One of the highlights for many regarding Oculus Connect 5 and the previous series of events is Oculus’ CTO John Carmack’s unscripted talk. This has been more tightly reined in over the last couple of years, with organisers usually giving him around one hour and 30 minutes, and still he’s always cut short mid sentence. This year was no different, with Carmack touching on a range of subjects including Oculus Go, detailing both the company’s surprise and its future plans.
To begin with Carmack revealed that the launch of Oculus Go has ‘exceeded expectations’ without going into actual sales numbers. The demographic is unsurprising however, tending to be older users, mainly male, with an unexpected success in Japan which he put down two a couple of different reasons.
The standalone headset featured in the first days’ keynote address, with Oculus announcing two new features for the device, Chromatic Aberration Correction to clear up the visual edges, and Casting. Initially, this will allow users to duplicate what they’re seeing in virtual reality (VR) to a mobile device – handy for assisting new users – with plans to then offer casting to TV’s.
Carmack then expanded on the former by saying that Oculus has planned on introducing a ‘Low-power mode’ which would switch off Chromatic Aberration Correction, turn the display brightness down, and drop the refresh rate from 72Hz to 60Hz. This should add around 15 minutes extra when watching videos.
Other interesting features include a Night Mode which he didn’t really explain and Micro USB support. It’ll be limited to FAT32 support but will add that much needed expandability the headset needs. He also touched on other possibilities that he wanted to work on, such as using a mobile phone as a controller for when you loose the Oculus Go’s and re-centering apps like that found on Google Daydream.
Carmack also noted some of the things he wasn’t happy about concerning Oculus Go, such as the split back strap which was originally designed for different hairstyles, and the proximity sensor which can be activated by the strap on occasion. As the OCulus Go continues to go from strength to strength VRFocus will keep you updated.