Oculus rift delays Virtual reality fan fervour

Christian Cantrell, a software engineer and science fiction author, poses for a photo at his high-end computer setup that an Oculus Rift camera will go with, at his home in Sterling, Vancouver. (Photo: AP )

Virtual reality, oddly enough, isn’t immune to the problems that arise in practical reality. Just ask would-be fans of the Oculus Rift headset, many — possibly most — of whom are still waiting for their $600 gadgets more than four weeks after they started shipping.

The delay, naturally, has sparked online grousing and even some data-based activism, including the creation of a crowdsourced spreadsheet for tracking who received their prized VR gear and when. Some long-time supporters of Oculus have declared themselves alienated by the company’s inability to deliver; others have defected to rival VR systems, or are at least considering it.

Christian Cantrell, a software engineer and science-fiction author in Sterling, Virginia, put in his pre-order roughly 15 minutes after Oculus started accepting them in January — and is still waiting. It’s been a “bummer,” he says, because he passed up buying a rival headset, the HTC Vive, hoping to be part of a VR “renaissance” with Rift.

“I’ve been kind of like an Oculus believer,” he says. “But if they bump it again, I might just order a Vive.”

It’s too soon to say how the delays will affect Oculus, much less the overall acceptance of VR, a technology that submerges users in realistic artificial worlds. (Early VR “experiences” consist primarily of video games .) In other contexts, big companies like Apple have managed to weather shortages and shipping delays for products such as the Apple Watch and its new iPhone SE.

But some find the Rift delays intolerable, especially given that Oculus is no fledgling startup, but part of Facebook — the social network bought it two years ago for $2 billion. “There’s an element of inexcusable incompetence going on,” says J.P. Gownder, a Forrester Research analyst, who placed his preorder in the first 10 minutes but doesn’t expect his Rift until mid-May.

Experienced hardware manufacturers would have set up suppliers months or years in advance to avoid these types of problems, Gownder says. The fact that Oculus managed to bungle its launch with more than three years to prepare, plus the backing of Facebook, is “scandalous,” he says.

Oculus, which has blamed the delays on an “unexpected component shortage,” declined to comment on specifics.