A light atop Oculus Quest is connected directly to the on-board sensors so that it turns on whenever the system “sees” its environment.
When Oculus Quest ships early next year, the security feature should be a welcome one for any folks concerned about Facebook putting four super wide angle cameras in their home. At Oculus Connect 5 last week Facebook’s VR teams said Quest would be able to remember multiple rooms and, in a future-facing area of the conference, the headset was shown using those same sensors to track body movements that were transferred onto an avatar.
The light atop Quest is “hard-wired to the sensor power rail” and its operation is not changeable by apps or the end user, according to an Oculus representative. That means the light turns on when the sensors do. While we’ve noted that Oculus Sensors for tracking Rift and Touch are really just modified webcams capable of producing recognizable images, the next generation Oculus Insight tracking system included with Quest is part of an integrated package that represents Mark Zuckerberg’s boldest attempt yet to anchor Facebook’s revenue streams in sources other than targeted advertising. We’ve heard Oculus representatives say in the past “it’s an existential crisis for us to make sure we get data handling right” and this hard-wired light could be seen as another expression of that aim. A second LED on the side of the headset indicates power levels.
You can see one light at the top of the front and one on David’s right (left in the image) as well.
We’ll be curious to see the eventual tear downs of Oculus Quest which will reveal how everything works inside. Earlier this year Oculus added a “my privacy center” to its account page so that people know what information the company has stored about them.
The first thing I thought about when the Oculus Quest was officially announced at Oculus Connect 5 last week is using the standalone wireless VR headset in a wide, open field outside. The idea of playing a free-roaming game by actually running around in a massive space sounds amazing. We did some light tests with the Lenovo Mirage Solo, but with “Rift quality experiences” and games like Superhot VR coming to Oculus Quest, in its a whole other category.
My excitement may have been a little premature, though. At OC5 we got the chance to speak with Sean Liu, Head of Hardware Product Management. We already talked to him about the Quest’s active cooling and launch lineup, so we asked him point blank: Can we use the Quest outside?
“It is indoor only,” said Liu. “We have tried to make the rooms here at OC5 different to show a wide range of setups. So like Sports Scramble [also known as Tennis Scramble, it was referred to by both names] same are like living rooms, some are a wider open court space. The easiest way to think about this is the sensors are analogous to your eyes. So if you can read a book in an environment, you can probably also track. If things are lit up during the day time, you can probably track. It is indoor use only so there is no outdoor.”
Part of me thinks this statement should be followed up by an implied, “…according to official safety documentation at launch,” or something like that. They probably can’t legally recommend using Quest outside since it blocks your vision and it’d be a massive safety concern, but in terms of technology, there isn’t any practical reason it can’t work in the right conditions.
So, that’s what I asked: Is there a technical reason you’re saying it won’t work well outside?
“I personally have done lots of things with this headset, let’s just leave it at that, but we are definitely planning for indoor use only,” said Liu. “You can also think about outdoors on a bright day when you have to kind of squint to see or put on sunglasses, the sensors have a similar thing.”
We know that the Oculus Insight tracking technology uses four front-facing sensors on the face of the Quest headset (one in each corner) to scan your environment and create your VR space. But in order for it to work properly, there needs to be high contract preferably (that’s why the Dead and Buried Arena was full of black and white objects) and there need to be unique, identifiable objects to anchor the system — like walls ans furniture.
“Guardian has to be on whenever you’re playing with Oculus Quest,” said Allison Berliner, Product Marketing Manager at Oculus. “It’s because we think it’s the best way to ensure you’re gonna have a safer experience. We’ve made a lot of improvements to Guardian to make sure it still feels frictionless and free.”
So, for example, in the middle of an empty field outside on a bright, sunny day it might not work well. But if you’re in a small backyard or maybe a covered patio area it might. That’s just my personal conjecture at this point.
“Whenever you put on the headset and turn it on, you’ll notice an LED light will go on,” said Berliner. “That indicates the sensors are on and tracking, that means Insight is on. When that’s on it will recognize any previous Guardian system that you previously setup. That’s how we get multi-room support. It will recognize the room you’re in if it’s been saved.”
To be clear, the real benefit here is that you can use Quest in any room in your house — not just wherever your PC is located. That alone is a great feature. Being “restricted” to primarily indoor use is a little frustrating, but in the end it probably will work outside most of the time in the right scenario. And even when you are indoors, the trackable area is larger than Rift.
“We haven’t shared the exact details for the minimum and maximum, the easiest way to think about it is we do want to support seated, standing, and room-scale,” said Liu. “The room-scale size of Quest will exceed a lot of the room-scale specs that exist today.”
What do you think of the news about the Oculus Quest tracking system and indoor use? Let us know down in the comments below!
Editor’s Note: We fixed a typo and added more context about multi-room use.
During John Carmack’s OC5 keynote on the second day of the conference, he explained that the Oculus Go was designed with a metal face plate as a form of passive cooling via heat dissipation. In other words, the front of the Go is like an external-facing heat sink. The Oculus Quest is going a different route.
While at the event last week we got the chance to talk with Sean Liu, Head of Hardware Product Management at Oculus. He explained that, “We’ve designed the thermal dissipation in this device [the Quest] differently, this one actually uses active cooling with a fan inside, as opposed to Go, which is all passive.”
The Quest is powered by a Snapdragon 835 chipset (as opposed to the Go’s Snapdragon 821) so the extra cooling power will definitely be put to use. We still don’t know what the battery size and life are like in the Quest, as it depends on the apps you’re using, but if I had to guess I’d say around 2-3 hours is likely.
“Battery life is really dependent on the content, some content will be higher intensity,” said Liu. “So we’re waiting until next year when we can finalize the lineup and test the range of the battery life more.”
However, sine a USB-C port is used for charging, it should support fast-charging as well and easily be compatible with an external battery pack for extended use. Although we assume the user manual won’t recommend doing that.
Other than what powers the device, we also know that the standard model will come loaded with 64GB of internal storage (although a larger model is expected to be announced as well — similar to how there is a 32GB and 64GB version of Go.) The Quest uses a twin OLED display, each with 1440 x 1600 pixels per eye at a locked 72Hz refresh rate.
With active cooling, something that not even the Rift has, we should see good performance all around. At OC5 while using the Quest I never once heard the fan humming inside the headset and it never seemed to get warm at all, so it appears to work well.
Do you have any burning questions about the Quest? Let us know down in the comments below and we’ll answer what we can!
Last week at the annual Oculus Connect conference in San Jose, CA, the VR giant set the world on fire with the announcement of the new all-in-one standalone headset, Oculus Quest. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was on stage for the reveal, explaining that the device will launch in Spring 2019 for $399 with over 50 launch titles. That’s a lot to look forward to.
We’re still a bit vague on the full launch lineup for the Oculus Quest, but we do have a few confirmed titles to work off of. Specifically, we know for sure Superhot VR, Face Your Fears 2, Tennis Scramble, and Dead and Buried are all guaranteed because we played them all. At the event they also confirmed Moss, Robo Recall, and The Climb as well. Based on the trailer footage (embedded below) it certainly looks like some variations of The Unspoken, Marvel Powers United VR, and Beat Saber will make their way over too. But that still leaves about 40 other titles that are big ol’ mysteries.
“We want people to understand that you can do a ton with this device,” said Sean Liu, Head of Hardware Product Management at Oculus. “So, we’re taking all of the top titles from Rift and bringing them over to Oculus Quest so people understand you can have those incredible experiences on this all-in-one device.”
If we look at this logo collage that was shown on-stage at OC5 of developers “experimenting” with Quest, also shown below, we can make some assumptions on what those top titles might be. In addition to the three guesses from before, we see Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo, Echo Arena, Echo Combat), Twisted Pixel (Wilson’s Heart, Defector), Pixel Toys (Drop Dead), Against Gravity (Rec Room), Funomena (Luna), High Voltage (Damaged Core, Dragon Front), nDreams (The Assembly, Shooty Fruity, Bloody Zombies), White Elk (Covert, Eclipse), Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja VR), Vertigo Games (Arizona Sunshine, Skyworld), Gravity Sketch, Ozwe (Anshar series), Schell Games (Along Together, Floor Plan, Adventure Time), Solfar (In Death, Everest VR), Survios (Sprint Vector, Raw Data, Creed, Electronauts), Harmonix (Rock Band VR, Harmonix Music VR), Bigscreen, Coatsink (Esper series, Augmented Empire), Force Field (Landfall, Pet Lab, Coaster Combat), and more all featuring logos. Fingers crossed on The Elder Scrolls: Blades too!
That’s a ton of potential games.
“There are lots of great titles we’re bringing over from Rift, like Robo Recall and Moss, but also new titles like Vader Immortal,” said Allison Berliner, Product Marketing Manager at Oculus. “We’ve shipped hundreds of dev kits and people are building some really cool stuff. What you see at OC5 is just the first wave of what we’re showing and we’re gonna have a lot more.”
If you’re an avid part of the VR community, you probably have a lot of the games listed above already. Having to re-purchase them on Quest would be a huge pain, but thankfully that doesn’t seem like something that Oculus wants to happen as long as developers agree.
“We want to make that a platform feature but it’s a developer choice,” said Liu. “You’ll have some experiences that have different materials between the titles but other devs will try to publish the same content so it’s a developer option.”
I also asked about cross-play between compatible titles as well. For example, if a version of Echo Arena, Sprint Vector, or something else with multiplayer support comes to Quest, it would be silly not to leverage the large user-base that already exists on the Rift for multiplayer.
“It’s up to the developers to choose, but we fully support it and you could even say we encourage it,” said Berliner. “For some games it will make a lot of sense.”
Hopefully we find out more concrete details about the launch lineup soon, because I’m dying to know whether or not I can slice boxes and Hulk-smash people on a standalone headset in Spring next year. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Oculus Quest, the company’s newly announced high-end standalone headset, has a USB Type-C connector. VirtualLink, the new VR connector standard created by a consortium of prominent industry players, also uses USB Type-C. So if you happen to own a new flagship GPU with a dedicated VirtualLink port, will you technically be able to take a USB-C cable, plug in the Quest and play your favorite PCVR games? Oculus CTO John Carmack tweeted recently that although “it was debated a lot,” the team ultimately decided against adding in VirtualLink functionality.
Carmack also says the team is currently experimenting with a way to stream over WiFi, although it’s not certain if it will be supported or not.
We did not add any dedicated hardware to act as a PC display (it was debated a lot), but we have a research project going to see what we can do with maxing out WiFi streaming. No promises…
Despite whatever drawbacks VirtualLink compatibility could have raised in Quest, be it the headset’s overall price or even the technical feasibility of adding support, ultimately it makes a certain amount of sense from a business perspective. Oculus is looking to go after a new market segment with Quest—somewhere in between the casual Oculus Go owner and the enthusiast Rift owner, and someone who is unlikely to own a gaming PC stocked with the latest graphics card anyway.
It’s also possible that Oculus won’t announce a second generation Rift for some time either, and that the company will be actively engaged next year in growing Quest’s native ecosystem of games and apps; healthy conjecture that the company doesn’t want to enter hybrid PC-standalone territory just yet.
Just because there’s no dedicated hardware on Quest for VirtualLink compatibility though doesn’t mean indie developers won’t try to create ad hoc support, as projects such as VRidge from Rift Cat have tackled the issue of bringing SteamVR functionality to mobile VR devices such as Gear VR and Oculus Go, albeit through a combination of WiFi streaming and USB cable.
However you slice it though, we’ll just have to wait for Spring 2019 to find out.
I think Ian said it best in his pre-Oculus Connect 5 predictions piece last week: a low-cost standalone VR headset that could run both Beat Saber and Superhot could dominate the VR market in the years to come. Well, we know Oculus Quest has Superhot, we know it’s a reasonable $399 and there are plenty of hints that Beat Saber is on the way. But what about a game that could go even further than that? Something with wider appeal that could really convince naysayers that this was a worthwhile gaming console? At first, I thought it could be Star Wars: Vader Immortal.
Despite its stunning visuals and breadth of content, Bethesda’s big new mobile game wasn’t met with an explosion of hype when it was revealed at E3 last June, largely due to the resistance to mobile gaming from those that prefer to play on consoles. Our ears pricked up, though, when we heard that the game was also coming to VR headsets. Specific devices weren’t confirmed, but Bethesda’s Todd Howard did show an image of an HTC Vive, promising cross-platform multiplayer, and explaining that he wants to release it on as many platforms as possible.
Now, again, Blades on PC VR sounds great though we’re not sure it’ll live up to the excellent port of Skyrim that just about anyone with a headset has already bought and it still comes with all the complications that have stalled the market from growing at this early stage. That said, the idea of exploring an all-new Elder Scrolls adventure on Quest with six degrees of freedom (6DOF) inside-out tracking providing realistic sword and shield combat as well as truly satisfying spell-casting is an exciting one. The chance to face off with your friends running the game on mobile nearby only sweetens the deal. We went hands-on with the mobile version at E3 to take a look at how the core game plays.
This is a series that’s so feverishly popular that Bethesda announced the sixth mainline installment before its even properly shown the game that’s coming before it. All signs point to Skyrim VR having sold well, and Elder Scrolls is the ultimate fantasy adventure, so Quest may represent the easiest way to virtually visit the sprawling universe yet. It’s got to be a no-brainer, right?
Except there’s one problem.
Earlier today, we asked Bethesda if there are any plans for the game on Quest. As expected, the company declined to comment past reconfirming the previously-announced mobile versions launching this fall. Perhaps Bethesda is playing its cards close to its chest, but it’s also a very real possibility that we never see Blades on Quest due to a larger struggle between Oculus and Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax Media.
As you may or may not know, Oculus and ZeniMax are currently enthralled in a lengthy legal battle. The latter accused Oculus of stealing technology when John Carmack, formerly of the Bethesda-owned id Software, moved over to the VR company in 2013. It resulted in a heated courtroom battle at the start of 2017 that ended with Oculus being ordered to pay ZeniMax $500 million. Fast forward about 20 months, though, and the conflict is still developing, with Oculus recently halving its payout and vowing to remove the rest, too.
Btw here is a quick little video fron #E3 showing how combat and inventory management work in The Elder Scrolls: Blades on mobile portrait mode pic.twitter.com/7HyMfT5dCg
— David Jagolanterns (@David_Jagneaux) June 15, 2018
Whilst Bethesda once said that the legal dispute wouldn’t keep its games from coming to Oculus headsets, none of its three PC VR games have yet launched on Oculus Home. In fact its first two releases, Doom VFR and Fallout 4 VR, don’t even feature native Oculus Rift support on SteamVR. It was only this year’s launch of the PC version of Skyrim VR that finally acknowledged Rift compatibility via the third-party platform. Granted, none of this can be explicitly linked to the lawsuit, but it does seem telling.
If Quest were to somehow support SteamVR (which is entirely unlikely), then it might be that Blades came to the headset that way, but we’re not so sure Bethesda is ready to officially release its first product on an Oculus platform. We’ve got our fingers crossed that that might change, though, because the more we think about it, the more Blades seems like it could be a genuinely important piece of making Quest VR’s first mainstream device, and its absence on the platform might prove to be Oculus’ biggest penalty yet.
As always, one of the highlights of this year’s Oculus Connect developer conference was the staggeringly detailed keynote talk from Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist at the newly-renamed Facebook Reality Labs. Abrash’s team is paving the future of VR and AR for Oculus, developing breakthrough technologies that could someday make headsets even more immersive than they are right now. For this year’s talk, he provided an update on just how far the team has come in the past two years.
Specifically, Abrash revisited predictions he made for VR in 2021 back at Oculus Connect 3 in 2016. His talk then included a look at the future of aspects like display, audio and haptics alongside estimations of when we’d get our hands on improved versions of each. Last week, he went over each of those estimations and assessed how they were holding up. It was a lot to process, so we’ve run down five main takeaways from his insightful talk.
Displays, Foveated Rendering And Virtual Humans Are Developing Quicker Than Expected
Abrash summed up his talk by suggesting that his predictions were pretty much “on track”, though some areas have made much more progress than others. Reassuringly, he stuck by most of them.
For example, one of the most intriguing segments of Abrash’s OC3 predictions concerned displays. He estimated that, five years from 2016, we would see a VR headset with a 140-degree field of view (FOV), variable depth of focus, and a 4k x 4k panel resolution with 30 pixels per degree density. Well, things are looking good in this area.
At F8 earlier this year, Facebook introduced its Half Dome headset prototype. Though still very much a work-in-progress, the kit featured varifocal displays and a 140-degree FOV. “Half Dome achieved two of my three display predictions three years early,” Abrash admitted, further adding that implementing 4K displays with 30 pixels per degree would be “straightforward”.
Going into more detail, he explained that Reality Labs had made “significant progress” in varifocal displays (which provide accurate blur based on the proximity of virutal objects to your eyes) using an AI-driven renderer called Deep Focus.
Work in foveated rendering, which uses eye-tracking to fully render only the area of the display the user is looking at and thus save on computational power, is also on track thanks to the help of a deep learning tool that fills in missing pixels.
Virtually real humans have also come some way using an early system known as codec avatars, a “novel machine-based learning approach” that could one day “revolutionize how we communicate and collaborate.”
There are other technologies pushing past Half Dome, too. Abrash spoke of Pancake Lenses, which will allow much sharper images at resolutions that go beyond 4K, and could even support a FOV of around 200 degrees and more compact headsets (though he did note the latter two couldn’t be achieved in the same device). Even these are likely to be surpassed by waveguide displays currently in development for AR devices, however (more on that in a bit).
But Eye-Tracking, Realistic Audio And Other Features Might Take Just A Bit Longer
While many of Abrash’s predictions had positive outlooks, he did also have to adjust his timeline slightly on some aspects. He now expects competent eye-tracking and high-quality mixed reality (which includes photorealistic replication of real world environments) to be here around 2022 rather than 2021, for example.
He also acknowledged that, despite recently experiencing an incredibly compelling demo of personalized head-related transfer function (HRTF) audio, it may take longer to get here than he thought. Personalized HRTF (the Oculus SDK already uses a generalized version) is able to replicate the distance and position of audio within a VR environment with incredible accuracy, though Abrash’s most recent demonstration required him to have his ears scanned for 30 minutes. Not ideal.
“Overall my two-year predictions are looking pretty good, but I was perhaps a little more specific than I should have been, not about the technologies themselves but about their timing. I think most of what I talked about will be in consumer’s hands a year later than I thought; four years from now rather than three,” Abrash noted. “But, apart from that, not only are the predictions on track, it’s actually starting to look like I underestimated in some areas.”
There Were New Predictions Too
One of the best bits of Abrash’s talk was a video showcasing Reality Labs’ very early work with haptic gloves that can provide realistic resistance when grabbing objects. A VR user played a game of Jenga with startling accuracy, including full hand-tracking to allow her to grab individual blocks and even place a virtual rubber duck atop the tower. It looked incredibly promising, though Abrash stressed that this was very early work, predicting that a form of haptic control similar to it would reach consumer hands within 10 years. As he said himself, this is the farthest out VR prediction he’s yet made, but it’s an important one.
To recap: Abrash believes that by 2028 our sense of touch could be simulated realistically by a glove-like VR attachment.
“I predict the first time you get to use your hands with haptics in VR it will be as much as a revelation as the first time that you put on a VR headset,” he said.
Facebook’s Work In AR Has ‘Ramped Up’ And It’s Helping VR Too
Oculus may have started out as a VR company first and foremost, but continued progress in augmented reality over the past few years has made it increasingly harder to ignore. Indeed, Facebook’s hiring spree over the past few years has made it obvious that Oculus is now working in AR, and Abrash confirmed that Facebook Reality Labs’ work in the field “has ramped up a great deal and over the last two years.”
Does this mean we’ll see an AR headset from Oculus one day? It’s very possible, but Abrash also noted that this progress in AR is helping its work in VR as the two share a “great deal of overlap.”
“VR can advance further and faster by leveraging AR technology,” Abrash noted. He explained that Reality Lab had to invent an entirely new display system for its work in AR, which could in turn “take VR to a different level.” The company’s work with AR waveguide displays, which utilize light injected into a thin lens no bigger than a few millimeters, is helping push work in VR to the point where Abrash even showcased concept art (seen above) of a strictly hypothetical Oculus headset that utilizes them.
Ergonomics is another big area of overlap, as the demands for a socially acceptable AR headset are far more than that of VR. By applying those same demands to VR, we could one day have much sleeker headsets. “Applying AR technology to VR, especially display, silicon, audio and computer vision, will make it genuinely possible to build something like the visor I showed you earlier,” Abrash claimed.
In Fact, VR May Be The Best Place For AR In The Next Few Years
Ergonomics aside, though, Arbash claimed that VR headsets may even be able to offer better ‘mixed reality’ experiences than AR devices in the coming years. Whereas devices like Magic Leap One and HoloLens use AR displays with see-through optics upon which digital elements are overlaid, Abrash argued VR’s more controlled environment with opaque display — using camera and sensor-based reconstructions of the real world — might offer a more compelling package for mixing two realities in real time.
“Mixed reality in VR is inherently more powerful than AR glasses because there’s full control of every pixel, rather than additive blending,” he said. “VR can also provide a richer experience than AR because the display doesn’t have to be see-through, the form factor is much less constrained, and it doesn’t have to run off of a battery for an entire day. So the truth is that VR will not only be the first place that mixed reality is genuinely useful, it will also be the best mixed reality for a long time.”
Eventually, though Abrash does say these experiences will converge, but that’s a long way off.
The VR/AR Takeover Is Inevitable
A personal favorite moment of Abrash’s talk came towards the start, when he spoke about Steve Jobs’ early visits to see the first-ever personal computer, the Xerox Alto, in 1979. He lifted a key quote from the Apple icon about how the technology was so powerful it would inevitably become a part of our lives.
The quote reads: “And within… ten minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day. It was obvious. You could argue about how many years it would take. You could argue about who the winners and losers might be. You couldn’t argue about the inevitability, it was so obvious.”
It’s a quote that seems very appropriate to the current state of the VR and AR industries, where early, expensive hardware is fueling doubt about their future as a market. Abrash then updated it a bit, saying: “Imagine a VR headset that’s a sleek, stylish, lightweight visor with a 200 degree field of view, retinal resolution, high dynamic range and proper depth of focus, with audio that’s so real you can’t believe it’s computer generated, that lets you mix real and virtual freely, that lets you meet, share and collaborate with people regardless of distance and that lets you use your hands to interact with the virtual world. If that existed, we’d be playing, working and connecting in it every day.”
“Imagine AR glasses that are socially acceptable and all-day wearable, that give you useful virtual objects like your phone, your TV and virtual work spaces, that give you perceptual super powers, a context-aware personal assistant, and above all the ability to connect, share and collaborate with others anywhere, any time. If those glasses existed today, we’d all be wearing them right now.”
Crucially, Abrash reaffirmed that “while it may be hard to believe, it’s all doable.”
Polyarc’s Moss has made a habit of coming to as many VR headsets as possible, but its upcoming version for the new Oculus Quest headset is unique in that it will be the first time the beloved VR game has appeared on mobile hardware. That means Polyarc will no doubt have its work cut out for it optimizing the experience. Fortunately, it looks like that work has already started.
Speaking to Windows Central, Polyarc CEO Tam Armstrong confirmed that the developer is already working on the Quest version of Moss, though it isn’t playable yet. “We think that experience where you can really get into the game and enjoy it will be nice and streamlined,” Armstrong said. “Hopefully it will be a nice streamlined experience getting into Moss, and people will enjoy playing it.”
With its standalone form factor and six degrees of freedom (6DOF) inside-out tracking, Quest does indeed represent an easier way to jump into VR. That said, one talk in particular at last week’s Oculus Connect developer conference made it clear that studios will have to make a lot of concessions to fit their Oculus Rift games onto Quest, though the results can still be impressive. Armstrong seems unphased by the challenge, though.
“I think we’ll make adjustments, but Moss was purposefully designed to be highly constrained,” he said. “The way the camera works, the way the lighting works, we feel like there’s going to be work to do of course, like there was moving to any of the other platforms, but it’s nothing that we’re extremely concerned about. We’re much more excited about having that portable six degrees of freedom, which is very motivating.”
We did ask Polyarc if Moss would support gamepads on Quest, though the team declined to comment for now. The kit, which launches in spring 2019 for $399, comes with two Touch controllers, but wider gamepad support is not yet confirmed.
Entwicklerstudio Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment kündigte in Kooperation mit Kinemotik Studios die Veröffentlichung des VR-Rhythmusspiels Rave Runner für Oculus Quest an, um in die Fußstapfen des erfolgreichen Beat Saber zu treten. Der VR-Titel soll zudem noch dieses Jahr für PlayStation VR (PSVR), Oculus Rift, HTC Vive und Windows-VR-Brillen erscheinen.
Rave Runner – VR-Rhythmusspiel für Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR (PSVR) und PC-Brillen
Als Teil einer VR-Fitness-Reihe soll Rave Runner mit einem ähnlichen Spielprinzip wie das erfolgsverwöhnte Beat Saber die Spieler/innen zur Bewegung antreiben. Dabei reiht sich das Gameplay in die bekannte Formel ein: Bunte Blöcke rhythmisch zur Musik zerschlagen. Allerdings soll der VR-Titel weitaus schweißtreibender sein als bekannte Genre-Vertreter.
Indem das Spiel vollen Nutzen aus der 6DoF-Technologie zieht, werden die Zielblöcke so weit wie möglich im Raum verteilt. Dadurch ist reichlich Bewegung bei den musikalischen VR-Enthusiasten gefragt. Um die Ziele zu zerschlagen, wird man regelrecht zum Tanz innerhalb der virtuellen Spielumgebung aufgefordert. Ein Konzept, welches ohne die störende Kabel mit einer Oculus Quest durchaus potenzial besitzt.
Ashley Cooper, Designer und Choreograf, glaubt an den rhythmischen VR-Titel:
“Wir wollten ein Spiel entwickeln, welches die pure Freude an der Bewegung vermittelt und Spieler/innen animiert, ihre Arme zu heben, anzufangen zu tanzen und sich dabei einfach großartig zu fühlen. Mit der universellen Sprache des Tanzes möchten wir die Freude teilen, die wir beim Hören von Musik erleben.”
Rave Runner erscheint noch 2018 für PlayStation VR (PSVR), Oculus Rift, HTC Vive und Windows-VR-Brillen. Ab 2019 soll der rhythmische VR-Tanztitel ebenso für Oculus Quest veröffentlicht werden.
Last week the VR event of the year came and went — Oculus Connect 5 — with Facebook’s Oculus Quest formally revealed as the company’s next attempt to tap a consumer market for VR hardware in 2019.
The fully standalone headset requires no phone or PC to operate and will start selling early next year for around $400. Facebook said Quest will ave 50+ games at launch and the company is helping to port over many of the top Rift titles including Superhot, Robo Recall, The Climb, and Moss. We expect games like Beat Saber, Marvel Powers United VR and other popular games to make appearances on Quest as well — alongside a timed exclusive for Vader Immortal — the official Star Wars experience which seems to include lightsaber combat.
Facebook is waiting until closer to release to reveal the full launch lineup for Quest, but the hour and 15 minute long keynote includes updates for Oculus Go and Oculus Rift as well. Go will soon be getting a casting feature and the keynote also included language making clear how Facebook is thinking about the PC VR market.
The full keynote is embedded below, but we cut down a 14-minute version focusing just on the key information above. Note that our super cut focuses on the product and game announcements and doesn’t include the Michael Abrash predictions portion which is the last half hour of the Oculus Connect 5 keynote.
What do you think about Oculus Connect 5’s announcements? Let us know down in the comments below!
