We spoke to a sales representative from another UK retailer who told us Quest was marked as end of life, with no further shipments scheduled.
Across many official Quest retailers globally, stock is either unavailable, or only available from third party sellers.
These possible signs of Quest’s product cycle ending comes just two weeks before Facebook Connect, the new name of the company’s annual AR/VR conference.
Throughout the year, evidence has been mounting of a new Oculus Quest. Sources told us this ‘Oculus Quest 2’ entered mass production in late July and features a new simpler lens adjustment mechanism for IPD.
The current Quest’s 64GB model retails for $399 and the other $499 model is 128GB.
If the Walmart & Target listings do indeed represent Quest 2’s price, why would the current Quest continue to be sold? It’s possible Facebook plans to discount it below even $299, but the dual OLED panels, fabric materials, and intricate lens separation adjustment mechanism make this proposition unlikely.
Weeks before the reveal of Oculus Rift S, retailers started to stop selling the original Rift. The evidence emerging suggests Facebook could be planning a similar move with Quest 2. To be clear though: the company hasn’t actually announced a new headset yet.
A promising puzzle game called Cubism will see full release on the Oculus Quest store later this month alongside its launch on PC VR headsets.
Earlier this year Cubism caught our eye with a SideQuest demo that made for a pretty cool early demonstration of hand tracking on Oculus Quest. Now the Belgium-based developer behind the title, Thomas Van Bouwel, is releasing the full game with 60 puzzles of varying difficulty.
Check out the announcement trailer:
“Sidequest helped me realize the game had an audience on Quest, which encouraged me to submit the Quest pitch document to Oculus in early January,” Van Bouwel wrote to me. “More than anything, Sidequest was an essential avenue for me to playtest the game and it’s puzzles during this last year of development. With Oculus’ announcement of new distribution paths to Quest in the future I think they have definitely realized the value of giving developers easier access to the Quest community to prove out early concepts, and to playtest and refine games in earlier stages of development.”
The developer says the full game is easy to learn and “within the first 10-30 seconds of launching the game, players learn the core mechanics and are solving their first puzzle.” It won’t launch with controller-free hand-tracking support initially — so tracked controllers only for launch — but “an improved version of hand-tracking input is planned in a future release along with other updates.”
You can try out the demos now or wishlist the game. Cubism is set to launch on September 17 for $9.99 on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift and SteamVR.
Vacation Simulator will see its free Back To Job expansion arrive on September 10th on SteamVR and Oculus Quest. The update is scheduled to launch on PlayStation VR in October.
The new update merges some of the game mechanics from the original Job Simulator with the expanded world of Vacation Simulator. The VR games from Google-owned Owlchemy Labs are among the most well known VR titles because they serve as fairly straight-forward playgrounds to introduce people to the mechanics of VR headsets with tracked hand controllers. Vacation Simulator features a range of activities divided into zones you can visit centered in beach, mountain, and forest environments. The original Job Simulator featured four jobs including office worker, auto mechanic, chef, and convenience store clerk with a number of activities and challenges faced within each job. With Back To Job, the “gig economy” has now made its way to Vacation Simulator because “all bots have gone on vacation and no one is left to job, so it’s time for the human to enter the on-demand workforce to make the perfect vacation for bots. Time to job, again.”
We’re looking forward to seeing what Back To Job brings to Vacation Simulator. We’ll have gameplay and impressions for you soon so check back on UploadVR.com for the latest. Also, if you haven’t played Owlchemy’s VR games yet, Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator are bundled together in a sale on Oculus Quest through September 11th. The pack discounts the games by 30%.
Facebook’s Oculus Rift S is again the most used VR headset on Steam, after losing its position back in April.
Back in March, Valve fundamentally changed how the Hardware Survey collects VR headset data. Beforehand it simply scanned for connected USB devices, but that missed out on new headsets as well as devices not plugged in at the time. The new method scans your SteamVR logs from the past month too, so any SteamVR-compatible headset should be detected.
But Valve may have continued to make tweaks in April. Rift S dropped 5% while Quest increased 3% and ‘Other’ increased 2%. Some have suggested Valve may have been miscategorizing Quests as Rift S when connected wirelessly via 3rd party software.
Regardless of what caused the drop, Rift S jumped +1.22% this month. Roughly 1 in 4 VR headsets used on Steam in August were Rift S.
This was accompanied by a -1.57% drop in HTC Vive usage. The Vive, originally launched back in 2016, seemed to see a usage jump in the months following Half Life: Alyx. Some owners likely dusted off the cobwebs to jump into Valve’s flagship title, but by now they could have packed it away again or upgraded to a Valve Index.
Index saw the second-highest growth this month- it’s now the headset of choice for roughly 1 in 6 SteamVR users. This continues a consistent trend for Valve, further proving the demand for higher-end PC VR hardware is greater than previously assumed.
Throughout the year, evidence has been mounting of a new Oculus Quest. Sources told us this ‘Oculus Quest 2’ entered mass production in late July and features a new lens adjustment mechanism for IPD. It’s unclear where this would leave Rift S, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped its momentum quite yet.
I would not consider myself to be a racing game enthusiast or connoisseur of authentic car simulation games. As a result, when I heard that Project CARS 3 was aiming to be a more accessible entry in the series, complete with native VR support on PC, I was naturally quite intrigued.
To be clear though: I haveactually played and written about racing games before. Several years ago I wrote a detailed hands-on impression of Project CARS 2 and I even reviewed DriveClub VR on PSVR back when Sony’s headset first launched. But I’m absolutely not a racing sim enthusiast, even if I do dabble from time-to-time.
This is all important background information to take in because Slightly Mad Studios have designed and marketed Project CARS 3 not as the ultimate driving simulator that its predecessor was supposed to be, but as a racing game for anyone and everyone. That’s an important distinction.
Project CARS 3 makes a good first impression. After some introductory moments and menu toggling, I took off into the Career mode. The structure is reminiscent of DriveClub VR and other arcade-style racing games with event-based missions like time trials and races that each have a short list of objectives and challenges to complete. Luckily it’s more nuanced than just “Win the race” every time and instead includes things like tasking you with hitting top speed goals or mastering a certain number of tricky curves. These mini-challenges that are tracked mid-race have heavy DriveClub VR vibes and that’s a very good thing in my opinion.
Each challenge you complete awards you points and you spend those points to unlock higher tiers of missions. It’s all very basic and straight forward but the actual races themselves are so snappy and concise there’s good encouragement to replay stuff until you nail it.
During races you also earn cash that can be spent to upgrade your cars and purchase new cards. The interesting bit here is that if you invest enough in a specific vehicle, you can actually end up upgrading its class beyond where it started. I did this by accident early on with the first car I bought. I dumped a bunch of money into it trying to make it as badass as possible, only to realize it was now nearly two classes above where it started and could no longer be used for any of the races I’d actually unlocked in the Career. I ended up having to spend even more money downgrading and buying worse components to demote the stats and make it usable again.
At its core, it’s all a numbers game and it’s all about as streamlined as you could hope for. I didn’t have much trouble coming to grips with it all and series fans will immediately realize though just how far the push towards accessibility has gone. There are tons of small features missing that dramatically added to the depth and realism of Project CARS 2 such as tire wear and tear during races, the need for pit stops, and needing to monitor fuel consumption. All of that is gone here.
Admittedly, I’d be lying if I didn’t say the streamlining of features was a bit of a relief for me personally. I typically play these games with a light amount of assists left on for things like braking and I never learned how to drive a manual transmission in real-life so I don’t bother in games either; I’m an automatic kind of guy.
With those caveats listed, I absolutely had a lot of fun playing Project CARS 3. Hitting a curve just right and drifting around the edges as you let off the gas, pump the brake, then slam back on the pedal to accelerate through the turn is exhilarating — especially when using a racing wheel setup. But after every 2-3 minute thrill ride the reality sets in that you can see most everything there is to see here in just a few hours of time.
And in terms of VR support, a lot of the issues start and stops with the poor performance. There is noticeably bad pop-in on lots of textures outside the track such as spectators and trees, not to mention low quality distant shadows. I could be wrong, but I also don’t think it ever lasted more than a continuous minute on-end with 90 frames-per-second. I kept experiencing dips and hiccups. Early on I even had a race crash the game back to desktop every time I launched it in VR so I had to re-boot the game in non-VR to complete it.
Racing Edge: Using A Wheel Peripheral
The majority of this review was conducted using a racing wheel and pedal set, specifically the Thrustmaster T300RS GT. For comparison I tried out an Xbox One controller and keyboard/mouse, but both simply pale in comparison to using an actual wheel peripheral. Not only does it significantly add to immersion when wearing a VR headset, but I found that I had much more accurate control over my vehicle and could take sharp turns and hard corners much more effectively. That being said, controller support does still feel quite good. Avoid playing with a keyboard/mouse at all costs.
Project CARS 3 VR Final Impressions
Project CARS 3 is a commendable effort to craft a racing game that can be enjoyed by anyone from the most casual of gamers to the most hardcore of racing simulation fanatics. Ultimately though, I don’t think Slightly Mad Studios really succeeded. The end result is a game that’s inferior in virtually every way to Project CARS 2 in terms of authentic racing simulation and when compared to more arcade-style games like The Crew 2, Forza Horizon, GRID, or even DriveClub VR, rest in peace, Project Cars 3 struggles to keep up. By trying to create the racing game for everyone, the developers ended up making the racing game that’s not really targeted at anyone. But if you do lean more on the arcade side of the spectrum, you’re likely to find quite a lot to love here.
Project CARS 3 is available right now with VR support on PC. You can find the game on Steam starting at $59.99. Project CARS 3 can be played with or without a VR headset on PC using either keyboard/mouse, gamepad, or steering wheel controls. The majority of this review was conducted using an Oculus Rift S and a Thrustmaster T300RS GT wheel and pedals set.
The game is also available on PS4 and Xbox One without VR support. For more details on Project CARS 3 in general, check out the official website.
HTC CEO Yves Maitre has resigned, citing personal reasons, in just less than a year since he took over the role.
Maitre assumed the position of CEO in late September 2019, around a month before HTC launched its latest consumer-focused PC VR headset, the Vive Cosmos. Maitre moved to HTC from French phone company Orange, and at the time HTC emphasized “5G and XR” as areas of potential growth.
In an interview with Bloomberg shortly after the launch of the Cosmos, Maitre said that he wasn’t sure that “the target is to beat Oculus.” The comments preceded a year where HTC has increasingly pivoted toward the enterprise market and shifted focus away from consumers.
Now, just shy of a year since Maitre became CEO, he has resigned from the position for personal reasons. Here’s a statement on the resignation issued by HTC:
HTC Corp., the global leader in smartphone and virtual reality innovation, today announced that the strict international travel restrictions due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted the lives of millions as well as business globally, have had an impact on its CEO, Yves Maitre, in reconciling work and family. Today, the Board of Directors accepted Yves’ resignation for personal reasons. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors. The Company’s chairwoman, Cher Wang, has assumed the CEO position.
Cher Wang has been in the CEO before — she took over as CEO in 2015 from Peter Chou and stayed in the role until last year. Yves Maitre took over from Wang in September of last year.
A VR development studio created a tool to measure the field of view of PC-capable VR headsets and a database to show the results.
The tool, made with Unreal Engine, supports SteamVR and Oculus Rift on Windows. It was created by iNFINITE Production, based in Prague. Its past VR projects include Experience: Colorblindness, which simulates what it’s like to live with poor color vision.
“Field of View” refers to how much of your vision a VR headset’s display system covers. A wide field of view immerses you in a virtual environment, whereas narrow field of view can feel more like using binoculars.
Human field of view is somewhere around 210°×150°.
The field of view of a given headset is notoriously difficult to consistently measure, because it actually changes depending on the distance between your eye and the lens. That distance is determined by the shape of your face and the fit of the headset.
Some headsets like Valve’s Index allow the lenses to be moved closer independently of the rest of the hardware.
iNFINITE’s webpage lists the average of the uploaded values for each headset, revealing what could be the most complete field of view measurements yet:
Pimax Vision 8K X
156°×104°
Pimax 5K+
140°×101°
Valve Index
108°×105°
Samsung Oddysey+
103°×107°
HP Reverb (G1)
98°×92°
Oculus Quest
96°×94°
HTC Vive Cosmos
95°×86°
HTC Vive (2016)
86°×86°
Oculus Rift (2016)
86°×86°
Oculus Rift S
86°×85°
iNFINITE claims the database now has 70 samples. Over time as this sample size increases, we should get a clearer picture of the typical field of view these headsets offer in real use.
We’ll also be curious to see how Oculus Quest 2 and HP Reverb G2 rank in this dataset. Will Facebook & HP deliver more immersion? We’ll let you know when we find out.
Facebook researchers are investigating AR glasses featuring “hear-through” technology powered by specialized in-ear monitors for “enhanced hearing.”
The technology “would be able to recognize different types of events happening around you: people having conversations, the air conditioning noise, dishes and silverware clanking. Then using contextualized AI, your AR glasses would be able to make smart decisions, like removing the distracting background noise — and you’d be no more aware of the assistance than of a prescription improving your vision,” according to Facebook.
The work with beamforming, adaptive noise cancellation, and machine learning is described as “an area we’re just starting to explore” with the goal of enabling “perceptual superpowers” like “enhanced hearing.” One of the possible paths would use the “pattern of your head and eye movements” to “automatically enhance the sounds you want to hear and dim unwanted background noise.”
Safe Use Questions
Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Facebook Reality Labs Research, responded to questions in a briefing call with journalists related to how the use of this technology might affect social norms. Could a personal conversation at a restaurant table be heard by a nearby AR-enhanced patron? Would the nearby patrons ever know their conversation was heard by someone else? And would that conversation be less likely to happen in the first place if people knew mediated hearing was more common than it is at the time of this writing?
Abrash and Ravish Mehra, the audio team lead at FRL Research, gave a few examples of some potential mitigation strategies that might be employed to limit the range of this feature in the future. Mehra explained in a prepared statement they intend “to put guardrails around our innovation to do it responsibly, so we’re already thinking about potential safeguards we can put in place…for example, before I can enhance someone’s voice, there could be a protocol in place that my glasses can follow to ask someone else’s glasses for permission.”
Another line of research at Facebook may explore the use of personalizing audio with a head-related transfer function (HRTF) which accounts for the individual shape of your ears, potentially using an “algorithm that can approximate a workable personalized HRTF from something as simple as a photograph of their ears.” A Facebook representative added “the audio research team is considering several novel approaches to scaling the capture of people’s unique HRTFs.”
A Facebook blog post explains:
“Another issue the team is keenly aware of is the capture of sensitive ear data, both in the research phase and beyond. Today, before any data we collect is made available to researchers, it is encrypted and the research participant’s identity is separated from the data such that it is unknown to the researchers using the data. Once collected, it’s stored on secure internal servers that are accessible only to a small number of researchers with express permission to use it. The team also has regular reviews with privacy, security, and IT experts to make sure they’re following protocol and implementing the appropriate safeguards…”
AR vs. VR And In-Ear vs. Open-Ear
Facebook Reality Labs Research In-Ear Monitors (IEM) audio prototype.
Mehra explained in the call that different audio-based modifications might be accomplished in future AR or VR-based sound delivery systems depending whether they feature in-ear or open-ear designs.
An open-ear audio design like the Valve Index or Oculus Quest, for instance, wouldn’t necessarily work well for the cancellation of sounds from the physical world, the researchers explained.
In-ear designs like Apple’s AirPods Pro might end up being a better fit for some use cases. They already feature “Active Noise Cancellation” and “Transparency mode” to switch between “depending on how much of your surroundings you want to hear.” Another in-ear design, Google’s Pixel Buds 2, offers an experimental feature called “attention alerts” that would lower volume when they detect a baby crying, a dog barking, or an emergency vehicle siren.
Facebook researchers, meanwhile, are using “prototype in-ear monitors” or “IEMs” which they say “can deliver the full experience of auditory superpowers. This lets us enhance the right sounds for you and dim others, making sure that what you really want to hear is clear even in loud background noise.”
“Our IEMs also feature perceptually transparent hear-through,” Audio Experiences Lead Scott Selfon explained in a prepared statement, “making it sound like I have nothing in my ears, and letting me safely hear the entire world around me.”
When asked if this same research could be applied to dynamically lower the sound from a VR headset to better hear someone talking to you in the same physical room, Abrash said he hadn’t thought of that before but it’s a “great idea.”
Future Aims
Facebook aims to make “stylish AR glasses” and pitches the research as being “focused on transforming communication for everyone, everywhere” while citing Johns Hopkins research suggesting one in five people have hearing loss and many “don’t use hearing aids for a variety of reasons including expense, social stigma, discomfort, and lack of reliability.”
“I’ve been wearing hearing aids since I was a little girl,” Technical Program Manager Amanda Barry said, in a prepared statement. “The ability to help people stay connected with their families as they get older and their hearing fades — that’s really pretty exciting.”
Facebook is also researching what it calls LiveMaps (an updating map of the physical world “with shared and private components”) and Codec Avatars (hyper-realistic personalized representations of human bodies) and either or both might be used in conjunction with the audio research. Overall, Facebook researchers seem set on a path to “defy distance” by providing “true social presence.”
“The only reason we need for virtual sound to be made real is so that I can put a virtual person in front of me and have a social interaction with them that’s as if they were really there,” Facebook Research Lead Philip Robinson explained in a prepared statement. “And remote or in person, if we can improve communication even a little bit, it would really enable deeper and more impactful social connections.”
Facebook recently launched a beta for its Horizon social network and added a new requirement that all future Facebook VR headsets be connected to a Facebook account. Starting in October, Facebook will be implementing new terms of service which state that “when people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable. For this reason, you must: Use the same name that you use in everyday life” when you’re using Facebook.
Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale serves up four-player cooperative action on Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift today. Should you grab your apron? Find out in our Cook-Out review!
You might not hear it over the racket of rhythm games, but VR has a secret love affair with the cooking genre. It seems like every other week we’re hearing about a new indie hopeful, looking to claim the crown as a proper Overcooked replacement for headsets. Of all of them, though, Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale comes closest to earning a Michelin Star. Or four of them.
Cook-Out’s four-player cooperative campaign deftly handles the delicate balance between hectic fun and overwhelming mess. The objective is simple; orders come in and you must stack the right ingredients in the right order, serving them up before diners get impatient. In execution, of course, it’s anything but basic, getting players to shout over each other as the orders mount, time runs thin and, in all likelihood, something catches on fire.
But, more importantly, Cook-Out is a thoughtful, VR-first take on what’s become a staple party game formula, switching out mad dashes across kitchen floors for expedited physicality. Onions must be chopped, dishes scrubbed and plates aligned with both precision and haste. These are all actions that would be allocated a simple button press in a traditional game, but take on a hurried new form in VR. Things start out reassuringly manageable, with simple orders that are quickly handled. Level-by-level, though, new and more chaotic elements are introduced.
New types of customers bring increasingly stressful demands. Werewolves, for example, order huge piles of food that make filling an order a war of attrition, while cats require their sandwiches to be perfectly aligned, getting you to place ingredients on plates with care. Eventually, you’ll encounter raccoons that are out to steal food and unlock dish-cleaning and food-grilling mechanics. It isn’t long, then, before the game reaches the desired level of riotous anarchy, with tensions and voices rising, escalating into shrieks of panicked commands and cries of concern as timers run down. Every time it threatens to tip over into oblivion, though, there are time-saving potions that speed up chopping or washing to help you out – a handy if slightly inelegant solution to sudden difficulty curves.
Cook-Out Review –Comfort
Cook-Out is a largely stationary game with no real comfort issues. Any movements you make are physical and you can even adjust the height of the workspace to your liking.
What works best in VR is the silly stuff. It’s hilarious to toss toasted bagels onto plates, steal ingredients from other players and fire projectile ketchup across the room. To that point, it’s a shame more gold hasn’t been mined by adding more cooking elements beyond chopping and grilling, too. Flipping pancakes, spit-roasting meat or peeling vegetables – there are plenty of other interactions that could have made Cook-Out all the richer. As it stands, though, there is a hearty recipe for fun here.
Developer Resolution Games is no stranger to the joys of casual VR multiplayer of course, but what places Cook-Out above last year’s also-enjoyable Acron is structure. There’s not just a set of party modes in place here but a full, multi-hour campaign across three main areas with a healthy number of levels, each with three separate stages to perfect. Cook-Out doesn’t risk falling into the same trap so many other VR party games do – a fun core mechanic with no longevity to anchor it – there’s plenty of reasons to return here to see the story through to completion. And, after that, there are the expected extras like an Endless Mode to enjoy too.
It’s best seen – and most cohesive – with four players, but you can make do with a party of two or three. Solo-play with an AI companion is an option but rather defeats the point a bit.
Even with all these elements, what Cook-Out doesn’t quite have is the erratic unpredictability of Overcooked, a game where new environmental designs twisted the core mechanics on their head on a routine basis. Different types of customers might have different demands for their dishes, but each still requires the same basic process, and I can’t help but wonder what kind of game Cook-Out would be if its physics adhered more closely to the laws of nature, having you accidentally slice the tops off of ketchup bottles or maybe even making sure you don’t catch your own fingers when using a knife. Needless to say, there’s plenty to build on from this solid foundation.
Where it does match its clear inspirations is its aesthetic. Cook-Out boasts a fun fairytale of a kitchen, with appreciated details fleshing out the world around you. Werewolves overbear on you menacingly with hungry grins, while rabbits straight out of Wonderland impatiently wait on food. As you play you’ll unlock new cosmetics for your knife, leading up to a disturbingly demonic cleaver.
Cook-Out Review Final Impressions
Cook-Out has all the ingredients for a good time in social VR, then, even if it isn’t especially original. A hectic, multi-hour campaign anchors some of the most engaging, demanding and frantically brilliant party gameplay you’ll find in VR. I wish it had gone deeper with its best ideas and embraced the platform more holistically, but you won’t find a better tribute to Overcooked anywhere else inside a headset. Compliments to the chef.
For today’s livestream we’re playing STRIDE, which is basically like Mirror’s Edge VR! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.
A few years ago developers were terrified of letting you move using analog sticks in VR. Now, we’ve got entire teams of developers making games about free-running and wall-jumping across rooftops like in STRIDE. Crazy time to be alive, right? This should be a ton of fun!
Our STRIDE livestream is planned to start at about 11:30 AM PT today and will last for around an hour or so, give or take, depending partially on how long my small toddler child decides to behave. We’ll be hitting just our YouTubeand I’ll lbe streaming from an Oculus Rift S two touch controllers. I’m flying solo on this one, pinning chat behind me to check periodically.
You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely. Let’s get ready to go!
