New VR headset Oculus Quest by Facebook

Although there are some great games, VR gaming is not yet a mass phenomenon. Facebook wants to change the 2019: A new stand-alone glasses closes the gap between his entry-level and his high-end headset.

Virtual Reality for the masses - now really?

Facebook's VR: Oculus Quest

In the spring of 2019, the Facebook subsidiary Oculus will launch a new virtual reality glasses in the market. The company introduced a model called Oculus Quest, which tries to combine the strengths of the previous headsets in one device. The quest, like the 'Oculus Go' released previous year, is wireless and does not require a Smartphone or a high-end PC as drive. This means: The glasses themselves are enough for the VR experience - at least while you are holding the battery.

At the same time, however, the new glasses are supposed to offer two things that the Go lacks and the owners appreciate about the 'Oculus Rift' offered for gaming PCs : On the one hand, two hand controllers that transfer the player's hand movements into the virtual worlds. On the other hand, blockbuster games like "Superhot VR" and "The Climb", which do not exist on the Go, because they not only lack the right control option, but also the necessary computing power.

For the quest both games, an action game with sophisticated time control option and a climbing game, have now been announced, along with other well-known Rift titles like "Moss" and "Robot Recall". And also a "Star Wars" VR game called "VaderImmortal" is supposed to whet your appetite for the new glasses. Oculus wants to signal with this line-up: With the quest Gamer get real VR games, not just simple games. Overall, 50 games are to be available for the start of the glasses.

How much Rift games optically lose in the Quest version and whether this affects the gaming experience, will only show in the field test. It is already clear that most developers cannot implement their games graphically 1: 1. But the quest will not be powerful enough, despite their technical superiority of the Go against defiance. By the way, on the screen, it will not be just that games look a little less chic than on the Rift - it offers a remarkable 1600x1440 pixels per eye.

No sensors needed in the room

Like the Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Oculus relies on inside-out tracking for the quest. In other words, the sensors that detect the controllers in the room are in the headset. So you do not have to place additional hardware like Tracker in the room, as with the Rift or the HTC Vive before playing.

In tracking, the quest uses a system called 'Oculus Insight', according to an Oculus announcement: "It uses four ultra-wide-angle sensors and computer vision algorithms to track your exact position in real-time without external sensors."

Insight offers "a stronger sense of immersion, presence and mobility and the ability to go beyond the room size". The Rift-known Guardian system is designed to prevent players from running with glasses on their heads against cabinets or walls.

Google developer Brandon Jones writes on Twitter that when he first tries out the goggles, he's reminded of a high-end Windows mixed-reality headset "with a larger field of view". The Quest system has only the expected weaknesses in recognising the controller: So there are about short tracking dropouts, if you keep the controller deliberately behind his head or makes unusual arm movements. But Jones does not see that as a bigger problem. In his short quest test, he played a tennis game, not a title known by the Rift.

A very attractive price

While some hardware details on the Quest, such as the battery life are still unknown, Oculus has already called the price directly. In the US, the headset is therefore expected to cost upwards of 399 dollars(approx 29K Indian Rupees), the 399 dollars are due for a version of the glasses with 64 gigabytes of memory. If you want to try a lot of games, you should expect to spend more money for more storage space.

From the first announcement, the Quest is an intriguing attempt by Facebook to bring VR to the masses - without the hurdle of the high-tech PC and the limitations of the Oculus Go, with which gamers are mobile, but in terms of tracking and selection of big games are severely limited.

The price also deters less than once in the Rift, for the market launch in 2016, initially Rupees 39,000/- were due - and then still without a hand controller. The quest, on the other hand, will now cost as much as the Playstation 4 Pro and the Xbox one X, the luxury variants of the current game consoles from Sony and Microsoft.