I thought Day 1 of the Oculus dev conference on 6 October was a little bit hit and miss as a press conference event, but the messaging coming out of it was mostly clear.

here's some of what we learned....

1. Oculus (or is it facebook?) has a lot of money and they are throwing it at developers who they now expect to 'make the magic happen'

2. Touch has the potential to be far and away the best VR controller device on the market when it arrives in December (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/why-oculus-has-my-favorite-vr-hand-tracking-controller/).

3. Additional tracking column cams can be purchased to make a roomscale environment for those who want it. So far it isn't known how big the area can become, but Oculus are indicating that the roomscale system will allow for unusual-shaped spaces (i.e. not just rectangular) to be incorporated.

4. Proprietary software technology will help with smoothing frame rate and avoiding frame drops through an intelligent frame-substituting technique. This would mean that VR will run acceptably on lower-spec PCs, and that the hardware entry bar will be lowered.

5. Oculus want to build a mobile VR platform (i.e. no wires so you can move around further)... but aren't there yet.

6. Marc Zuckerberg has big plans for social media implementation in VR. It looks niche (and unlikely to transition to mainstream) but on the face of it he seems serious about it.

7. Lone Echo (in development) looks to be an incredible game.

8. You'll be able to buy earbud headphones for $50 if you don't like the current option.

9. Oculus had a nice segment in their presentation to celebrate women and diversity and inclusiveness in VR. I believed that they meant it. I guess we'll see.

10. Palmer Luckey was conspicuously absent. Surely the best thing for everyone at this point!