Facebook-owned Oculus has announced its next virtual reality headset, the all-in-one Oculus Quest — the consumer version of the tech giant’s long in development ‘Santa Cruz’ project.
Coming in at $399 USD (approximately $512 CAD), the Oculus Quest features six-degree room-scale tracking and ships with a pair of Touch controllers. Since the Quest is standalone, it doesn’t require a powerful PC to operate, which means it’s also completely wireless.
Further, the Quest also doesn’t require external sensors for its room-scale tracking to operate, similar to Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Concerning play space, Facebook says that the Oculus Quest will be capable of supporting a 400 square foot area of tracking.
The 64GB Oculus Quest package includes the headset and two Touch controllers. The new version of the Oculus’ Touch controllers loop above your hands instead of below them, but still include the same button layout.
Facebook says that more than 50 games are set to be available when the Oculus Quest launches, including Robo Recall, The Climb and Moss.
To ditch the sensors required to make room-scale tracking work, the Quest features new technology the company calls ‘Oculus Insight.’ This tech utilizes four ultra wide-angle sensors built into the headset, along with computer vision algorithms, to track the wearer’s position in real-time.
The Oculus Rift’s Guardian system, which creates a virtual safety net around the user to prevent them from running into objects, will also be featured in the Quest.
Spec wise, the Oculus Quest features a display resolution of 1600 x 1440 per eye, compared to the standard Oculus Rift’s 1080 x 1200 pixel screen and the competing HTC Vive’s 1080 x 1200 pixels. Similar to the Oculus Go, the Quest headset also features built-in speakers.
In many ways, Oculus Quest combines the high-end, powerful Oculus Rift headset with the company’s more affordable, entry-level Oculus Go offering.
The main question surrounding the Oculus Quest right now is how powerful the headset actually is. While Oculus VR head Hugo Bara claims that the headset is designed “for games,” it’s likely still powered by a mobile onboard processor of some sort.
That said, with ports of graphically-intense Rift titles like Robo Recall in the works, the Quest seems poised to feature enough power for the standalone headset to be a viable virtual reality gaming platform.
The Oculus Quest is set to launch this Spring in the United States. We’ve reached out to Facebook for details related to Canadian pricing and availability for the Quest headset. We’ll update this story when we hear back.
Source: Oculus
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