Oculus Rift gets new competitor in the form of Totem, promises features never seen before

The virtual reality market is about to get a bit more crowded soon. We already have the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus and Samsung’s Gear VR among other headsets, but there’s definitely room for one more. Canadian company Vrvana launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their tentatively named Totem virtual reality headset. At first glance the device looks very similar to the Oculus Rift, but can it offer something more? Well, according to the company, Totem has “features that have never been seen before”. This will apparently be a “premium” VR headset that comes with 1080p resolution OLDED display and a 90 degree field of view. Moreover, Totem is compatible with a wide range of devices and can connect with computers, consoles, tablets and mobile phones. While this headset is more than suited to help you with your gaming needs, the Totem has plenty of other uses as well. These include:

• Educational purposes such as 3 dimensional problem solving or using educational-based gaming
• Training such as practicing surgical techniques, or aviation navigational landings
• Simulations for tactical manoeuvres for military, police, firefighters or other critical response teams
• Managing post traumatic stress or other psychological disorders by recreating and repeating situations in a controlled way
• Improving patient recovery time or lower stress by using calming VR environments and sounds.
• Creating virtual tours for travel destinations
• Visiting architectural spaces or development sites not yet built in fully immersive walkthroughs
• Experiencing television entertainment in first person POV with 3D content such as sporting events and concerts
• Virtually attending conferences, boardroom meetings or social gathering events with friends and family in your favorite space.

As mentioned, the project was just launched on Kickstarter where it has a goal of $350.000 CAD, which is the equivalent of about $317.000 USD. The team behind Totem wants to reach this goal within a month and they might just succeed seeing as how the campaign was only launched today and more than $45.000 have already been raised as of this writing. In order to secure a Totem VR headset backers must pledge at least $400 CAD ($362 USD) and they will receive the device along with accessories sometime during April if everything goes according to plan. For more information you can visit Totem’s Kickstarter page.