Oculus Rift, Facebook’s $2 billion, Augmented Reality headset goes on retail sale this week in the States and seems destined to bring this industry into the mainstream. Ahead of this and the imminent release by numerous other headset manufacturers ABC’s Far North Kier Shorey and I took a look at this new tech and what is may be capable of.

Augmented Reality adds additional information on top of the a real world – things head up display on a car, Virtual Reality closes of the real world and takes you to a digital world and mixed reality does a bit of both depending on your need and what’s being viewed. These tech’s have been around in sci-fi for 100+ years and yes we’ve been promised them for just as long, but we are now in the sweet spot where tech, computing power and dreams have met and the tech is on taking an industry that’s worth US$2.54 billion today to an estimated US$13.5 by 2020.

The sues for these headsets are endless ranging from education, recreation, , medical, retail, tourism, sport, media and the list will continue to grow, but at its core its an output device that lets us experience and bet a part of data and information in a way never before possible.

It’s early days, its messy, still a bit expensive and not a deep catalogue of experiences, but this will change and these new devices will be in most people’s homes and offices within 5 years and will be the equivalnet of the mobile phone that not too long ago nobody needed and today can’t live without.

So have a listen as Kier and I explore some of the uses and potential of this new technology (11 minutes 56 seconds)…