Oculus Quest is a new $ 399 standalone VR headset that will be shipped next year

Oculus has announced its new headset, the Oculus Quest: a standalone virtual reality headset of $ 399 that will be launched in the spring of 2019. According to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, "With Oculus Quest, we will complete our first generation of products Oculus. The Oculus Quest combines "the key attributes of the ideal VR system" – wireless design, virtual manual controllers and complete position tracking. "If we can combine these three qualities into one product, we believe this will be the foundation for a new generation of VR."

The Oculus Quest is a mainstream version of what was previously called Project Santa Cruz. It uses motion controllers similar to Oculus Touch, and four wide angle cameras provide position tracking that allows users to move around in virtual space. It is supposed to support "Rift Quality" experiments, with an initial catalog of over 50 titles, including well-known existing games such as the Rocket Simulator. The climb and adventure game Foam. Oculus VR chief Hugo Barra describes Oculus Quest as "made for gaming", which sets it apart from Oculus's more video-oriented mobile headsets. "We will invest significantly in this new platform," he says.

Oculus Quest essentially combines the high-end Oculus Rift headset and connected with the relatively inexpensive stand-alone Oculus Go headset that was launched earlier this year. It uses the same optics as the Oculus Go, with a resolution of 1600 x 1440 per eye, but with the ability to adjust the spacing of the lenses. Like the Oculus Go, the Oculus Quest includes built-in speakers that deliver sound into the ears of users, but supposedly with improved bass.

But unlike the Oculus Go, you can walk, apparently over great distances. Barra describes it as having an arena-wide track that supports at least 400 square feet of space. Its controllers have the same button layout as the Rift touch controllers, but with the inverted halfpipe tracking ring, it passes over your hands instead of down.

We do not know exactly what will be the power of Oculus Quest, but Barra promises that porting games from high-end Oculus Rift to Oculus Quest (or vice versa) will be easy. We will learn about it later today at the Oculus Connect Developer Conference.