Whether you’re fascinated or benumbed by the virtual reality craze, the biggest objective knock against the first round of headsets is that you can’t have one tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that.
Visit Oculus VR’s website and the Rift headset currently lists its expected ship date as “August 2016.” That’s definitely a problem, Houston.
But it’s about to change, though for what I assume may be a slender window of time: Oculus says the Rift will launch at 48 Best Buy stores on May 7. That’ll include the option to demo the headset, a critical shortcoming of the blind, online-only ordering process, since for VR, seeing is literally believing–or not, as the case may be.
If you want to schedule a demo, there’s also a website that’ll get you a spot, since you’ll probably want to spend more than a few minutes sampling the wares.
Furthermore, if you’ve preordered already, Oculus says you can optionally purchase retail while retaining your preorder benefits (like a free digital code for EVE Valkyrie, the online space shooter). To do so, just grab a Rift at retail, then visit your order page online and let Oculus know.
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