A Headset for Gamers Made With Cellphone Chips

A Matter of Perception

Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

Palmer Luckey, creator of the Oculus Rift headset, at a demonstration.

IRVINE, Calif. â€" Virtual reality is one of many inventions that never seemed to make the leap from science fiction to mass-market product.

A view from inside the headset with a lens removed.

Again and again, headsets that promised to immerse people in wondrous, three-dimensional worlds have bombed with the public â€" held back by high prices, ungainly designs and crude graphics.

But now the bonanza of cheap, high-quality components created for the mobile electronics market, coupled with some technology innovations by a Southern California start-up called Oculus VR, could bring within reach the fantasy of many a video gamer: a virtual reality headset that costs just a few hundred dollars and puts players inside games like no television set can.

Resembling an intimidating pair of ski goggles, the Oculus Rift, as the headset is called, envelopes the vision of people who wear it in vivid, three-dimensional images. The sensation is like watching an IMAX screen that never ends. A snap of the head to the left instantly shifts the perspective inside the game in the same direction.

That connection between a player’s point of view in the game and the real world makes the experience feel more natural when, say, the game character is surrounded by a group of armored knights.

The company’s design, which is about to be delivered to game developers, is already creating buzz among industry veterans and battle-scarred believers in virtual reality.

Cliff Bleszinski, a former game designer at Epic Games who led the creation of its Gears of War series, said that the first time he wore the Rift headset, “I gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed back at me.”

“The next big thing isn’t always a brand-new technology that you never heard of,” Mr. Bleszinski said. “It’s this thing that existed 10 years ago and quietly got better.”

Despite its missteps in the consumer market, virtual reality has become commonplace for a number of industrial and military applications, where the high cost of headsets â€" from $1,000 to $50,000 â€" has been less of an impediment. Hospitals use the headsets to train surgeons, while the United States Army has used virtual reality to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, in part by exposing soldiers to short simulations of combat.

The mass market has been far more elusive, in large part because the components in the headsets were too costly.

Many of the crucial parts in the Oculus Rift are the same components found inside smartphones and tablets, including the headset’s 7-inch display and its sensors for detecting head movements. Because those parts are already being pumped out in enormous volumes in factories in China, Oculus can create a product that is likely to end up costing consumers something between $200 to $300.

“I’ve said this before, so you can’t totally trust me on this, but really, really I believe this is the time,” said Mark Bolas, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and a longtime virtual researcher who is an adviser to Oculus VR.

Elements of the Oculus headset are based on the virtual reality research by U.S.C., which has freely released headset designs for  others to use.

Still, most venture capitalists would rather finance a hot-dog stand than a high-risk virtual reality start-up. Oculus instead used the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to harness the enthusiasm of virtual reality fans and to take orders so it would not produce too many headsets. It raised $2.4 million on Kickstarter and received orders for 10,000 headsets.

The first ones, which Oculus says will begin shipping next month, are still rough around the edges and are primarily aimed at game developers.

Oculus is mum on when it will ship a version for consumers, hinting that its target is next year.

If the company is successful, it will have a lot to do with Palmer Luckey, the 20-year-old founder of the company, who seems to have wandered out of a casting call for unconventional, young technology entrepreneurs. He pads around his office in bare feet, munching on cookies. He refuses a chair during a meeting, preferring to sit cross-legged on the floor.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 18, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Matter of Perception.