Welcome to Oculus (lost 2.0 release of Oculus Rift 'introductory demo'; 2014)

Game thumbnail uplodated to Meta (Oculus) Forums by treytech.

Status: Lost

Welcome to Oculus is an introductory demo for Oculus created by treytech back in February 2014 for use on the Oculus Rift development kit. In September of 2014, the game was updated to version 2.0 (later known as Classic), and updated to run on the Oculus Rift DK2 kit. This updated version includes a new buildup intro that was not present in the original version of the demo, and the music was provided by Mitch Murder.

The developer, treytech, would later give the demo to SliceVR, and in 2015, the game was updated to work with the new 0.7.0 runtime, and some of the old Oculus logos were replaced with the new logo that was introduced in the same year. From that point forward, the original version 2.0 has not resurfaced and is currently considered lost.

Gameplay

The demo starts out with a simple screen of a clip from an unknown show or movie. It is accommodated by a text-to-speech voice giving the user a history lesson about virtual reality. Later, a door opens up, and reveals a long conveyor belt with you, the player, sitting in a chair. Multiple screens show progress of technology and media, before you finally arrive at the Oculus logo and move through it.

The game then enters you into an old, wooden shack with the TTS voice explaining to the player how convinced they might be that it was real life. All of a sudden, a pipe approached the player, and the voice says that the player still feels the urge to duck out of the way. A block then lowers overhead the player, which makes it look like the ceiling is caving down on them, with the text-to-speech saying the player feels a sense of uneasiness. The player then starts to feel as if they're moving through the shack, and when they get close enough, the door of the shack opens.

On the other side of the door, a black room with a cut-off platform reveals itself. The lights turn on in the room, revealing the old Oculus website screenshotted all over the room. The narration says that the player will still get a 'falling sensation' in the pit of their stomach. Immediately afterwards, the platform disappears, and the player is sent falling down to the bottom of the room. Another conveyor belt reveals itself after a brief scene transition plays.

On the other side of the conveyor belt, black doors open up automatically, and the player is sent into a world eerily similar to Slender: The Eight Pages. As the player moves through the dark atmospheric enviornment, the screen starts to fill with static, indicating Slenderman in nearby. Nevertheless, the scene continues. Sooner or later, the screen fills up with so much static it's impossible to tell where you are, and then, after a fade to black, the Slenderman reveals himself, standing directly in front of the player, while epic music plays in thw background.

Immediately afterwards, the player is sent into a room that looks like a cinema. Clips of various films play while the text-to-speech explains to the player how revolutionary virtual reality is for watching films. After the narration completes, more film clips continue to play for a brief period of time, but as a character swings their sword, the cinema screen goes off, and the scene fades out.

Sudddenly, the player is transported into what looks like a bedroom. In the bedroom, there's an Oculus logo next to the door, Ready Player One sitting next to the player in the chair, a few posters around the room's walls, an arcade machine, and a TV in the middle of the room. The scene showcases some various TV shows and video games while the TTS voice talks about how revolutionary it is that you can watch TV and use traditional media right in virtual reality without ever having to take off your VR headset even once.

The scene fades out as the text-to-speech gives out final remarks about virtual reality and Oculus. One last conveyor belt shows up, and the player moves through it, with various screens showing different kinds of traditional media. At the very end, a huge door similar to one of a garage door opens up, revealing a shot of Earth from space. As you move further into space, the Oculus logo begins to get smaller and smaller until it falls into place. The demo ends with the text-to-speech saying "Welcome to Oculus". The experience can either be restarted or quit beyond this point.

History

Oculus Rift Dev Kit

The Oculus Rift headset was announced way back in 2012 through a Kickstarter. The people who backed the Rift project would recieve a development kit later on. The development kit was also used by game developers who wanted to make projects for the Oculus Rift headset. The kit was also used internally by Oculus to thext the various features of the headset and to fix bugs or any other issues.

Welcome to Oculus v0.4.1

Seeing as how capable the headset was and how unaware people were with the whole concept of 'virtual reality', developer treytech created an introductory demo for the Oculus Rift called "Welcome to Oculus" in February 2014. The demo was to introduce users into the world of Oculus and virtual reality, and give them a first taste into what it was like.

The first version of the demo was version 0.4.1. This version of the introductory demo was very limited and didn't have any kind of proper introduction until later when 2.0 waqs eventually released. When the demo released, it was very well recieved and it pushed the developer to make constant updates to it so it could work with any new future Oculus releases.

Welcome to Oculus v2.0

In September of 2014, a huge update to the demo rolled around so it could work with the new Oculus Rift DK2 kit. Update v2.0 gave the game a huge visual overhaul, and this time, a proper introduction was created with the text-to-speech talking about the evolution of technology, and how we eventually arrvied at virtual reality. The new, improved version of the demo also included music from Mitch Murder, whom provided treytech with the music for the new version of the demo on his behalf, and wouuld later be credited on the website.

At this point, the demo gained huge media attention from YouTube. People like PewDiePie, who had already got Oculus Rift development kits, tried out Welcome to Oculus. This version of the demo recieved widespread acclaim for how it introduces the player into virtual reality and the world of Oculus. It also, without a doubt, helped Oculus Rift DK2 sales soar.

SliceVR

Seeing as how well the demo was doing, SliceVR offered to help treytech update the game further beyond 2015, and the developer accepted, which meant that the Welcome to Oculus demo now belonged to SliceVR. The game wouldn't recieve any major changes for some time, but in the middle of 2015, that was all about to change as a huge update was made to the demo in the middle of 2015.

Welcome to Oculus Classic

SliceVR dumped version numbers altogether, and renamed the demo to Welcome to Oculus Classic, and released it in 2015. This version was the biggest update to come out since it was now updated to work with the 0.7.0 runtime that was just recently released around that time. There weren't any major changes to the game, besides one tiny thing that seevrely changed the game because of its sudden addition.

The old Oculus logos were dumped out and replaced with the new Oculus logo revealed the same year. While not a gigantic change, this waas still a pretty big change, because now the old branding was being thrown out entirely and replaced by the new Oculus branding. But not everything. In this new version, most of the stuff was left alone. The old Oculus website was still inside of the rooom, and the old Oculus logo was still on top of the wall in the bedroom. The only places where the 'new' logo was used was at the end of the opening in the doors, as well as the ending in space.

The demo eventually completely disappeared from the internet after the SliceVR website went down. This meant that the demo could no longer be downloaded, and became lost. But, before the site went down, the Wayback Machine archived the SliceVR download for the Classic version of the game, making it still available to download to this day, just not officially from SliceVR themselves.

Welcome to Oculus: Remastered

The developer, treytech, did not give up on the demo, and in 2018, he decided to remaster Welcome to Oculus under the name Welcome to Oculus: Remastered. This time, the game was no longer free to download and required players to spend at least $1.49 to get it.

The game saw a gigantic overhaul with this new release. All of the old textures were either thrown out and replaced by upgraded textures, or they were upscaled. The new version also reused the old Oculus logo, and also added some noticable changes to lighting depending on whatever scene that the player was currently on.

Despite the great changes, the game did not garner enough of an audience as the original, and so, the game was eventually taken offsale. As such, there is no way to play the remastered version, either. When it went offsale, it too became lost media.

Gallery

Screenshot of the game.

Availability

While the original version of the game can be played, as well as the version released for the 0.7.0 runtime, the original 2.0 release of the game meant for use on the Oculus Rift DK2 kit is completely lost and unrecoverable. It is unknown if the game will ever be found, but it seems unlikely at this time. Version 2.0 was originally saved and archived at one point, but the link to download it has since disappeared and is also gone as well. It is also unknown if treytech has a backup of the original version of 2.0. Unless that is the case, it is highly unlikely it will be found.

External Links