facebook, valued at $1.6 billion, as well as an additional $300 million assuming Facebook reaches certain milestones.[2][3][4] This move was ridiculed by some backers who felt the acquisition was counter to the independent ideology of crowdfunding.[27]

Many Kickstarter backers and game industry figures, such as Minecraft developer Markus Persson, criticized the sale of Oculus to Facebook.[28][29] On March 28, 2014, Michael Abrash joined the company as Chief Scientist.[30]

As of January 2015, the Oculus headquarters has been moved from Irvine, California to Menlo Park, where Facebook's Headquarters is also located. Oculus has stated that this move is for their employees to be closer to Silicon Valley.[5]

Following Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of id Software and John Carmack's previous employer, sought legal action against Oculus, accusing the company of theft of intellectual property relating to the Oculus Rift due to Carmack's transition from id Software to Oculus. The case, ZeniMax v. Oculus, was heard in a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, and their verdict was reached in February 2017, finding that Carmack had taken code from ZeniMax and used it in developing the Oculus Rift's software, violating his non-disclosure agreement with ZeniMax, and Oculus' use of the code was considered copyright infringement. ZeniMax was awarded $500 million in the verdict, and both ZeniMax and Oculus are seeking further court actions.[31][32]

In 2014, Samsung partnered with Oculus to develop the Gear VR, after the success of the then-in-development Rift.[33]

From 2014 through 15, two Innovator Editions (in-development versions of the Gear VR mainly sold to developers for sole research and understanding) were developed, manufactured, and sold.[34] The device that the Innovator Editions used was the Note 4.[35]

On November 20, 2015, the consumer edition of the Gear VR was released to the public and sold out during the first shipments. The device supported the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, and later, the Samsung Galaxy S7, and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.[36]

In May 2015, Oculus acquired British company Surreal Vision, a company based on 3D scene-mapping reconstruction and augmented reality. News reported that Oculus and Surreal Vision could create "mixed reality" technology in Oculus' products, similar to the upcoming HMD, Microsoft HoloLens.[37] They reported that Oculus, with Surreal's help, will make telepresence possible.[38]

On December 28, 2016, Facebook acquired Danish eye tracking startup The Eye Tribe.[39] In September 2018, Oculus became a division of a new structural entity within Facebook known as Facebook Technologies, LLC.[40] Facebook announced in August 2018 they had entered negotiations to lease the entire Burlingame Point campus in Burlingame, California, then under construction.[41] The lease was executed in late 2018, and the site, owned by Kylli, a subsidiary of Genzon Investment Group, is expected to be complete by 2020.[42] Oculus is expected to move to Burlingame Point when development is complete.[43]

On August 13, 2019, Nate Mitchell, Oculus co-founder and VP of product announced his departure from the company.[44] On November 13, 2019, John Carmack wrote in a Facebook post that he would step down as CTO of Oculus to focus on developing artificial general intelligence. He stated he would remain involved with the company as a "Consulting CTO".[45]

Upon the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook Inc., Luckey "guaranteed" that "you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift."[46][47] Under its ownership, Oculus has been promoted as a brand of Facebook rather than an independent entity and has increasingly integrated Facebook platforms into Oculus products.[48][49][50] Support for optional Facebook integration was added to Gear VR in March 2016, with a focus on integration with the social network, and integrations with features such as Facebook Video and social games.[51] By 2016, the division began to be largely marketed as Oculus from Facebook.[52]

In September 2016, support for optional Facebook integration was added to the Oculus Rift software, automatically populating the friends list with Facebook friends who have also linked their accounts (displaying them to each other under their real names, but still displaying screen names to anyone else).[50]

Users have been increasingly encouraged to use Facebook accounts to sign into its services (although standalone accounts not directly linked to the service were still supported).[53] In 2018, Oculus VR became a division of Facebook Technologies, LLC, to create "a single legal entity that can support multiple Facebook technology and hardware products" (such as Facebook Portal).[49]

On August 18, 2020, Facebook announced that all "decisions around use, processing, retention, and sharing of [user] data" on its platforms will be delegated to the Facebook social network moving forward. Users will soon become subject to the unified Facebook privacy policy, code of conduct, and community guidelines, and all users will be required to have a Facebook account to access Oculus products and services.[54] Standalone account registration will become unavailable in October 2020, all future Oculus hardware (beginning with Oculus Quest 2) will only support Facebook accounts,[48] and support for existing standalone Oculus accounts on already-released products will end on January 1, 2023.[55] Facebook stated that this was needed to facilitate "more Facebook powered multiplayer and social experiences" and make it "easier to share across our platforms". Facebook stated that users would still be able to control sharing from Oculus, maintain a separate friends list within the Oculus platform, and hide their real name to others.[56]

Users and media criticized Facebook for the move. Ars Technica noted that there is no clear way to opt-out of information tracking and that the collected data will likely be used for targeted advertising.[54] Furthermore, Facebook requires the use of a person's real name.[48] In September 2020, Facebook temporarily suspended sales of the Oculus Quest in Germany; a German watchdog had presented concerns that this integration requirement violates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which prohibits making use of a service contingent on consenting to the collection of personally identifiable information, and the requirement that existing users also link to a Facebook account to use Oculus hardware and services.[57][58]

The first-generation Oculus Quest.

On September 26, 2018, Facebook unveiled Oculus Quest. It was originally unveiled as a higher-end counterpart to the Oculus Go, and part of a goal to reach one billion VR users. Similarly to Oculus Go, it uses embedded mobile hardware running an Android-based operating system, including a Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip, and 64 or 128 GB of internal storage. The Quest uses OLED displays with a resolution of 1600x1440 per-eye and running at 72 Hz. It supports Oculus Touch controllers via an "inside-out" motion tracking system known as "Oculus insight", which consists of a series of cameras embedded in the headset. The controllers were redesigned to properly function with Insight.[67]

It supports games and applications downloaded via Oculus Store, with ported launch titles such as Beat Saber and Robo Recall. It also supports cross-platform multiplayer and cross-buys between PC and Quest.[65][61] Facebook stated that they would impose stricter content and quality standards for software distributed for Quest than its other platforms, including requiring developers to undergo a pre-screening of their concepts to demonstrate "quality and probable market success".[68] In June 2019, Facebook announced it sold $5 million worth of content for the Oculus Quest in its first two weeks on sale.[69]

In November 2019, Facebook released a beta for a new feature known as Oculus Link, which allows the Quest to be attached to a PC over USB 3.0 for use with Oculus Rift-compatible software.[59] In May 2020, Facebook added additional support for the use of USB 2.0 cables, such as the charging cable supplied with the headset. Support for controller-free hand tracking was also launched that month.[70][71]

In September 2020, Facebook unveiled an updated version of the Quest, Oculus Quest 2. It is similar to the original Quest, but with the Snapdragon XR2 system-on-chip and additional RAM, an all plastic exterior, new cloth head straps, improved Oculus Touch controllers with improved ergonomics and battery life, and a 1832x1920 per-eye display that is currently supporting running at 90 Hz. Similarly to the Rift S, it uses a single display panel rather than individual panels for each eye. Due to this design, it has more limited inter-pupillary distance options than the original Quest, with the ability to physically move the lenses to adjust for 3 common IPD measurements. The Quest 2's models are both priced US$100 cheaper than their first-generation equivalents.[60]

The original Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift CV1, also known as simply the Oculus Rift, was the first consumer model of the Oculus Rift headset. It was released on March 28, 2016 in 20 countries, at a starting price of US$599.[62] The 6,955 backers who received the Development Kit 1 prototype via the original Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign were eligible to receive the CV1 model for free.[72] On December 6, 2016, Oculus released motion controller accessories for the headset known as Oculus Touch.[73]

Oculus Go headset

On October 11, 2017, Oculus unveiled the Oculus Go, a mobile VR headset manufactured by Xiaomi (the device was released in the Chinese market as the Xiaomi Mi VR). Unlike the Oculus Rift, the Go is a standalone headset which is not dependent on a PC for operation. Unlike VR systems such as Cardboard, Daydream, and the Oculus co-developed Samsung Gear VR (where VR software is run on a smartphone inserted into a physical enclosure, and its screen is viewed through lenses), it contains its own dedicated display and mobile computing hardware. The headset includes a 5.5-inch 1440p fast-switching LCD display, integrated speakers with spatial audio and a headphone jack for external audio, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 system-on-chip, and 32 or 64 GB of internal storage. It runs an Android-based operating system with access to VR software via the Oculus Home user experience and app store, including games and multimedia apps. The Go includes a handheld controller reminiscent of one designed for the Gear VR, which uses relative motion tracking. The Oculus Go does not use positional tracking.[63][74][75]

While official sales numbers have not been released, according to IDC the Oculus Go and Xiaomi Mi VR had sold nearly a quarter million units combined during the third quarter 2018,[76] and in January 2019 market analysis firm SuperData estimated that over a million Oculus Go units had been sold since the device's launch.[77] In his keynote at 2018's Oculus Connect developer conference, John Carmack revealed that the Go's retention rate was as high as the Rift's, something that nobody at the company had predicted.[78] Carmack also noted that the Go had done especially well in Japan despite lacking internationalization support and the company not specifically catering to the Japanese market.[79]

Oculus Go was declared end-of-life in June 2020, with software submissions to end in December 2020, and firmware support ending in 2022.[80]

On March 20, 2019 at the Game Developers Conference, Facebook announced the Oculus Rift S, a successor to the original Oculus Rift headset.[81] It was co-developed with and manufactured by Lenovo, and launched at a price of US$399. The Rift S contains hardware features from the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest, including Oculus Insight, integrated speakers, and a new "halo" strap. The Rift S uses the same 1440p fast-switching LCD display and lenses as the Oculus Go (a higher resolution in comparison to the original model, but lower in comparison to Oculus Quest), running at 80 Hz, and is backwards compatible with all existing Oculus Rift games and software. Unlike the original Oculus Rift, it does not have hardware control for inter-pupillary distance.[65][61]

Oculus Story Studio was an original animated virtual-reality film studio that existed between 2014[88] and May 2017 and ever launched only three films.[89] The aimed to pioneer animated virtual reality filmmaking and educate, inspire, and foster community for filmmakers interested in VR.[90] Oculus Story Studio was first launched publicly at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival,[91] where it presented three VR films - Dear Angelica, Henry, and Lost. Despite generally positive reception and critical acclaim, the studio did not publish any other work and was closed in May 2017.[89]