Imagine yourself amidst the scenic beauty of the Himalayas. You are standing on the highest cliff in visibility. While enjoying the view, you take a step forward and slip down into the deep valley. You feel the terror and are horrified of thinking about the outcome. You try to stretch your hands around to grab something, but all you can get a hold of is your arm chair. You realize being at the same place where you were about 10 minutes ago. Geographically, you haven’t moved an inch, but with the power of virtual reality, you could experience traveling to a distance, thousands of miles away from your location. Now, when you mix this technology with gaming, you get an unbeatable gaming experience and you get it for real with Oculus Rift.

Oculus Rift has a sturdy build and is elegantly lightweight with no pain points at all. It has a head gear containing OLED display with a resolution of 1200×1080 pixels for both the screens on your eyes. These screens are connected with three thick straps forming a triangular support at the back of your head. The straps have foam cushioning and the chassis feels weightless. On either sides, it has integrated detachable headphones with custom DAC to boost sound quality. The product comes with a remote control—Oculus Sensor—for setting volume and controlling video motion, also offering a good experience for non-gaming activities. A wireless controller and adapter for Xbox One are also available in the box.

The system requirements for this product are minimal. At the least, you’ll need an Intel Core i5 4590 or equivalent processor with 8GB RAM and AMD Radeon 290 or NVIDIA GTX 970 video card. At the higher end, the better the PC, the better will be the performance and experience. Setting up the device takes less than 10 minutes and requires no installation hustle.Talking of performance, you won’t notice a single technical snag—such as frame drop, pixel stretch, or screen tear—in the display, or in any of its other accessories. The sensors are smart in the real sense because they detect and respond to the slightest motion of your position and that of the headgear. However, it is not smart enough to detect the movement of hands. Also, new users might experience a bit of nausea in the initial adventures.

Nevertheless, Oculus Rift has a lot to offer as a virtual reality gaming console and does absolute justice to its price—a steep $599. The current games will let you explore various adventures in the gaming world. The device is comfortable to wear even for a prolonged period, enabling you to indulge in unbeatable virtual gaming, 360° movies, or media content for an experience that is second to none. However, we are positive that what looks like a luxury for now will soon become a necessity and in the future, Oculus Rift will have more to offer as a whole personal computer than just an entertainment platform.