Oculus Rift 'Crystal Cove' prototype designed as "a seated experience," says founder
Oculus VR showcased the latest version of its Rift headset, dubbed Crystal Cove, at CES 2014 in Las Vegas last week.
According to a Q&A with Reddit Games featuring Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey and vice president of products Nate Mitchell (via
“We can say we’re focusing generally on a seated experience,” said Luckey. “I mean, we have a cable to deal with anyway, that’s very much a limiting factor. I’d love to have VR games where people can stand up and walk around and run around. Aside from the liability concerns and everything else, that’s a really tough problem. “People have been trying to make positional tracking stuff for a long time and with a lot of money too. If we had really great localized positional tracking that could move over large spaces in any direction without external points we wouldn’t have GPS, that’s what we’d be using instead. So it’s a very tough technical problem to solve. "We think what we have right now is pretty much the best option available for seated VR.” Luckey admitted that some users have issues using the headset, particularly if they wear classes, and while there are some tweaks in the works, the firm had nothing to announce at present. "We are working on ways to solve [the problems], ideally without having to wear your glasses in the headset," Luckey said. "It's never going to be an optimal experience if basically you're wearing two headsets." You can watch the Q&A in the video below.