Oculus Won't Stop Porn Appearing on Rift

Adult-oriented entertainment will not be prohibited from appearing on the Oculus Rift, according to Palmer Luckey, founder of the Facebook-owned VR company.

Variety reports Luckey appeared at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference on Monday and responded to a question about Oculus' stance on the adult entertainment industry's potential adoption of VR devices such as the Rift.

"The Rift is an open platform," he responded. "We don't control what software can run on it ... and that's a big deal."

Luckey's contemporaries were less direct about adult content on VR devices, with Samsung's Nick DiCarlo reportedly shifting the focus on the traction the Gear VR has achieved and noting that the device will be available in major Best Buy stores by the end of the summer.

DiCarlo added that Samsung was planning to bring content from major media outlets to the Gear VR through its Milk VR content delivery service.

Clay Bavor, VP of product management at Google Cardboard, meanwhile, said his company's initiative to provide VR experiences through inexpensive means could help Samsung and Oculus by serving as an easy entry point.

"Cardboard is a good introduction," he said, before Sixense CEO Amir Rubin agreed, calling Google's device an "icebreaker."

Rubin went on to say that, of the 16,000 developers his company is working with, less than 20 percent are building traditonal games. Instead, many are using VR as an educational tool or for health applications.

Rubin added that affordable hardware will be key in driving the adoption of VR as a whole: “You will have hundreds of millions of VR-enabled phones in consumers’ hands in the next two to three years."

The Oculus Rift consumer model launches in the first quarter of 2016, which places it as arriving before April. Although pricing has not been announced, Oculus has said fans can expect "more news" about the device in the lead-up to E3 2015.

Sony's PlayStation 4 headset, Project Morpheus, is also expected for release in 2016. Meanwhile, Valve and HTC's ViveVR headset is due to launch later this year.