You may not be able to get your hands on the very-much-backordered second generation Oculus Rift, but you know who did? iFixit — the guys who tear apart pretty much every device they can get their hands on to get a better look at the hamster wheels inside. So what’d they find? It’s pretty much all good news — especially for people who like to repair things on their own. While Oculus still hasn’t publicly announced when they plan to sell these things to consumers, this second gen prototype already shows significant improvements on the engineering front.
If you’re one of the lucky few to get your hands on an Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset but then break it, rest assured that there’s hope for you yet. The folks at iFixit, which provides repair guides and teardowns of electronics, took the liberty of pulling apart the second-generation Rift development kit, which became available earlier this year for $350. The website on Thursday gave the Rift DK2 a commendable “repairability” rating of 9 out of 10 — with 10 being the easiest to fix. That’s the same score the website gave last year to the first developer kit. Oculus, which was purchased by Facebook earlier this month for $2 billion, is only providing the developer-kit prototypes and hasn’t yet committed to a launch date for the Rift. Still, its Rift virtual-reality headset has gained enormous attention within the video-game industry, with a bevy of companies lining up to develop applications for the device.
