Oculus Rift latency won't be an issue at launch, says developer

When the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset becomes available to the public next year, latency won't be an issue, Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey told Gamasutra in a new interview.

"The stuff that we're doing in the lab right now, we think that we've got latency basically solved," Luckey said. "We think that, for the consumer launch, we're going to be able to get latency to the point where it's not even an issue--it's a completely nonexistent issue, completely beyond the level of human perception."

Though Luckey said he is confident that the company can reduce latency to negligible levels, he said other issues will continue for developers.

"Where the difficulty is going to remain is with game developers, and how they do buffering in their engines, how they do vsync," Luckey said. "How their game engines handle rendering and whether they can stay at 60 or 90 or 120 frames per second. And that's going to be the difficulty. Because if we make perfect hardware, developers still have to make low-latency game loops."

In August, Doom studio id Software cofounder John Carmack joined Oculus VR as its chief technology officer. Luckey told Gamaustra that Carmack is "really focusing" on a number of different things, including improving the company's SDK and optimizing the virtual-reality technology for mobile.

The Oculus Rift is currently available to developers for $300. The consumer product is aiming for a similar price point, Luckey said.