Category: Oculus Rift Santa Cruz

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: ‘Oculus Quest Completes Company’s First-Gen Lineup’

Oculus Quest, the newly announced standalone 6DOF VR headset (ex-Project Santa Cruz), completely stole the show at this year’s Oculus Connect with the promise of offering some very Rift-like experiences in a mobile form-factor. There was a torrent of news surrounding the headset and its upcoming apps like SUPERHOT VR, but what seemed to fall through the cracks was the revelation that Oculus Quest marks the end of the company’s first-gen hardware.

“With Oculus Quest, we will complete our first generation of VR products,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

Oculus Quest is due to launch sometime in Spring 2019 at $400 for the 64 GB version, including a pair of optically-tracked controllers, also dubbed ‘Touch’ like the Rift’s controllers. Tracking is handled by on-board, head-mounted sensors, so there’s no need for a PC or external sensors.

Photo by Road to VR

At Connect, Zuckerberg outlined that the company will be pushing forward with the three hardware platforms—Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Rift—as definitive classes of devices that will eventually see new versions in the second generation.

“So from here we’re going to make big leaps in tech and content for the future generations for each of these products,” Zuckerberg continued. “We’re going to build each of these as platforms, so everything that you build for them today is going to work on future versions of these devices. This is all still early, but [Go, Quest, and Rift] is the basic road map.”

You can view the full day-one keynote here on YouTube.

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Oculus Quest Hands-on and Tech Details

Notably, this means Oculus Go, the company’s standalone headset which has the same basic functionality of a Samsung Gear VR, likely won’t be subsumed by Quest, but rather continuing onward to fill the place of the company’s most affordable VR headset. Oculus CTO John Carmack has even outlined a few items o the company’s wishlist for Go’s second generation, further driving the point home that Go is here to stay.

While it’s simply too early to tell what’s in store for the second generation of Quest, Facebook revealed at the F8 dev conference a high-FOV varifocal prototype headset, dubbed Half Dome. Some of that tech, Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash says, shouldn’t be expected in a product anytime soon though, although it certainly looks like a Rift 2.0 will be the company’s next product—whenever that is.

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Oculus to Scrap Trackpads on Santa Cruz Controllers in Favor of Buttons & Sticks

At GDC 2018 this week, Oculus revealed some additional details surrounding their high-end standalone VR headset prototype, Santa Cruz. Among those details, the company plans to replace the current controllers’ trackpads with buttons and sticks, much like the Rift.

Santa Cruz has been mostly impressive, but it did seem like an odd choice that the company chose to use a trackpad on the controllers (which are very similar the the Touch controllers), especially considering that many people seem to prefer the button and stick layout of Touch over trackpad VR controllers like the Vive’s wands and the Gear VR controller.

During a session at GDC 2018, Oculus said that one consistent piece of developer feedback that they heard from Santa Cruz demos was that developers wanted standard input between Rift and Santa Cruz, ostensibly so that it’s easier to develop games that are cross-compatible with both headsets.

The company showed a picture of an early prototype of the Santa Cruz controller which appeared to consist of an Oculus Remote with a tracking ball attached to the top. The next image showed the later trackpad prototype, which looks like a Touch controller but with the tracking ring inverted. And finally, an image showing what appears to be the latest prototype, a similar looking inverted Touch controller but this time with buttons and sticks.

This trackpad version of the Santa Cruz controller will be changed to sticks and buttons | Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus confirmed they are showing off the Santa Cruz prototype to developers behind closed doors during GDC this week; here’s our hands-on thoughts with the prototype from last year.

While the company isn’t ready to divulge the full details of the headset, like what it might look like when it’s fully productized, or what it will cost, “pretty soon you won’t be able to get us to shut up about this device,” Chris Pruet, Oculus’ Head of Development Engineering, teased.

“If you were to pull it apart and look at its components it would look a little like Oculus Go, but that description of it sells it short. It’s actually a completely different type of device,” he said on stage. “We took many of our ideas from Oculus Go and unlocked them on Santa Cruz.”

Chris said the headset was designed for lots of heat dissipation and allows the hardware to run at clock rates than any similar device he’s seen. The implication seemed to be that Santa Cruz is closer to a standalone version of the Rift than an upgraded version of the Go. But considering Santa Cruz is running (as far as we know) mobile hardware, it’ll be up to users to decide where it really falls in terms of graphics and performance between Go and Rift.

The post Oculus to Scrap Trackpads on Santa Cruz Controllers in Favor of Buttons & Sticks appeared first on Road to VR.

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GDC 2018: ‘Inside Oculus 2018’ Session, Live Blog @9:30AM PDT

GDC 2018 is in full swing and we kick of Wednesday with a Live Blog of Oculus’ “Inside Oculus 2018” session, which is set to give developers an insight into the Facebook owned VR company’s hardware and software road map for the year.

Presented by Ross O’Dwyer (Director of Engineering), Jason Rubin (VP Content), Chris Pruett (Head of Development Engineering), Ruth Bram (Producer, Oculus Studios) this GDC session is described as “an inside look at what’s coming across the Oculus ecosystem in 2018, from Rift, mobile and new standalone devices to the advancements, services, and tools helping developers define the next wave of immersive gaming.”

With some interesting new hardware hoving into view this year with the mobile, entry-level Oculus Go and the wireless Oculus Rift ‘Santa Cruz’ headsets, there’s quite a bit for developers to prepare for. With luck we’ll learn new information on these devices and Oculus’ plans for then in 2018/2019.

The talk is taking place today at 9:30AM PDT (local time here), and will go for approximately an hour. Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang will be manning the keyboard, so get ready for speedy fingers and insightful commentary. Updates will appear below, no need to refresh your browser:

The post GDC 2018: ‘Inside Oculus 2018’ Session, Live Blog @9:30AM PDT appeared first on Road to VR.

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Oculus Connect 4 Day 1 Roundup: Oculus Go, Rift Price Drop, New ‘Santa Cruz’ Prototype, and More

The opening keynote at the fourth annual Oculus Connect developer conference delivered several new product announcements from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, VP of Virtual Reality Hugo Barra, and others. This included new standalone VR hardware, a new price for the Rift, and many software and game reveals.

Affordable standalone headset ‘Oculus Go’ revealed:

Image courtesy Oculus

At $199, Oculus Go is a low-cost, all-in-one standalone headset launching in early 2018. On stage, Hugo Barra claimed that the headset was designed to deliver the “best visual clarity of any product we’ve ever built”, using a “fast-switch LCD” at 2560×1440 and an “all-new, custom optical design”. The lenses are an evolution of the ‘hybrid’ optics found in the current Rift. Sharing the same controller input set as Gear VR – a single controller and rotational-only tracking – apps will be “binary compatible”, working on both systems. Essentially, Oculus Go is an enhanced, standalone version of Gear VR.

Project Santa Cruz developer kits coming in 2018, we go hands-on:

Image courtesy Oculus

Described as the “first, complete, standalone VR system with full inside-out tracking and hand presence”, Santa Cruz developer kits will be available next year. The company revealed various improvements to the latest prototype, including brand new 6-degrees-of-freedom controllers, similar to Touch. Unlike Oculus Go, Santa Cruz is designed as a high-end, standalone system, with full positional tracking on both headset and controllers, but will be limited by the performance of its on-board mobile PC. Check out our hands-on impressions here.

‘Oculus Dash’ is a total interface overhaul, supports desktop apps:

Nate Mitchell, Head of Rift, described how Oculus has been rebuilding the core software from the ground up over the past year, introducing various improvements to ‘Rift Core 2.0’. Most significantly, Oculus Dash is a total overhaul of the Rift user interface, designed specifically for motion input. It combines the existing functionality of Home and the Universal Menu, while allowing access to traditional desktop apps. Mitchell claims Dash will offer “best in class performance and visual quality,” for PC apps in VR, setting the platform “on a path to replacing real monitors entirely.”

Oculus Home also completely rebuilt:

The Rift Core 2.0 update also brings a brand new Oculus Home space, with a more realistic visual design, with “state of the art lighting” and “dynamic soft shadows”, powered by Unreal Engine 4. This is customisable with toys, furniture, artwork and achievements, and is designed to be a persistent, social space, with the potential to create shared spaces in the future.

Rift receives permanent price cut:

Photo by Road to VR

Hugo Barra, Vice President of Virtual Reality at Oculus announced a permanent price cut of the Rift and Touch bundle to $399. The package still includes the same hardware bundle of headset, two sensors, two Touch controllers, and “six free apps” – although there are actually several more free apps available on the Store.

Echo Arena FPS Expansion, more Lone Echo coming:

image courtesy Ready at Dawn

Following the success of Ready at Dawn’s sci-fi adventure Lone Echo (2017) and standalone multiplayer mode Echo Arena, the studio has confirmed a new multiplayer, first-person shooter experience coming in 2018 called Echo Combat. In addition, more single player content for Lone Echo is on the way, continuing the adventure of Captain Olivia and Jack.

Respawn Entertainment developing Rift-exclusive VR title:

Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin’s closing announcement was that Respawn Entertainment, ex-Call of Duty developers and creators of Titanfall, are building a major new VR title for Oculus Rift. The game is due to launch in 2019, and Respawn director Peter Hirschmann offered a few details on their blog.

The post Oculus Connect 4 Day 1 Roundup: Oculus Go, Rift Price Drop, New ‘Santa Cruz’ Prototype, and More appeared first on Road to VR.