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Oculus has spent years selling virtual reality fans on an ecosystem of diverse products. Last year, at the Oculus Connect developer conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced a family of headsets for different types of virtual reality: the low-end Oculus, the only one in the world. Oculus Rift and the mid-range Oculus Quest. This year, Oculus's message was clearer, but no less clear: there is only one headset that counts for consumers, it's the quest.
Until now, Oculus has clearly explained why people should have these three flagship devices at home. (The Samsung Gear VR still exists, but Oculus admits it's almost dead.) Oculus Go is cheaper and has its own ecosystem of video-based applications and simple games, but it does not offer tracking. complete position or virtual hands. The Rift is aimed at people who want virtual reality without limiting the size or consumption of a game. The Quest is the stab at Oculus against "traditional" VR. It has capabilities similar to those of the Rift, but it does not require the purchase of additional equipment.
But this week's Oculus Connect speech compromises this framework. First, Zuckerberg has revealed Oculus Link – a new feature that will allow people to hook up their Oculus Quest on a computer to play Rift games. "Your quest is essentially a flaw now, too," he says. Next, Oculus product manager Stephanie Lue said that 50 Oculus Go applications were being migrated to the Quest, with free upgrades (until the end of the year) for Oculus Go buyers .
Oculus has also effectively introduced a new exclusive controller to Quest: your hands. An update next year will add finger tracking features without a controller to built-in Quest cameras. This will be an early experimental feature and probably never a main interface for the current generation of Quest. But it should allow users to perform simple interactions even without Oculus Touch controllers and play games specifically designed for fine finger movements.
Notably, Oculus did not even suggest that this happen, although the Rift S also uses built-in cameras. Oculus claimed that the Rift S is a "reference standard" for virtual reality games. In an interview with The edgeJason Rubin, head of Facebook's special gaming initiatives, suggested that the Rift S remained in some respects an upscale alternative to Quest. "Rift S has an extra sensor and allows better tracking of Quest. There are good reasons to buy the Rift S, "he said.
This does not change the fact that Oculus is launching for the first time a great new feature on its mid-range headphones. Beyond this sensor, the Rift S does not offer many other high-end options. Like Devindra Hardawar to Engadget pointed out, it has a lower resolution screen and a refresh rate barely higher than the Quest.
If Oculus Link really works and if you are a normal person who likes to play or watch virtual reality experiences at home, there is basically no reason to buy anything other than a Quest. The Oculus Go has considerably more capacity, which makes it easy to earn $ 200 more. (Almost nobody Needs a VR headset right now. So, if you have one, it's worth it to spend more on something that expands your options so much.) Even if you primarily use VR with a gaming PC, the Quest adds many features to a Rift S for 399 $ price. And this is clearly the area where Oculus is currently focusing its efforts. It might be quicker to get future updates as well.
It is in the quest that Oculus has the greatest benefit because there is nothing like it on the market. Oculus' former flagship product, the Rift, has several major competitors, including Valve, which surpassed the Rift with its high-end Index headset. But the biggest US competitor of the Quest is the next HTC Vive Cosmos, which has not been tested yet. Nor is it a fully wireless headset yet; it's just a product attached with a wireless adapter.
It's in this quest that Oculus focuses its efforts in the near future. During his speech at Connect, Oculus Senior Scientist, Michael Abrash, discussed new prototypes of "half-domes" with lighter designs and expanded fields of view. But he said that the next-generation VR would arrive "in a short time."
This is not to say that Oculus will abandon the Rift S or Oculus Go for the moment. If you're in a video arcade, arcade, gaming studio or other company that has no interest in mobile virtual reality, the Rift S is perfect. Its ring design is also more comfortable than the Quest. As a result, people who spend a lot of time in virtual reality prefer it. (Again, this assumes that Link is really making the quest a proper substitute for the Rift.)
Likewise, Oculus Go is a good cheaper option for specific scenarios. More passive VR experiences have not been proven commercially viable, such as those that resemble games with manual and positional tracking. John Carmack, CTO of Oculus, said this week that "we just had not stirred the pot properly" for content such as virtual reality photography and video, noting that no one had found "the instagram of immersive media ". an essential part of training modules in companies such as Walmart, where a rich user experience is less important than disseminating essential ideas.
But these two devices seem to aim to push the advanced markets that Oculus can not capture with a single helmet, without constituting a range of products equally attractive (although different). This makes sense because Oculus has always taken a risk by releasing many different VR headsets. Today, these versions look like Oculus and constitute a smooth access ramp to the quest – and, in retrospect, this could have been a wise decision.
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