Oculus Quest, the newly announced standalone 6DOF VR headset (ex-Project Santa Cruz), completely stole the show at this year’s Oculus Connect with the promise of offering some very Rift-like experiences in a mobile form-factor. There was a torrent of news surrounding the headset and its upcoming apps like SUPERHOT VR, but what seemed to fall through the cracks was the revelation that Oculus Quest marks the end of the company’s first-gen hardware.
“With Oculus Quest, we will complete our first generation of VR products,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
Oculus Quest is due to launch sometime in Spring 2019 at $400 for the 64 GB version, including a pair of optically-tracked controllers, also dubbed ‘Touch’ like the Rift’s controllers. Tracking is handled by on-board, head-mounted sensors, so there’s no need for a PC or external sensors.
At Connect, Zuckerberg outlined that the company will be pushing forward with the three hardware platforms—Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Rift—as definitive classes of devices that will eventually see new versions in the second generation.
“So from here we’re going to make big leaps in tech and content for the future generations for each of these products,” Zuckerberg continued. “We’re going to build each of these as platforms, so everything that you build for them today is going to work on future versions of these devices. This is all still early, but [Go, Quest, and Rift] is the basic road map.”
You can view the full day-one keynote here on YouTube.
Notably, this means Oculus Go, the company’s standalone headset which has the same basic functionality of a Samsung Gear VR, likely won’t be subsumed by Quest, but rather continuing onward to fill the place of the company’s most affordable VR headset. Oculus CTO John Carmack has even outlined a few items on the company’s wishlist for Go’s second generation, further driving the point home that Go is here to stay.
While it’s simply too early to tell what’s in store for the second generation of Quest, Facebook revealed at the F8 dev conference a high-FOV varifocal prototype headset, dubbed Half Dome. Some of that tech, Oculus co-founder and Head of Rift Nate Mitchell says shouldn’t be expected in a product anytime soon though, although it certainly looks like a Rift 2.0 will be the company’s next product—whenever that is.
