Santa Cruz Prototype – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

September 3, 2018

Everything We Know About Oculus Santa Cruz (so far)

Oculus Santa Cruz is a VR prototype that brings many high-end features of the Oculus Rift and Touch, most notably positional (6DOF) tracking on both headset and controllers, into a self-contained, standalone design. What follows is a brief overview of everything we know about the headset so far.

Updated: September 3rd, 2018

What is Oculus Santa Cruz?

Originally announced at Oculus Connect 3 in 2016, the Santa Cruz project represents “the future” of Facebook’s long-term vision for VR hardware, positioned between Gear VR and Rift, aiming to deliver a high-end VR experience without the need for external sensors or a PC connection. Santa Cruz has many similarities in design and features to the Oculus Rift, but it isn’t the ‘Rift 2’; instead it’s a self-contained system, using an internal processor, displays, battery, and sensors for the same kind of positional (AKA 6DOF) tracking found on high-end tethered headset. That means it doesn’t rely on a host device like a connected computer or docked smartphone.

Unlike the Oculus Go, which is essentially an affordable all-in-one Gear VR, Santa Cruz is targeting a future ‘high-end’ mobile VR market thanks to its 6DOF tracking on both the headset and the controllers, and a more powerful processor.

Want to know what it’s like to use Santa Cruz? Check out our hands-on with the latest prototype for a detailed look.

What Are the Oculus Santa Cruz Specs?

For now, detailed specifications are unconfirmed, as Santa Cruz is still in its prototype phase. However, it is likely to use a high-end mobile chip; specifically we’d bet on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 as the underlying SoC, especially considering that the Oculus Go is built on a lower-end version of that chip.

Looking into the capabilities of the Snapdragon 845 then gives us some high level insights into the specifications of Santa Cruz. According to Chris Pruet, Oculus’ Head of Development Engineering, who spoke about Santa Cruz at GDC 2018, the headset’s thermal design allows the processor to run at higher clock rates than any similar device he’s seen.

We went hands-on with a Santa Cruz prototype in October 2017, which already featured what appeared to be higher resolution displays (but probably running below the Rift’s usual 90Hz) and improved Fresnel lenses when compared to the Rift. At the time we confirmed that the headset is using a pair of displays, and includes an IPD adjustment slider. If we had to guess, we’d expect that Santa Cruz is using the same 1,440 × 1,600 displays that are presently found in the Samsung Odyssey and Vive Pro headsets.

The most recent Santa Cruz images from Oculus show that the latest design remains similar to latest prototype we tried in 2017, in terms of incorporating the mainboard and battery into the display enclosure, with four ultra-wide cameras placed on the leading edges that perform the inside-out positional tracking, as well as tracking the 6DOF controllers.

The device also features integrated speakers hidden in the head strap (similar to the Oculus Go), along with volume buttons on the headset, plus a headphone jack for more private and higher-quality sound. The headstrap looks similar to the Rift at first glance, but has a different shape for cupping the back of the head, and is made from a more flexible, rubbery material.

Oculus initially debuted the Santa Cruz controllers with trackpads, but has since said they’ll return to thumbsticks. | Photo by Road to VR / Image courtesy Oculus

The Santa Cruz controllers look something like an upside-down Oculus Touch, and though earlier versions have been shown with a trackpad, Oculus confirmed the final design will feature thumbsticks and buttons instead of trackpads to bring the Santa Cruz controller inputs closer to Touch parity.

What’s Know About the Oculus Santa Cruz Release Date & Price?

Oculus hasn’t officially announced a release date or price for Santa Cruz, but recent reports indicate the company is targeting a Santa Cruz release date of Q1 2019.

While price is also unconfirmed, Santa Cruz is clearly a very different proposition to the $200 Oculus Go. With Rift-level components and a self-contained design, it seems likely that it will be considerably more expensive than the $400 Oculus Rift and Touch. Competitive products give us a likely idea of pricing as well, with the Lenovo Mirage Solo priced at $400 and the Vive Focus around $525.

We’re expecting to hear more information about the Santa Cruz launch date and price at the company’s Oculus Connect 5 conference at the end of September.

The post Everything We Know About Oculus Santa Cruz (so far) appeared first on Road to VR.

October 12, 2017

Hands-On with Project Santa Cruz – Getting Closer to Where VR Needs to Be

Oculus VR’s Santa Cruz was originally revealed at Oculus Connect 3, San Jose, last year. Today the company offered an update on the all-in-one head-mounted display (HMD), and a year in development has brought about some big changes. While the underlying technology appears on-par with the debut a year ago, the HMD itself has benefited from significant change.

The Santa Cruz HMD – now known as Project Santa Cruz – is essentially a redesigned version of last year’s cobbled-together HMD. It’s no longer an Oculus Rift with a micro-computer attached to the rear, and instead a HMD in it’s own right: it’s lightweight, soft to the touch and of a much better build quality. It’s also surprisingly small. In the first touch and use, the Santa Cruz HMD feels lighter and smaller than the Oculus Rift.

This is of course a big deal, as Project Santa Cruz involves mounting all of the compute power within the frontend of the HMD, alongside the tracking cameras. Maintaining comfort through balance would be difficult, but here Oculus VR has pitched the compute power to a standard which, although inferior to a high-end PC, is more than capable of outdoing any of the current mobile HMDs. Oculus VR aren’t being drawn on specification just yet, but did reveal to VRFocus that the current internal processing power is higher than most smartphones currently on the market.

This was evident in the first of two software demonstrations available. Featuring Bogo, a character that appears very similar to some of the aliens that appear in Oculus Rift launch title Farlands, the player can interact with the creature by offering fruit, stroking its head and playing fetch with a stick. Movement is of course encouraged and the tracking holds up perfectly well with both fast and deliberate forward, backwards and sidesteps. This demonstration was obviously designed to showcase the Santa Cruz HMD’s six degrees of freedom (6 DoF) tracking as Bogo would freely move around the player in all directions.

Of course, one of the biggest new additions on this front is the motion-controllers. Offering the same 6 DoF tracking as the HMD itself, the controllers sit somewhere between Oculus Touch and the motion-controller launched for the Samsung Gear VR earlier this year. A touchpad is accompanied by Home and Back buttons, while a trigger and grip button are positioned for index and fore fingers. The same Constellation tracking seen on Oculus Touch controllers is in place, and while they won’t be tracked when behind the player due to the HMD-mounted cameras, the volume in which they can be tracked remains impressive.

Much like the HMD itself, the motion-controllers are of a decent build quality. Lighter than Oculus Touch and ergonomically designed to fit comfortably within a normal holding position, they currently operate using regular AA batteries. VRFocus was informed that the controllers are in fact less far into development than the HMD and will likely see significant changes prior to launch, but even at this stage they appear to be comfortable and perfectly capable of delivering a high quality immersive experience.

One year on, Project Santa Cruz has answered a lot of questions about the future of the technology, but has also posed many more. Oculus VR has suggested that Project Santa Cruz will act as a third pillar between mobile and high-end VR, but how will that pillar be supported? How will it be priced? And, with HMD sales still not setting the world on fire, how can the company avoid cannibalising their own sales next to the Oculus Rift? It may be yet another Oculus Connect until those questions are answered, but right now the hardware is looking ready to take up the challenge of heading towards a consumer market.

October 7, 2016

Hands-on with Santa Cruz: Oculus VR’s Tracked Mobile Headset Doesn’t Fail to Impress

Despite Google’s official unveiling of the forthcoming Daydream mobile head-mounted display (HMD) earlier this week, mobile virtual reality (VR) is due a revolution already. The Oculus VR and Samsung collaboration on Gear VR may only be a year old but in an industry moving this fast is already looking long-in-the-tooth. The next holy grail of mobile VR is inside-out tracking – allowing for head-tracked movement without an external camera – and Oculus VR has not only come along with the technology to adequately represent this, but roomscale movement tracking also.

Intel and Qualcomm have both revealed mobile HMD prototypes in recent months that allow for inside-out tracking of the head, delivering an experience not too dissimilar to that which is currently available on the Oculus Rift (sans Oculus Touch and additional Constellation trackers) or the soon-to-launch PlayStation VR. However, Oculus VR’s Santa Cruz prototype goes one further by incorporating free movement. This isn’t simply allowing look, tilt and distance to be tracked: Santa Cruz allows the user to move freely around a space much like the HTC Vive.

Standalone VR Oculus - 3

The demonstration software was very simple. An opening science-fiction scene with no action was presented to allow the user to acclimatise to the volume they could move within and get their first demonstration of the visual chaperone system: a grid which currently looks very similar to that of the HTC Vive’s. Soon thereafter, the user is transported to a new version of the paper city demonstration first seen alongside the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype at the original Oculus Connect event two years ago; VR is most certainly becoming cyclical.

Three sequences within this scene had the user walking around a field and taking in the view, witnessing planes flying overhead and dogs barking before things turned for the worst: alien invaders. Not long into the short demonstration UFOs come into the scene and begin abducting the white silhouette people, with the climax (or rather, somewhat of an anti-climax) being your own abduction. The software was less thrilling an experience than the impressive technology itself. Again, the sensation of being wowed more by hardware than the software takes us back to a time when the shape that consumer VR would initially take was still a mystery.

The tracking was very well realised. Spatial awareness was incredibly accurate, as was head movement in terms of depth. Turning did present some irregularities however: the image displayed did seem to lag at times, seemingly uncertain as to whether your body was moving or just your viewpoint.

As for that hardware, the Santa Cruz demonstration unit was essentially an Oculus Rift, broken apart and cobbled back together with new components. The external housing hosted four cameras on the front panel which determined your position relative to the preset volume – no information is currently available on how to set that volume – and the rear has a large bulk containing all of the on-board computational hardware. HDMI and USB cables are visible for transferring data from this rear processing to the internal monitor and vice versa, resulting in a much more delicate feeling design than that of any previous Oculus VR hardware; however, the inference that this is very early hardware was reinforced throughout.

Santa Cruz is a long way from consumer release. That’s evident from the HMD on show, if not from Oculus VR’s own track record. However, the device is very impressive even in its current state, and from here on out it’s only going to get better. When will we see inside-out tracking on a mobile HMD from Oculus VR? It’d be impossible to guess right now, but you can rest assured that when it does come it will be of a very high standard.

October 6, 2016

Watch How Oculus’ Standalone VR Prototype Device the “Santa Cruz” Works in This Short Intro Video

Yes, it seems as though each of the head-mounted displays (HMD) are going along the same line of experiementation with the HTC Vive being tweaked to become wireless, but Oculus has gone that step further. It was announced earlier that Oculus had been working on a standalone HMD, and now you can see exactly what is meant by it in the introductory video that was showing during the first Oculus Connect 3 keynote.

By standalone we don’t mean simply wireless, but completely independent of an additional machine to store and create the experiences. The Santa Cruz Prototype is to be a device encased in itself with its own storage for VR experiences, described to be the “sweet spot” between mobile and PC VR.

Standalone VR Oculus - 2

Although the video is short, it shows how users can move around and do just the same as they do in the Oculus Rift now, but without any added tech.

For more on the latest from Oculus Connect 3, as well as all the news, updates, and features in the world of VR, check back with VRFocus.