Metaverse One

The recent boom in popularity for virtual reality headsets has brought about a variety of both professionally designed and DIY (Do It Yourself) Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). I personally have seen casings of all different shapes and sizes that turn the standard smartphone into a virtual reality HMD and these made from a variety of materials like wood, plastic, and even cardboard. While I give credit to engineers and makers from the SVVR and SFVR meet ups for doing it before it was cool, it was Google that really pushed the cardboard HMD into the blogosphere during their Google I/O 2014 Keynote. Google Cardboard , as it is appropriately named, is the firm's attempt at a do-it-yourself VR headset. Literally made of cardboard, the remarkably low-cost virtual reality goggles combine a split-screen image from a smartphone, delivering impressive graphics for the low price of almost free. Combined with positional sensor data from the phone, it's possible to look aroun...

At the beginning of this month Long Beach, California based Oculus announced their Kickstarter project  to create a next gen VR HMD (Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display) called the Rift. Since putting this project on Kickstarter, Oculus has shot past their goal of $250,000 and raised over $2 million for creating the device. The Rift will work on PC and mobile (no mention of Mac), offer 110 degrees diagonal / 90 degrees horizontal field of view, 6 degrees of freedom head tracking, 1280x800 resolution (640x800 per eye), with a weight of only 0.22 kilograms. What makes the Rift so exciting is that there has yet to be another HMD out there that has great specs that is even close to affordable. HMDs that offer this resolution and field of vision are thousands of dollars. Rift will retail around $300. Check out their Kickstarter video with some big names in the gaming world giving their support. So I pledged my $300 to get the EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BF...