And no thanks to the developers of either the hardware or the games themselves. In fact it was all down to the “Meant to be Seen” community, that has pushed stereoscopic 3D gaming through its efforts and made it possible to play more and more titles through the Occulus Rift VR headset.
Interestingly for a community development project, you'll actually have to pay for the drivers – known as Vireio Perception – to make the Occulus Rift support these games. The price according to PCGamesn, will be around $50 (£30) and will make Mirror's Edge, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, Unreal Tournament 3, Dear Esther, Dirt 2 and Skyrim all fully compatible with the upcoming VR headset. More titles are planned down the road.
What do the drivers do? They add certain features to the game which are unique to the Occulus, like its strange 8:10 aspect ratio. They also take into consideration the slightly warped imagery that the Rift optics make use of, as well as adding full support for head tracking.
Of course with the Occulus Rift yet to be fully available and dev kits only arriving on backer's door steps around March, it'll be a little while before we see how good these homebrew drivers really are.
KitGuru Says: If the Occulus Rift is as good as many people are saying, games like Mirror's Edge could be ridiculously engaging. That said, so could the somewhat less interactive Dear Esther and Portal 2. All of it really. Hang on, I'm going to email Occulus now and try and get a review sample. A boy can dream right?