Project Santa Cruz wireless VR HMD is now Oculus Quest, begins shipping next spring
The next generation of Oculus VR is called Oculus Quest, a standalone HMD with hand tracking and 6DOF.
There's been a lot of buzz surrounding Project Santa Cruz, the upcoming standalone VR HMD from the crew at Oculus. Thanks to the OC5 keynote, we now have a name for the future of VR: Oculus Quest, which will begin shipping to customers next spring.
Quest is the latest untethered HMD from Oculus, and is designed to present the very best of all technological advancements the company has been working toward. The Quest will offer "Rift-quality experiences" in a completely wireless, standalone HMD. That means no wires, no computer connectivity, and no additional components required.
The Quest supports inside-out tracking, hand presence, and 6 degrees of freedom, all in a singular package. It also has support for what's being called 360 degree audio, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is even better than the audio options present in the Oculus Go.
Oculus promises that over 50 titles will be available for Quest when it launches, and VR fans can jump into the action for just $399, a price which appears to include two Oculus Touch controllers. Shipping is slated to begin next spring, and we're certain to hear more about the latest tweaks and titles in the months leading up to its release.
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Kevin Tucker posted a new article, Project Santa Cruz wireless VR HMD is now Oculus Quest, begins shipping next spring
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There will still be things I'd prefer my Rift for, but I'm definitely getting one of these. There's just a ton of things that are nice about it - wireless, ease of setup, it'll be awesome for demoing stuff.
Just need to see how easy it is to port stuff to - can I run Quake and Doom in VR on it, etc.
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I find everything about the Quest confusing. It sounds like a more powerful Go, and the base Rift will continue to stand on its own for the PC.
However if the Quest can work with a PC at that $400 price point $plus$ some wireless setup to communicate with the PC it will make the Vive Pro inferior at it's $1,100 starter kit + $300 wireless adapter.
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This might be the ideal thing for the company, as a lot needs to be improved to bring VR to the masses. System spec requirements need to drop significantly, FOV needs to go much higher, the refresh rate should go up, the whole unit needs to be much lighter and easier to put on, and have inside-out tracking so mounted sensors won't be required.
This might not be a thing for another 3-5 years, though, sadly. Unless Oculus and other companies are further along than has been indicated in public.
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True. I meant watered down compared to what the next gen is capable of in terms of graphics.
Self-contained experiences are more consumer friendly. The direction is necessary and makes sense, I just have no interest. I’d gladly pay $3k with a $2.5k PC to have something unbelievable. Hell I’d pay even more.-
Oh, I own everything (the shack community DK1 was my old set). I'll own Quest because it has some real value and use cases, but I'm not giving up my Rift anytime soon.
As I said above, I imagine half dome or some evolution of it will become Rift 2.0 - with 140 degree FOV and variable focus it's already a huge improvement. If they could get it wirelessly streaming it'd basically take care of all my current issues.
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This sort of device is attempting to solve the chicken and egg problem, where VR can't get big games because it doesn't have enough users because it doesn't have big games. More users getting in with a device like this will grow the VR market across the board, which benefits high end PC users as well in the long run.
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I think this will be helpful for adoption - the barrier to entry for VR is way too high when tethered to a PS4/PC.
However, I'm not the target audience for this product - I really hope we continue to see investments by companies for wide FOV, high resolution screens (i.e. Pimax) and better controllers and realistically those will need desktop PC's for the foreseeable future -
Vox Machinae is up on Steam EA for your mech heads.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/334540/Vox_Machinae/
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