May Your Quest to Obtain the New Oculus Be Successful

Oculus Goes Wireless; With Strings Still Attached

Oculus, and Facebook of course, have launched a competitor to the Valve Index VR headset which Jim wrote about earlier.  The Oculus Quest is a $400 Snapdragon 835 powered wireless VR headset which offers a combined resolution of 2880×1600 on the internal OLEDs.  Ars Technica was told you can expect well over two hours of gameplay before needing to charge via a USB Type-C cable which can get your battery up to ~75% in 30 minutes.  To test that they ran their OpenGL smartphone battery test and saw the Quest last for 175 minutes, with charging capabilities also as advertised.

It has the ability to map and store up to five play areas in it’s Guardian system, similar to SteamVR’s Chaperone, which will project a virtual wall into your field of view if you are approaching boundaries but still won’t be able to spot people running through it.  The Touch 2.0 controllers have been updated and performed admirably, though this does mean your first generation controllers are not compatible, Ars did notice they are the same as those which come with the Rift S, and will indeed work. 

Apart from the weight, 571g, Ars fell in love with the new Oculus, as you can read about in their full review.