virtual reality headset viewer

The virtual reality future that visionary developer John Carmack promised us will take longer than expected.

The Oculus Rift 3D headset developer kits are now set to ship out in mid-March. The product, which began as a Kickstarter project, is a victim of its own success.

“When we launched our Kickstarter campaign in August, we hoped to sell a few hundred kits to game developers and virtual reality enthusiasts around the world,” reads a statement from the Oculus VR company. “Instead, we were blown away by the overwhelming response from a community of almost 10,000 backers, who raised nearly $2.5 million dollars to help us develop the Oculus Rift.”

Oculus is off the hook for the 7,500 units it originally said would ship in January 2013, but a bottleneck in the production line is forcing the startup to inform backers of this delay.

The main source of the delay is with Oculus’s manufacturer and its injection-mold tooling required to create the headset’s plastic casing.

Days-to-launch

Oculus provided a chart that shows the injection-mold process swallowing up almost two months, from mid-November into the first quarter of January. The company also linked to the following video from the television program How It’s Made, which explains plastic injection molds: