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> The consumer version of the Rift should be out in about a year.

Yeah, and will I be able to buy one and use it without Facebook keeping a permanent record of everything I do with it (tied to my real name of course)? Will it refuse to work unless it's online? I was really looking forward to the Oculus, but man ... if there is an alternative that doesn't have FB integration, I think I'll buy that instead.

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Sadly, the license of the library used to talk to the Oculus Rift (libOVR) is also under very restrictive terms - you can't use it with competing systems, can't distribute it in part, and lose the license if your users have health or safety issues with your product.

With the source code available, it's hard to make a clean-room reverse engineered version of the hardware communication layer and shaders.

I haven't actually seen the source code, so maybe me and someone with a DK2 could do it by sniffing USB packets.

Try castAR as an alternative.

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