‘Oculus Go’ doesn’t require a phone or PC.
Oculus’ biggest event of the year, Oculus Connect 4, kicked off Wednesday morning with an opening keynote reveal from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
The Facebook owned Oculus unveiled on stage their first standalone VR headset. Dubbed Oculus Go, the VR headset is a all-in one mobile computer, which means you don’t need to slide in your phone or plug it into a beefy gaming PC. There’s also no cords. The best part of it all, Oculus Go is priced at $199 and will be available in 2018.
The most accessible VR headset yet according to Zuckerberg, Oculus Go is part of Oculus’ larger goal of getting one billion consumers into virtual reality. “We have to make sure virtual reality is accessible to everyone and we have to work both on affordability and quality,” said Zuckerberg.
Oculus Go expands on the reach of apps developers are already building for the Gear VR mobile headset in that, if you’re a developer building for Gear VR, you’re also building for Oculus Go.
With elastic straps and a foam layer face pad that is reminiscent of Google’s Daydream View headset, Oculus is touting comfortability to their more affordable Go headset. Oculus Go is said to have the same FOV but with better glare reduction over their current Oculus Rift headset. Built in spatial audio keeps you from having to bother with cumbersome audio headphones.
Oculus ships Go headset developer kits in November with a consumer launch in 2018.
In addition to announcing the Oculus Go, Oculus shared an update on their 6DOF Santa Cruz headset. Revealed at Oculus Connect last year, the Santa Cruz prototype’s next phase this year includes delivering hand presence with two positionally tracked controllers. An industry first, this means the inside-out tracked headset will have Santa Cruz controllers that also work with the same sensors, expected to achieve a large controller tracking volume to make movement more natural and unrestricted.
