- published: 28 Mar 2016
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The Oculus Rift is an upcoming virtual reality (VR) headset that the company Oculus Virtual Reality Inc. is developing for simulations and video games.
Before E3 2012, Id Software had previously announced in May that the company would develop an edition of Doom 3, subsequently known as the BFG Edition, compatible with head-mounted display units. During the convention, Carmack introduced a 'homebrew' prototype of the Oculus Rift featuring a six inch LED display, visible via dual lenses that were positioned over the eyes to provide a 90 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical, stereoscopic perspective.
Following a demonstration of the Oculus Rift prototype at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June 2012, the company announced a Kickstarter campaign on 1 August 2012. Several prominent figures from the games industry, notably John Carmack, the co-founder of Id Software, Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation, and Cliff Bleszinski, design director at Epic Games, contributed to the campaign. Within four hours of the announcement, Oculus Virtual Reality secured its objective of $250,000 to further develop the headset.
In geology, a rift or chasm is a place where the Earth's crust and lithosphere are being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics.
Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted segment, called a graben, with parallel normal faulting and rift-flank uplifts on either side forming a rift valley, where the rift remains above sea level. The axis of the rift area commonly contains volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all active rift systems.
Major rifts occur along the central axis of mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust and lithosphere is created along a divergent boundary between two tectonic plates.
Failed rifts are where continental rifting began, but then failed to continue to the point of break-up. Typically the transition from rifting to spreading develops at a triple junction where three converging rifts meet over a hotspot. Two of these evolve to the point of seafloor spreading, while the third ultimately fails, becoming an aulacogen.