Oculus Go is Facebook’s Affordable Standalone Headset Priced at $200, Shipping Early 2018

By
Ben Lang
-
28

On stage at Oculus Connect 4 today, Oculus revealed the Oculus Go headset, the company’s affordability-focused standalone VR headset.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the new Oculus Go headset today during the Oculus Connect keynote. The headset is a low-cost, all-in-one standalone headset which doesn’t rely on a smartphone or a computer; everything needed for the VR experience is built into the headset. Price at $200 and launching in “early 2018,” the headset aims for affordability.

Oculus Go is not the continuation of the standalone Santa Cruz prototype that the company revealed last year. Instead, Oculus Go is more similar to mobile VR headsets like Gear VR, featuring rotational-only tracking (3DOF) on both the headset and the controller. Santa Cruz, on the other hand, will be a more expensive standalone headset that aims for a higher-end market, featuring positional (6DOF) tracking on both the headset and controllers.

Image courtesy Oculus

Though it doesn’t look it, the Oculus Go headset has integrated audio, meaning players will be able to hear the virtual world without putting on a separate pair of headphones. The speakers are built directly into the headband. There’s also a 3.5mm jack for private listening or higher-end headphones.

Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus says the headset uses a “fast-switch LCD” at 2560×1440, which the company says has a much better fill-factor than OLED, helping to eliminate the screen door effect. The headset is said to use Oculus’ “next-generation” lenses, “offering a wide field of view with significantly reduced glare.”

Oculus Go will use the same Oculus app platform as Gear VR, and uses the same input model, which means all mobile Oculus apps are cross compatible with both headsets.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • MosBen

    This is great for the people that don’t want to make decisions about which phone to buy based on compatibility with VR stuff. And at just double the cost of a Daydream View but without the need to buy a special phone, this might appeal so some folks. It’ll be interesting to see what the specs are like to know a bit more about what kind of power is under the hood, but the expectation is that we’re dealing with something similar to mobile phone parts and performance.

    And sure, that’s all nice, but it’s Santa Cruz that is the most interesting. 3DOF is enough to we the appetite for VR, but once you’ve had 6DOF, especially with controllers, it’s hard to go back.

    • amanieux

      360 videos and 360 photos are 3dof anyway so 6dof is better of course but not a must have imo ( not to mention 6dof tracking + rendering generates more heat and suck battery life faster). a higher resolution to avoid screendoor effect was a must have for me.

      • MosBen

        I mean, there’s more to mobile VR than movies and photos though. I haven’t used my GearVR much since getting a Rift, nut I played more games on it than watching videos.

        Don’t get me wrong, this is a good product for the price and in comparison to the products with which it is competing, but in my opinion 6DOF is more essential to creating immersion than a higher resolution. Higher resolution is definitely nice, but current resolutions are good enough to bump it down the list of most important features. It is, of course, an easier fix than 6DOF for the reasons you state.

  • mellott124

    Hmmm… so do I cancel my Samsung Odyssey order or not… If this was OLED based I probably would.

    • VirtualJedi

      Not really the same class of product at all. Samsung Odyssey is a tethered Windows Mixed Reality (i.e. VR) setup more equivalent to the normal Oculus Rift. This looks to be for the person who wants a Google Cardboard type experience without using their phone.

    • kontis

      This is mobile Standalone VR with it’s own built-in computer.

      Odyssey is a PC VR peripheral, just a display.

    • Cy James

      If you were looking forward to the level of VR you were going to get with the Odyssey – then this would be a downgrade. This is more like Phone VR, without needing a phone.

    • dk

      this is absolutely the same as a gear vr
      and santa cruz has 6dof and 6dof controllers and most likely will run mobile apps and won’t have any input from a pc ….and it will come probably in the end of next year

  • Simon Wood

    “Oculus Go will use the same Oculus app platform as Gear VR”… so does that mean that it would be usable with Rift-Cat? That would be quite interesting, making it a usable device for PC applications with a little “hacking”. Hopefully the OS wouldn’t be totally locked down.
    At present Rift-Cat does not support positional tracking itself, although you can cludge it with the combination of a lit-ping-pong ball, PS-Eye Cameras, PSMoveService, Rift-Cat and Steam-VR.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYkDXu20VA

    • dk

      u install riftcat on android…..and most likely this will be just oculus home….but they might make an app in the future ….but it will be pointless because oculus go doesn’t have 6dof or 6dof controllers ….u will still have to hack that part

      • brandon9271

        That’s what the PsMove controllers are for…

  • VirtualJedi

    So basically the same thing as the upcoming standalone Daydream VR headsets without positional tracking. Wonder if this will run Android behind the scenes? I would assume yes. Price-point does seem reasonable though. Will be curious what sort of internal specs this has at that price. Cant imagine they would put the guts of a flagship phone into a $199 device unless they are seriously subsidizing it which would make this a step down from a Gear VR or Daydream rig performance wise.

    • RFC_VR

      Qualcomm 735VR SOC. Surprisingly powerful with optimised software.

      • VirtualJedi

        So this is substantially cheaper and just as powerful for VR as say a snapdragon 835? I do find it hard to believe that a VR focused SOC for a niche market can be more cost effective than SOC made for the largest market of computing devices there is and offer nearly the same performance. Perhaps the underlying OS is the trick here to optimize the performance.

        • RFC_VR

          Qualcomm Snapdragon 835VR SOC… To give it it’s full name.

          • VirtualJedi

            Did they announce this for the GO? Or are you speculating? Lowest cost Snapdragon 835 phone is ~$500.

          • MosBen

            I haven’t seen any reporting on the specs of the Go yet. That said, building a headset that takes unnecessary phone bits out might save some money, but it does seem awfully cheap to be top of the line internals. My guess is that we’re looking at a step or two down from bleeding edge mobile hardware. On the other hand, they could be selling these things at a loss with the assumption that they’ll make it back in software sales in Oculus’ walled garden store.

          • Shawn MacDonell

            Phones cost substantially less to manufacture than what they’re priced at for consumers; phone companies have to make profits off hardware sales, Oculus does not (as much) due to owning the Oculus Home platform and software sales.

          • Simon Wood

            It’s also confirmed that the Oculus Go will not contain celluar capability, so there’s less hardware needed and license fees (Qualcomm tax) to pay.

      • Muzufuzo

        true VR optimised SoCs will be out in 2019 at the earliest

    • Shawn MacDonell

      The upcoming headsets from Lenovo and HTC both feature inside-out positional tracking via dual stereo cameras; Google’s WorldSense tracking.

      • VirtualJedi

        Right, I am having trouble understanding what the Oculus Go brings to the table compared to those. At 199 it sees almost certainly to be based on a much lower specced SOC than the Lenovo and HTC which I believe will be using the Snapdragon 835 and be priced around $400.

        • whitedragon101@gmail.com

          cough cough porn….. cough cough sharp screen low priced 3dof 180 3d porn.

          Oh and distant second a cheap personal cinema with netflix

          • brandon9271

            Folks will probably end up USB tethering it to a PC and using PsMove controllers or Nolo with it as well.

        • Shawn MacDonell

          Lenovo and HTC both need to make profits off the hardware, whilst Oculus isn’t as-required to (they still will of course); just like their Rift price cuts, they probably won’t earn nearly as much per-unit sold as Lenoov/HTC will with their respective Daydream headsets.

  • Jean-Sebastien Perron

    I have a Rift and I will buy the Go for work and boring family parties. Finally no need for 1000$ stupid phones.

  • WyrdestGeek

    Yeah, I would really like to have a standalone VR setup at this point, but I don’t think I’m going to spend $200 on Yet Another device that lacks tracking.

  • VirtualBro

    Hey, any indication of whether there’ll be a way to adjust the IPD? My IPD is an extra-large 70.5mm, which makes it impossible to use any one-size-fits-all headset. (On the upside, my gigantic bulky neck makes even the heaviest headsets a comfortable weight..)