Leaked, 'ancient' images of Oculus Rift hint at controller

The images, which appeared Tuesday after Facebook-owned Oculus updated its website, show a headset with a camera on the front, a controller, and a wired object that might be a charging stand for the headset. So far, Oculus has only demonstrated prototypes of the headset.

And with Oculus holding a press event Thursday to talk about the Rift, some speculated that the images reveal the final version of the headset and its accompanying control devices.

However, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey squashed those rumors on Reddit and cautioned people to not read too much into the images, which have been taken down from the site.

"This is an old placeholder concept image that we accidentally leaked. Everything in it is ancient, certainly nowhere close to final," he said.

Even though the images are dated, they may contain a preview of what Oculus VR will discuss this week.

"Enjoy checking it out, at this point, but don't expect everything to carry through to the stream on the 11th," Luckey wrote, referring to Thursday's press event, which is being streamed on the Internet.

One of the images showed a box with a list of items included with the headset. In addition to the Rift, it ships with a controller called a Simple Input Device, a device called a gamepad, cables, and a "Rift tracker," presumably for tracking head movements.

The Simple Input Device has a circular touchpad, plus and minus buttons, and a button that might be for returning to a previous screen. The gamepad wasn't shown in any of the images. The stand-like accessory could be the tracker.

In May, Oculus said the highly anticipated headset would ship to consumers in the first quarter of 2016.

Pricing hasn't been shared, but Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said at a conference last month that the headset and a PC equipped to run it would cost approximately US$1,500. Judging from the computing specs Oculus recently released, consumers will need a well-appointed PC to use the Rift.

Fred O'Connor writes about IT careers and health IT for The IDG News Service. Follow Fred on Twitter at @fredjoconnor. Fred's e-mail address is fred_o'connor@idg.com