Rock Paper Shotgun,

"Oculus have announced that “final Rift hardware” is now on its way to developers who are “imminently shipping.” “Imminently” is a very exciting word."

"For those devs who are not working on launch titles, Oculus say that the old DK2 headset and 0.8 SDK is sufficient, suggesting that there won’t be a vast gulf in technology between the DK2 and the consumer model, even if the latter is likely to be a more beautiful and comfortable experience. If you’re a VR dev who thinks you can become an Oculus launch title dev, you can submit your game or application here and might wind up with a final tech headset if you sufficiently impress ‘em."

LFS is not a 'LAUNCH' title, ergo the DK2 is all you need for LFS dev.

Remember this is all about money and marketing, it's owned by Farcebook after all !

Quote from Scawen :

I don't really like this announcement. It's not really good news that no-one is allowed access to the Rift 1.0 SDK, unless they have 'final rift hardware'.

It obviously contains some informations that they don't want to disclose yet.
CV1 is completely different from DK2 (two sceens, different resolution, distortion, lenses, tracking system) and has built in headphones and microphone. While the games built with SDK 1.0 will work with DK2 you want to be sure that they will work with CV1 on launch and how can you test the game on the CV1 when you don't own one and noone else does, so you can't get anyone to test it for you. I think it's better than releasing DK3.

Quote from Scawen :

I get the feeling they are trying to create a Rift software store that works similarly to the Gear VR software store.

That was known for quite a while. It will be what Steam VR is for the Vive. It's good for those who build VR-only games, but for people like you - who are adding VR support to existing game and already have their own store - kinda shit.

Quote from Scawen :

Hmm, no... submitting it isn't going to work. You have to run some submission checker, and one of the errors is like this (an example taken from their example page)

That submission checker is for APK - Android - Gear VR. They should be more clear about that.

I menaged to upload LFS, but had to put it in the .ZIP since this it the required file format.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

LFS is not a 'LAUNCH' title, ergo the DK2 is all you need for LFS dev.

If LFS will work with the Rift on the launch day, it is a launch title - and it already does.

Boo to the capitalists! How dare people try to make money with their abilities in providing optional products and services!

On the other hand, would jumping into bed with their store be that bad? Wouldn't be that much different to putting it on Steam; they get a slice and it could be a bigger slice by having it available directly through (possibly) the next big thing.

I mean, it could do with being finished, but that's another conversation

Amynue: Thanks for the info.

I'm still trying a bit and also trying to get a couple of straight answers from cybereality (privately).

For example about if their 'store' can just link to our site or if our product would have to be sold there (which is not possible).

"CV1 is completely different from DK2 (two sceens, different resolution, distortion, lenses, tracking system)"
That CV1 is completely different to DK2 seems to defeat the most of the point of it.

"While the games built with SDK 1.0 will work with DK2"
More importantly, will games built with SDK 0.8 work with CV1 (and SDK 1.0)? Without knowing what differences SDK 1.0 needs, developers are stuck in limbo.

Quote from Scawen :

Well, I hope you are right, and that the SDK will become available to all software developers eventually. They have not said that will be the case, and the word 'currently' doesn't imply that at all. It may suggest it if you take an optimistic view. But unfortunately Oculus have been becoming more and more closed as time has gone on. It wasn't a great email to wake up to this morning.

Well this seems to proof that SDK 1.0 will be public for all developers later on:

https://forums.oculus.com/view ... ?f=26&t=28130#p310136

I think Oculus wants to ensure that for the launch only "great" titles will be available.
LFS for sure would be a great launch title.

Preorders are confirmed by Palmer soon after new year:

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/679382796779958272

Quote from Scawen :

if their 'store' can just link to our site or if our product would have to be sold there (which is not possible).

If there will be a "Demos" section, you could just put the demo there. You could even stretch LFS into Free2Play category

Quote from just2fast :

Preorders are confirmed by Palmer soon after new year:
https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/679382796779958272

I expect announcement at CES, they'll have a pretty big booth there.

Mixed feeling here. Should I buy a rift would be to play lfs. I mean the rift is like my steering wheel. It is hardware to me.
I will keep me informed before placing an order. Seeing similar bullshit for the Vive is not cool either.

Don't bother reading my last post guys, not like it doesn't actually explain things !!!!!!!

To REPEAT, LFS is NOT a launch title, don't know why not, not my department. HERE, and HERE are some of the launch titles.

Try reading Farcebooks posts, you need to have sold your soul and income to Farcebook to be accepted. LFS is probably not acceptable as it's not a big money game studio, (cough -EVE- cough) or daft enough to sign over their earnings to get the "Farcebook Launch Publicity Experience".

Does your game have micro transactions and run within Farcebook ? If not, work it out for yourself !!!!

Key points though, the game seems to work well with both Occ Thrift and Valve, that's extra sales for the Devs. Isn't that great

It gets great VR reviews from almost everyone who's used it and that can only be positive moving forward.

Not being in bed with Farcebook is also a great thing, saves you from the corporate transmitted diseases that tend to happen to small co's that do that.

Most people in the small sim racing world know LFS and know it works well in the VR universe.

I think LFS has bigger things to focus on improving getting into the 20 late teens than VR, but they have done a great job there.
So, weather ?, damage modelling ?, crash physics ?, tyre pysics ?, S1 cars ?, car interiors ?........

But, the VR stuff is great for everyone who uses it.

With Victor's help, it took quite a few hours, because of all the massive screenshots that are required and other things. But I have done a submission of LFS to the Oculus store.

I'm pleased that, as just2fast said, it does look as if 1.0 will be released to the public, so my fears yesterday were probably unfounded. I was looking forward to a holiday and now had this to deal with, so that may have been part of it (in addition to all the recent talk of exclusivity, one of the scourges of modern business). Also Oculus should definitely sort out that PC / Rift submission site so it doesn't have irrelevant and off-putting examples pulled from the Android version.

Anyway, LFS is submitted so we'll see what happens. if it does go to the store, that would be good publicity.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

http://www.howtogeek.com/geeknote/android-is-hilariously-insecure-87-of-phones-are-vulnerable/

Yeah. I feel so bad paying a little bit more (about $100 when it comes to cost of standard on-contract phones here) for a phone that will be secure for its entire lifetime.

Secure from what? Who wants my Clash of Clans data, my contacts, my internet searches and text messages? Why do I care if they had it anyways? I'd give it all to the world for much less than $100 as long as I get to keep my phone

And anyways, when you say $100 that is a 100% increase in price for me.

Quote from Scawen :

Anyway, LFS is submitted so we'll see what happens. if it does go to the store, that would be good publicity.

Free CV1 would be also nice Good luck!
Did you get any answers from cybereality?

Not before the submission. But after that he admitted he didn't really know the answers. I found the submission site actually works quite well. The bad things are the lack of info about what it is for, what kind of a store it leads to and also those irrelevant examples that are related to Android. There's no explanation of why a ZIP file must be supplied. They might have good reasons for this, but I think that type of thing should be explained there, rather than leaving us totally in the dark. Also the Rift SDK 1.0 announcement, I still believe the wording is deliberately misleading and incomplete. I prefer a bit of honesty and it makes me quite annoyed when people are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/3ynsim/i_got_to_try_the_consumer_beta_ecv7_and_here_is/

Sounds good, can't wait until we finally get the consumer versions of both major headsets on the market to see how they compare.

If all that is true it might be hard for me to resist the temptation to spend money on upgrading my computer and eventually spend money on Oculus Rift.

Quote from Scawen :

The bad things are the lack of info about what it is for, what kind of a store it leads to and also those irrelevant examples that are related to Android.

How many launch titles there might be? 50? 100? It would be a waste of resources to design a special submission page just for ~100 people which they'll use only once. So I think they just used their store submission page instead, since it menages to gather all the info they need from the launch title candidates. Still, they could modify it a bit to make some things more clear, but it works good enough.

Quote from Scawen :

There's no explanation of why a ZIP file must be supplied.

Not everyone have their game compiled into installer like you do, so ZIP is a convenient way of gathering all the files into one. It also compresses the files so it's a bit faster to upload/download. Most of the games I've download for DK2 were either in ZIP or RAR.




As I've expected, Lucky's Tale will be bundled with every Rift alongside EVE Valkyrie:
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/luckys-tale-to-be-bundled-with-every-oculus-rift/

Palmer Luckey kind of confirmed that they will unveil the price, release date and full specs of the Rift at CES 2016 (next week):
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/3ytirz/ces_2016_is_one_week_away_what_are_you_looking/cyh0dus?context=3

Quote from Amynue :

How many launch titles there might be? 50? 100? It would be a waste of resources to design a special submission page just for ~100 people which they'll use only once. So I think they just used their store submission page instead, since it menages to gather all the info they need from the launch title candidates. Still, they could modify it a bit to make some things more clear, but it works good enough.

They are refusing to tell developers when the SDK 1.0 will be available, or even to confirm that it will be available before the Rift CV1 is launched.
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=28124&start=20#p310438

Cyber recommends to all developers "if you have a project you think is promising, just submit it to the Store and see what happens. Of course, you might not be approved, but you would be no worse off than if you didn't submit".
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=28124#p310381

Somehow I think more than 50 to 100 people will go through this. There is no way anyone can tell me it's too much effort to have a quick look through their PC pages and delete a few lines of irrelevant nonsense that is only about Android and unrelated to PC. That would take far less time than it has taken me to write this post.

Cyber's advice ignores the fact that it takes half a day to do the submission. It's quite rude to ask submitters to supply all the final artwork to display in the shop, without any indication that their project may be accepted. Or even any knowledge or description of how the shop will look, or if games with an external sales page (e.g. LFS) can be put there. This information is NOT AVAILABLE.

And it is beyond rude to refuse to confirm that developers will gain access to the 1.0 SDK before the Rift is released. There is ONE reason developers bought a DK2. To develop for the CV1. And now Oculus is denying them that.

It's pretty bad, so let's not pretend they are being reasonable.

It seems like Oculus have been creating the kits as a way for them to develop the Rift, not for developers to target the Rift. That the release version will be very different to the dev kits, with a new API, is... strange.

Quote from Scawen :

There is ONE reason developers bought a DK2. To develop for the CV1. And now Oculus is denying them that.

They are giving CV1 bundled with SDK 1.0 to those developers.

DK2 was announced before the Facebook money came in and allowed them to make CV1 better than initially planned and therfore alot different from the DK2.

Now some bad news:
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/update-on-oculus-touch-ship-date/
Touch delayed from Q2 2016 to second half of 2016. Well, at least they weren't waiting till June to announce that.

So Oculus will be giving a free Oculus Rift CV1 to everyone who pledged for the DK1 on their Kickstarter. That's over 7000 people. WOW!
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/kickstarteredition/

List of countries Rift will be launching in at first:

Quote :

United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan.

Quote :

Good news, everyone: When you preorder Rift, you also reserve your spot for Touch preorders. First in line for Rift=First in line for Touch.

Quote :

Rift preorders are different from most of the games industry. You don't get charged until we ship - no deposit lock-in, no bonus pressure.

More news tommorow.