Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled the Oculus Quest, a standalone wireless VR headset with $399 price tag that looks to usher in the next age of virtual reality.
The Oculus Quest combines the portability of the $199 Oculus Go and some of the capabilities of the $399 Oculus Rift, which requires to be powered by a high-end PC.
Meet The Oculus Quest: The Future Of Virtual Reality?
At the Oculus Connect conference in San Francisco, Zuckerberg unveiled the Oculus Quest, which is a VR headset that does not need wires, external sensors, or a PC.
The Oculus Quest, which will be released next spring, will carry a $399 price tag that is double that of the company's other standalone VR headset, the Oculus Go. However, compared to the $199 Oculus Go, the Oculus Quest offers a much better virtual reality experience.
The new Oculus VR headset provides better position tracking through its four wide-angle cameras, without the need to place sensors around a room. Users will be able to move around a space of up to 4,000 square feet while wearing the Oculus Quest, which will come with handheld motion controllers once it ships next year.
The Oculus Quest pulls users into a VR world much closer, but still not equal, to what the Oculus Rift offers. The two VR headsets carry the same price, but it should be noted that using the Oculus Rift requires several wires attached to a high-end PC, which by itself may cost at least $1,000.
Oculus VR head Hugo Barra said that the Oculus Quest is "made for games." Once the VR headset is released, it will support more than 50 games, including popular titles such as climbing simulator The Climb, adventure-puzzle game Moss, and shooter Robo Recall.
What's Next For VR?
The standalone, wireless VR headset has long been considered by Facebook as an important milestone in its ambitions for virtual reality, to encourage mainstream adoption. The technology is moving toward future VR headsets that will only need 1 USB-C cable to connect to powerful PCs, but until then, standalone, wireless headsets will be more important to encourage more consumers to buy in.
Facebook's Oculus is not alone in the virtual reality space though. While some companies such as Magic Leap are not progressing as well as they would have hoped, other big names such as Apple are also in the mix, with the iPhone maker expected to launch a standalone wireless headset that combines virtual reality and augmented reality by 2020.
