Using affordable hardware derived from cell phones, the Oculus Rift headset may finally deliver a rich virtual reality experience to gamers–and far beyond. Here, CEO Brendan Iribe talks us through the tech.

Keanu Reeves went virtual in Johnny Mnemonic and The Matrix. Even further back, films like Tron or Lawnmower Man promised us virtual worlds. But for years, what we got instead were five-minute games at malls or amusement parks at 10 bucks a pop. Now Virtual Reality may finally be getting real. Very real. The Oculus Rift headset is VR for the masses.

“You have to have it very affordable and that’s a key part of our strategy. We want to keep it in the same $300 range as the developer kit,” says Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus VR. “We would like the consumer kit to be just as affordable and even more affordable over time.” With costs low enough that the company is selling developer kits to game companies, it appears the futuristic tech is finally ready for the living room. As cellphones have grown more powerful, so has the power of smaller components. It was in this happy confluence that an engineer named Palmer Luckey saw an opportunity.

Read the full article at Fast Company.