Virtual reality headset company Oculus has responded to the accidental leaking of what looked like images of the final version of its Rift headset on its website on Tuesday, with Palmer Luckey, chief executive of the Facebook-owned firm, explaining the images were actually “placeholder concepts”.
Luckey spoke out to the Reddit community on the same day as the images were leaked, confirming that they were official Oculus images but adding that some design details wouldn’t “carry through”.
Oculus had updated its website on 9 June, offering viewers a countdown timer to a special live event on 11 June at 10am. But hidden beneath the timer, and accessible by examining the source code of the website, were a series of images of what appeared to be the latest version of Oculus’ Rift headset, currently in its second developer preview.
The 12 images show a 360 degree view of the headset, revealing an audio-integrated head strap and a sleek and ergonomic black and green design. A caption reveals that the box contains a “Rift headset, the Rift tracker, the SID (simple input device), a gamepad and cables”.
The Rift tracker, the headset’s positional tracker, is a simple one-foot high base with a microphone-like tube on the top, and a cable running off it that neatly attaches using a wire organiser.
The small “SID” looks similar to Valve’s recently-revealed Steam Controller cut in half, with a circular touch trackpad at the top. In the middle of the controller handset are defined plus, minus and return buttons.
But the images may not be as revealing as they look, with Luckey dismissing the leak as an “old placeholder concept image”. Even so, he hinted that some of the design features would appear in the event on Thursday:
“This is an old placeholder concept image that we accidentally leaked. Everything in it is ancient, certainly nowhere close to final (as evidenced by the GPU specs and the game named “war”). Enjoy checking it out, at this point, but don’t expect everything to carry through to the stream on the 11th.”
Oculus is expected to feature the new Oculus Rift headset at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) conference between 16 - 18 June.
