"Facebook gives us the resources we need to develop a lot of custom hardware."
Maximum PC's Jimmy Thang caught up with Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey to talk about the Oculus Rift at this year's PAX East. A very tired Luckey talked about the potential for virtual reality technology to replace TVs and monitors and even the acquisition by Facebook.
In the first segment of the interview, to put it briefly, Luckey talked about how the commoditization of VR tech would bring about a much cheaper product that could replace TVs and monitors. This could happen once the VR tech "can reach the pixel density of a real monitor, looking straight forward."
As for Facebook, Jimmy brought up a point that the social media company could provide the capital needed for the Oculus team to build its own hardware. Luckey explained that, prior to the deal, the team was "relying a lot on the scraps of the mobile phone industry." An industry, Luckey pointed out, that doesn't need high refresh rates or low latency.
He added, "Facebook gives us the resources we need to develop a lot of custom hardware that uses the same kind of base technologies of a lot of mobile hardware. But also optimize it and make it better for VR."
Luckey also said, which wasn't captured on video, that Facebook is letting the Oculus team be completely autonomous. He went on to confirm that consumers will not need to use Facebook in order to use the Oculus Rft, that there will be no Facebook branding, and that the team won't change their open SDK.
As for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, Luckey wouldn't go into specifics but did say that it will have a refresh rate of 90Hz or more and be higher than 1080p. No price or release date for the consumer product was provided.
Watch both videos below for the full interview and tell us what you think of Luckey's opinion that VR tech could replace TVs and monitors.
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