Oculus VR, the company that made a name for itself at this year's E3 with its virtual reality headset which allows the person wearing it to check out their environment in full 360 degrees simply by turning his or her head, recieved a boost to help bring the product to consumers.
Now, it seems the Oculus Rift, the company's product, is closer to being in gamer's living rooms than ever before. USA Today reports the company has locked down $16 million in funding to help get the device to the point of a consumer push.
Led by venture capital firms Spark Capital and Matrix Partners, the money will go straight toward speeding up the Oculus Rift's development and software. The hope is a 360 degree virtual reality gaming system will be a viable reality for consumers in the near future.
"Oculus began with a single mission: to put players inside the game," Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and inventor of the Oculus Rift, said in a statement. "This investment allows us to deliver immersive and affordable virtual reality to players everywhere."
Antonio Rodriguez, a general partner with Matrix Partners said he believes the Oculus Rift, although still rough around the edges, was the future of gaming and said that's why the company chose to get involved with the development.
The Rift virtual reality headset can display stereoscopic 3D with a field of 110 degrees diagonally. Gamers at E3 were able to stand in a lava cave and move their head to uncover the subtle 1080p details of the environment mapping.
Oculus Rift claim they're excited by the prospect of game developers making games that are compatible with Rift's virtual reality gaming, or, ideally, for game developers to design and build games from the ground up that are centered on virtual reality.
There is still no clear timetable for the company to make their product available to consumers. The company, which began as a Kickstarter campaign, initially raised $2.4 million. They have since shipped 7,500 developer kits for $399 each.
