Checked out an Oculus Rift dev kit

My boss got an Oculus Rift DK2 a while back, and today he loaned it to me. When you see the thing it becomes immediately apparent that it's a long way from being consumer-ready. By the time you get it hooked up there will be a sea of wires and plugs all over the place.

Despite that, I got it hooked up, installed the runtime, and ran the config utility. My PC locked up when trying to run the demo app. After rebooting, the utility ran and I launched the demo. I was staring at this large screen floating in this blue space. Only when I looked down did I realize I was sitting at a virtual desk. There was a desk lamp, a plant, etc. You can move your head all over the place and examine objects like you would if you were really doing this. At this point, my mind was blown.

Next up was a flight experience that lets you use a xbox controller to control thrust and wherever you look is where you fly. I was flying over mountains and almost immediately started feeling queasy. It's way more than what you feel on a rollercoaster, at least it was for me. I spent a few minutes in this one, screwing around and flying. It's really trippy. Eventually I quit because I was feeling sick.

Next was an experience my boss had recommended, "Don't Let Go". You hold your fingers on each CTRL key. Again you find yourself sitting at a desk in an office. Flies start buzzing around you. They intensify, and at that point I said screw this because it was already getting uncomfortable and I still felt crappy from before. You let go of the keys and it ends. The game throws a lot more at you but I wasn't up for it.

Checked out a haunted house game that seemed neat but didn't spend much time in it. I am a serious wimp when it comes to horror games.

My last go was an exploration game where you find things on an island and underwater. Loot something. Seemed neat but something wasn't configured properly and I had to look behind me to look ahead if that makes sense. Also for some reason your avatar is Skorpion from MK.

So... my initial thoughts are as follows:
- mind blowing experience
- motion sickness is a real concern. Not sure if I don't have it configured properly or if I will just suffer it with this model, with anything, etc.
- it will definitely take tailored games to really take off
- the consumer version really needs to be plug and play. The DK2 is not for amateurs.

Just this fall, the tiny Stream gallery in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, which exhibited an illusory gallery to be browsed entirely with a first-generation Oculus Rift developer’s headset, employed docents with mops exclusively to clean up the real vomit produced by beholders overcome by the psychic dislocations of virtual reality.--NYT