Meant to be Seen

As November is only a couple days away, I am sure there are over 100 users on here patiently waiting for a November shipping update

Palmer - any thing that you can share/update - please?!?

bump! i'm one of the lucky 100.

jayoh wrote:bump! i'm one of the lucky 100.

Jealous. I just can't wait for more news, and I'm hoping that when people start to get their kits we get something so...the sooner the november ones go, the better

November is 30 days long. I doubt that he has all those units wrapped up ready to be shipped by 1st... But I'd would love to be proven wrong . I'm not one of those lucky ones, but still would welcome more feedback from actual users - unless they come with NDA - something that I doubt.

Am I the only one that hopes they ship at the end of November?

We've waited over 2 decades for something like the Rift to become a reality. Yet the guys at Oculus have had a few months since the Kickstarter to get the Rift designed, sourced, prototyped and tested.

30 days is a drop in the ocean to us. 30 days is an additional 25-33% development time to the guys at Oculus. It's insane what they're trying to achieve in so little time, let's give them a little slack.

Asking for an update / ETA is not the same as demanding it to be shipped

Exactly - I do not want my unit rushed either - I did not demand anything for November 1st... simply looking for a status update to see how Palmer and the crew are coming along...

I hope they have found a fast way to ship outside US. For the last Kickstarter project i had to wait en entire month

Damn it... December can't some soon enough

I think they should hold everyone's kit until January, so I don't die of envy during the holidays :p

jaybug wrote:I think they should hold everyone's kit until January, so I don't die of envy during the holidays :p

Sir, you are hereby endorsed

jaybug wrote:I think they should hold everyone's kit until January, so I don't die of envy during the holidays :p

Screw that! Some of us have been waiting a year for this kit.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... =45#p67871

*Obligatory "I have been waiting for 2 decades" reply* :p

I've been waiting for proper Virtual Reality since before you guys got your first glimpse at Regular Reality

I've been waiting for this kit since I was a child featured on my local news on a segment focsuing on the wave of the future... our local mall had Dactyle Nightmare for a weekend showcase setup and was creating quite a buzz in the community. I have tried everything possible to get back that excitement that I experienced as a child. All thanks to Palmer this is all coming together!

Very cruel !! I just got a Paypal email with the following title: "Your gifts are here early".

So I ripped open my email to find...

Three gifts
- $5 back: Bill Me Later
- ebay deals: Free shipping
- Paypal Mastercard offer

LOL - oh man I can actually feel your excitement instantly shatter after receiving an email like that!

Ha ha, I got the same email! Thankfully I saw your post first, so my heart didn't stop.

Its ironic how hard many people are working already to have content ready for the release of the dev-kit.
After all we are supposed to be getting the dev kit to start developing. I guess thats just proof of the strong potential and enthusiasm.
People are already developing stuff _before_ the dev-kit even arrives.

We are working on November shipments as fast as we can. The situation is a bit different than when I started the Kickstarter, though; The parts are not all entirely off the shelf, getting units before the main run is tough.

I will update when I know, don't worry.

PalmerTech wrote:We are working on November shipments as fast as we can. The situation is a bit different than when I started the Kickstarter, though; The parts are not all entirely off the shelf, getting units before the main run is tough.

I will update when I know, don't worry.

I guess lot's must have changed since then. Can't wait to hear about all the work you guys have been doing behind the scenes once the units go out.

I think their original plan was to order a first batch of components (prior to the engineering of the case assemby line) and ship the 100 November unbuilt units, then order a much larger batch of components including the polished case assembly, and ship the remaining ones.
But now they opted for different components and cannot simply buy them on ebay so it's possible the first 100 units will ship just some days before the others, at the end of the year.
I have waited a lifetime, I can wait a month more

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I hope people won't be upset having to wait a little longer, though they will be getting a more polished product.

It's probably the tracker. The new tracker sounds amazing, but it wasn't a finished mass produced product yet. I'm sure it will be worth waiting until December for. There may be other cool stuff though, like maybe a custom driver board. I don't know. But I'll be very impressed when they pull this off.

PalmerTech wrote:We are working on November shipments as fast as we can. The situation is a bit different than when I started the Kickstarter, though; The parts are not all entirely off the shelf, getting units before the main run is tough.

I will update when I know, don't worry.

Are you still confident you will be able to ship the devices this year? Or is it possible they will be pushed back to January or even further?

alekki wrote:

PalmerTech wrote:We are working on November shipments as fast as we can. The situation is a bit different than when I started the Kickstarter, though; The parts are not all entirely off the shelf, getting units before the main run is tough.

I will update when I know, don't worry.

Are you still confident you will be able to ship the devices this year? Or is it possible they will be pushed back to January or even further?

I think it means that since some of the parts they will use to build the Rift are either custom or purchased wholesale, probably in very large lots, obtaining small amounts of necessary parts earlier than is required to put together the bulk december orders might not be possible.

We are still on track to ship this year.

PalmerTech wrote:We are still on track to ship this year.

Thats all I ever wanted to hear..That timeline is close enough for me...Well to have it on my doorstep by the 24th of December would be great also..LOL

I bought a 3D FX VooDoo video card in 1999 and the ProMo was that you will get a free copy of Unreal when it is released..I kid you not, it showed up on my doorstep on December 24th, that was a nice surprise.

Haha, Nice cyber! I keep picturing myself crying in the corner on Christmas day because it hasn't arrived, being an international customer...

Don't say that, i've had a few things over the last decade vanish with Australian customs.

I'm still dreading they'll look at it and go... i've heard of this... it's can't be that cheap though they must just be trying to avoid paying tax cos it like that sony thing only its alot better and that sony one is almost $1000 so this is probably actually worth $1500 so lets slap him with GST and customs for that

Endothermic wrote:Don't say that, i've had a few things over the last decade vanish with Australian customs.

I'm still dreading they'll look at it and go... i've heard of this... it's can't be that cheap though they must just be trying to avoid paying tax cos it like that sony thing only its alot better and that sony one is almost $1000 so this is probably actually worth $1500 so lets slap him with GST and customs for that

For the sake of Australian customs, I really hope that the packages are CLEARLY marked as a Developer Device/kit, with the correct value shown. A $300 consumer device should not attract import duty, but I too have heard of the situation you described. Not for a long time, but it happens, and means paying an extra $150-250 for your stuff, or taking MONTHS to fight it, only to find out your goods have been 'misplaced'.

That said, they don't mess with research samples or equipment, and tend not to mess around with anything that looks like it might be for a business, so in this case honest labelling might actually be a plus

Australia's pretty good, I'm sure they'll let it through customs for free as long as it is properly labelled and has the correct price. Other countries may have problems though, since their customs and tax isn't free.

It doesn't really matter if they label it as gift or research or whatever, anything <$1000 (excluding shipping) is tax and gst free. If it has gift on it or say its a retail or business purchase it doesn't matter but the reverse applies as well so if it's marked GIFT but they deem the value of the gift is over $1000 it will get taxed.

So what they put on the label and the value doesn't really matter in a way if the customs person that happens to inspect it sees "RIFT" and doesn't know much about it but has heard its a "VR HMD" and remembers when they went to university they heard one of the departments got a VR HMD for $5000 so gee this thing must really be worth that and not the $300 displayed so time to tax them big time, then your stuffed atleast untill you jump through all the hoops and prove that fools opinion on what it was worth is wrong and the value on it was indeed the correct value.

Thats why I thought in another post it would be a good idea if on the outside packing that customs will see they put on something like 1 x Oculus RIFT please refer to "Oculus RIFT" on www.kickstarter.com to verify value of package.

That said though i'm not really "too" worried about them thinking it's actually worth more then $1000 and trying to tax it, just about it vanishing into the aether. Though while I have had a few thing vanish with customs they have all been dvd's (so easy targets for sticky fingers) so expect it unlikely a package the size of the RIFT will just disappear so I guess i'm not really as worried about customs as I think I am .

From what I can tell, the total UK cost of the Oculus Rift dev kit will be about £282, excluding any foreign credit card fees or exchange rate inflations.

My calculation:
$330 = £206
+ Import duty of 14% based on commodity code 852859402 (£29) = £235
+ VAT of 20% (£47) = £282

I really doubt customs just value packages on a whim. More likely than not they will just accept whatever the declaration says.

I remember when I imported a PSP, back when that was new. The store was friendly enough to write "$20 toy" on the package. Saved me the 24% tax on the $400 or whatever the PSP was.

Btw, we're screwed either way in Norway, as the normal taxfree import limit is about $40, and even with "gifts" the limit is less than $200.

Mart wrote:From what I can tell, the total UK cost of the Oculus Rift dev kit will be about £282, excluding any foreign credit card fees or exchange rate inflations.

My calculation:
$330 = £206
+ Import duty of 14% based on commodity code 852859402 (£29) = £235
+ VAT of 20% (£47) = £282

Aren't you supposed to leave out the shipping cost when calculating VAT?
Also, should you calculate VAT after adding the import duty?

jaybug wrote:I remember when I imported a PSP, back when that was new. The store was friendly enough to write "$20 toy" on the package. Saved me the 24% tax on the $400 or whatever the PSP was.

Btw, we're screwed either way in Norway, as the normal taxfree import limit is about $40, and even with "gifts" the limit is less than $200.

You mean the store was corrupt enough to steal $96 from the Norwegian government. The government uses that money to provide services for you and your fellow Norwegians. Presumably you and your fellow Norwegians voted for that tax because they wanted government services or because they wanted to protect Norwegian industry. But I do sympathise, since I'd hate to have to pay an extra hundred dollars.

Hey now, don't go attacking the poor canadian store, I'm the tax-cheat who asked for it :p

In any case, no I don't think the people is for the import tax. At least not the people who care about it. There's been alot of talk of increasing the limit, and all the politicians say they wanna do it, but somehow it never gets done.

The thing that makes it suck is that they imposed the limit in 1975. You could probably import a car for that amount back then :p (Actually, the import limit was equivalent to about $200 in todays money, aka 5 times more.)

Any information about the parcel service used to ship the Oculus Rift?