Roger Fingas
Presenting at an event in San Jose on Wednesday, Facebook's Oculus introduced the Go, a new headset capable of operating without a connected phone, Mac, or Windows PC.
The device will sport a WQHD (2,560-by-1,440) display and built-in spatial audio, with an option for external headphones via a 3.5mm jack, executives said. Wearers will only be able to glance around spaces instead of walking around a room, the latter being a major feature of high-end PC headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
To ensure app support, the Go will be compatible with all titles for Samsung's Gear VR. The latter product is based on Oculus technology but sells for an even cheaper price since a Samsung smartphone is required for processing and display.
Oculus has shared few other details except to say that the first development kits will ship in November ahead of an "early 2018" launch.
In the meantime the company is permanently dropping the price of a Rift bundle with Touch controllers from $499 to $399. That also includes six free apps, such as Robo Recall and two artistic titles, Medium and Quill. A new version of the Rift's dash interface — Rift Core 2.0 — combines every app and menu into a central hub, and introduces Home, a personal VR environment.
A long-term project is "Santa Cruz," something Oculus is promising will bring "the magic of a PC VR experience to an untethered form factor." The technology was teased last year, and this year the company showed off new controllers enabling six degrees of freedom.
Apple has largely steered away from VR in favor of augmented reality. macOS High Sierra does, however, lay the groundwork for VR on Macs.
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13 Comments
Apple had WISELY stayed away from VR though I wouldn’t be surprised if they have one in the works to allow them to rapidly enter the VR space should they choose to one day.
Still has no appeal to me personally, but for early adopters who are willing to be cut off from the rest of the world in a head-mounted isolation tank... go for it.
I've seen several articles on the Go device touting that it doesn't need a phone or PC to operate. Where does it get the content from? What kind of processing power can it have for $199? Rift requires a substantial computer and graphics card to run, and Gear requires an $800 phone. Is it essentially a VR iPod? Since it's Gear compatible, it likely runs Android in some form. Personally, I think Apple is right on this technology. It's neat, but it's too niche and the applications are very limited right now. No one wants to strap a display to their face for very long. The ergonomics alone are problematic; add to that the as-yet untested long-term impact on vision... AR makes more sense for real-world applications, but the tech is even further out than VR.
Haha and people here wanted to argue with me about an iPhone-less VR headset.
For some reason people thought VR headsets needed an iPhone or iknockoff strapped to their face to work.
As I said long ago, if Apple ever were to get into this space it wouldn’t be nerdy goggles with an iPhone strapped to your face.