Facebook in March announced to the world that it was going to buy the virtual-reality technology company Oculus VR for about $2 billion.

Most people wondered if Facebook FB, -0.89% CEO Mark Zuckerberg had gone mad. I’m not sure it was worth the price, but you should see the Oculus Rift, an immersive headset that gives users a 360-degree view of the virtual world they inhabit.

When paired with headphones, the goal of Oculus Rift is to make games, virtual worlds and live events feel “real.” Since it first came out as a Kickstarter project — before Facebook’s purchase — Oculus Rift has been the hot topic of the gaming industry.

It’s important to mention that Oculus Rift wasn’t the first virtual-reality head-mounted display (HMD). One of the first commercially available consumer HMDs was Forte VFX1 Headgear. It made its debut in 1995 and sold for $600. Forte offered limited compatibility for about 200 games and applications at 256 color depth and 640 x 480 resolution.

Forte VFX1 Forte

Fully compatible games detected head movement in three axis: yaw (motion where you turn your head from left to right), roll (when you tilt your head from left to right) and pitch (when you move your head up and down). Forte also had its own two-axis controller (“cyberpuck”) to make its use even easier.

There have been many more virtual headsets prior to the Forte VFX1, showing that virtual reality has been an exciting prospect for many years.

So why did virtual reality fail to become anything more than a novelty on the consumer market? There were many factors, including steep prices (some devices cost more than $20 000), the lack of complete immersion due to low image quality, as well as “simulator sickness” (a phenomena characterized by headaches and nausea, resulting from the lag between head movement and resulting on-screen response). Also, some people simply didn’t like having to wear bulky devices on their faces (the VFX1 weighted 2.5 pounds).

Having said that, here’s how Oculus Rift tries to tackle those challenges:

Price: The consumer version of the Oculus Rift will be “a low-cost product,” ArsTechnica reports. It may follow the gaming-console sales strategy, where it’s sold below cost with profits earned on games and accessories. The initiative to keep the price low comes from Zuckerberg, and although Oculus Rift isn’t a gaming console, I’m sure the young billionaire has a few aces up his sleeve to monetize the headset.

So how expensive will the consumer version of Oculus Rift be? British web magazine PC Advisor predicts 250 pounds (about $427).

Image quality: Although the developer version is somewhat limited to 960 x 1080 pixels per eye, the consumer version will feature a greater than 1080p low-persistence OLED display (organic light emitting diode) to present much cleaner and fluid images, thus reducing simulator sickness.

Nausea: By far the biggest challenge Oculus faces is the feeling of nausea that comes from its prolonged use. Two of the biggest culprits for that are the aforementioned lag and high image persistence (motion blur and judder that occur during rapid head movements). Although the development kit 2 version has already reduced both considerably, there is still room for improvement.

Bulkiness: Oculus Rift (development kit 2) weighs only 0.97 pounds. That still may not be light enough to ignore while gaming, which may further reduce the sense of immersion.

To help you better understand various display parameters (resolution, persistence, etc.), I’ve discovered a great website you can visit. So don’t be afraid to take a simulated Oculus Rift for a spin now.

Hint: The best settings (resolution 4, low persistency turned on) are a rough representation of what the consumer version of Oculus Rift might look like. Also be aware that this is not meant to be an accurate simulation of the device, and it’s still a work in progress.

What you see when wearing the Oculus Rift headset

Although it may seem that Oculus Rift is the only head-mounted display worth mentioning, there are others. Oculus Rift is a forerunner of things to come, and devices like Sony’s Morpheus (here’s a TechRadar review), Avegant Glyph, and the controversial Chinese AntVR show there’s a growing mainstream interest in head-mounted display technology.

Will virtual reality finally go mainstream? From my point of view, things look bright for VR. What do you think? Let me know in the comments field below.

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