Delays for the Oculus Rift developer’s kit will prevent kits from being shipped until March of 2013. So far, the main reason for the Oculus Rift Dev Kit delay appears to be last minute changes in the design of the product. While March is later than anticipated, the changes made could make the end result worth the wait.

The Kickstarter News

Tthe Kickstarter page for the Oculus Rift reports that the developer kits won’t start being sent out until March of 2013. The Kickstarter began taking donations back in August with a great response from patrons partially thanks to the support of John Carmack from id Software. The Kickstarter closed with a final donation total of $2,437,429. This exceeded expectations, as the original goal was $250,000.

Why the Oculus Rift Dev Kit Delayed?

The team is continuing to work on manufacturing the developers kit, unfortunately, due to changes in the design and changes to certain features and a tight schedule for the team, there is a delay for when these kits will ship out. According to Oculus, “the manufacturers are creating tools for a mold for the shell of the Rift”. Oculus did not want to make an announcement until they had an official announcement from their manufacture.

Changes to the Rift

Another cause of the delay was making particular choices for the display for the Rift that would be optimal for mass production. The prototypes used a 5.6-inch LCD screen. This was for the purposes of research and testing out how a game would work on the product, which is where Carmack came into play. He did work with Doom: 3 BFG Edition for the Rift. While this display was sufficient, according to representatives, they are impractical for mass production. It was determined that trying to buy the displays in bulk was more difficult than anticipated due to the heavy response from the community.

There was success in finding a new display for the Rift. It will be bigger at 7 inches and will have a resolution of 1280×800. The change in display proved to be beneficial for the product as motion blur was reported to be lessened even though it added weight to the product. A new motion sensor has also been chosen for the developers kits and is faster than the prototype’s sensors.

Improvements Worth the Wait

The Oculus Rift has seen a lot of positive response by both the developer and video gaming community and because of that the donations received have exceeded original expectations. It is because of this response, Oculus has seen fit to make some changes to the product that will prove to improve the experience of the player. The new motion sensors and screens are better quality and the manufacturers are creating a new mold for the plastic. It is these improvements and changes that are causing the delay of the Oculus Rift, but will prove for developers to be worth the wait as it will prove a higher quality product than previous prototypes.