Oculus Discontinues Its Low-End Go Headset To Focus On Oculus Quest (theverge.com) 30
Oculus is ending sales of its budget Oculus Go virtual reality headset and opening its Quest headset to a wider range of software. The Verge reports: The company will maintain Oculus Go firmware through 2022 and accept new apps through December 2020, but it will stop selling Go hardware after the current stock runs out. Meanwhile, it will add a new Quest app distribution channel without the current strict approval process, encouraging more developers to work with the headset. In a blog post, Facebook-owned Oculus says it's retiring the Go after positive response to the Quest -- which features the same all-in-one format but tracks full spatial (or 6DoF) motion, not just head orientation. "You've told us loud and clear that 6DoF feels like the future of VR. That's why we're going all-in, and we won't be shipping any more 3DoF VR products," the post says. Oculus already listed the $149 Go as out of stock before its cancelation, and it dropped the Go from its business VR platform in January, saying the Quest was the "best solution" for most users.
Oculus launched the Quest with a highly curated app selection aimed at giving new VR users a consistent experience. Now, with Go developers getting nudged toward the Quest, it's apparently developing an alternative option for early 2021. This system will let developers "share their apps to anyone with a Quest" as long as they meet Oculus' content standards. They won't get the visibility of an Oculus Store page, but users won't have to manually sideload the apps onto their headsets, making it easier to deploy software that's in testing or built for a limited audience.
Oculus launched the Quest with a highly curated app selection aimed at giving new VR users a consistent experience. Now, with Go developers getting nudged toward the Quest, it's apparently developing an alternative option for early 2021. This system will let developers "share their apps to anyone with a Quest" as long as they meet Oculus' content standards. They won't get the visibility of an Oculus Store page, but users won't have to manually sideload the apps onto their headsets, making it easier to deploy software that's in testing or built for a limited audience.
Hoping for a more advanced PSVR as well. (Score:2)
I would love it if Sony would follow up the PSVR with a new PS5 headset, that had better tracking, and improved resolution.
As it is, it works quite well, but it's a fiddly thing to set up as it needs a camera out, then the move controllers, and what feel like a million wires going back to the PS.
Maybe will have to break down and get an Oculus for Star Wars Squadrons though...
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I have a PSVR, and unfortunately, I don't see any realistic way to reduce the number of cables, short of incorporating the VR breakout box into the console itself.
Hmm, which actually might not be that huge of a deal. What would that take really? An extra HDMI port and just a little more "hidden" video processing power to undistort VR rendering or project a 2D game onto a virtual screen?
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They can do it the same way you can on PC right now, the headset does inside-out tracking with video cameras and rendered contnet is streamed in over AC WiFi. I haven't used the Quest but reportedly there isn't a significant degradation of quality or lag.
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>I haven't used the Quest but reportedly there isn't a significant degradation of quality or lag.
Then one of us is misinformed.
What I've heard is that both quality and lag are adequate, but much poorer compared directly to an otherwise comparable wired headset. Though they have done an decent job of hiding the fact, especially if you're only accustomed to the very low-quality rendering the Quest is capable of on its own. Unfortunately the tricks they use to disguise the reduction also rely on a relativ
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Certainly possible these were all lies fed to me by Facebook^h Oculus fans. Still feel it would be good enough for people used to console graphics and performance.
Aren't they using an old off-the shelf Qualcomm SOC like 835 or something, those should be dirt cheap by now. And if it's not supposed to run the games by itself, it might work with some custom ASIC to decode the stream. The only trick that comes to mind that they might do on the headset end is to run the reprojection which might be more difficul
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No, the Quest is standalone. The idea is that you can chuck it in your backback & use it anywhere.
It might limit the graphics, but I'm not going to be investing in any "walk-around" VR until it's untethered. I'm definitely going to have my eyes trained on the next Quest successor.
The Ars review was quite interesting:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
No Love for AR? (Score:1)
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I've got plenty of love for AR. Sadly it's unrequited until someone develops a decent AR system.
In fairness AR is FAR more difficult than VR.
First there's the there's the tracking - VR only needs to track your head +hand positions in space. Maybe the rest of your body position too - that would be awesome. How is something like Kinect not a standard VR stracking device? Anyway - AR also needs to track the entire environment to accurately represent the interplay of real and virtual elements. You don't
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There's also the problem of framerate and higher-order artifacts insofar as passthrough-AR is concerned (where you capture video with cameras & output it on the next frame to immersive video displays in a HMD).
Simply put, today's framerates are way too low, period. 90fps is less-awful than 60fps, but to eliminate PERCEPTIBLE "sloshing", you need to get the framerate up to around 400-1000fps. Note that you don't necessarily HAVE to get the framerate of your synthetic content up to 400-1000fps... there's
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Quite so, which is why I suspect pass-through AR will be a non-starter except in very niche markets - putting a horrible pass-through filter on the real world is no way to move forward.
Transparent screens are a huge step forward, but they need some huge technological leaps forward before they can address the focal-plane problem.
Really, laser retinal projection is probably the most promising current display technology for the purpose - it can already maintain a clearly focussed image at any focal depth, and
Re: No Love for AR? (Score:2)
> that could potentially be addressed by coupling it to per-pixel "shutter glasses"
> whose only purpose is to obscure the real world where appropriate.
I totally agree. The LCD darkening-grid wouldn't even have to be hi-res or fully-opaque, since it would be kind of like a LED backlight in reverse & only serve to darken & opacify regions where bright light is being overlaid.
They could probably even get away with something like a passive-matrix (maybe DSTN) 256x256 grid that just darkened the li
Just curious... (Score:5, Interesting)
...does it rely on Oculus internet support, so actually stops working at all when support ends?
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You can sideload apps on it, so it should still be somewhat usable after 2022. However the real kicker is that they'll close the shop for new apps and updates by the end of the year, just six month after this announcement. That in turn will kill a lot of media apps that need updates to keep up with changes on the server side. BigScreen already called it quits due to that.
Increase Resolution you fools (Score:1, Troll)
Why don't they work on display tech so they can increase resolution? They haven't meaningfully improved the resolution since 2016. We should be at 5K per eye by now which would make it possible to enjoy movies in it. GPUs have to get there too, but they're very close already.
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Hey fool, do some research.
Pimax has dual 4K displays with 200* FOV available since last year .
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Displays yes, signal no. Pimax 8kx is only becoming available.
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All I want is a comfortable HMD with 1080p displays, without all the VR stuff, without all the games nor connectivity to any game systems, just with a built browser that will play media off apache2. I just want to watch movies across wifi from my server.
What's the bottom of the line entry into this market?
Re: Increase Resolution you fools (Score:2)
HP Reverb G2, unfortunately you need high resolution per eye for movie watching or it will be annoying to for any length of time.
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You said it: if there was a 5k per eye headset, there would be no signal source for it. VR market itself is so small that it's not able to push GPU development faster.
That said, Pimax 8kx (so 4k per eye) is starting deliveries soon I hear, that's 4k per eye and the claim is that with eyetracking and foveated rendering it's fine to run it with 2080ti.
Are you ready to pay $1299 for the headset, and I guess $400 for the tracking + controllers, and $2000 for the PC?
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You said it: if there was a 5k per eye headset, there would be no signal source for it.
While gaming and VR180/360 movies would struggle to produce content for 5k displays, plain old 2D movies need that kind of resolution so that VR can compete with all those cheap 4k TVs. Especially considering that those 5k would be spread over at least 90, while a 2D movie in a cinema is concentrated over just 45. So viewing in a virtual cinema reduces that 5k display down to just a 2.5k virtual cinema screen. If one wants to use VR as replacement for a computer monitor, that kind of resolution would also b
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Sounds like you're describing the Oculus Quest, you know, the thing they're focusing on now and the reason they killed the Go off?
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Still problematic (Score:2)
Too much motion sickness. Waiting on the perfect implementation.
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Sidequest (Score:2)
The new, less strict apps store announcement seems to be aimed at SideQuest, which serves this exact purpose, but which requires side loading (and is independent of Facebook/Oculus). It will be interesting to see if the two stores live side by side, or if SideQuest dies.
They're all discontinued (Score:2)
You can't buy Oculus [from Oculus].
Visit Oculus.com
Click 'buy now'.
You have 2 choices. Both out of stock. Have been for months and months.