Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

Oculus VR games are likely restricted to the Oculus platform, so figure that in as well.

Which comes down to framerate, not detail. Put somebody in a grayscale world with simple geometric primitives (something even a mobile processor could render back in the 90s) with sub-60 framerates and people will get sick.

Most gamers that I see nowadays are all about the detail. Crank the AA up to max, the texture resolution to max, draw distance, and so on. If you lose a frame or two, it's not a big deal as long as the average is 60+.

VR completely reverses that - losing frames destroys immersion and causes motion sickness. Since even a fax-machine detail world still produces presence, we can easily sacrifice some detail for better framerates.

I'm surprised no one on here has mentioned Minecraft yet.

One game that I was never able to get into before Oculus Rift was Minecraft. My kids have been begging me to play with them, but I really struggled to remain interested in the game. I could see why they loved it, but I didn't get into myself.

It bugged me that I was missing this opportunity to connect with my kids, especially with something computer-y, so over the holiday I spent a little time getting the Minecrift mod working.

Wow!

I now totally get it, and it seems to me that Minecraft will be at least one huge driver for the adoption of VR hardware amongst folks who are able to use it. (Recommended 13+.)

The low-resolution polygons in Minecraft really accentuate the 3D effect. When you're going up hills or looking at trees, the depth effect is crazily pronounced and amazing.

The basic graphics in Minecraft also have the benefit of rendering quite nicely even on incredibly limited hardware. For example, I spent hours playing on my 12" Retina MacBook, which I believe is the weakest hardware Apple ships. (Maybe it benefits from a GPU that powers a Retina display? I don't know.)

Getting attacked by creepers and zombies in the first-person was an insane experience. My heart rate was actually going up as I attempted to escape and ultimately failed.

And I was there. I grew personally attached to the cave I mined for myself where I hid to protect myself throughout the night, and felt a little sad when I accidentally let water flood in and destroy it. I was in that cave. Very cool.

I would frequently look down at my hands to remind myself of what weapon or tool I was holding and go through my hot keys until I saw the tool I wanted to use.

I'd spend a good deal of time just watching that big pixelated sun set over a landscape, and if I found a safe place, I'd sit around and watch the stars move through the night sky as the earth rotated. (Mostly I think this is when I became the most aware of the "screen door" effect.)

Anyway, if you've got DK2 hardware, I highly recommend trying it out with Minecraft if you haven't already. Microsoft announced they're planning official Oculus Rift support for Minecraft in the first half of next year, and judging from the way my son talks to his friends about it ("he's actually in Minecraft,") I think Minecraft will be a huge driver of sales of Oculus Rift.

Precisely because that'll give you time to consider it. They want the impulse buys.

> lower end GPU are playing games like League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Starcraft

None of those games you listed are available on the Steam shop and aren't included in the stats linked. The Steam stats do have tons of other games and is pretty much the most accurate consensus on PC gamer's hardware.

And GTX 970 is pretty much in the top 5% of GPU hardware, the vast majority 90%+ of PC gamers aren't even close to that.