Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a virtual reality company founded by Palmer Luckey that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality industry. It was the first virtual reality headset to provide a realistic experience at an accessible price, utilizing novel technology to increase quality and reduce cost by orders of magnitude compared to earlier systems. The first headset in the line was the Oculus Rift DK1, released on March 28, 2013. The last was the Oculus Rift S, discontinued in April 2021.
Oculus Rift
The Development Kit 1
Rear view and control box
The Development Kit 2
A virtual reality headset is a head-mounted device that uses 3D near-eye displays and positional tracking to provide a virtual reality environment for the user. VR headsets are widely used with VR video games, but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers. VR headsets typically include a stereoscopic display, stereo sound, and sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes for tracking the pose of the user's head to match the orientation of the virtual camera with the user's eye positions in the real world.
An Oculus Rift CV1 VR headset, which must be wired to a PC and uses external tracking
The PSVR headset for the PlayStation 4 video game console, released in 2016
An image displayed by a VR headset, showing compensation for lens distortion and chromatic aberration
A U.S. soldier being prepared to use a ground combat training virtual reality headset at Fort Stewart in 2013