John Carmack sees the Nintendo Switch as the main competition for Oculus’ latest VR headset, the Oculus Quest.
The Oculus CTO said as much in his keynote speech at Oculus Connect today. “Realistically, we are going to wind up competing with the Nintendo Switch as a device,” Carmack stated. He continued, explaining that he sees Quest as the mobile gaming device that existing console owners would pick up. “I don’t think there’s going to be that many people that say “I’m not going to buy a PS4, I’m going to buy a Quest instead,”” he said.
Quest is indeed a mobile gaming device, though it offers a drastically different experience to the Switch, which has sold around 20 million units since launch last year. Switch acts as a hybrid home console that you can pick up an take with you, though Quest will undoubtedly still mostly be played in people’s homes rather than, say, on the train. Quest will also cost $399 when it launches next year, whilst Switch is $100 less at $300. Quest will have an uphill battle for consumers wallets against Nintendo for sure, though Carmack never actually said he expects Oculus to win.
During the OC5 day one keynote, I was most excited to see Superhot VR confirmed for the Oculus Quest. When I played it, I was blown away and honestly felt like it was the ideal way to play the game going forward. But what I didn’t expect is to also really, really enjoy Tennis Scramble. So much so in fact, I think it’s the only one of the four Quest demos that I’m tempted to go wait in the non-press line for just so I can try it again against someone else. Competitive multiplayer has that effect on me sometimes. Dead and Buried in a 4,000 square foot arena with six Quest headsets gave me a similar feeling.
It’s a simple demo, nothing special really. On paper, it’s not impressive sounding at all. Tennis Scramble is basically Wii Sports Tennis — you’ve got similarly legless cartoon-style avatars, there’s a lot of whimsy in the style and tone, and it’s got tons of bright colors. But it’s in VR, it’s untethered, and it’s got full 6DOF tracking which changes everything.
Other than not holding a real racket (that could be resolved with some plastic accessories) and not hitting a real ball (a minor loss by comparison) I may as well have been playing real tennis. During the Tennis Scramble demo I was running from side to side on my end of the court, returning balls, and building up volleys with my opponent.
I had to turn my body for backhand shots and actually jog over to the ball on several occasions. People liked to compare Wii Sports to real tennis, but for all intents and purposes, this was actually quite close.
Now the major caveat here is that this is an accessible arcade-style game, not a sport simulation, so take that comparison with a grain of salt. There are lots of little Mario Tennis-style flourishes in Tennis Scramble as well. During the match power ups would pop up over the net at the center of the court and when I hit them with the ball they’d do things like change my opponent’s racket size, change the ball size, or even raise the net higher.
Tracking worked great as well. Even if I was looking down court and swinging to my side, the headset’s cameras didn’t lose track of my controllers. This is because even if I can’t see my hands in VR because of the limited field of view, the cameras on the outside of the headset still can since there are four in the corners of the device. It can see a lot more than my eyes can inside the headset, so I don’t even notice the loss of tracking if it ever occurred.
Although Tennis Scramble isn’t a system-seller on its own, a pack-in collection of small, simple sports games would be an excellent bundled title for Oculus Quest. I had a lot of fun, smiled while playing, and seriously want to jump back in there to try my hand at it once again.
Tennis Scramble (we think this is still a WIP title because the booth technically said “Project Tennis Scramble”) is expected to be a launch title for the Oculus Quest when it releases next year in Spring 2019. For more details on what we thought of the Quest itself, read our hands-on impressions. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Oculus announced that its Project Santa Cruz virtual reality headset will ship next year as the Oculus Quest, and we got to try out several new game titles on the Quest. Find out our impressions of VR without wires.
Oculus Quest might be being touted as the future of virtual reality (VR) – where Oculus is concerned anyway – but the company has yet to release many specs for the headset other than it being standalone with built-in inside-out tracking using Oculus Insight. The big question is how well it’ll stack up against Oculus Rift, with Oculus’ Head of VR Hugo Barra stating in yesterdays keynote address during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) that it would provide ‘Rift like experiences’. That question became a little clearer thanks to a session which looked at porting content to the new device.
In the session called ‘Porting Your App to Oculus Quest’, Oculus Developer Relations Engineer, Gabor Szauer, discussed the processes developers would need to use to fine tune their videogame for the less powerful head-mounted display (HMD). While most of the talk gets quite technical – especially towards the end – Szauer does use multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) Dead and Buried as an example, showcasing side by side comparisons of the two.
As you can see from the image above there’s not a huge amount of difference between the two, with the Oculus Rift version having better lighting thanks to real-time lighting and volumetric lights. While the Oculus Quest version uses whats called ‘baked’ lighting which is much less intensive to produce. And there’s greater detail not only in the scene but the gun itself for the PC version, with Szauer noting that the Oculus Rift version uses 6,917 polygons while the Oculus Quest gun uses a mere 33 polygons.
Easy to pick apart when side by side, in a hectic videogame like Dead and Buried you’re likely to notice this difference a lot less, especially when playing the new arena version, due to the physical nature of the gameplay.
To see it in action take a look at the video below. It’s the entire session so skip to 9:08 minutes in to see the short video demonstration. It probably looks even better in the headset thanks to the new lenses which are similar to Oculus Go. As further details regarding Oculus Quest are released VRFocus will keep you informed.
One of the most impressive VR technology demos we’ve ever seen is on display at Oculus Connect 5 in San Jose.
In a corner of the convention center The VOID brought Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, demonstrating publicly for the first time that the startup is using Oculus Rift inside its VR helmet to provide the visuals you see when visiting one of The VOID’s $30+ per ticket attractions. Right next to the demo there’s a 4,000 square foot arena setup for the Oculus Quest version of old west shooting game Dead and Buried.
While Oculus Rift powers some of the best VRattractions of 2017 and 2018, through this demonstration Facebook is showing that Oculus Quest may be able power the next generation of these experiences in 2019 and 2020 without any backpack or specialized external tracking hardware.
Quest could represent a big step forward in terms of convenience, cost and setup — though it also remains unclear whether the standalone hardware will be able to operate at the robust scale required by regular use at a VR installation. The cost came down last year to $1,500 per camera for Optitrack-based setups, but the largest setups still require dozens of them to work.
If you could equip four people with headsets and controllers for practically the same cost as a single OptiTrack camera, though, the convenience and cost savings are going to be just too much to ignore. It could give rise to new kinds of arrangements for VR attractions built around the capabilities of this particular headset. After all, some installations are combining Gear VR with OptiTrack because the system uses a lower cost combination of PC and head-mounted display.
Which brings me to the demonstration at Oculus Connect 5 showing two teams of three wearing Oculus Quest and facing off against each other. The two teams hid behind boxes on either side of an old west train station while myself and a camera person stood in between the teams and watched the action unfold all around us through the screen of an iPad held up to view the action.
It isn’t the first time we’ve seen handheld phones or tablets able to peer into the virtual world of someone wearing a headset — but it is the first time we’ve seen it done at this scale with standalone headsets.
It is also worth noting Google just announced a new controller tracking technology which nobody has tested publicly, but if Oculus Quest’s controllers aren’t robust enough for this kind of use case at a commercial sale, there’s a chance Google’s upcoming standalone controller tracking technology might be up to the task instead.
There are a number of virtual reality (VR) apps that aim to help you become fitter and healthier, ranging from mindfulness meditation to making you burn calories. Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment is a developer that specialises in these sorts of apps, and has now announced that its upcoming rhythm-exercise title Rave Runner will be heading to the Oculus Quest.
As was revealed yesterday at Oculus Connect 5, the Oculus Quest is the new official title for what was previously known as the Santa Cruz, a stand-alone VR headset that offers inside-out tracking, 6DoF and compatibility with the Oculus Touch controllers.
Job J. Stauffer, the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment took to Twitter to show off an early look at Rave Runner, declaring that the title would be heading to Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift along with ‘All 6DoF immersive platforms’ – a list which includes the HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Windows Mixed Reality.
Rave Runner is being developed by Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment in partnership with the Texas-based Kinemotik Studios. Glimpses of the title have been seen at other events, where it seems to work as a ‘dance’ title, where the player reacts to audio and visual cues in a way designed to make the player move around and be as active as possible.
“Our team believes in harnessing the transformative power of mindfulness and video games, and that practicing self-care can be truly ecstatic and habit-forming, never feeling like work,” Stauffer said previously, “Virtual Reality has allowed us to ignite the flow state in a player by designing games for their sense of presence and focused attention, strengthening their motivation, creativity, and learning. We then ground these ideas in traditional self-care practices such as dance, meditation, and artistic expression, creating an entirely next level genre of truly embodied self-care entertainment.”
For future coverage of Rave Runner and more news from Oculus Connect 5, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Oculus used its Connect 5 conference this year to properly reveal its highly-anticipated standalone VR headset with six degrees of freedom (6DOF) inside-out tracking, named Oculus Quest. With Rift-like tracking in a headset that doesn’t need to be tethered to an expensive PC, Quest may represent VR’s best chance yet at catching on with the mainstream. But what do we actually know about it?
Based on what we learned at OC5 and beyond, we’ve compiled a handy guide for the newest member to the Oculus family.
There’s been a little confusion as to if Quest is a new version of Oculus Go or the sequel to the Oculus Rift. In short, it’s neither. Yes, Quest is standalone like Go and has features similar to Rift, but it’s got its own ecosystem that falls directly in the middle of those two devices. It won’t mirror Gear VR’s content library like Go does and any Oculus Rift games that appear on it will be direct ports just like when, say, a PS4 game gets ported to Xbox One. You won’t need any other Oculus hardware to get into Quest, nor will you need a PC.
Tracking Is Similar To Rift, But Not Identical
Oculus Quest’s big draw has always been its 6DOF tracking, which puts it a step above the 3DOF Go headset. Whereas Go allows you to rotate and tilt your head to look around in VR, Quest is closer to Rift in that you can move your head forward, backward, left, right, up and down and have all of those movements replicated within a virtual world. But it’s not identical to Rift, either; the crucial difference is that Quest uses a new inside-out tracking system called Oculus Insight.
Rather than placing external sensors around your room to track you like with the Rift, Quest has four wide-angle sensors fitted to the corners of its front faceplate. These read the room around you to locate your position within it, and you’ll also be able to set up a Guardian system to avoid obstacles like chairs. This allows Quest’s tracking to go ‘Beyond Roomscale’ and even store tracking setups for multiple rooms, though it may also mean tracking can’t keep up if you put your controllers behind you. We’ll need to do extensive testing with the limits of this system.
Its Controllers Are Similar To Touch, But Not Identical
Another big leap for Quest — and something that many other 6DOF standalone headsets don’t have — is two fully tracked hand controllers, which are just new versions of the Touch controllers that come with the Rift. They have the same amount of buttons including analog sticks, triggers, grip buttons and face buttons and will accurately replicate your movements so long as the sensors can see them. To that end, Oculus has rearranged the tracking ring seen on the original Touch to now extend over the top of the controllers rather than under it, which could give them more visibility.
It’s More Powerful Than A Go, But Not As Powerful As Rift
As we learned after the keynote, Quest is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 mobile processor. That’s not quite top of the line; it was used in Samsung’s 2017 Galaxy S8 smartphone, for example, but replaced with the next generation 845 in this year’s S9. It is, however, a generation beyond the Snapdragon 821 that’s fitted inside Oculus Go. It’s important to note that Quest’s dedicated hardware will mean all of that horsepower can be devoted to VR, though, unlike on a phone.
You can look forward to some amazing fidelity from Quest games, then, but don’t expect the latest and greatest Rift games to be able to run on the device. Some of Rift’s most demanding games are already taking full advantage of graphics cards far more powerful than what you’ll find in Quest, but it will still be good enough for a lot of developers to be able to scale down and port their experiences with excellent results.
It’s Going To Have Lots Of Rift Ports, But Also New Games
To that end, Oculus is preparing a lot of ports of Rift games for Quest. At Connect 5 yesterday we learned that popular titles like Moss, The Climb and Robo Recall will be making their way to the device. On display at the event, meanwhile, are new versions of time-bending shooter, Superhot VR, and Oculus’ own multiplayer shootout showcase, Dead and Buried.
There will be new games too, of course. On display at Connect is Face Your Fears 2, the sequel to Turtle Rock Studios’ super-popular VR terror showcase. There’s also a new multiplayer tennis game being shown on a properly-scaled tennis court. Finally, Oculus revealed a list of developers that are “experimenting” with Quest, which included some of the biggest names in VR like Ready at Dawn, Insomniac Games, and High Voltage Software. In fact, it’s promising over 50 games will be ready for launch next year. There’s also a brand new Star Wars VR series, Vader Immortal, set to debut on the platform.
Speaking with Oculus Product Managers we also confirmed that several of the “top” non-gaming apps from Go will make their way to Quest as well.
It’s Display And Audio Match Go, Internally Different
Oculus Go might be cheaper than the Rift, but the two years of extra development time brought about some important improvements that Quest will be using too. For starters, it’s got a slightly better resolution of 1600 x 1440 per eye display resolution, which is actually better than what’s on Rift right now, though it still hasn’t completely done away with the dreaded screen-door effect (which describes the effect of seeing gaps between pixels).
On the audio front, Quest also utilizes the brilliant in-ear speaker system first shown in Go. Whereas Rift has headphones you wear, Quest will directly emit the sounds of the virtual world right into your ears, giving you a more immersive experience but also letting you hear the outside world with ease too.
Additionally, we’ve confirmed with Oculus Product Managers that the Quest will have internal, active cooling via a built-in fan, rather than heat dissipation like the Go’s metal front plate. We also know the Quest will get casting features similar to Go.
It Costs The Same As A Rift, But Doesn’t Need The Expensive PC
Now for the important bit. Oculus Quest costs exactly the same as the Oculus Rift: $399 (which is double the price of the $199 Go). Consider, though, that Quest is an all-in-one system, meaning everything you need to jump into VR is embedded inside the headset already. The Rift, meanwhile, still requires an expensive PC that it must be tethered to at all times in order to work. As such, the all-in price of a Quest is drastically lower than that of the Rift.
It’s Coming Early Next Year For $399
Finally, Oculus confirmed that Quest is coming sometime in spring 2019. There’s no official date, though we’ve heard the company is aiming for a Q1 launch. That said, we wouldn’t be surprised if it slipped back to Q2, perhaps launching around Facebook’s F8 conference much like Go did in May of this year.
Editor’s Note: This post will be regularly updated by various members of the UploadVR team.
There isn’t a list of launch titles for Oculus Quest yet, the company’s newly announced $400 high-end standalone VR headset. Polyarc, the minds behind Moss (2017), say that the super endearing platformer adventure is indeed going to be among the 50+ launch titles coming to Quest on day one.
Already available on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR, Moss will be cramming itself into mobile VR hardware for the first time—no small feat that will hopefully retain the incredible graphics that we came to love on higher-resolution headsets such as Rift and Vive. After all, Quest is said to feature a 1,600 × 1,440 per eye OLED, which is not only the same resolution of HTC Vive Pro, but we think it actually looks pretty great on Quest.
A particularly important piece of the puzzle is undoubtedly Oculus Quest’s ‘Touch’ controllers, which just like with Rift will allow you to physically interact with the little pint-sized hero Quill and move the puzzle-like platforms to help her along the way to save her missing uncle.
Oculus Quest is said to launch sometime in Spring 2019, so the team still has some time to tighten down on those textures, reduce polygons, and stuff the wide, beautiful world of Moss to fit Quest’s on-board Snapdragon 835 chipset.
While the list of Quest launch titles is still pretty uncertain—Oculus says Rift titles Robo Recall, The Climb, and Dead and Buried are all coming to the headset—it’s not clear if these are launch titles or not. Either way you slice it, some of the best Rift titles making it to Quest will certainly makes it easy for newcomers looking for solid content on the Rift-like mobile headset.
Every time I’ve played Superhot VR in the past, it has always been a bit bittersweet. On the one hand, the game’s levels are slick, clean, and wide open in a way that few VR games are. On Rift, Vive, and PSVR I can lean and move around enemies or reach out and punch them and watch them shatter into a hundred crystalline pieces. It feels amazing. But since the game requires you to physically move in order for time to move, it’s as if the world beckons you to more freely explore. I want to run around freely. But you’ve still got a wire connecting you to a PC or game console in all other versions of Superhot VR — that’s not the case when playing on Oculus Quest.
It didn’t take long for that to sink in during my hands-on demo at Oculus Connect 5 yesterday and once I started to take full advantage of the headset’s capability, it felt amazing and freeing in a way VR hasn’t really yet.
Obviously this isn’t the first example of wireless positionally tracked VR. I’ve used the TPCast add-on, the Vive Wireless Adapter, and even the Pico Neo. But those first two examples still need you to be within range of your PC and the latter has a content problem. When Oculus releases Quest next year, it side steps both of those concerns. I was playing a Rift-caliber VR game on a headset that was entirely standalone. It felt like magic.
Honestly, Superhot VR on Oculus Quest quite frankly feels like the way the game was always meant to be played.
In the video above you can see me moving around the wide open space without issue. For the first minute or so I was hesitant, but when I noticed how well the tracking worked, I threw all caution to the wind. I picked up bottles and tossed them at enemies, grabbed guns out of the air, reached behind my hand to throw a shuriken across the map. I did everything I’d have done if I were playing on Rift, but without the burdens that a PC-powered VR headset carries.
In my hands-on impressions of the Oculus Quest I wrote about how every now and then the tracking faultered, such as if I moved my hands out of vision for a while then brought them back slowly, or if I tried to grab something out of view. That was very rare and it wasn’t frequent. As you can see in the video at the top, I could reach back to throw an object without losing tracking, even when my hand passed behind the headset’s cameras.
I’ve got a feeling that, if developers are willing to take the time to port games down to the Quest’s Snapdragon 835 chipset, we could be opening up a whole new class of VR gaming. Games that previously suffered from movement restrictions and PC-tethering can be re-experienced in brand new ways, just like Superhot VR.
For VR users that already have a three-or-more sensor setup for Rift or have and HTC Vive, then Quest is going to seem less impressive — and that’s fine. If you have no desire of ever using VR outside of your dedicated VR space and you’ve got a wireless adapter of some kind, then Quest doesn’t offer much. But if you’re not in that upper-echelon of VR users already, the Quest is really impressive.
With over 50 launch titles on the horizon when Quest launches in Spring 2019 for $399, there is a lot to look forward to. In addition to Superhot VR Oculus has already confirmed Tennis Scramble, Dead and Buried, and Face Your Fears 2 (all three of which we’ve played) in addition to Moss, Robo Recall, and much more.
What do you think of Quest so far? We’ve been really impressed with it — let us know any thoughts or questions down in the comments below!
Oculus has been notoriously hard-nosed about the location-based entertainment (LBE) market for virtual reality (VR). Prohibitive clauses in the use of their hardware and a reluctance to offer a more rugged version or a ‘business edition’, has seen the company responsible for the modern rebirth of VR seems almost ignorant towards one of its most rapidly growing sectors. There’s always an opportunity to change however, and the Oculus Quest could well be the device to do it.
During the Oculus Connect 5 keynote, wherein the Oculus Quest was officially announced as a product evolved off of the Santa Cruz prototype, Mark Zuckerberg spoke openly about the device’s large area capabilities. This is a stark change for a company that insisted just two years ago that modern VR should be led by seated experiences, but undoubtedly a welcome one. There’s room for all types of experience in VR, from seated to standing to moving several feet very quickly.
Dead & Buried Arena is Oculus’ first attempt at the latter. Built on the Oculus Touch launch title developed by Gunfire Games (it’s not yet been confirmed whether or not the studio worked on this follow-up, but is more than likely) Dead & Buried Arena is a fantasy wild west shooting experience for six players. Forming two teams of three, players took to the arena using cover to avoid one another’s fire.
The basic mechanics include destructible scenery (boxes that exist in the real world and fade out to blue when shot in-game), a 10 second respawn to allow players to find a new cover position when killed and collectible weaponry. It’s nothing revolutionary on the surface, but in the minutiae Dead & Buried Arena makes some interesting design decisions for a robust LBE title.
The design of the arena itself.
In order to keep the players apart and prevent collisions, the centre of the arena has a train which passes through. This is automatic on occasion, but it also can be manually triggered whenever a player steps upon it, this results in instant death and no respawns until you’re back on your side of the map. The destructible scenery doesn’t send particle effects flying it alter the polygons presented at all in order to allow for accurate real-time mapping for all players – VRFocus was informed that the map and the player’s location within were networked via wi-fi even in a local environment – and the weapon variety (although plentiful for this short demonstration) was far more limited than the original title.
Dead & Buried Arena is a strange beast: at once presenting an argument for Oculus to join the push for the LBE agenda yet at the same time feeling less complete than the year-old original. It may well be that Dead & Buried Arena was purely a technical demonstration designed specifically to showcase the capabilities of Oculus Quest, but it’s definitely not a huge leap to see a market for this kind of experience.
During the Oculus Connect 5 keynote, wherein the 
