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Should I get a Rift devkit?

YetAnotherClose
Honored Guest
Good day, Oculus VR community. I have been heavily considering ordering a Rift development kit, but I have some reservations in that regard. While I have plans to develop for the Rift, should I decide to purchase one, it is my understanding that they are in short supply, with a waiting list months long. While I could handle waiting, I fear that my meager experience in UDK is far from sufficient to justify potentially delaying another, probably more skilled developer receiving his.

My question is, can my limited skill in development contribute enough to the community to warrant purchasing a development kit?
5 REPLIES 5

Anonymous
Not applicable
That's very selfless of you to think about other devs before yourself, but even if you don't make any full games sometimes just good ideas and prototypes can be useful to the community. Game design for VR will be different, and we all need to figure out together what works and what doesn't. If you can do that with your limited skills then that would be cool. Maybe learn some unity or more UDK while you wait for your order?

YetAnotherClose
Honored Guest
Thanks for your response. I am indeed planning on learning more UDK, whether or not I decide to pursue VR applications, and have ordered a well reviewed book on that topic. If the opinion you expressed is the general consensus, I will probably go ahead to purchase, but I have seen some posts on this forum referencing the possibility of a second iteration of the development kit. I can't find much solid information on that topic, though I'm probably just looking in the wrong places, so I would like to ask if that will be in a near enough time frame that it should affect my purchasing decisions.

Saethan
Honored Guest
I've seen a mention or two of 'the next version of the dev kit' but no mention of a time frame. I can't imagine it'd be so incredibly better that it would be a 'must have' over V1 before the consumer release.

One thing to consider is current orders have now been bumped to August as estimated delivery. So if you can put up with paying now and waiting 3 months I say go for it. 🙂 Many people are buying them just to experience/play with them, any extra development work is surely beneficial.

Pingles
Explorer
I think maybe we need someone to compose a good reply to this question and then we pin it to the top of the forum.

Pros:
- Great experience
- More and more content being released every day
- Relatively cheap (price of a mid-range graphics card)
- Easy to set up

Cons of the Dev unit (these will likely change in the final product)
- Low res
- Blurring during movement
- No positional tracking
- lead time is currently 3 months+
- Only a few commercial products can use it
- Many people get "Virtual-sickness"

etc.

usb420
Honored Guest
I wouldnt worry about it. There's been enough time for any skilled developer who is interested in the rift to have ordered one by now.