Note: This post was updated the day after the Oculus Rift was released.

As mentioned in the last post, 2016 is billed as the year that Virtual Reality (VR) will finally take off, and it just might do it. As predicted, the fun kicked-off with the buzz out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week.

Facebook backed Oculus created a frenzy by accepting pre-orders of the Consumer Edition of the Oculus Rift on Wednesday, January 6th. It turns out that it costs $599, and the first shipments will be March 28. Oculus says that it will also be available in “limited locations at select retailers” starting in April. This means that will still see it under the Coming Soon category on our Cosma 3D site. Note that this edition will not include the much touted “Oculus Touch Controllers.” That will not be available until later this year, but to soften the blow, they are bundling the games EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale.

The $599 price tag was much higher than most fans expected, so it caused a backlash. Here are two articles that appeared the morning after pre-orders began.
“No More Ballparks” — Oculus’ Palmer Luckey Admits Screwing Up Rift Price-Point Messaging (Natasha Lomas, Tech Crunch)
The Oculus Rift’s Problem Isn’t Price—It’s Perfection (Dina Litovsky, Wired)

HTC Vive has also just released their next developer version called the Vive Pre. It is creating quite the buzz in tech-land. Here’s a nice, “relatively” accurate update on the state of VR products today. My tiny quibble with it is that I think they played the HTC Vive down a bit too much at the end.

Oculus Rift Versus HTC Vive: The VR Headset Battle (Bloomberg Business)

It is exciting to hear about all that is happening, but on the other hand it is frustrating that there’s so much hype, closed door demos for developers and the press as well as other types of activities that do not involve products and content that are readily available to typical consumers right now. We are focused on overcoming that frustration by focusing on what is already available and possible in the here and now.

That being said, it is also valuable to know what’s going to be coming just over the horizon, so Cosma 3Ds Coming Soon and Platforms pages have just been completely updated. This is where you can find information about what you can look forward to seeing in the “relatively” near future (roughly in the order you can expect to see them). Enjoy!

Oculus Rift (Oculus VR, Facebook)
Vive (HTC, Steam VR)
PlayStation VR, fka Project Morpheus (Sony)
Hololens (Microsoft)
Magic Leap (Magic Leap, Google)

Of course, we’ll be trying to get our hands on as many of these as we can as fast as possible, and then bring them to you through our events. Please stay tuned…

More info.
Virtual Reality In CES 2016 Spotlight As Sony, HTC And Facebook’s Oculus Show Off VR Gear, Content (Salvador Rodriguez, International Business Times)
Hands-On with New HTC Vive vs. Oculus Rift at CES 2016 (Steve Burke, Gamers Nexus)
HTC Vive VS Oculus Rift VS PlayStation VR: release date, price, specs and games (Adam Shepherd, IT Pro)
How 2016 will be the start of your virtual-reality future (Scott Stein, CNET)
This is the best analogy we’ve ever read about the future of virtual reality (Jillian D’Onfro, Telegram.com)