Oculus Rift Crescent Bay impressions:
I was able to register through their app on Thursday for a chance to try it out today at 3:00, once I got there I just needed to give them my name and waited with about 7 others for a room to open up.
Each demo room had a door and computer monitor with a person inside helping you put them on and supervise the whole thing. They fit really easily over my glasses but I did have some room on the bottom where if I looked hard enough I could see some light leak. They were comfortable for the whole demo though and I had no sort of eye strain or motion sickness at all.
All of the demos were non-interactive as far as controls went, it was just the VR headset and headphones. They showed a few small segments at the start like a dinosaur rendered and animated in a black room, a colorful cartoonish style world with a small fox, dear and rabbit around a camp fire. They had a good demo with a small cartoonish world that looked like the whole thing could sit on a table, planes flying and taking off from an airport and cars driving around the streets, really felt like something you would want to reach out and touch and interact with. Another demo had a mirror and your face reacted in it but kept changing to different masks and things, their was a little shelf below the mirror with some apples in a bowl and I wanted to grab those too, the immersion level is really quite good. The last demo was a UT4 engine segment with futuristic police shooting at a huge mech in the middle of a city street with bullets flying by in slow motion and rockets exploding things, it was really amazing and playing a first person shooter like that would be crazy. My favorite demo was a sort of Bioshock Infinite type city at night and you were standing on a tower and could step to the ledge of the platform and see the whole city below and air blimps flying around.
The whole thing left me wanting more interaction but the fidelity and immersion are their, now we just need a retail release to really get the support rolling. I'd highly recommend checking it out if you can, download that app on your phone if you plan on attending any events they'll be at, the line if you didn't pre-register seemed crazy long and they were only giving those people demos of the Samsung Gear VR headset.
