Oculus Quest (formerly Santa Cruz) has been officially revealed, launching Spring 2019 for $400. We’ve got our first up close look at the newly refined headset.

Update (3:00 PM PT): In a previous version of this article, it was stated that Oculus Quest and Oculus Go shared the same resolution. This is incorrect, and has been corrected in the body of the article.

Upon entering the press room at Oculus Connect this morning, three display stands stood off to the side of the room. Each under glass, the Oculus Go and Oculus Rift flanked the third display stand which was covered by a black cloth: the international tech conference signal for “we’re about to reveal something special.”

As Oculus Quest was revealed, the cloth came off and we got our first up close look at the new high-end standalone headset from Oculus.

Photo by Road to VR

Of course, we’ve seen Santa Cruz before (the prototype that Quest is based on), but careful inspection of Quest shows a number of changes, some obvious and some subtle.

First and foremost, this is the first time the company has shown the finished controllers, which now include thumbsticks and buttons rather than a trackpad. Oculus is straight up calling these ‘Touch’ controllers (even though they’re a little different from the desktop version), since they have all the same inputs, including the ‘hand triggers’ (for grabbing), which work so well on the Rift version of the controllers.

Photo by Road to VR

Oculus says the move from trackpads to thumbsticks and buttons was based on overwhelming developer feedback; developers wanted a common input paradigm between Rift and Quest in order to make it easier to make games work on both platforms.

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The design of the headset has also been polished to be ready for consumers, now with a similar cloth exterior to the Rift, some more subtle curves, and improved audio (with speakers hidden in the headband), which is said to have more bass than before.

Photo by Road to VR

We also get a look at the final ports, buttons, and adjustments on the headset, and can spot a power button, USB-C port for charging, and 3.5mm headphone jack if you want to use your own headphones.

On the bottom of the headset there’s an IPD adjustment slider (which changes the spacing between the lenses) and volume buttons. And it appears that there is a microphone on the front top of the headset, possibly for noise-canceling against another mic hidden on the bottom.

Photo by Road to VR

Oculus confirmed that Quest is using the same lenses as Oculus Go, which they say are their best to date. Although it’s using a 1,600 × 1,440 resolution per-eye, which is different from the LCD display used in Go, which has a 1,280 × 1,440 per-eye resolution. Despite this, we’re expecting more or less the same ~100 degree field of view, although we’re awaiting confirmation on those details.

We’ll be going hands-on with Quest soon to see how it fares when put to the test in a live setting.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Sibbo

    Interesting price point. Thought given the extra hardware included was expecting it to be higher. Makes the original rift look a little expensive in comparison. Interested to see what performance can be squeezed out of this. Could finally get great VR to the masses. The rift is great when you have everything setup but tripping over wired and having a beefy pc makes it a hard sell for many.

    • JJ

      Yeah, but the original one had 2 cameras and a xbox one controller, so the hardware included is maybe less on the new one?

      • Justos

        No, the original box had 1 camera and no touch controllers.

  • Joseph Elwell

    You list the Quest as having 1,600 × 1,440 per-eye resolution. I believe the Oculus Go has a resolution of 1,280 × 1,440 per eye. So probably not the same LCD display as the Go. I got that resolution from this article:
    https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-go-review-standalone-vr-priced-for-the-masses/

  • kontis
    • MosBen

      Nice catch, and…damn.

    • impurekind

      Is that good or bad?

      • SomeGuyorAnother

        Good that it’s better than the Go, bad that it’s not as good as it could have been (845). Standard was likely established last year, though, when they sent out the dev kits and didn’t want to change much afterwards.

        • Firestorm185

          So maybe an updated version in a year or two with new processors, then?

        • impurekind

          Well, I guess that’s in line with what we know, that you can basically make slightly cut-down versions of current Rift games for the Quest. And, thankfully, you can easily put any Quest games straight onto Rift with a single button press apparently.

    • Darshan

      Possible as if Xiaomi adds SD845 on phone that cost just $300 Price tag.. Why not it could be incorporated in $400 Standalone VR headset.. May be many reasons (like screen cost, cost of controllers, tooling expenses etc) Still i am hopeful the release version of Oculus Quest should be powered by SD845 as 845 is much more powerful than 835, also oculus is trying to bring games like Climb and Robo Recall to Quest than 845 is much better weapon of choice.

      • dk

        I am betting it will be using the SD835 that’s how they keep the price low …and when they say “rift like experiences” they mean whatever a phone can run that is sort of similar to the rift title
        it would be pretty cool if they have a second version with 128gb and SD845 for 550-600 …but if they were going to do that they would have announced it at this point

        • Darshan

          128 GB ok.. New platform with 2 different processor in each version is not ok. Developer will face nightmare to build properly working app for new platform in that case.

      • namekuseijin

        a phone has only 2 cameras, not as large a display, no lenses, no controllers, etc

      • OkinKun

        Price was the main concern, and the 845 added too much cost and not enough additional gains. They were able to add an active cooling fan to their 835 inside the headset, and that lets it run better than most phones with an 845, so might as well go for lower cost.

        • Darshan

          Love logical answers..and when reply comes with logic.. LOL you may be right.. In this case .. with oculus for right choice.

        • dz11

          Not enough additional gains? As well as being more powerful, the 845 is also 30% more power efficient than the 835. So battery life would see a big improvement. Oculus will lose sales if they are stingy with the processor.

    • they probably removed it because it’s not final. Actually i’m sure of it.

    • dsadas

      pfff… they could have went $499 and put a snapdragon 845. When johnny quest is released there will already be phones that will have 855. Very disapointing.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        But the 845 costs much more than a 835, and I really think the $499 will be close to productioncosts with maybe a $50 profit (max)..

      • OkinKun

        They didn’t need too, and this is cheaper for average consumers. They’ve got an active cooling fan on their 835 inside the headset, and that allows it to run better than most phones with an 845.

  • Bob

    “that probably means that Quest is using the same LCD display as Go ”

    Shame. Was hoping they went the OLED route but if that were the case then the price point probably would have jumped up closer to the $500 target. Meh so it uses the same fast switch LCD as the Go then……and there goes the blacks and great colors..

    • OkinKun

      I don’t think that’s accurate/possible, the Go uses 1 panel, the Quest has 2, since it has an IPD slider. They’re certainly different panels I would think. And frankly, I don’t notice half the issues with the Go pannel, that I notice on my Rift. lol So I’m not worried about the quality of the screen.. You can’t judge that by the technology name, they still manage to find good screens for VR latencies and such.

      • Rogue Transfer

        They carefully explained in the keynote that it’s a ‘lens spacer’ adjuster. As opposed to moving separate screens. That suggests it’s a single panel(not confirmed, AFAIK). This would fit in with the reduced price, as it requires half the driving ICs for a single display.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      appearantly the Quest is usind OLED displays.

      • Bob

        Yeah Ben cleared that up in another comment of his. THANK GOD.

  • Ian Shook

    I think this is a good step in the right direction for VR. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s right.

    • paratay

      It’s f-ing pathetic you retard. It’s going back in every level you trol

      • VRgameDevGirl

        Wow. Just wow.

      • emanresu

        That’s a really nice, sensible, calm and well thought out reply. Congratulations!

        • nebošlo

          He’s right, though, this is definitely not where VR should be at this point. At least not as a flagship product. They should be iterating the tethered Rift with higher FOV/res and wireless, and have this as a 2nd offering.

          • Ian Shook

            They sort of are though. This is their half-way product while they sort out the details on their more complicated and higher end “rift 2” headset.

          • care package

            We already have an idea how complicated. Auto adjusting lenses with eye tracking. Combine that with the new features Quest has. That’s easily a gen 2 product right there. Personally I don’t care about wireless for PCVR. I don’t like the cable, but I don’t want to wear extra shit either, or worry about battery life.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Yep, that’s why I think they should have also produced a PC-thetered version which could even be cheaper (as it doesn’t require a battery or a ‘hefty’ 835 soc).

          • Andrew Jakobs

            But then again, why not have the same kind of headset without the 385soc and thetered for PC, which would mean they could fully replace the current rift for even a much lower price (I would think rather $299 or something like that). I think that would sell really well as a PC VR headset as you don’t need the cumbersome setup anymore, and it’s quite in the consumer pricerange. Personally I think this is what the next consumer Rift upgrade should have been at this point in time. And have a real higher end upgrade with higher resolution displays and wider FOV as a next headset (when GPU’s are more capable of driving the headset with expected AAA visuals).

          • Ian Shook

            Honestly for me, the wireless aspect is huge. I have a rift, and my biggest gripe is the cord and being confined. So I guess what I’m saying is that a corded solilution would’ve been a detractor. Now, that being said, an OPTIONAL cord for high end wired gaming might’ve been a nice little feature for people like you.

        • nipple_pinchy

          This paratay guy has mental problems.

    • nipple_pinchy

      It actually is groundbreaking that we’re getting a standalone 6DOF headset for the cost of a console and after only 3 years of consumer VR. That’s crazy.

  • RJH

    Available in UK?

  • iThinkMyCatIsAFlea

    Think, before handing over money to Oculus/Facebook.

    Google Oculus Trump

    • Smokey_the_Bear

      Palmer isn’t even with the company anymore…So what’s your issue with them now? I personally don’t decide on what to buy based off the companies founders political leaning…if I did, I wouldn’t have Amazon Prime.

      • iThinkMyCatIsAFlea

        Palmer owns Facebook shares. Facebook own Oculus. Neither Facebook or Oculus fired Palmer for financing the alt-right Nimble America group.

        • Smokey_the_Bear

          Again…hardly anyone’s cares. A ton of right wing people own stock in a left wing company, and vise versa…because, you guessed it, Know One Cares.

          • iThinkMyCatIsAFlea

            I do.

          • Smokey_the_Bear

            Then you are part of the political divide trying to tear this country apart. Congratulations

          • F1ForHelp

            I think political discrimination is worse than racism at the moment so please don’t contribute to that.

          • iThinkMyCatIsAFlea

            Ok, I’ll just buy an Oculus/Facebook headset and their software, knowing that Palmer will profit, and, who knows, maybe he’ll finance another alt-right group, or maybe he’ll put the money into his border wall company, Anduril.

          • F1ForHelp

            Not wanting to benefit a stock because of a single person’s bad intentions is a little short sighted. A lot more completely normal people have shares and we definitely have no idea who they are to be able to judge what they’re going to do. I knew someone personally who had a really bad day when Facebook’s stock went down after that whole data scandal.

            I have no opinion on Palmer because I’m not informed about the subject. My point is, supporting Oculus may benefit Palmer, but taking him down by decreasing facebook stock would have a lot of casualties.
            Edit: I know I deviated from what I was talking about in the previous post, but I believed this was more important to be informed about.

          • Engineer_92

            Ehhh, be careful with that

    • kontis

      This makes no sense. All the big guys there are leftists or anti-trump.
      Oculus has huge diversity program, heavily promoting inclusion of women and minorities in VR industry. You are barking up the wrong tree.

    • Ted Joseph

      Facts don’t lie.. They may open your eyes!!!

      TRUMP:

      2018 Q2 the US economy grew by 4.1%

      Trumps policies created 3.7 MILLION new jobs since his election

      Unemployment is at its lowest rate in almost 50 years

      Unemployment for Americans with disabilities are the lowest EVER

      In June 2018 600,000 new workers entered, or re-entered the workforce

      To continue this awesome momentum, Trumps administration launched “the pledge to America’s workers” – More than 100 companies, associations, and others have pledged to train or retrain over 4 MILLION American students!

      Trump just established a national council for the American worker which will develop a national workforce strategy which will deliver jobs and training to more than 11 MILLION students and workers

      With respects to North Korea:

      – Ceasing of missile testing

      – Ceasing of nuclear testing

      – The US has received the remains of 55 US service men

      – The US is in deep discussion about how to proceed with denuclearization

      Barak Obama = Horrific

      The only president in the history of the US to not reach 3% GDP growth for one entire year

      Lowest labor participation rate since 1970s

      Almost 95 million Americans out of the labor force

      Worst recovery since 1940s

      Lowest home ownership rate in 51 years

      Almost 13 million more Americans on food stamps

      Over 43 million living in poverty

      • Andrew McEvoy

        Oh seriously F O with that pro Trump bollocks in here mate. This forum is for vr only. Take your brainwashed propaganda somewhere else.

    • Jistuce

      Facebook’s CEO is quite vocally anti-Trump.
      And people of all political views own stock in the company.

    • ShiftyInc

      After 2 years still posting this junk. Try to google yourself at this point, that is even worse.

    • CURTROCK

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    • Andrew Jakobs

      oh no, not you again…..

  • impurekind

    The wireless is one of the big things VR needed to move forward, but I also think increasing the field of view is just as important, if not more so in most cases. I mean, I’m almost never gonna use a VR headset outside of my house anyway, so I’d personally rather just stick with it being tethered if it meant getting up to around that 200 degree field of view. But, it’s all coming in time. . . .

  • Smokey_the_Bear

    99%, that is the odds of me buying this. :p

    • Firestorm185

      same

  • REP

    100 degree FOV is trash. If this is all they can come up with for the last 2 or 3 years, then i guess they’re going to be stuck in the sand for awhile. Unless, you have Pimax of course.

    • paratay

      Yes agreed, even 140 is not enough. Forget Oculus, they have gone to the dark side pal.

      • Bob

        140 is about bearable but it’s much better than 100 degree that’s for damn sure.

    • dsadas

      it will be “good” if it had 100 degree FOV, but actually it only has 84 horizontal. Vive has 100 horizontal.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Except the Pimax needs at LEAST a 2080 to even drive the headset with medium settings.. AND it also has it’s problems, AND we still don’t know the actual consumer price, but it certainly will be $600+ (and at the moment that’s even without any external lighthouse basestations).

  • Slackar

    Those are some sexy layered plywood stands.

    • Eric Mcoo

      Plywood is the future.

      • Firestorm185

        plywood is life

    • Jistuce

      If the headset comes with the stands, it is a day-one purchase.

    • Mei Ling

      Shame they couldn’t have applied such sexy material to that already sexy looking plastic shell. Love the smell of plywood in the morning especially when it’s sitting right on your face!

  • Ted Joseph

    Zuckerburg stated that the Quest will have Oculus Rift comparable experience. This translates to a 835 AT LEAST!?

    • paratay

      He is a lying sack of shit period. nvidia/ amd might as well stop developing new cards… as it seems we have reached the pinnacle of VR graphics

  • paratay

    The entire VR industry is being raped by these sort of products and forced on to the gullible consumer as the ‘ future ‘ of VR. It is ‘ Virtual Reality ‘ people, NOT ‘ Virtual cartooney ‘ graphics. They are going backwards to say the least.

    We WANT 170+ FOV
    We WANT GOOD Lenses, for the love of god, DO F–ing Custom NON-Fresnel Lenses you have the cash Facebook
    We WANT TO USE OUR LATEST HARDWARE such as 2080Ti for Best possible CG

    On top of all that $400 is an insult and way too expensive.

    Zuckerberg only wants a mediocre HMD for the ‘general ‘ public so he can have the ability to shove facebook type SM up your you know what…

    • dk

      they can do both …..at least it’s not 3dof which is basically a demo sort of resembling vr
      …..if it had optional pc connection it would have been an incredible versatile device even without fov improvements

      • paratay

        FOV / Lenses improvement is an absolute must. PC connection would have been good certainly, again, would have, should have , could have but does not have and will not have unfortunately.

        • dk

          yes it is a must ….and they will have that at some point with the cv2
          this is targeting a different area of the market…. cheap all in one 6dof headset/controllers….it’s basically 1st gen all in one capable of real vr experiences

      • nebošlo

        They’re not doing both, though. That’s the problem.

        • dk

          both meaning 6dof all in one and desktop headset that will be updated ….but both in the same headset will be a win

    • Bob

      Everything you listed is basically PIMAX. Why wait for Oculus to do those things for you when you can settle with overpriced Chinese junk?

      • dsadas

        it’s not… pimax has huge distortions to the lenses, only LCD panels and only 2k per eye… which is 3k. Yes you heard… pimax 8k is 3k and yet they called it 8K.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Horizontally over both eyes it is 8K… there’s 4k and there’s 4K UHD, the latter also specifies the vertical resolution…

    • Andrew Jakobs

      And now get back to reality… You’re only a very minority, even among VR-enthousiasts.
      What you want still costs way in the thousands, and at this moment is for such a small market, it’s just not realisticly feasible.. Yes they will have better hardware in their labs..

      Looking at what’s in the Quest, I even think the $400 will be not much higher than what the actual production costs of the headset will be, maybe a $50 profit if that (and ofcourse they are entitled to have a bit of profit on the headset itself).

      You really should get your head out of your ass and start being realistic.
      If you think it doesn’t cost a lot of money to produce a headset like this, than I suggest you go and design and produce your own headset.. Hee, you think it’s that easy, so go ahead.

  • dk

    it might need a soft strap option for travel …or a case that fits the controllers charger and battery and stuff

  • Erik Middeldorp

    It’s got a usb-c port did you say? The same type of usb-c port used by the new VirtuaLink standard? How could they have that port on it and not make it plug-in-able to a PC?!

    • FireAndTheVoid

      I expect that it will be plug-in-able in order to update firmware and download games

    • Marcus

      Because the profit will come from the store, not the hardware?

  • MW

    As a consumer, and VR enthusiast, I’m totally not interested with this product. Period.

    • nipple_pinchy

      Then you don’t understand the market it will appeal to, which is everyone who isn’t an elitist and graphics wh#re which is… pretty much everyone. Quest will be the best thing ever for consumer VR.

  • fuyou2

    What a fucking joke!

  • fuyou2

    Why can’t I plug this to my PC? Oculus you guys are fucking absolute CUNTS..

  • HomeAudio

    I was saying it so many times… and I feel I need to repeat it one more time:

    THEY SHOULD WORK WITH NVIDIA/AMD ON HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION OF FOVETAL RENDERING!!!!!

    It is all what I am expecting from them right now. Only this one thing they should figure out properly right now (IN COOPERATION WITH NVIDIA/AMD!!!!).

    • Andrew Jakobs

      they are working on it, maybe you should read some previous news articles…

  • Lucidfeuer

    So yeah nope, that’s absolute crap: The Oculus Quest is basically an Oculus Go with slightly better resolution, mobile processor and positional tracking at double the price.

    Which would be okay if it wasn’t way more bulky, had that same unbearable unergonomic strap design, but most importantly and FFS had hybrid tethering (wireless and/or cabled)…is there a SINGLE reason why they didn’t implement the ONLY necessary functionality to make this product even considerable?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      You mean, considerable for YOU? but you aren’t the mainstream population they are targetting..

      • Lucidfeuer

        Good question. I formulated my opinion from both standpoint: the first part is my opinion, this is not something I have anything I want.

        The second part is a loose (didn’t think it trough more than that) opinion on why it will probably fail as a value proposition.

        The Oculus Go work by it’s sheer price and simplicity. The Oculus Quest is too much of an inbetween with bad execution.

  • Justos

    VR enthusiast are honestly some of the most entitled brats…

    When go and gearVR released, it wasn’t “real VR” because it didn’t have positional tracking. Fair enough.

    When Mirage released, its still not ‘real’ VR because with no controllers means no games.

    Now Quest comes, with the literal feature set of a Rift, in a 399$ package, all in one and standalone and you can only bash its graphics? Still not VR. Ok.

    Theres a reason Oculus is focusing on all in one and standalone at the moment, and you guys just aren’t it. Please be patient, a second gen Rift is well on its way.

    • Bob

      They want to sell these things and make a market out of VR and the best way to do that is to focus on what makes the product usable but an affordable price, right? A high resolution 4k per eye headset with super custom lenses that needs a high end graphics card to run and a cable running down from the headset isn’t gonna move units. Simple as that.

    • Marcus

      Not all of them. I’m a VR enthusiast waiting for the Quest since the first reports of early Santa Cruz prototypes. I’m happy now and only regret that it doesn’t come before this xmas ;-)

  • Callsign Vega

    We need a high end replacement for the woeful Rift, not new low end garbage.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      If they would release this one thetered, (so without the 835 soc) at the same or even lower price (as it wouldn’t have the 835 soc), it would be something we want at this moment.. Be realistic, even current highend GPU’s have problems driving the rift/vive with visuals we come to expect from AAA games.. Once midrange GPU’s ($200-$250 cards) are having enough power to drive the current rift/vive with everything on max, THEN we might really start looking at headsets with higher resolution displays.. And I’m talking about MAINSTREAM VR, highend VR is such a niche that no company would start investing in it at, except for businesses, and then expect headsets to costs a few thousand..
      I think a lot of people here just aren’t being realistic.

  • lloydbeatz

    Most important question: does it have room-scale? I’m not seeing sensor boxes.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Yes it has roomscale, it has inside-out tracking (and appearantly just as good as current oculus rift outside in tracking.

      • lloydbeatz

        thanks but that wasn’t really my question. I was asking if it had snap-turning. like can you be looking in the same direction in real space but have your view shift to the left or right in-game to reorient where you are looking.

  • ranyw

    I’m happy to hear that they are now using usb C for charging. Any idea if the controllers are rechargeable?

  • Jesusjones

    As an apartment dweller who’s accidently smashed fans when trying to throw discs in Echo Arena, being able to escape my PC room with VR sounds amazing.