LYNX-R1, from France-based startup Lynx, is the first 6DoF standalone passthrough video AR headset. It is priced at $1499.
Passthrough AR
There are currently two fundamental types of AR headsets: see-through and passthrough. Most AR headsets, such as Microsoft’s HoloLens 2, are see-through. The user views the real world through the glass directly, with virtual objects superimposed onto that glass.
The technology behind see-through AR optics is still in the very early stages. The field of view is narrow and virtual objects cannot be fully opaque.
Passthrough headsets, like LYNX-R1, use the same kind of display system as VR headsets, except instead of rendering an entirely virtual world they display the real world via cameras. While the real world won’t necessarily look as good, this allows for AR across a much wider field of view, as well as full virtual object opacity and lower cost (HoloLens 2 is priced at $3500).
Some, including Lynx, call this kind of product a “mixed reality headset”.
Fully Standalone
LYNX-R1 is not the first passthrough AR headset. Varjo XR-1 and XTAL both promote similar capabilities, as was the Vrvana Totem acquired by Apple.
But other 6DoF passthrough headsets have to be tethered to a PC in order to function. Like the Oculus Quest, LYNX-R1 is standalone and wireless — it has the computing hardware, battery, and storage onboard.
Lynx is using Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon XR-2 chipset. That’s a for-XR variant of the Snapdragon 865, roughly twice as powerful as the Oculus Quest’s Snapdragon 835. This is paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.
Other Specifications
The headset uses dual 1600×1600 LCD panels running at 90Hz- LCD provides better sharpness than PenTile OLED, but with less rich colors. The lenses are unique “4-fold catadioptric freeform prisms” with a claimed circular field of view of 90°.
There are four cameras on the exterior. Two black & white cameras provide positional tracking, and two color cameras are used for the passthrough and computer vision tasks such as occlusion mapping and hand tracking, including gesture recognition.
Inside the headset are eye tracking cameras. The headset also has two speakers and two microphones, enabling positional audio and voice communications.
Charging is done via the USB Type-C port, and Lynx claims the battery lasts for two hours of “active use”.
Gap In The Market?
LYNX-R1 could fill a gap in the enterprise market for a wireless, standalone AR headset which offers a relatively wide field of view for a relatively affordable price. For consumers, the idea of video passthrough may be unappealing, but professionals might not care whether they’re looking through glass or a camera.
LYNX-R1 is slated to ship in summer of this year. Preorders are available now from the company’s website.
Facebook today provided the prices planned by developers for their May 21 launch on Oculus Quest.
Oculus Quest is the $400 all-in-one VR system from Facebook which ships with a pair of intuitive hand controllers. Facebook sent us free Quest review units a couple weeks ago to test with access to a limited number of apps. This week, they opened up much of the launch library and we are working through the titles and answering questions about the system on our livestreams.
There are more than 50+ titles planned for launch and the games selected represent Facebook’s effort to curate a high-quality console-like experience on the system. Every Quest will include access to free demos of some games, like Beat Saber and Creed. Now, with pricing, we are able to answer the most common question we’re receiving from interested buyers.
The Quest titles range from free up to $29.99. Orbus VR: Reborn is an outlier at $39.99 for access to its subscription-free massively multiplayer online world. All prices below are in United States dollars and are provided to Oculus by developers as of today. Also, if you’re a Rift owner, be sure to check out our updated cross-buy list.
Next month might be the third anniversary of Oculus Rift’s launch, but the industry is slightly more focused on one of the companies other products, the soon to be released standalone headset Oculus Quest. Scheduled for a Spring 2019 launch, Oculus will be hard at work helping developers get their titles ready for either launch day or soon after. In a new blog posting on the Oculus Developers page, the company has detailed what it expects from developers, stating that a high bar will be set when it comes to content.
When it comes to online videogame stores and the content they list each will have its own set of parameters regarding the quality of the experience studios can submit. Steam, for example, isn’t particularly strict, whereas the Oculus Store or Viveport won’t just let anything onto the store – and getting onto PlayStation VR is even harder.
It’s a fine balance between regular content to keep customers interested but of a good enough quality that its not a yard sale of junk with a few gems here and there.
With the Oculus Quest it seems the company is looking to keep that bar raised fairly high saying: “We hope that when players get into their Oculus Quest headset their library showcases the innovation, sophistication, and development talent that exists in VR today, and inspires future developers.
“To get to that bar, we have to start with a quality-first approach.”
Oculus then goes on to add: “High-quality, innovative titles tend to be expensive to build, and developers need confidence that they are shipping into an ecosystem that will generate a return on investment. We’ve set a high bar for content quality on Quest, higher than we’ve ever enforced before, in order to build a platform where everyone has confidence in the quality of the titles they’re buying and developers know that their investments have a strong chance of success.”
With Oculus Quest Facebook isn’t taking anything for granted, ensuring the launch could be the biggest this year. The headset will be on demonstration at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 next month, with Oculus also attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June. Oculus has previously said that over 50+ titles would be available at launch including Moss, Robo Recall and The Climb.
The Facebook Developers Conference (F8) at the end of April is when the Oculus Quest is expected to officially launch – like Oculus Go last year. As further details are released regarding Oculus Quest, VRFocus will keep you updated.
HTC Vive’s standalone headset the Vive Focus has yet to see a release on western shores for the average consumer, only available for the business market. Now the headset will be superseded after only a short window of availability as the company has just announced a brand new version, the HTC Vive Focus Plus.
HTC still isn’t aiming the new standalone device at consumers, solely focusing on the enterprise market with this redesign. Just like the original Vive Focus, the new headset will have everything built in and ready to go with one big exception. Instead of a 3 degrees of freedom (3DOF) controller, the Vive Focus Plus will include two 6DOF controllers.
These controllers are tracked using ultrasonic technology to greatly improve accuracy. Alongside the normal face buttons and trackpad, the controllers include an analogue trigger that gives users the ability to control objects or interactions with pressure-sensitive input.
Keeping with the original Vive Focus, the new HTC Vive Focus Plus is still powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile VR Platform with a single AMOLED display at 2,880 × 1,600 resolution. HTC has said visuals should still see an improvement with reduced ring effects thanks to all-new lenses, and the headset should be more comfortable as it’s been re-balanced to sit easier on users heads. In keeping with its enterprise led design, a new soft, easy-to-clean material has been fitted making it ideal for high-usage environments.
“At Vive, the announcement of Vive Focus Plus furthers our commitment to rapidly iterate and refine the VR market for both businesses and consumers,” said Daniel O’Brien, General Manager Americas, HTC Vive in a statement. “This rollout of Vive Focus Plus leads the way for deeper immersion, more realistic training and simulation, and easier porting of experiences from PC to the stand-alone category.”
The HTC Vive Focus Plus will support the Vive Wave Platform with content coming from Viveport. Customers will have access to the new Viveport Infinity service, able to use a single account across their portfolio of VR devices when the service launches on 2nd April.
The headset will be available for purchase starting in Q2 2019, across 25 markets worldwide, supporting 19 languages. It’ll ship with several features designed to business including Kiosk Mode, Gaze Support, and device management tools to remotely enroll, monitor, and manage multiple headsets all at once. For further updates on the HTC Vive Focus Plus, keep reading VRFocus.
It’s time to meet yet another new member of the HTC Vive family. Say hello to the Vive Focus Plus.
Announced today ahead of next week’s Mobile World Congress, Vive Focus Plus is the next entry in HTC’s enterprise-level standalone headset series. It’s got everything you need to jump straight into VR, just like the original Vive Focus. You don’t need a phone, PC or even external sensors thanks to inside-out six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking. The biggest additions here, though, are the new 6DOF controllers.
The original Vive Focus came with one 3DOF controller that allowed you to point in VR. This pair of new controllers, first announced last year, let you reach into virtual worlds just like on the original HTC Vive. Unlike the first Vive, though, Focus Plus uses ultrasonic technology for tracking. The controllers also sport triggers, grip buttons, a trackpad and home and menu buttons. Like the newly-redesigned Oculus Touch controllers for Oculus Quest, the tracking ring runs over the top of the kit.
HTC introduced these controllers as a developer kit for the original Focus. They shipped out to studios with a mount you needed to fit to your headset for tracking. However, HTC told UploadVR that it currently has no plans to bring the controllers to original Vive Focus owners.
“At this time, the new 6Dof controllers are not compatible with the Vive Focus,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “In working with our partners, they’ve expressed the need for both devices and we’re thrilled to offer a portfolio of standalone products which cater to different developer and company needs.”
The Vive Focus first arrived in China in 2017 but only released in the west in November 2018. That leaves just a three-month gap between Focus’ release and the announcement of this upgraded model.
Vive Focus Plus also improves comfort though you wouldn’t know by looking at it. At a glance it looks identical to the old model. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset powers the kit. That’s the same as the one seen in the original Focus. It’s also got a 3K display, which is what the original included, though HTC also says it has improved optics. It runs on HTC’s Vive Wave platform.
Vive Focus Plus will be launching in 25 countries in the second quarter of 2019. We don’t know how much it will cost yet. That said, the original Vive Focus cost $599 when it launched three months ago. Expect it to be higher than that.
Elsewhere, HTC is also set to release the Vive Pro Eye in Q2. Like the Focus Plus, it’s an upgrade to the original enterprise-level model that won’t replace it. Finally, the Vive Cosmos is also on the way this year. That’s a new consumer headset with 6DOF tracking of its own. We still have a lot to learn about it.
Der chinesische Hersteller Pico kündigt mit der Pico G2 4K eine neue Variante der Pico G2 an, welche über ein 4K-Display verfügt und eine technische Überarbeitung des Vorgängers darstellt.
Pico G2 4K: Autarke 3DoF-VR-Brille mit 4K-Auflösung vorgestellt
Pico bereichert bereits seit einigen Jahren mit diversen VR-Brillen den Virtual-Reality-Markt. Mit der Pico G2 4K möchte das Unternehmen nicht mehr Konsumenten ansprechen, sondern Unternehmen, welche mit der neuen Technologie arbeiten wollen. Dementsprechend sind auch zum Start wichtige Funktionen für Unternehmen vorhanden. So gibt es einen Kiosk-Mode, welcher nur eine Anwendung abspielbar macht, einen Modus für die Bedienung ohne Controller (Auswahl durch Blickrichtung) und der Schaumstoff der ans Gesicht drückt, soll einfach austauschbar und zu reinigen sein.
“Die Anwendungsfälle für VR und AR sind grenzenlos, und wir wollen Unternehmen dabei unterstützen, dies mit unseren Produkten zu realisieren […]. Wir entwickeln unsere eigene Identität als führender VR- und AR-Hardwarehersteller und erweitern den Gesamtmarkt durch maßgeschneiderte Produkte und Optionen, die nur wenige unserer Wettbewerber zu diesem Zeitpunkt anbieten.” (Henry Zhou, CEO von Pico Interactive, Inc.)
Im ersten Quartal 2019 soll die Pico G2 4K in den USA verfügbar sein. Wann die VR-Brille nach Europa kommt, ist aktuell noch unklar. Da es sich jedoch “nur” um eine 3DoF-VR-Brille handelt, also kein Bewegung mit der Brille durch den Raum möglich ist, sollte der verspätete Marktstart verkraftbar sein.
Auf dem Mobile World Congress in China sprach Alvin Wang Graylin, chinesischer Präsident von HTC, über den aktuellen Stand der VR-Industrie. Dabei ging er expliziter auf die Rolle der eingesessenen Brillen, wie Oculus Rift und HTC Vive ein und prognostizierte eine glänzende Zukunft des Marktes durch Standalone-Brillen.
Vive-Präsident China: “Erste Generation der VR-Brillen war overhyped”
Alvin Wang Graylin äußerte sich auf dem diesjährigen Mobile World Congress über den aktuellen Stand der VR-Industrie und zog ein Resümee über die Entwicklung des Marktes seit 2016:
“Ich denke, als HTC und Oculus erstmals die HTC Vive und Oculus Rift im Jahr 2016 vorstellten, wurden die Brillen overhyped. Das war auch der Grund dafür, dass es 2017 nicht zum erhofften Wachstum der Nutzerzahlen kam, der ursprünglich prognostiziert wurde. Allerdings denke ich, dass es 2018 und die folgenden Jahre ein neues Zugpferd geben wird, da sämtliche Geräte in die zweite Generation übergehen und uns neue Produkte erwarten.”
Mit den neuen Produkten verweist Graylin auf die Vive Focus, eine Standalone-Brille, die ähnlich wie die Oculus Go autark funktioniert. Dadurch ist es möglich, kabellos und frei in die Virtual Reality einzutauchen. Auf die Vorteile und das Potenzial dieser neuen Generation von VR-Brillen verweist er daraufhin in seiner weiteren Ausführung:
“Die Einschränkungen, die bisher beim Einstieg in die VR entstanden, gehören damit der Vergangenheit an. Mit der Brille ist es möglich, in nur wenigen Sekunden in eine komplett neue Welt einzutauchen. Egal ob Unterwasser, im Weltraum oder auf ein immersives Familientreffen mit den verstreuten Verwandten, die Möglichkeiten sind nahezu unbegrenzt. Das ist es, was die Leute wirklich möchten.”
Im Vergleich zu den Vorgängermodellen eröffnen die Standalone-Brillen deutlich mehr Freiheit im Zugang in die immersiven Welten. Besonders der Wegfall der teuren Hardware gilt nach Graylin als größter Katalysator für den Anstoß der VR-Industrie:
“Bisher waren die Bedingungen für einen Zugang zur Virtual Reality einfach zu kompliziert. Man benötigte zunächst einen teuren PC und musste alles einrichten mit unzähligen Kabeln. Jetzt ist es so leicht wie nie. Konsumenten können die Brille nach Hause bringen und einfach loslegen. Die Brillen fungieren damit als Game Changer.”
Die Vive Focus ist derzeit lediglich in China erhältlich. Im späteren Verlauf des Jahres soll die autarke Brille ebenso im Westen verkauft werden.
As some of you may know, I have a background in software engineering and CAD and have been active in emerging tech field over the last ten years through investments as well as growing start-ups in mobile IoT, AI and, recently, augmented reality (AR) and/or virtual reality (VR). We then have set up the Realities Centre to help filter through the hype and offer environments for the start-ups and corporates to harness those technologies for industry-specific verticals for AR/VR innovation and to learn more about the technologies.
This has enabled us to see where there is real traction, and we have been lucky to run great events, such as many hackathons, to validate industries and ideas as well as build what is probably the largest ecosystem of developers, mentors and corporate partners. I have seen first-hand how new users react to technology, interfaces and experiences through our many public and private conferences, and also having been personally involved in a company that offers virtual reality tours for multi-user property. I have been scaring many IT directors with the account of the number of involved cables as well as the software restarts and computer requirements for the package that would be needed for them to run our experiences. Moreover, I have seen companies finding ways around that problem by on-boarding clients first with a preloaded mobile VR package, which is an all-in-one “case” to reduce this hardware pain, and then trying to upgrade them to a full high spec solution.
6 DoF Room-scale VR Headsets Solve A Lot Of Problems
It is, therefore, out of genuine sentiment that I think that this year’s upcoming standalone headsets that include room-scale tracking (called 6 degrees of freedom or “6DoF”, as opposed to 3DoF like in mobile VR), such as the HTC Vive Focus, Pico Goblin and Google Mirage Solo with Daydream (pictured below), are going to really solve a lot of the difficulties that the potential large-scale B2B2C users experienced. As those were eliminated, their decision to adopt VR at scale for their organisation and to deliver to end-users shall be much easier.
Of course, high-end tethered headsets still have an important role to play for engineers, designers, arcades and gamers as they benefit from higher specifications, such as the HTC Vive Pro, which delivers optimal graphics and positional tracking with wireless options coming soon. Those still have very legitimate uses and innovations, such as eye tracking, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) and more, are key. However, that would be specified in another article.
Instead, this standalone adoption is meant for the schools, retailers, training academies and departments and entertainment centres (although arcades can be included here too), and, therefore, they are meant for commercial mass use. Note that I am mentioning 6DoF here, as I think that any headset that does not offer positional tracking – to ensure that the head and body are fully tracked in space due to the presence of the inside-out sensors – should not be considered. 6DoF allows a minimum degree of immersion, which comprises the VR experience. I believe that 3DoF, although it is cheaper (at the moment), is a dangerous offering for the mass market, and, therefore, it is a no-go as follows: there is a lot more chance of getting sick, it is not as immersive and the experience is a lot more passive. It is bound to disappoint, and we all know the importance of first impressions …
3 DoF Is A No-go For B2B2C
Although Oculus, with the release of the 3DoF “Go” headset, has made some great tilt features to mimic head tracking and incorporate some great UX features as well as social tools, this is not enough. Consequently, we have found that some first-time users have become pretty sick after using it, and it is far from being a 6DoF device. Therefore, I think that for delivering VR experiences at scale for education, training, commercial experiences, such as experiential marketing (travel agents, property walkthroughs, etc.), 6DoF standalone headsets eliminate the difficulty of having to run a gaming PC/laptop, setting up the headset and sensors and installing the whole software stack. Standalone headsets solve that and, although they might be missing 6DoF hand controllers, already upgrades that are being announced to make those possible are present, as we have seen recently for the Vive Focus.
The last thing entails choosing which one should be used as a few varieties are available. Although they are all quite similar, they come with content platforms, accessories and an existing ecosystem. However, I would first look at the professional services and innovations that they would be bringing to the forefront. If you look at the use cases that involve education, training, entertainment and arts, HTC Vive has been a lot more innovative and active in those sectors to offer the following: recharge and cleaning cabinets for schools and training academies, centralised remote software control applications for synchronising experience delivery for groups (useful for schools, entertainment and more), an Art and Studio program as well as partnerships with big sports institutions (McLaren and Major League Baseball has been recently announced), and, most importantly, it has made continuous innovations which I will cover later on in this article.
There has clearly not been as much engagement for education, arts, entertainment and technological innovations from the other standalone makers, such as Google, although they do have the requisite education and professional services’ infrastructure to be able to make those possible.
A great recent example of the education sector was given by Paola Paulino at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen in which she used the Vive Focus to enable students to generate content they had created as well as integrate hand gestures integrations by the XR Pioneer program’ students (see picture below). The elementary, middle and high school students were involved in showcasing their VR Storybooks that they had created with Vive Paper. Moreover, they were the first students to pipe K-12 student-generated content to the new Vive Focus 2.0, which leverages hand gesture interactions.
And this also removes the difficulty in the past to setup large PC VR classes (like Vivedu did last year), whereas now it takes minutes to setup similar size classes with the Vive Focus. In terms of education, such a user friendly and easy setup VR system makes kids more engaged and learn more easily.
Offering Complete Professional Services As Part Of The Offering Is Key
It will take time, as we are still in the early stages of adoption, trial and understanding user onboarding and user experience development; however, those really offer a chance to deliver immersion at scale, albeit of a slightly lower quality (although the Vive Focus is 3K, which is higher than most tethered headsets). But this will keep improving with the increase in the better performing chipsets and also the upcoming 5G and cloud VR infrastructure, thereby delivering all that high-end graphic performance from the cloud itself with the help of machine learning, as I wrote earlier this year on VRFocus.
However, already, a great example of how remote streaming of the experiences is done has also been demonstrated in Vive’s latest announced feature on the Vive Focus as follows: the ability to stream VR from a PC is also key to solving content issue and also wirelessly use it (called Riftcat), so that one can play all Viveport and, especially, all Steam VR games on the Focus headset. HTC advises using this in a modern 5G Wi-fi local area network to have proper visual quality. This also solves the initial low amount of content that can be currently found on the Vive Focus ‘wave’ content platform by enabling tapping into Steam, the largest 3D experiences platform that is present.
Moreover, I have not even touched on the open space mixed reality experiences’ potentials that those headsets can offer while blending VR with the real world for facilitating fully spatial experiences, such as commerce and property simulation as well as entertainment. The inside-out cameras offer a lot of potential for space and object recognition. The most obvious and hoped for (as the device originally only came with one controller) feature was hand gesture tracking for control, similar to Leap Motion. This was also announced and teased as an additional feature on the update for the Vive Focus.
Even more features are coming out, such as the ability to upgrade the Vive Focus’ current 3 degrees of freedom (3DoF) controller to behave like a 6DoF controller without the need for any additional hardware by leveraging the device’s existing front-facing cameras and AI computer vision technology as well as demonstrating the option of streaming the phone screen’s content from the latest HTC U12+ phone to the Vive Focus. This enables millions of existing mobile applications, video games and video content to be enjoyed on a super-sized screen on the top of making phone calls and creating cool social VR experiences.
China Is Leading The Way With Adoption And Implantation Of New Use Cases
It seems that VR innovation out of China really fuels from the adoption that the market has been undergoing (and, recently, it has been highlighted by Alvin Wang Graylin, President of Vive’s China business, showing 85% awareness of VR and great demographics. We can perceive improvement occurring at a great pace, which should result in optimising content and hardware improvements at scale, which is great as it holds the great promises for the standalone headsets. This should, importantly, enable the development of professional services around the setup, content production and maintenance of pools of standalone VR headsets, as the graphic given below shows, in the case of Vivedu’s ‘turnkey solution’ in China.
That’s a great example of potential models that will be released for education and training and will be marketed as professional services in various industries. I cannot wait to contribute to that development as well as benchmark the best practices and lessons that can be learnt from the Chinese market to effectively grow these professional services in Europe at scale.
When Oculus announced Oculus Go late last year at its developer conference, the headset came as a bit of a surprise. The previous year Facebook announced the Santa Cruz standalone prototype with full six degrees of freedom. By OC4, they added controller tracking that allowed full freedom of movement for both your head and hands throughout an entire room. It was truly a vision of the future for VR. In a way, Go seemed like a step backward.
Oculus Go is a 3DOF headset like the Gear VR with a single 3DOF controller, and developers can easily port over apps from Gear VR. For all intents and purposes, Oculus Go is basically a Gear VR without the need for a smartphone to power it.
For starting at just $200 for the 32GB model (or $250 if you want 64GB), that’s impressive. We previously looked at a somewhat similar headset — Pico Goblin — but Oculus Go brings the weight and power of Facebook behind it.
Go is here to finally bring standalone, out-of-the-box ready VR to the masses.
The latest version of the Samsung Gear VR and Gear VR controller.
From Gear to Go
Gear VR has been successful as a pack-in item with new Samsung Galaxy smartphones. However, as a dedicated VR platform, it has a lot of core, underlying issues. For starters, relying on the user’s smartphone for juice means that you’re asking someone to not only use up the battery of their VR device, but also drain their phone battery as well.
Some phones were prone to overheating while inside Gear VR, and sometimes background processes and other apps accessing the data signal or WiFi meant it was difficult to use networking features in VR. If you already had a compatible Galaxy phone then sure, it made sense to grab one. But what about the millions of Android users that don’t use Samsung devices and/or don’t have a Google Daydream? What about the high-end Rift or Vive users that want a portable VR headset? Enter Oculus Go.
Setup
Oculus Go is the first piece of hardware that Facebook-owned Oculus has released that is entirely standalone. It doesn’t run off of a Windows-powered PC, it wasn’t created in partnership with Samsung, and it doesn’t require another company’s phone to work. Everything from the physical device to the operating system and app store is all Oculus. That’s a big deal.
In order to get your Go up and running it’s actually very simple. You’ll first need to download the Oculus app from either Google Play or the iOS App Store and follow the steps. Through the app you’ll set up your controller, get it paired, input WiFi network information, and more. It’s annoying that an app is needed to get the headset up and running, but thankfully it’s not needed again after that. Although if you want, you can queue up apps for download using the mobile app, which is a nifty feature.
The box includes a charging cord and USB-to-wall-outlet plug, as well as an eyeglass spacer face plate, lens cleaning cloth, and attachable lanyard for the controller.
Headset Design and Ergonomics
As a glasses wearer, I think this is the most comfortable VR headset Oculus has made. It doesn’t have the awkward, top-heavy feel of the Gear VR since a phone isn’t strapped to the front and it doesn’t smash my face like the Rift does. Since I need to wear my glasses inside the headset, the Rift always felt a little claustrophobic, but the Go is plenty spacious.
The soft, breathable fabrics seems to ventilate itself well and I never once had to mess around with foggy lenses at all. The outer shell is very reminiscent of the Rift in style, but obviously sports a much lighter gray shade as opposed to solid black.
By default, Go has a strap that goes around the back of your head and another that goes over the top of your head, with an adjusted back band to hold everything in place. You can remove the top strap if you’d like, but I preferred to keep it on so the headset was a bit tighter, but less likely to slip around.
I’m still of the opinion that the halo-style visor design employed with the PSVR and the Windows VR line of headsets (specifically the Samsung Odyssey and Dell) are the most comfortable headsets on the market, but Go isn’t far behind.
Display and Optics
I haven’t done extensive side-by-side testing of the Oculus Go against other headsets on the market, but I can say that anecdotally it’s got one of the sharpest screens I’ve seen. Bright, colorful games like Pet Lab really pop and watching movies or videos in a virtual theater and hanging out with people in Rooms really looks sharp. People aren’t going to be disappointed by the Go’s visual clarity at all.
The Oculus Go features a 2560 x 1440 WQHD LCD screen and extremely clear lenses with reduced god rays. The refresh rate is 60Hz, or up to 72Hz depending on the experience. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 mobile VR chip.
Compare that to the 2160 x 1200 resolution of the Oculus Rift and you can see why I found the Go so impressive.
Sound
One interesting decision that Oculus made with Go is that they embedded its speakers directly into the sides of the headset, along the strap. The result is that you don’t have to adjust earphones at all and everyone else can hear what you’re doing — which is nifty for sharing experiences. However, the downside to this is that — you guessed it — everyone around you can hear what you’re doing. The benefits gained from sharing experiences are negated when Go doesn’t support any sort of Chromecast streaming or anything like that out of the box.
Thankfully the headphones jack is right next to charging port on the left side of the unit, making it very accessible. Along the top you can find the power button and volume buttons.
The audio quality itself is quite good from the embedded speakers. They’re so close to your head the vibrations reverberate around a bit near your ears. Based on our testing it seems like the mic quality is quite good. Friends we tested with didn’t hear the speaker audio interfering or echoing at all.
Tracking and Controller
This is the big sticking point for a lot of people: Oculus Go is just a 3DOF headset, meaning it doesn’t have the ability to track when you lean and move through space. It can tell when you look up and down or side to side, but that’s it. No spatial movement. The same goes for the controller.
Anyone that’s used to the Gear VR or Google Daydream won’t be missing any features — it works just like those two in terms of not being able to move spatially and only point or twist with the controller. You can’t reach out and grab anything. Since the vast majority of Go apps are either existing Gear VR apps or are cross-platform, everything works flawlessly across devices in this way.
The downside is that, in 2018, it feels like a step backwards. Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are both two years old, the PSVR has been out for about a year and a half, and we’ve got standalone headsets like the Pico Neo, Vive Focus, and even Oculus Santa Cruz that are all doing positional tracking without being tethered to a PC.
Obviously Go is geared (pun intended) toward a more casual audience and the price point clearly reflects that, but since the Gear VR already seemed to be filling this niche it feels a bit redundant and disappointing from a tracking perspective to not have more freedom.
Apps and Games
Another part of Go that felt lackluster is the catalog of experiences. Oculus Go is a brand new VR headset and its the first standalone VR headset from Facebook-owned Oculus. Needless to say, I expected to see some marquee games and apps to really help sell the headset even to people that have VR already. That’s not what we get.
There are a handful of really unique and new things, like all of the great updates to Oculus Rooms, the forthcoming Oculus TV, and more — but most of the games and apps (and I mean most by a manner of a thousand or more) are already on Gear VR or are releasing on Gear VR today alongside the Go versions.
So, as someone that’s had a Gear VR ever since 2015, I’ve seen what that device can do. I’ve played the big games, I’ve watched movies and TV shows, I’ve talked with friends, and I’ve graduated to the Rift, Vive, and other more powerful devices.
From that perspective Go feels like a missed opportunity. You’ve got a headset here that has great visuals, no tethers to a PC or phone, a controller for interaction, and access to WiFi. Tether it to your phone and you can connect anywhere with a cell signal. So the question on my mind is — why didn’t they double down on social VR more?
Battery Life
Usually this wouldn’t really deserve its own section for a hardware review, but Oculus Go has a really, really bad battery life. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it may very well have the worst battery life of any interactive piece of technology I’ve used in recent memory.
If you’re watching standard media, like a movie or looking at images, then it can last approximately 2 – 2.5 hours and if you’re playing a game that drops to just 1.5 – 2 hours. That’s not good at all. That’s barely long enough to watch a movie and definitely isn’t long enough if you spend a few minutes doing other things or want to invite people over to watch something inside VR.
For example, just yesterday while testing things out, I bounced around between a few apps and games and ended up spending an hour inside the headset. In that single hour I was already down to 56%.
Now before you say that you could easily just plug it in while you’re using it, I’d say that this is the opposite of what the user manual says to do and is also unreasonable since it’s designed to be wireless and untethered.
Other Features and Topics
Before wrapping up there are still a few areas I wanted to touch on that didn’t really fit into other categories of the review. For starters, the UI. It’s a brand new look that’s changed from the Rift and Gear to make it easier than ever to quickly switch between different areas and features on the device. Right from the home menu I can pull up a friends list, click the call icon to start a party, and immediately jump into mine or their room to hang out or kick off a session in a specific app.
Furthermore, the included Oculus Go internet browser is very well done. The browser included a built-in 180 or 360 video player so if you found a video on a website that was in 180 or 360 that you wanted to watch, it’s as easy as clicking play. No need for third party apps or rearranging things into specific folders.
Using the new Oculus Gallery app it’s also easier than ever to quickly access content from your phone (by linking the Camera Roll), from Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, and even your home media server as long as it’s on the same WiFi.
After our brief GDC demo we called the Oculus Go a “solid” $200 headset and that’s still true; it’s an impressive and important piece of hardware. Coming in at an affordable price point, Go makes a strong case for any VR enthusiast to pick one up at the very least as a media device and portable VR headset. It’s just a shame that the library doesn’t feel more fresh and new.
However, the bottom line is that, as it stands, Oculus Go is an excellent VR headset with great value if you don’t already have a Gear VR and serves as an excellent complement to the more powerful PC-powered VR ecosystem. While the poor battery life and lack of position tracking are large blemishes, the ease of use, surprising visual clarity, and depth of features make Go an easy recommendation for anyone interested in getting started with VR or anyone interested in having a dedicated VR device to take on the go.
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.
Of course, high-end tethered headsets still have an important role to play for engineers, designers, arcades and gamers as they benefit from higher specifications, such as the HTC Vive Pro, which delivers optimal graphics and positional tracking with wireless options coming soon. Those still have very legitimate uses and innovations, such as eye tracking, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) and more, are key. However, that would be specified in another article.
Instead, this standalone adoption is meant for the schools, retailers, training academies and departments and entertainment centres (although arcades can be included here too), and, therefore, they are meant for commercial mass use. Note that I am mentioning 6DoF here, as I think that any headset that does not offer positional tracking – to ensure that the head and body are fully tracked in space due to the presence of the inside-out sensors – should not be considered. 6DoF allows a minimum degree of immersion, which comprises the VR experience. I believe that 3DoF, although it is cheaper (at the moment), is a dangerous offering for the mass market, and, therefore, it is a no-go as follows: there is a lot more chance of getting sick, it is not as immersive and the experience is a lot more passive. It is bound to disappoint, and we all know the importance of first impressions …
There has clearly not been as much engagement for education, arts, entertainment and technological innovations from the other standalone makers, such as Google, although they do have the requisite education and professional services’ infrastructure to be able to make those possible.
Even more features are coming out, such as the ability to upgrade the Vive Focus’ current 3 degrees of freedom (3DoF) controller to behave like a 6DoF controller without the need for any additional hardware by leveraging the device’s existing front-facing cameras and AI computer vision technology as well as demonstrating the option of streaming the phone screen’s content from the latest 
That’s a great example of potential models that will be released for education and training and will be marketed as professional services in various industries. I cannot wait to contribute to that development as well as benchmark the best practices and lessons that can be learnt from the Chinese market to effectively grow these professional services in Europe at scale.
