Oculus Quest Review – IGN

By Whitson Gordon

Virtual reality is a total explosion, but so far, it was not very accessible to normal people. The HTC Vive, for example, was launched at $ 800 and required a beefy gaming PC, and the Oculus Rift also needed a PC. The Oculus Quest changes this by offering a fully self-contained headset with room-scale tracking for $ 400, wireless, and gaming computer needed. And of course, it is accompanied by some demotions of PC-based systems, but all in all, the Quest is very fun and brings real virtual reality to a whole new audience.

Oculus Quest – Design and Features

The $ 400 quest looks like a minor update to the Rift, from a design point of view. You get a non-embellished VR headset with rounded corners and four sensors on the plastic faceplate that follow your movements for six degrees of freedom. This contrasts sharply with the Oculus Go, which – although it also acts as an Oculus standalone helmet – is a step backward in every respect. The Go offers only three degrees of freedom, allowing you to rotate, tilt and rotate your head, but does not follow your movements from one side to the other nor from top to bottom. Quest tracking is more like the current headsets of PCs than the mobile headsets of today, and the range of titles available is completely different. While he shares some titles with the Go, but he also shares some games with the Rift – though not all Rift titles support cross play with the Quest.

The rest of the helmet's body is covered with a durable fabric, with adjustable straps on the top and sides to allow you to wear it to the head. An Inter-Pupillary Distance (IPD) slider is located at the bottom left to allow you to adjust the lenses to your view and a volume toggle at the bottom right. The Quest has built-in speakers, so you do not necessarily need headphones, although I recommend them without hesitation. Headphone jacks are located at its left and right sides, but you will need to use your own buttons as none are included in the box.

Unlike the original Rift, which used fluffy foam around the eyepieces, the Quest uses a rough cloth, which I found a little irritating to the face – although it may be that it will soften the use. The Quest also comes with a spacer of glasses that you can add between the padding and the helmet if you wear glasses.

The guts of the Quest are powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor running an Android operating system, and each eye has a resolution of 1600×1440 clocked at 72Hz. For comparison, this resolution is higher than that of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive original (1080×1200), but its refresh rate is lower (72Hz vs 90Hz on the Rift and Vive). This somewhat lessens the effect of the mosquito net door at the expense of a little finesse – although I have personally found the decrease barely noticeable.

Finally, the Quest comes with touch controllers working like the Rift, with two triggers on the handle, clickable joysticks and two thumb buttons. The tracking ring can also detect certain finger movements, allowing the Quest to see if you hold the forefinger or punch. I still find it a little awkward myself, but it's still impressive.

Oculus Quest – Configuration and Configuration

Configure Oculus Quest is a kid's game: just download the Oculus application on your phone, turn on the headset and follow the instructions on the screen. Before you start, you need a few steps, but these steps are incredibly simple: charge the headset with the included USB-C cable, connect it to your Wi-Fi network, insert AA batteries into the controllers, and so on. this. You will probably have to wait five minutes for the headset to update its firmware, but once that is done, you are ready to put it on.

The helmet setting is a bit confusing at first, as it tends to sit on top of your head when it is out of the initial state. As a result, I and other testers at IGN discovered that it would slip too easily on our face, blurring the graphics of the game. I later discovered that the key was to undo the Velcro on the top and pull the back of the strap all the way down the head for it to wrap around the bottom of my skull. Once I did that, it stayed a lot safer.

The Quest recommends a 6.5-foot 6.5-foot space for play-level play, but you can get away with something smaller if you need it (do not break any lights). Oculus also recommends using the device indoors – probably for security reasons, but also potentially for tracking. No external sensor or base station is required as the system is completely autonomous. Instead, the Quest uses built-in headset sensors to track your movements in the room by "seeing" the world around you. The headset will warn you if there is a tracking problem because there is not enough light in the room or something like that.

Once you have donned the headset, you will see the real world through its sensors, which will allow you to "draw" the boundaries of your game in the room using your controller. This is incredibly fast and intuitive, and the quest will recognize and remember your play space next time. This means that once you have done all this initial setup, you will not have to do it again if you do not bring the quest elsewhere.

Oculus Quest – Quality of the game and graphics

The quest menu is quite minimal and easy to navigate – just point your controllers to an icon and press to click. You can download new games from the app on your phone or from the VR menu, and switch between standing games and scale of a room by simply pressing a button (which is great if you play somewhere other than your main VR space). Oculus Touch controllers are still comfortable, and while I personally prefer the simpler triggers of Vive, the Oculus finger tracking and compression buttons provide a little more immersion once you get used to it.

Gaming on the Quest is – just – awesome. As the owner of HTC Vive, I was shocked to find that the Quest felt … remarkably similar to its more expensive, PC-based competitor. Moving around the room posed no significant tracking problems, such as stuttering or floating hands. In fact, even Expert + Beat Saber players say that Quest tracking is responsive enough for them, which means it should be enough for just about everyone. Playing virtual reality without cables is amazing, and as I mentioned in my article on the Vive wireless adapter, it's something you have to experiment in order to appreciate it. I had never felt that virtual reality cables were annoying until I experimented with virtual reality in a standalone state, and now it's hard to go back.

That said, there are some minor degradations here, especially in graphical fidelity. Space Pirate Trainer, for example, shows a lot more color stripes and aliasing on the Quest than on the Vive, and although the game is certainly no less fun, the owners of Rift and Vive will certainly notice some degradation . (He also stuttered a bit at launch, but seemed pretty smooth after about 30 seconds).

Although the Quest's screen has a higher resolution than the Rift and Vive, many games can actually run at lower quest resolutions to optimize for the less powerful Snapdragon chip. The developers of Beat Saber pointed out these difficulties in an interview with Ars Technica, saying they had to refuse certain graphic effects (like fog) for the game to work properly. Again, this is not a big deal, but it's noticeable, and it can prevent some games that require a lot of graphics from appearing in the Quest.

But honestly, I'm willing to neglect that for the transparency of the quest. There is a power button on the side, but I never even had to use it: when I highlighted the headset, it automatically turned on the eyes and left me where I had been left so that I can play right away. I have not yet experienced a virtual reality headset that's so easy to use. Usually, they make a few clicks or taps on your PC or phone to get things started, and sometimes – on my computer, at least – I'll have to restart Steam or do something stupid for Vive to work. But with the quest, you just have to tie your head and leave – no clicks, no wires, no nothing. The transition is incredibly fluid and I can not exaggerate how pleasant the experience is. Although I know that the Quest is technically a downgrade compared to PC-based systems, the total experience feels as an upgrade because it's so easy to use.

The battery life for VR is hard to test (because it's extremely tiring to be in the headset for as long), but I can say it was a little better than expected: after about an hour I was generally between 50 and 75 years old. %, which means you can probably get 2 to 3 hours of play (depending on what you play). It does not seem like much, but frankly, I need a break anyway, and that's when I put everything back on the charging cable. It could be annoying if you lead a group of friends via virtual reality demos, however.

And at the end of the day, the best VR games like Beat Saber and Space Pirate Trainer do not need graphics perfection to be fun. If you are a fan of virtual reality wanting to play demanding and large-scale games such as Skyrim VR, the Quest may not be the device for you. But for all the others, the Quest changes the game, ultimately making virtual reality accessible to the masses.

One last note, for Oculus, is the list of launch titles for Oculus Quest, although the company notes that some of these changes may change before its launch on May 21st.

• Angry Birds VR: The Island of Pigs, Resolution Games
• Apex Construct, Fast travel games
• Apollo 11, Immersive education to virtual reality
• Bait!, Resolution Games
• Ballista, High voltage software
• Beat Saber, Beat the games
• Beta Bigscreen, Large-screen VR
• Bogo, Oculus
• FireBaobab
• VR Box, Fit XR
• Creed, Survios
• Dance CentralHarmonix
• Dead and buried 2, Oculus Studios
• Drop Dead: Duel Strike, Pixel Toys
• Electronauts, Survios
• Epic Roller Coasters, Games B4T
• Face your fears 2Turtle Rock Studios
• First contact, Oculus
• Fruit Ninja VR, Half-brick
• Guided Tai ChiCubicles Ninjas
• I'm waiting for you to die, Schell Games
• Job simulatorOwlchemy Labs,
• Journey of the godsTurtle Rock Studios
• Keep talking and no one explodes, Steel case games
• Foam, Polyarc
• National Geographic VR Explore, Force Field VR
• Hiking Nature, Greener games
• Ocean RiftDr. Llyr Ap Cenydd
• Oculus Browser, Oculus
• Oculus Gallery, Oculus
• Oculus TV, Oculus
• Oculus Video, Oculus
• Orbus VR, Orbus Online
• PokerStars VR, LuckyVR
• Fury Racket: Table Tennis, Pixel Edge Games
• Recording room, Against gravity
• Robo reminder, Drifter Entertainment
• RUSH, Binary mill
• Point of ShadowCoatsink
• Skybox VR video player, Source Technology Inc
• Hacker Trainer Space, I-illusions
• Sport scramble, Frame Studios
• SUPER HOT VR, THE SUPERHOT team
• The exorcist: Legion VR, Wolf & Wood Developer, Fun Train Editor
• Thumper, Bave
• Tilt brush, Google
• UltrawingsBit Planet Games
• Vader Immortal, ILMxLab
• Virtual Office, Virtual Desktop, Inc.
• Virtual Reality, Tender claws
• VR Karts, Point of view games
• HRVhat, HRV 53. Wander, Parkline Interactive

Buying Guide

the Oculus Quest will be on sale May 21 for $ 399. You can register to be notified when pre-orders are posted on the Oculus website.