What to Expect from Facebook's Big Keynote Oculus Connect 5 – TechCrunch



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L & # 39; Oculus The Connect 5 conference begins tomorrow in San Jose, where FB and his company will let their latest virtual reality efforts relax and finally try to prove to the world that virtual reality is coming and we can do nothing to stop it.

Tomorrow will be a great day for the material, although there may not be many surprises because Oculus has already been very excited about some of his future projects, we will see it however.

Here are some of the things we expect to see tomorrow.

Release date, price for Oculus "Santa Cruz" standalone

The autonomous 6DoF headset, still unnamed, with tracked controllers is more than likely at the beginning of next year, the big question will really be its price.

While Oculus has been very aggressive with its starting price of $ 199 for Oculus Go, it will be interesting to see where prices will evolve, no matter how "Santa Cruz" ends up being called. The headset still uses a mobile chipset, although it's probably a current generation Snapdragon 845, unlike the much older 821 that is found on the Oculus Go. The helmet will also include the position controllers and hand control (which we will probably see the update) at launch, features that will certainly add to the price.

I'm expecting prices to be around $ 349- $ 399, all of which would probably not be a cannibalization of Oculus Go sales and that any additional purchase would be difficult to sell to consumers who have already shown reluctant to buy VR.

A look at the next generation of Oculus Rift

We had a preview of Oculus's "Half Dome" prototype at F8, I guess we'll see a lot more about it tomorrow and maybe we'll get press proofs of a prototype.

The company's Rift headset is over two years old at the time, so it's probably time to think about the new generation of PC powered headset. There has been a lot of jumps in the power of the GPU since the announcement of the Rift and now that Oculus has some products that complement the low-end, they can be released a little more to have a professional PC level who may have a little more experimental.

The big problem with "Half Dome" is its new approach to how lenses focus on objects. With the old system, their fixed focal length did not allow you to read anything at your fingertips. With the new system that uses motorized displays and visual tracking, the headset will behave as you watch them dynamically. This is coupled with a new lens system that dramatically expands the field of view. It's really very powerful, but it does pose a lot of engineering problems. It will be interesting to hear more details about Oculus on stage.

Blurrier Oculus / Facebook Division

Just like Instagram and WhatsApp have been sucked into Facebook the company hierarchy, we will likely see the results of Oculus's further integration into Facebook's virtual reality division represented at the conference.

After the great reorganization of the end of 2016, the executive structure of Oculus saw the co-founders downgraded as power inflated the cadres of Zuckerberg's inner circle. Hugo Barra is still RV Vice President Facebook while Andrew Bosworth is the vice president of AR / VR, we will probably hear a lot. In the early years of the conference, we saw a co-founder of Oculus go on stage for the big announcement, and last year Mark Zuckerberg led the way and invited everyone to make the big announcements.

This year, Oculus Research has been renamed the Facebook Reality Lab. It will be interesting to see where Facebook will enter the Oculus structure.

Facebook Spaces has gained time in recent years, it is likely that the team will come back on stage to share its latest feature updates, see if the social app enjoys support 'Santa Cruz' and whether it will become stock app or continue to live in its more experimental phase.

New AAA content

We can certainly expect many things about tomorrow with the new games available on the existing platforms of the company.

Oculus made a big deal last year over how he is courting AAA game publishers to develop Rift, Oculus Studios divisions will probably guide us in his next wave of titles with more emphasis on some headlines rather than a wave of independent projects.

A few years ago, Oculus said that it had spent $ 250 million on content and was spending $ 250 million more, but we did not hear a lot of updates on amounts promised for games or experiments. We may hear a little more detail about the importance of the company's investments or the future goals of the company.

Mixed Reality of Oculus

It may be a bit long, but it may be the year in which some of society's experiences with augmented reality have been light in recent years.

We know that the Facebook Lab Reality Lab team is working on AR helmet technologies, but it is also clear that this technology is still very expensive. Nevertheless, Microsoft is likely to present a HoloLens update focused on the business and Magic Leap has already presented its first big step in the consumer sector.

Oculus would show up so early that it would be a little surprising, but if Apple is about to release a headset as suggested by the reports, perhaps they would like to explain to people what they are working on.


There will be a lot going on over the next few days, especially at the conference tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock in the morning. TechCrunch will be in the field to bring you the best analysis and the fastest updates you can find on the World Wide Web.

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