Japanese eye-tracking virtual reality headset FOVE is starting to ship its first units from its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. The company originally planned to ship its product about eight months ago, but ran into a series of delays along the way. Orders placed today will ship in February as the company catches up with its Kickstarter backers and pre-orders.
“This is the culmination of a two and half year adventure,” said Yuka Kojima, co-founder and CEO at FOVE. “We started FOVE as a small team back in 2014, and now we’re finally realizing an entirely new way for humans to interact with a virtual world.”
In addition to shipping its debut product this month, the company is launching some content. Lumen is a VR meditation experience that enables you to grow a forest by staring at various aspects of it. By changing where you look, you change how the forest grows. It’s a really interesting use case for eye-tracking VR, and was developed in partnership with Oscar-winning creative studio Framestore and Time’s Life VR platform.
The company’s headsets continue being available for pre-order for $599 from its website, with units ordered now shipping next month.
FOVE was a finalist in TechCrunch Battlefield, and raised $11 million last year.