Tag Archives: natemitchell

Oculus put privacy-mocking jokes inside Touch controllers

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Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell said tens of thousands of Touch controllers have jokes mocking privacy printed on an internal component. The so-called easter eggs include "This Space For Rent" and "👁Big Brother is Watching👁," though Mitchell said the...

Oculus redesigns the Rift interface for Touch and customization

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From the stage at Oculus Connect 4, Oculus' Nate Mitchell just announced Rift Core 2.0. It's designed around Touch, offering a motion-control-focused interface that apes a lot of what hackers have been doing with BigScreen. The big addition is Dash,...

Oculus VP: ‘Our number one goal is to make developers successful’

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2015 is the year of virtual reality. That's been the consistent messaging coming out of Oculus VR's executive leadership since early this year. And with this week's announcement of a $99 Gear VR headset -- a mobile VR solution co-produced with Sams...

Oculus Rift’s Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell talk VR as a platform, the new Share program

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Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One may be the big next-gen stars at this year's Gamescom, but Oculus Rift is here as well, continuing to draw our adoration with news of a developer portal called Share. The portal facilitates easy distribution and cataloging of apps for current Oculus Rift dev kits, essentially centralizing the software world of the Rift in one convenient place. Company co-founder and Rift creator Palmer Luckey told us during GDC Europe this week that Share is just the tip of the iceberg -- a precursor to the future consumer portal of VR applications that'll exist alongside the eventual consumer model of the VR headset.

He and product VP Nate Mitchell sat down with us for a candid interview, touching on everything from the future of Share, to VR as a platform (and the challenges therein), to why mobile is the next space to watch for virtual reality (seriously!). Head past the break for the full video...and for a peek into the future of gaming's most innovative product in, well, maybe ever?

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Oculus Rift HD prototype VR headset appears at E3, we go hands (and eyes) on (update: video)

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Oculus Rift HD prototype VR headset appears at E3, we go hands and eyes on

We've been impressed with Oculus Rift from the start, and have been following the VR headset closely ever since. The developer edition has been in the hands of devs for a couple months now, and while Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell have certainly received rave reviews of the headset from many, they've also heard lots of feedback about ways to improve it. The number one request from users and devs? A higher-resolution screen than the 1,280 x 800 panel in the dev device. Well, after months of research and tinkering to find the right hardware combination, team Oculus is finally ready to show off a Rift with a 1,080 x 1920 display, and we got to demo the thing.

Before heading into the land of 1080p, we got to explore a demo built with Unreal Engine 4 in the existing dev headset. After looking around a snowy mountain stronghold inhabited by a fire lord in low res, we switched to the exact same demo running at 60 fps on the HD prototype device -- and the difference was immediately apparent. Surface textures could be seen in much higher fidelity, colors were brighter and less muddied and the general detail of the entire environment was greatly improved.

Gallery: Oculus Rift HD prototype VR headset hands-on

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Oculus Rift could work on current and next-gen consoles

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Think virtual reality is the exclusive playground of the PC gaming elite? It doesn't have to be. Oculus VR's Nate Mitchell says it's a matter of development support and interest. "Basically, the bar for a great VR experience is roughly 60 frames a second with stereoscopic 3D support in Vsync," said Mitchell in a recent interview. "The biggest challenge, actually, is working with the console platform providers, Microsoft and Sony, to make your peripheral a licensed peripheral." Oculus isn't reaching out to consoles, however -- Mitchell notes that while the current generation can reach 60fps in some cases, it often struggles to meet the demands of the Oculus Rift headset. Still, he admits there's no reason it couldn't work, and seems optimistic about the incoming console generation. "We'd definitely love to work with the console manufactures as we go down the road to get the Rift onto those platforms."

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Oculus’ Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell on the past, present and future of the Rift

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As geeks, we have a tendency to let our imaginations run away with us. Science fiction-fueled dreams conjure up images of flying cars, robots and artificial reality. We judge our gadgets by the arbitrary standards of famous speculative works: hoverboards by 2015 and a holodeck in every home. It's a silly and unrealistic way to measure our progress, but it inspires us to build the future we're tired of waiting for. This is the kind of passion we found at Oculus VR headquarters, where founder Palmer Luckey and a platoon of software engineers, hardware gurus and marketing wizards hope to make virtual reality a plausible reality. We sat down with the company's aforementioned founder and VP of Product Nate Mitchell to find out where that passion came from and where Oculus VR is heading.

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Oculus VR’s Nate Mitchell backstage at Expand (video)

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DNP Oculus Rift's Nate Mitchell backstage at Expand video

Nate Mitchell, vice president of product for Oculus VR, was in the spotlight here at Expand discussing gaming hardware, such as the firm's VR headset, and what it means for the future with folks from NVIDIA and Razer. Mitchell found his way backstage and we asked him about the largest challenges the headset is facing, how Oculus is supporting developers and creating standards for VR games and when an immersive holodeck experience might finally arrive. Take a leap past the break to catch the full interview footage.

Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here

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Gaming’s New Frontiers liveblog

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Gaming's New Frontiers liveblog

Want to know what the future of gaming will be? Odds are that the panel we're hosting now at Engadget Expand has the answer. Our very own Ben Gilbert is sitting down with NVIDIA Product Marketing VP Ujesh Desai, Oculus VR Product VP Nate Mitchell and Razer Systems Product Group VP John Wilson to see their latest hardware and how it will impact the way we play. Hop past the break for a vision of gaming's new frontiers as it unfolds.

March 17, 2013 5:30 PM EDT

Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!

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