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What sets Quest apart from Go and Rift, is that it's the first headset to carry Oculus Insight, a technology that optimizes device tracking capabilities. It uses the four ultra-wide angle sensors located at the front of the helmet as well as computer vision algorithms to help you track your position in real time. This gives the Quest six degrees of freedom – the ability to move in all directions in three-dimensional space (forward / backward, left / right, up / down) – without the use of external sensors. The Go, meanwhile, has only three DoFs, while the Rift needs several external sensors to have the same head tracking capabilities.
Insight has been in development for more than two years, and at the time it was referred to as Project Santa Cruz (Andrew Bosworth, hardware manager at Oculus, says Santa Cruz is more a name for technology than headphones, but admits that Is a bit of a nitpick naming). When I tried it for the first time in 2016, it was mostly a mix of circuits and wires. Last year, however, the product looked much closer to the quality of production and looks a lot like the material Quest I have tried today.
I used the quest with three different virtual reality experiences: Superhot VR, Dead and buried in a team environment, and Tennis Scramble Project, which was made especially for the conference. The mesh fabric on the front of the Quest looks a lot like the original Rift, and the shoulder straps on the side and on the top of the head are similar. There is an elastomer head on the back, which is a bit stiffer on the Quest than on the Rift, but it's not at all uncomfortable. In fact, I found that it was one of the most comfortable VR helmets I've ever put.
The Quest's tactile controllers are very similar to those in the Rift, but they are not quite the same. While the circle sensors on the Rift's touch controllers curl down, those on the Quest controller curl up, which looks a bit like the HTC Vive sticks. Anyway, I found the controls quite similar to those of the Rift; there is a joystick, X and Y buttons, an Oculus home button, as well as trigger and jack buttons.
An interesting difference between this and the Rift is that it does not come with a built-in headset. Instead, like the Oculus Go, the Quest uses spatial audio to direct the sound into your ears. You have the option of using your own headphones of course, but as I walked around hitting enemies and shooting at villains, I did not think they were necessary. I could hear everything around me. In fact, I felt much better without a helmet, because I wanted to keep my ears open, which would make me more alert. After all, there are no more wires to keep you attached to a PC, so some security measures are probably sensible.
Speaking of safety precautions, I must admit that walking around an empty space without seeing what's around me was a bit dangerous. I continued to want to remove my helmet to make sure not to bang against a wall. Oculus has incorporated its Guardian technology into Quest, which allows you to set virtual limits to prevent such incidents, but it still felt like walking on a tightrope without a net.
Oculus must have planned, because with Dead and buried, there is actually a mixed reality option that lets you see the real world around you, but in a drawn style. In this way, Oculus says you do not have to lift your helmet to know what's going on around you and avoid bumping into your teammates while you run around the balls. I found that I did not really need this mixed reality mode most of the time – the VR mode worked fine for the most part – but I liked having it there in case.
I've also noticed that playing some games was actually a lot easier in confined spaces, compared to big ones. In the game of tennis, for example, there was an option to play in a small lounge or in a larger tennis environment. In the tennis room, I really had to run and run to shoot. My opponent, who happened to be Bosworth, was in the small room and did not have to be so athletic. He ended up fighting me easily, and I think that might be the reason. Or it's my excuse anyway.
Overall, I found that the experience was very similar to using a Rift, with the ability to look around corners and behind objects. The gameplay was very fun and it was great to be able to walk without wires that held me back. This definitely made the experiences much more immersive.
Still, it does not quite fit the Rift experience, at least in terms of graphics. Yes, the Quest has a resolution of 1600 x 1440 in each eye and offers crisp and colorful images, but the shaders are not as sharp and detailed as on the Rift, which of course has the advantage of its power and performance. of a beefy PC GPU.
"There is a real limitation of watts that you can put on someone's head," Bosworth said. Not only in terms of performance, but also from a thermal point of view. "There is no real way to dispel all this heat, especially in a wireless product."
Another big question that I had was the battery life. Unfortunately, Bosworth has been unable to tell me how long it lasts. During my demo of Dead and buriedI noticed that the Oculus team exchanged headsets and charged them between sessions, which makes me think that the battery life is probably not very long .
It might be worth it, at least according to Bosworth. "You get the same experience as the Rift, to be teleported into space," he said. He added that although you can not download all Rift games on Quest, developers should be able to easily transfer their existing Rift titles into Quest. More than 50 titles will be launched with Quest already.
For the future, Bosworth is not limited to virtual reality. "Now that we have the first generation of VR headsets completed, we can start looking at mixed reality," he said. "We could combine virtual and real environments and move into areas other than entertainment and games." Mixed reality, he said, would be much more useful for everyday life, for example by using an infinite digital workspace. It's certainly a concept we've heard about Microsoft and Magic Leap.
"The future is not just the game and the content […] We need to make this tool more useful, open more markets, "he said," We need to look beyond the immediate applications of VR and what else it could become. "
In the meantime, virtual reality is still largely focused on games and immersive experiences. To get your own quest, you'll have to shell out at least $ 400 for the 64GB version. The earliest will be available in the spring of 2019.
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