Where to try the $2 billion Oculus Rift in Toronto

The Oculus Rift has been one of the buzziest pieces of technology among the technorati since it first made its appearance at tech conferences a little over two years ago. That buzz is only going to get louder with Facebook’s announcement on Tuesday that it is buying Oculus VR for $2 billion (U.S.).

If you want to try out the device that has Mark Zuckerberg all excited — and many tech pundits are skeptical of the purchase — head on down to the DigiPlaySpace at TIFF Bell Lightbox, where the award-winning PaperDude VR installation is up and running until April 21.

Made by local company Globacore, the game is a modern homage to Paperboy, the ’80s classic, but now you strap on an Oculus headset, ride a stationary bicycle and have your arm motions read by an Xbox Kinect sensor as you try to deliver newspapers in a retro graphic-based environment.

Since Globacore launched PaperDude VR, it’s been a hit, appearing at tech conferences and festivals around the world. It’s a small glimpse into a future of virtual reality gaming, and Oculus has taken some great strides to show its potential.

As a technology, virtual reality has been much maligned over the past 30 years. Many companies have tried but failed to make it work. Typical setbacks include the comfort of the headgear, the lack of available software, issues with onscreen lag or control latency, and even the onset of motion sickness among users have kept virtual reality from being a realized success.

Oculus VR started a few years ago, when the company’s founder, Palmer Luckey, was a VR enthusiast who cobbled together a prototype from older attempts and got it into the hands of John Carmack, the video-gaming legend who created Doom. Carmack was so impressed he held it aloft at the E3 conference in 2012 and proclaimed it the future of gaming. He has since joined the company.

From there, Oculus launched a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, received over $100 million in investor funding and has proceeded to wow almost every member of the gaming press who has tried it.

My first taste with the technology was at CES two year ago, and I was amazed at being completely immersed in a virtual world.

Oculus is not commercially available, and so far, the company has seeded development kits with all kinds of tech companies around the world. Beyond just gaming, there are several potential applications for the technology. A local Toronto company is working on using it for condo sales, allowing customers to walk around a unit years before it is built, to get a real idea of the space that they want to buy.

But gaming is the area that Oculus has really focused on, and as early as last year, the company was believed to want to go it alone, which makes the news about Facebook more surprising. But gaming companies are stepping up the competition; just last week, Sony unveiled its VR prototype, Project Morpheus, a similar headset device that will potentially be available for use with the PlayStation 4.

Facebook’s purchase of the company for $2 billion could have massive ramifications for Oculus and its potential uses. For the 10-year-old Facebook, it could be another acquisition (like its previous purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp) to insure against its own obsolescence. Even though, despite some issues retaining younger users, the company’s usage metrics currently show no real sign of waning.

As for Oculus, technically Facebook’s first purchase of a mobile hardward company, the influx of cash certainly helps. While the company was originally using parts from cellphone manufacturers, it recently reported some issues with suppliers, and will have to take more control over building its own components. But as the company has warned, there still remains a lot of work to turn the virtual into reality, and for Oculus Rift to be a consumer-ready product.

Facebook’s purchase seems unexpected, but the company has now bought its way into one of the coolest and most exciting technology companies out there, one that could potentially change how we interact with all kinds of entertainment including gaming and movies.

As a technology, virtual reality still has a long way to go before we’re all strapping on headsets and jacking into a Facebook-powered Matrix. But with one the world’s richest companies on board, the virtual future is going to be a lot more interesting than its troubled past.