Facebook subsidiary Oculus just announced its first consumer virtual reality headset, the Rift, will launch early next year, and a big part of the release will be support from Microsoft.
Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, took the stage at Oculus' announcement event to reveal that each Rift will come bundled with an Xbox One controller and wireless adapter, and the headset will support game streaming from the console. Windows 10's Xbox app will presumably provide the game streaming, which will be displayed in a virtual reality "cinema mode," since the games are designed for a television and not virtual reality.
With cinema mode, games will be displayed on what amounts to a projection in a virtual room, as if the user were in his or her own personal home cinema.
No other details were provided about Microsoft's partnership with Oculus, though Spencer implied the two may work closely together in the future.
With the partnership, Microsoft will now support both augmented and virtual reality in Windows 10, as the company's HoloLens augmented reality headset will use a custom version of the operating system called Windows Holographic.
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