Oculus Quest put us in a Wild West shootout at the arena scale, and it was great

The Oculus Quest, a $ 399 standalone virtual reality headset that will be available next spring, was announced only yesterday. But he made his third appearance at the annual Oculus Connect conference, after appearing under the code name Santa Cruz in 2016 and 2017. We tried Santa Cruz both years and we were impressed, but the demos were tightly controlled. This year, Oculus presents nearly finished headphones in more complex scenarios, including a multiplayer shooting game organized in a 4,000 square foot arena. And while many questions remain about Oculus Quest's capabilities, it still sounds like an exciting step for virtual reality.

Oculus Quest combines elements of the $ 199 Oculus Go, a stand-alone standalone helmet released this year, and the $ 399 Oculus Rift headset that was launched in 2016. Its distinctive feature is the indoor tracking, which detects the User movement with four cameras mounted on the headphones. In comparison, the Rift uses external cameras to provide the same full tracking in space, and the Oculus Go detects only the angle of the head. Nate Mitchell, vice president of Oculus, says Quest is designed for people who are interested in high-end virtual reality games, but do not have a gaming PC ready for Rift. Obviously, this could also please any Rift owner who is tired of all threads.

The black fabric and plastic design of the helmet is very similar to that of the Rift, but it has a rounded, studded front that looks a bit more like the flat and elegant version of the Rift. Its controllers reflect the existing Oculus Touch, with an analog stick, a few buttons on the face and a pair of triggers on the bottom. The LED tracking strip now goes over your hand, so it's easier for cameras to stay visible. Mitchell says that Oculus could make minor cosmetic or functional changes to the device we've seen, but that it is "very representative" of the end product.

The Oculus Quest uses the same optics as the Oculus Go, including a 1600 x 1440 display for each eye, while adding a Rift-type distance slider for the lenses. Like the Oculus Go, its bracelet features small built-in speakers that serve as highly functional headphone substitutes, controlled by a volume rocker on the underside of the helmet.

But once in VR, his updates become very clear. Room-level wireless tracking can make some existing Rift games completely different experiences. In the devilishly creative first-person shooter Superhot VRit was easier to withdraw Matrix– like slow idle or move completely around enemies, opening up new options in his puzzle-shaped fight. On the other hand, Oculus Rift games are often designed to allow users to stay in one place, no matter how much space they have. The main advantage is a simple configuration and a lower risk of tripping.

As we have already said, the Oculus Tracking System seems perfectly suited to Rift Tracking capabilities. And we have now seen him play in different scenarios, including a dark and ominous play for the horror game. Face your fears 2 – although in each case, Oculus made sure there were no blank walls that could disturb the sensors. The headset can theoretically track the space as long as it has clear visual reference points, but we do not know the exact limits of its computer vision system. You can "map" a room and do things like layering virtual objects on furniture, and as with the Oculus Rift, you can draw a guard fence around the edges of your play space.

The competitor from Oculus, HTC, has already enabled wireless tracking on the room scale with his Vive headset. The Oculus quest is a lot cheaper and more convenient – the Vive wireless adapter alone costs $ 300, and you still need a PC and two towers of lighthouse monitoring. It also sacrifices some performance by using a mobile chipset instead of a PC graphics card. The headset will come with popular Rift titles such as Robo's reminder, but Mitchell says he would have trouble managing the most graphically intensive games, such as the semi-photorealistic space game Solitary echo. "If you have a PC that can power Rift and you're excited about games, Rift is the best place to go, "he says.

An elaborate experimental demo, however, shows an experience that the Rift could not offer. Oculus set up an important scene cluttered with physical boxes, then placed six players in the Oculus Quest helmets, which covered it with a Wild West cartoon scenario of the Gunfire Games game. Dead and buried. The boxes became crates and the players became animated skeletons, who could move effortlessly while firing six shots. This has created a fascinating sensation of actually being able to touch and squeeze virtual objects, and you could allow a coarse mixed reality mode to see the "real world" as an impressionistic black and white image.

Once again, it's not quite new – the hyperreality company The Void, which brought Star wars-experience to connect, superimposes physical objects to virtual objects. The Oculus quest makes it incredibly easy, eliminating the heavy pocket computers from the backpack.

Oculus Quest will not support this arena scale tracking or mixed reality mode at launch; This is what Mitchell calls the Oculus "Innovation Center". In any case, most people can not build their own combat stadium, so you'll be more likely to see it in a theme park or game room. But it's a good example of how Oculus can combine exciting features we've seen on other headsets, such as wireless tracking or "merged reality" overlays, in a cost-effective and user-friendly package.

What exactly is there in the Oculus quest? How long will the battery last? Is it comfortable for sessions longer than 10 minutes? And will its 50-game catalog be powerful enough to attract first-time buyers, while you can get thousands of VR games elsewhere? We can not answer any of these questions. we can report that Oculus seems on track to deliver a long-awaited headset – and that we would really like to try Dead and buried demo again.