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
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.
Oculus Go, the company’s upcoming $200 standalone VR headset, doesn’t have an official release date yet, but a recent report from Varietycontends Oculus will be launching Go at Facebook’s f8 developer conference this May.
Variety cites “multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans,” although a Facebook spokesperson declined to comment when asked to confirm.
In short, Oculus Go is essentially a standalone version of Samsung Gear VR, a mobile VR headset featuring rotational-only tracking (3DOF) for both the headset and the controller. Starting at $200, Oculus Go is however much cheaper than Gear VR’s total price, which requires not only a $130 headset/controller, but also a compatible Samsung smartphone to drive it.
Besides delivering an accessible entry point for VR newcomers at a cheaper price than Gear VR, Go uses what Oculus calls a “fast-switch LCD” at 2560×1440, which the company says has a much better fill-factor than OLED, helping to eliminate the screen door effect. The headset is said to use Oculus’ “next-generation” lenses, “offering a wide field of view with significantly reduced glare.”
image courtesy Trusted Reviews
Recent FCC filings hold two versions of the headset will be available, a 32 GB model and a 64 GB model.
Oculus Go was first unveiled at Connect 2017, Oculus’ annual developer conference. Since developers have already started receiving Oculus Go since at least November last year, and in boxes that appear to be consumer-ready, many surmised its launch could be as early as this year’s GDC. Since Facebook hasn’t publicly acknowledged Variety’s report, there’s still no telling why the company is reportedly waiting for f8, which takes place May 1-2, 2018 in San Jose, California.
At CES 2018 last week, Lenovo revealed the Mirage Solo, the company’s standalone Daydream headset. The new device has everything on-board, including inside-out positional tracking, which means it doesn’t rely on a smartphone or external computer to drive the VR experience. There’s many benefits of standalone headsets compared to smartphone shell headsets, but the Mirage Solo’s price point seems to position it in an awkward in-between segment.
Strong Fundamentals
The Lenovo Mirage is based on Google’s standalone Daydream reference design which we first saw last year. The headset, which is to be priced “under $400,” of course runs a restricted version of Android which directly presents the Daydream VR content store/ecosystem to the wearer (you can’t run any standard Android phone/tablet apps on the headset).
A Step Up
Photo by Road to VR
Coming from the Daydream shell headsets, the Lenovo Mirage is a step up in most regards. The optics offer a notably wider field of view, which Lenovo claims is 110 degrees (which would roughly match headsets like the PSVR, Rift, and Vive, if true). The resolution is 2,560 × 1,440, which matches the resolution you’d expect from Gear VR and most other Daydream Ready phones (single display, no IPD adjustment).
Because it’s standalone, not only will it not kill the battery life on your own phone while in use, but the battery can be made larger than what’s in a phone in the first place; Lenovo is targeting an ample seven hours of battery life for the Mirage, and we hope that they’ve been able to use all the extra space to design enough thermal dissipation that users will never again have to worry about overheating (which significantly reduces performance).
Unlike the Daydream shell headsets though, the Mirage Solo crucially adds inside-out positional tracking thanks to a pair of front-facing cameras which allows the headset to track its position while moving through 3D space. This makes the headset much more like high-end tethered headsets, however, the controller itself is still rotational-only tracking; it’s effectively paired to your head position, so it gets a bit of pseudo-positional tracking, but not the real deal.
Tipping the Scales
The Mirage Solo is quite heavy at 645g (1.42 pounds), for comparison: PSVR is 610g, Vive is 470g (555g at launch), and Rift is 470g. The ‘halo’ style strap has been proven to be fairly comfortable on the PSVR and other headsets, however Lenovo seems to have made almost no effort to counterbalance the weight by moving some of it to the back of the headband. It was comfortable enough in my 20 minutes using it, but long-term comfort remains to be seen.
Display & Lenses
Photo by Road to VR
Looking through the lenses, the clarity was quite good. As expected for an LCD display, there was almost no mura (color and brightness inconsistency between pixels), which helps a lot with clarity. The screen door effect was minimal and can be a little more or less apparent depending upon certain colors and brightness levels (darker hides it more, brighter tends to show it more). The lenses are indeed Fresnel, and the usual god rays are very apparent in high-contrast scenes. Despite the 75Hz refresh rate and LCD display, I couldn’t spot any ghosting/smearing. I also didn’t notice any flickering (which becomes more apparent with lower refresh rates than higher ones), though there’s a range of flicker sensitivity from one user to the next so your mileage may vary if you are particularly sensitive.
Clarity vs. Rendering Capability
Overall clarity is quite good, potentially class-leading among mobile headsets. The bottleneck to visual fidelity in this case may actually fall more on the rendering horsepower contained in the headset than on any optical or display parameter. High resolution rendering with heavy anti-aliasing is computationally expensive, and it must be used much more sparingly than what’s possible on tethered headsets.
Many of the experiences I tried on the Mirage would have looked significantly better if they had the budget for more anti-aliasing. That’s not to say that things looked bad through the headset, they actually looked quite good, but the graphics and limited anti-aliasing make for a distinct ‘mobile’ look. This means that visual fidelity is likely to range depending upon how skilled developers are when it comes to optimizing their applications to be capable of rendering at native resolution and with effective anti-aliasing, with the best looking titles still falling short of the type of AAA visuals possible on tethered headsets. Though to be fair, the same rule about developer optimization skill applies on tethered headsets as well.
Positional Tracking
The Mirage Solo’s inside-out positional tracking is the same WorldSense tracking that Google introduced for these standalone headsets last year. Using the on-board cameras, the headset is able to accurately derive its own position by observing the world around it (it doesn’t seem that the cameras will be usable for pass-through video). In my short initial experience with the headset, the tracking was entirely competent and I quickly felt comfortable enough to physically move around, taking several steps in either direction.
I didn’t spot any overt latency, but the positional tracking at a very fine level felt a little ‘sticky’, as in—when I kept my head still and then began moving it slowly, it would take just a moment before my virtual view started moving. It feels like this could be the result of tuning to reduce jitter (subtle, static jumpiness caused by the system’s inherent imprecision). It feels subtle enough that the majority of users won’t notice it, especially during typical gameplay (which is a little different from me staring at the floor trying to suss out the intricacies of the tracking system!). It remains to be seen how the system will handle particularly challenging tracking scenarios, like when surrounded by mirrors, windows, and direct sunlight.
The space where I was testing the headset was only about 8 × 8 feet (2.4 × 2.4 meters), and when I stepped a few feet away from the place that I set as the ‘center’, the view faded to black and told me to move toward the center location. For now, there’s no explicit boundary system that would allow you to trace a safe playspace within a room, only the ‘fade out’ feature. Lenovo didn’t mention whether or not the fade out distance would be configurable, but hopefully there will be some options made available at launch, as WorldSense is theoretically capable of tracking very large playspaces. Without a configurable boundary, the headset may be more difficult to use comfortably in smaller playspaces.
T-Rex Simulator 2018
Photo by Road to VR
One caveat to the otherwise quite good positional tracking is that the controller itself does not have positional tracking. It only has rotation sensors. Like other Daydream headsets, the controller is thus essentially fixed to your head position, and the rotation is used as input to move a pseudo-arm that rotates from a fixed point. While this feels like an ok compromise for mobile, seated VR (where the controller is primarily used as a pointing device) when you are using it standing up with positional tracking it feels like your arm is superglued to your torso down to your elbow, and you can only articulate your forearm from your elbow joint—that is to say… it feels weird.
What this means in practice is that if there’s a virtual object sitting on a desk in front of you, but your hand isn’t close enough to it, so you can’t simply reach your hand forward like you would in real life (or with other VR systems) in order to grab the object. You’d actually need to move your entire body forward to get your hand closer to the object. This could make for a great T-rex Simulator 2018 game, but it might otherwise relegate the controller to mostly pointing-oriented functions. If that’s the case, it means that the headset’s own 6DOF capabilities become less useful, since the application design is in many ways limited to what the hand-input is capable of.
Lenovo today unveiled the first standalone VR headset in Google’s Daydream mobile VR ecosystem, the Mirage Solo. Revealed today at CES, the headset integrates Google’s WorldSense six degrees of freedom (6DoF) positional tracking alongside the headset’s 3DoF controller.
First teased back at Google I/O, Lenovo’s then unnamed headset was set to arrive with a similar 6DoF headset from HTC, however HTC recently scrapped plans to bring their headset to the West with Daydream support, instead releasing in China with a mobile version of the Viveport content store. Lenovo’s headset is the first and currently only standalone headset currently in the Daydream app ecosystem.
Clay Bavor, Vice President of Virtual and Augmented Reality at Google, says Lenovo’s headset marks an important shift for the Daydream platform, giving the user a “more immersive and streamlined way to experience the best of what Daydream has to offer without needing a smartphone.”
image courtesy Lenovo
There’s no definitive release date yet, but the headset is expected to hit shelves in Q2 2018. As for pricing, Lenovo says they’re working on reducing the price “so that it’s accessible to more people.” The company says the Mirage Solo will be priced “under $400.” While not explicitly stated, we’re reading between the lines here when we say it’ll likely have a $399.99 price tag, but that remains to be seen.
Mirage Solo is said to give users access to the entire Daydream catalog of over 250 apps and games, including Google apps like YouTube VR, Street View, Photos, and Expeditions. Notably, Google says a game designed for Lenovo Mirage Solo’s 6DoF capabilities based on Blade Runner 2049 (2017) called Blade Runner: Revelations will come to the headset as well. “We’re working closely with developers to bring new experiences to the platform that take advantage of all these new technologies,” the company says.
image courtesy Lenovo
Lenovo Mirage Specs
Dimensions (W x L x H) (mm) : 204.01 x 269.5 x 179.86 (inches) : 8.03″ x 10.61″ x 7.08
Weight: 645 g (1.42 lbs)
Color: Moonlight White
Operating System: Daydream OS
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 835
Audio: Android N Pro Audio, 3.5 mm Audio Jack with Dual Microphones
RAM : 4 GB
ROM : 64 GB UFS
Card Slot : microSD Card; Up to 256 GB
Battery: 4000 mAh Li-ion Polymer (standby and general usage time TBA)
Display 5.5″ Resolution QHD (2560 x 1440) LCD, 75 Hz
Xiaomi, the Chinese electronics giant, officially announced that they’ve partnered with Oculus to not only manufacture Oculus Go, the company’s upcoming $200 standalone VR headset, but also produce a China-only standalone VR headset called Xiaomi Mi VR Standalone. Xiaomi’s headset is said to incorporate everything Oculus Go does hardware-wise, albeit with Xiaomi branding and its own Mi VR content store.
According to Xiaomi’s official announcement, the Mi VR Standalone will be available exclusively in China, while Oculus Go will be available in the rest of the world. Oculus has yet to officially offer Rift in China, while Xiaomi, the world’s fifth-largest smartphone manufacturer, has relatively low market penetration in the West.
Since they’re ostensibly the same hardware platforms (besides Mi VR’s white housing), both headsets include 2K resolution fast-switch LCD screen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 mobile processors, Oculus-developed integrated spatial audio, and what Oculus calls “next-generation” lenses.
image courtesy Xiaomi
Tang Mu, VP of Mi Ecosystem and head of Mi Lab, said: “We are excited to work with Oculus on these standalone devices that exceed expectations in terms of performance at a very attractive price. Xiaomi has always relentlessly pursued the best user experience and price-to-performance ratio. For the best experience, we consider every minute detail. Through our collaboration with Oculus, we have integrated world-class technologies and craftsmanship to produce a VR standalone that lets people immerse themselves in another world without being connected to smartphones or computers.”
“The standalone VR form factor represents the next significant phase of VR hardware development at Oculus,” said Hugo Barra, VP of VR at Facebook. “Through our partnership with Xiaomi, both Oculus Go and Mi VR Standalone represent our first step in delivering that sweet spot between mobile and PC VR. These devices will be, hands down, the easiest way to get into VR.”
Barra, a previous Google VP of Android, came to Facebook from his last position as Xiaomi’s Global VP—sort of making it a Game of Thrones-style marriage of brands that seems to have bore a viable offspring of its own.
Pico Technology, the China-based VR headset manufacturer, today unveiled their latest Pico Neo VR headset, a standalone device that offers 6DoF positional tracking and 6DoF motion controllers. Like HTC Vive Focus, Pico Neo will use the Vive Wave open source API and have access to a mobile version of Viveport in China; unlike Vive Focus though, which was previously destined for Western markets using the Daydream platform, Pico Neo is definitely leaving China along with Vive Wave, although it still isn’t certain which app store the headset will use.
The new Pico Neo doesn’t have much to do with the Pico Neo CV we saw earlier this year, which housed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and a single camera for inside-out tracking.
Now coming closer to Vive Focus in specs, the updated Pico Neo for Western release includes dual-camera inside-out tracking powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, a three-hour battery life, 4GB RAM, support for 128 GB microSD and dual 90 Hz 1,440 × 1,600 AMOLEDs. Pre-order requests are available on the US-facing site, but the company is only selling both Pico Neo (for $750) and a newly announced depth sensor Pico Zense to business for now.
China’s versions are slightly different, spanning two different options, both of which contain LCDs; a ‘basic version’ including a 3DoF motion controller similar to the ones packaged with the latest generation of mobile VR headsets for 4,000 RMB (~ $610), or a ‘business edition’, which includes the 6DoF controllers, but lacks the Western version’s AMOLED displays for 5,300 RMB (~ $810). Both headsets are currently available for general pre-order in China.
The headset’s controllers are positionally tracked using ultra-sonics technology. While it isn’t clear exactly how this works, the company says it “enables the Neo to deliver high fidelity control without the need for any external cameras, trackers or wires. It also means users are able to get high end VR experiences (6DoF head and hands) typical of an expensive PC solution in a beautifully self contained package.”
When Pico Neo ships in January 2018 in China, the headset will be the second after Vive Focus to adopt HTC’s open source mobile VR API Vive Wave, and also the second to hook into the mobile version of the Viveport app store. When it ships outside of China though, it’s not so certain which app ecosystem it will have access to.
Pico told Road to VR “we are working with HTC to incorporate Vive Wave into the western release of the Pico Neo. We will know more details soon and will update you as soon as we know.” The company didn’t specify which app marketplace the Neo will use, and hasn’t responded yet to further inquiry. We’ll update this article when/if they do.
the China-facing Viveport App Store, image courtesy Pico Interactive
HTC has already signed up twelve hardware partners in China that will support Vive Wave and integrate Viveport content into their future products, including Pico, 360QIKU, Baofengmojing, Coocaa, EmdoorVR, Idealens, iQIYI, Juhaokan, Nubia, Pimax, Quanta and Thundercomm. How many of these will make it out of China isn’t certain at this time, but we’ll be keeping our eyeballs peeled.
Pico Technology, the China-based VR headset manufacturer, today unveiled their latest Pico Neo VR headset, a standalone device that offers 6DoF positional tracking and 6DoF motion controllers. Like HTC Vive Focus, Pico Neo will use the Vive Wave open source API and have access to a mobile version of Viveport in China; unlike Vive Focus though, which was previously destined for Western markets using the Daydream platform, Pico Neo is definitely leaving China along with Vive Wave, although it still isn’t certain which app store the headset will use.
The new Pico Neo doesn’t have much to do with the Pico Neo CV we saw earlier this year, which housed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and a single camera for inside-out tracking.
Now coming closer to Vive Focus in specs, the updated Pico Neo for Western release includes dual-camera inside-out tracking powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, a three-hour battery life, 4GB RAM, support for 128 GB microSD and dual 90 Hz 1,440 × 1,600 AMOLEDs. Pre-order requests are available on the US-facing site, but the company is only selling both Pico Neo (for $750) and a newly announced depth sensor Pico Zense to business for now.
China’s versions are slightly different, spanning two different options, both of which contain LCDs; a ‘basic version’ including a 3DoF motion controller similar to the ones packaged with the latest generation of mobile VR headsets for 4,000 RMB (~ $610), or a ‘business edition’, which includes the 6DoF controllers, but lacks the Western version’s AMOLED displays for 5,300 RMB (~ $810). Both headsets are currently available for general pre-order in China.
The headset’s controllers are positionally tracked using ultra-sonics technology. While it isn’t clear exactly how this works, the company says it “enables the Neo to deliver high fidelity control without the need for any external cameras, trackers or wires. It also means users are able to get high end VR experiences (6DoF head and hands) typical of an expensive PC solution in a beautifully self contained package.”
When Pico Neo ships in January 2018 in China, the headset will be the second after Vive Focus to adopt HTC’s open source mobile VR API Vive Wave, and also the second to hook into the mobile version of the Viveport app store. When it ships outside of China though, it’s not so certain which app ecosystem it will have access to.
Pico told Road to VR “we are working with HTC to incorporate Vive Wave into the western release of the Pico Neo. We will know more details soon and will update you as soon as we know.” The company didn’t specify which app marketplace the Neo will use, and hasn’t responded yet to further inquiry. We’ll update this article when/if they do.
the China-facing Viveport App Store, image courtesy Pico Interactive
HTC has already signed up twelve hardware partners in China that will support Vive Wave and integrate Viveport content into their future products, including Pico, 360QIKU, Baofengmojing, Coocaa, EmdoorVR, Idealens, iQIYI, Juhaokan, Nubia, Pimax, Quanta and Thundercomm. How many of these will make it out of China isn’t certain at this time, but we’ll be keeping our eyeballs peeled.
At Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit held this year in Hawaii the company announced their latest Snapdragon chip for smartphones and mobile VR/AR. The Snapdragon 845 represents the pinnacle of Qualcomm’s technology prowess and its ability to deliver a low power system on a chip with lots of performance and minimal heat. The Snapdragon 845 makes notable improvements across the board, but there’s a particular focus on immersive technologies this time around. In fact, according to Qualcomm, Snapdragon is already in 20 different VR or AR devices with another 20 on the way.
Qualcomm uses the term XR to collectively refer to AR and VR together. With such a large difference between those experiences, there are going to be multiple applications of the same technology to deliver different forms of ‘reality.’ Because of this, the processor that runs these applications needs to be flexible and capable of adapting to the needs of the developer and the user running the developer’s application. That’s why the Snapdragon 845 is such a big deal; it isn’t just about improving the GPU, it is also about improving the CPU as well as the digital signal processing and image signal processing to allow for all of the features needed in XR. These improvements are needed for rooms-scale tracking in a standalone headset.
CPU Improvements
I am very excited to see what Snapdragon 845 will do for the XR industry, especially the standalone VR and AR solutions that are highly dependent on performance, thermals, and latency. So, what are the improvements exactly? The new Snapdragon 845 Kryo 385 features eight new CPU cores with four ARM Cortex A75 cores and four Cortex A55 cores. These CPU cores are the fastest and most efficient cores that ARM has ever produced, and Qualcomm tweaked them to improve performance and latency. This new CPU improves performance by as much as 25-30 percent which is necessary for freeing up compute resources for other tasks and ensuring high frame rates.
GPU Improvements
All of these improvements lead to Qualcomm being able to claim that the Snapdragon 845 and the associated VR platform are capable of room-scale VR, beyond simple full freedom of movement. Qualcomm is also claiming that the Snapdragon 845 can power VR headsets with 2k x 2k displays at 120 Hz. In addition to the new CPU, Qualcomm also entirely rebuilt their Adreno 630 GPU from the ground up to allow for a new class of performance. The Adreno 630 is capable of improving GPU performance over the Snapdragon 835 by 30 percent as well, and offers the ability to maintain the same level of performance but at a power reduction of 30 percent. This GPU is also capable of enabling tile-based foveation in conjunction with eye-tracking technologies to reduce the rendering workload and improve the user experience. Having support for this at the GPU level is crucial for enabling it at all because it has to work at a very low latency and appear virtually invisible to the user. The Adreno 630 GPU inside of the Snapdragon 845 is also capable of multiview rendering, which once again speeds up rendering times and reduces the overall load on the GPU.
In the demo room, Qualcomm had numerous Snapdragon 845 reference platform headsets running the FAST demo where you have to identify a stroke victim and use hand and voice controls to complete the experience. I was quite impressed with the Snapdragon 845 platform. The application had hand tracking, and it was smoother than it was in the past. Qualcomm has tightened up the experience with the Snapdragon 845 and simultaneously boosted performance to levels where it may be difficult to tell the difference between a standalone headset and one that’s tethered to a console or PC. I believe that Snapdragon 845 will have a big impact on the overall XR user experience in 2018 and it should allow for immersive experiences with all the right capabilities available to developers and OEMs.
Disclosure: My firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, cited or related to this article. I do not hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.
Facebook-owned Oculus is working to create a $200 stand-alone wireless headset that won't require a dedicated PC to run, something Facebook CEO Zuckerberg indicated was coming at last year's Oculus developer conference.
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.
“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.”
