Introducing Oculus Quest, Our First 6DOF All-In-One VR System
oculus.com
oculus.com
I've owned a Vive for over two years and not having to devote a good chunk of my basement to it is another plus, along with not having to maintain a really beefy gaming PC.
I would much prefer to not deal with a PC; this isn't an anti-windows thing, I work on Win10 all day writing code. However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
VR is a lot of fun though, and for most of the past 2 years was worth the hassle. Lately though I don't have the energy to fight my gaming rig and I when I occasionally play now, I just ignore whatever issues crop up. I'm ready for a simpler solution at a good price.
However I disagree with this:
> However maintaining a gaming rig is another issue entirely. I frequently have to spend 20-30 minutes getting the sound to work correctly after windows updates, iTunes updates, vive updates, steam updates, etc etc. It's almost comical and I wonder if this is an indication of the PC gaming tool-chain issues, or something as simple as Steams VR software is shit. And honestly I don't care, I just want it to work.
I have no idea how that could happen to you, if you have super exotic hardware or if steam vr doesn't work.
I maintain 3 "gaming" computers, and they basically never have issues. The "everything need to auto update once a week" is getting boring pretty fast sure, but nothing gets broken; sound, video, gsync, keyboard/mouse, network ... It's actually quite impressive how reliable all of it is. Hell, ever since moving to networked laser printers even the scanning/printing chain doesn't fail randomly anymore.
Compared to even ten years ago in the late XP days, windows and the modern drivers available for it have become incredibly reliable.
This has been exacerbated for me because initially I only allocated ~20GB for the Windows boot partition, which is plenty for Ubuntu but apparently nowhere near enough for Windows. Even at ~30GB, I have to do things to reduce the amount of space Windows uses (like disable hibernation, manually compact WinSxS, etc) so that those big named updates can complete.
In short: Windows is too high maintenance for infrequent use.
[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifica...
I didn't check the minimum requirements, but if I had I would have been even more annoyed when 20GB wasn't enough to complete updates.
Yes! I have two machines I use for VR stuff, and I face this every time I come back to VR! I even have the full hard drive allocated, not just a 20GB partition.
Ouch! Watch out for the coming Win10 fall update (October). It might brick your setup, as it needs (supposedly) minimum 20 GB free space.
Note/disclaimer: Not sure how true this is, couldn't validate it personally. That said, I'll definitely ensure all of my Win10 system boot partitions have at least 30 GB free space.
If you used a gaming console the same way you are using your main computer (booting it into a separate OS for most the time, until you all of a sudden wanted to play a game) you might also find that there's updates waiting to apply, and some games require the OS update before they'll play, etc.
Plus, there's a bug in the installer that requires a full re-download.
That was just for the OS. He obviously has a separate data partition to install games on (unless he only likes retro 8bit type games).
Personally I think they've really nailed this.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...
This was not my experience at all with Alienware. I'll never buy anything from them again (yes I know they're part of Dell now)
Anyway, I maintain that this part of your experience is anecdotal and not representative of the general experience.
- Wouldn’t turn on. Took me a few times plugging both headsets in to realize I was pressing volume not power.
- couldn’t connect my controller. Thought maybe I had grabbed the wrong one but it turned out to be a dead battery
- Oculus Venues needed an update. Did that
- then it asks for my FB login. Take the headset off, get my phone
- turns out it’s a new phone, need to reinstall the Oculus app. Wait for that to download
- Connect my FB account via the browser
- now Venues loads, needs me to watch a Terms of Use video. Watch it. Nothing happens.
- hit the < button, the only identifiable option, it just takes me back to the Venues menu
- click into Connect again, watch the Don’t Be An Asshole video again. Still can’t move past it in any obvious way. Press all the buttons repeatedly
- close and restart Venues. No change. Give up
Total waste of 30 minutes.
I'll take the Leaf, or better yet, do what I've done with VR so far: wait.
So you turn on your computer, wait half a minute to half an hour for Steam to update, then try to launch anything (like a game) and it too has to update, so now you're just standing in the middle of your room, controller in hand, waiting for another 20 minute download. ...god, is steam downloading something else now? Okay, take off the helmet, fix steam and the three things that crashed while you were in purgatory, put the helmet back on, restart ...everything use the fraction of a percent of the UI that HTC devoted to selecting something from your library, and then your gtg.
Famous first words: "you just"
I am on Windows 7 though
The only gripe I have with this is that, I assume, the controllers would stop working outside of camera FOV. It sounds like minor gripe, but it typically becomes frustrating for someone who is used to full-fidelity room-scale.
For anyone interested check out videos of people using Oculus Medium, something as insanely complicated and fiddly as 3D sculpting becomes instantly natural when you interact with both hands in 3D instead of a mouse or pen in 2D.
Installing Nvidia drivers will usually set the default sound device to HDMI for your main display instead of restoring the previous default. So, it's possible to end up juggling 3-5 audio outputs after a driver update - on board, on board headphones, Vive USB, Vive HDMI, and main monitor HDMI.
I run a little Powershell script after those updates that returns everything to my settings and disable all the telemetry services/tasks, but there are a bunch of free utilities that makes audio device switching easy - Ear Trumpet, Audio Switcher, and a few others.
Also, for whatever reason, sometimes Steam just needs to be relaunched for SteamVR to work properly after a Stream client update. Very rarely I'll need to reboot for things to work properly (if the base stations don't wake up).
Finally, I strongly recommend uninstalling the advanced open VR program that's often recommended in old tips and tricks sites (it's very outdated and known to cause problems now) and run a round of "verify game integrity" on SteamVR and all Valve VR entries (from inside Stream library, right click menu).
Oh, and finally, finally, laptops/pre-built PCs will usually have some driver updater/maintenance utility adding a layer of annoyances on top of all this.
I love my Vive, but I have to admit that there can be some annoyances. OTOH, I had just as many issues with the GearVR (an Oculus product) and solutions basically boiled down to hoping it would be addressed in an update or allowing 7 constantly running background processes.
You're in a nice groove where this stuff is pretty easy to manage, but to a lot of people this stuff is an exasperating pain in the butt.
Realistically, though, most of these aren't VR problems as much as they're general PC gaming problems with Nvidia and Steam. I accept that price for the flexibility I get in return.
Contrast that to having no control over the various background processes and apps always loaded in memory when using a GearVR, though. Like most consumer-friendly tech, it just works until it doesn't. Then there are only three solutions possible: reboot phone, uninstall updates and reinstall them, and hope the bug is addressed in the next update, whenever that will be. (I'm assuming Oculus with lock down the OS similar to what Samsung does with Android, which means major compromises if you want to try rooting it.)
I do realize I'm in the minority that spends a few hours fixing or working around a problem, rather than shelve the unit and play update roulette in random short increments. But, with VR still in its infancy, are we/they really ready for those types of consumers? I mean, there is a severe lack of standards across the board, making handholding really difficult. Everyone threw up their hands at tablet UIs and decided to just make them bigger phones and I'd hate to see VR suffer the same fate of being dragged down by the lowest common denominator.
These are issues that occur rarely. I have less troubles using my PC than some friends do with their consoles.
It helps that Steam truly does update things in the background, and that it is possible to bandwidth throttle updates.
In comparison, a rarely played console will want to potentially spent hours on updates.
A PC has advantages because it is most likely used daily, so the updates have already happened in the background.
Honestly, both consoles and PCs are about an equal pain to keep running now days. PCs have gotten better over the years, and consoles got worse, and they have kind of met in the middle.
Occasionally I've kept Firefox tabs open four 3 weeks or something "feels a little off" so I restart more than the once a month necessary to install Windows updates, but other than that, I feel confident that I can hit the VR button on steam and have the dashboard in the helmet ready to boot a game by the time I've put the strap on.
My absolute worst experience was a game crashing VR over and over in one spot and a restart fixing it
I am looking forward to this but also a much more streamlined future iteration that will still let me take advantage of my PC power.
... or, I could run some long cables. Out of interest, how long are the cables in your setup, and how well does it work?
I don't use my setup for VR, but I've got my gaming rig in the office extended to the living room TV.
USB and HDMI over 30 meters, with one active USB hub/HDMI extender connecting two 15 meter cables in the middle. The HDMI extender needed some fine-tuning, but after that everything just works as it should. Just need to remember to turn the hub/extender off when not in use or else it's quite a pointless electricity drain.
Tho I'm not sure how well a setup like that would work for VR, with latency being such an important issue and the VR setup introducing even more cable length to it all.
Looks like you need VFIO. My Windows 10 LTSB VM state gets reset on shutdown unless I commit changes.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/29093986/How-do-y...
Share the booty. Yo ho ho!
md5: e39ea2af41b3710682fe3bbdac35ec9a
Maybe VR is the problem in this instance?
The hardware in the OC Quest is probably some kind of Nvidia Tegra style SoC, at least that's what I'd expect in terms of performance out of it. Ideally, I'd want the future of VR to be in eye candy popping UHD with super high refresh rates, tho I doubt mobile computing will be up for that task in the next decade.
I was hoping for them to announce a higher dpi, wider fov unit for use with Elite Dangerous and DCS World. Alas, I shall keep on waiting. 95hz 3440x1440 34" 21:9 curved monitor with TrackIR is pretty good meanwhile.
Still pretty cool for the few games that support it but not VR
If your plan with this is sitting or standing VR, well, the HTC Vive already supports that configuration as well.
you sound like you should be a console gamer. Cheap(er) and simple is what they do/market. And PS4 has PSVR too.
The stuff happening in VR feels like a more interesting direction, and can probably extend across a broad market because the hand controls are more approachable than console game controllers.
I haven't actually used a headset newer than a DK1 though. Fingers crossed these get demo setups at Best Buy or something.
Positional tracking and hand presence make a massive difference.
It kind of reminds me of Virtual Boy...
I know the Go already runs at 72 or 60 Hz, but without positional tracking it was never going to be particularly immersive no matter what framerate it had.
If the Oculus Go is anything to go by, I suspect most games built for the Quest will match up fairly well graphically against experiences originally built for the DK1.
In terms of large scenes with high res textures and detailed models, probably not going to do much better than the Go. It's really all about the resolution increase and 6dof tracking, more than trying to get anywhere near the Rift's visuals.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/the-big-thing-facebook-didnt-say-about-o...
[2] https://www.androidcentral.com/snapdragon-835-vs-snapdragon-...
I don’t have a space for a real “room scale” setup with Rift cameras or Vive beacons, so I’ve been waiting on Santa Cruz’s inside-out tracking to look at VR more seriously.
Pleasantly surprised by price. They’ve confirmed it’s based on a Snapdragon 835, which isn’t a top end SoC, and I think that’s a smart move to get it down to this range. At $500 they’d have a much harder sell, and this is where PS4 and Xbox One started (once they dropped Kinekt, anyway).
However - I think great artistry trumps great hardware. Some of the most compelling VR experiences I've seen have been more about the art direction than about the rendering power.
And thus a completely different experience.
The biggest game changers in VR (in order) are:
1. High refresh rate (DK1 had this. So does the Go). The world feels "solid and out there"...
2. 6DOF head tracking (a huge difference - to the extent that I tend to use the term "real VR" and "sort of VR" to distinguish the two). The world continues to feel solid when your head moves even by small amounts...
3. 6DOF controllers (depends on the experience. 3DOF controllers suck but there's plenty of incredibly immersive experiences that get round this - basically by not using the controllers much. Trickier for games but for narrative and artsy things - it's totally doable)
This is almost certainly based on an Android phone so I expect it to have the same performance limitations as those.
Look at consoles like the Wii/Switch/Gameboy and how well they did. Gameplay is what makes a great game and VR gives you a whole new set of gameplay tools.
The first iPhone and iPad had very different types of games to mainstream consoles but those games were tailored to that type of experience - Angry Birds would have been a pretty dull console game but the touch input made it fun. Pokemon go couldn't even have worked as a console game.
VR is about a new way to experience and interact with a game (it's also awesome how they have standardised the touch controller so that can be properly explored).
Now it's up to developers to experiment and make games people love with this new set of tools.
I feel like this could be the thing that gets that back and forth ball rolling.
I mean we convinced people that listening to music by sticking a speaker in their ear canals is healthy and safe. Why can't we do this for our eyes? The "Samsung Galaxy" moment will be when they start shipping disposable contact lenses with AR functionalities....but this requires a cross industry expertise and highly proprietary nanotech which Pentagon needs to fully test out before approving it for consumer usage, as with many of our major technological innovations owing to the military-defense complex.
AR is the only one with a hope of becoming socially acceptable in public, but it will have its own hurdles (Namely the fact that you will always be pointing a camera at someone just by looking around.)
That same ability to transport you to some other world was an absolute godsend on a recent 12+ hour flight from SFO to Beijing. My Oculus Go has been added to my list of long haul flight must haves in addition to my QC IIs.
FWIW you cant see the haters staring when you've got it on LOL.
- difficult to adjust the inter-pupillary distance
- display not optimized for VR (phones don’t need OLED, low persistence, or high refresh rates)
- you can’t prop up your headset and fire off a quick text
Kudos oculus.
It’s a real bummer Palmer has shit politics or I might have been a customer.
I am more wondering who they are targetting; me for sure but I would also pay $1000 for it, not gaming fanatics who care about resolution, fps and amazing graphics and not people who play games on cheap Android devices. Looks to me they are going for the kind of people who bought the Wii when it came out. Is Carmack still involved as at least then we know it will be a good gaming experience if nothing else?
The Oculus privacy policy has a blanket clause that lets it share and receive information from Facebook and Facebook-owned services.
I’ll come back when that’s no longer the case.
Wont be buying any more Oculus equipment until I can be sure there is no data collection period
Though I wish valve would stop with their stupid trackpads.
I guess a company might include a penalty clause in its EULA that would promise customers remunerations for violations, and give customers rights to investigate such violations.
I don't think he's a shill, just over-committed. At one point the the founder of Oculus Palmer Luckey even called him out as an "insufferable fanboy". [1]
I don't say this just be a detractor or mean-spirited, but I would advise caution as there's likely bias in these charts.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4gfpjk/palmer_lucke...
They could have included a row for "Open platform for games", or "Has finger detection", etc. Alternatively, they could have included columns for Vive, or Vive+Wireless, and so on.
This kind of implicit bias is very difficult to avoid, however; in general, viewers of ANY online media should already be assuming the viewpoints they're consuming are biased in the first place.
In particular, since the source is the /r/oculus subreddit, anyone viewing this information there (1) already assumes this implicit bias, and (2) is likely to share it.
If you're familiar with P-Hacking, then you know how even "factual information" can be misrepresented.
Just when I thought I couldn't think less of Palmer Luckey...
1. No wires (easy to move around, can use anywhere)
2. No setup (no cameras to attach, drivers to install, etc)
3. 2 hands and positional tracking
I have a Vive, but having to setup all the components and deal with the wires is pretty annoying. I also have a daydream, but having to pop in my phone, drain my battery and install all that crap on my phone is also annoying. This is the perfect middle ground. Now I'm curious to see if Google announces something similar in a few weeks.
Care to explain?
You still need a powerful mobile GPU to do good 3D graphics but actually rendering but the VR part doesn't require as much.
> But mobile phones (Gear VR, Google Cardboard) can do VR with much less graphics horsepower because the entire hardware stack can be controlled.
No, they just generally have a much lower expectation to meet of the graphics fidelity produced.
> The path from the motion sensors to rendering the VR scene on a phone is very fast.
What would you say slows this down on a modern PC? Is it the connections to the headset? Is it the OS?
> You still need a powerful mobile GPU to do good 3D graphics but actually rendering but the VR part doesn't require as much.
Why would this be different between mobile and a normal PC? Both need to render a image at 60fps (or probably 90), for two viewpoints, regardless of if it is driven by a PC or a mobile. What is different?
John Carmack has written extensively on this subject if you are interested. One example he gives is that graphics card drivers will aggressively buffer draw commands to increase performance and image fidelity at the cost of latency. In a normal game that's no problem but that is terrible for VR. Even a little bit of delay between movement and the display reflecting your new position is nauseating.
On mobile, the latency can be highly controlled from the driver, OS, and custom hardware even while sacrificing other performance.
Except that only holds up if you consider the headset a primary gaming device.
Usually people expect a certain graphical fidelity from PC or console games, so either we have a world with only consoles (which have standardized hw/sw stacks like mobile) and mobiles are gaming devices or we have one that is just like it has been for the last 10-15 years. Which do you think is more likely?
I'd say mobile phones can do much less VR with much less graphics horsepower. I tried both Oculus, Vive and Cardboard, and the last was terribly underwhelming after seeing proper VR solutions.
Don't expect the games on this to look anywhere near as good as PC VR games.
I'd be really curious at what FPS they are able to accomplish that and still have enough resources available to actually run applications.
Even with hardware dedicated to "computer vision" tracking it'd be quite the accomplishment to do this with a high enough FPS to not induce motion sickness in some people.
(the Focus is sometimes slightly short of "rock solid" but I think that's probably due to quality control issues than hardware limitations)
Seems like it'd get hot and not last long. Impressive if they've actually made it work.
Then they’re able to use cheaper parts and keep the price lower, which is pretty exciting.
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/5g-here
:-)
I'm guessing the latency would make that hope a pipe dream - but fingers crossed.
The deciding factor is naturally the same one any promising platform has: The question of a killer app. The iPhone shipped with its own killer app, Mobile Safari. Can Oculus or Facebook build the killer app for the Quest? Will a third party? What would a killer app for VR look like?
I am most wary of this. And given occulus's past, I would be surprised if this wasn't a walled garden of sorts.
I hope I'm wrong, though, and that you'll be able to run anything, and tinker with the hardware (SD card, nvme ssd) and the software, down to the OS.
It's a great step forward, but it will absolutely be a walled garden.
Having a Vive and GearVR had taught me that I don't like the helplessness that comes from Oculus's mobile VR design philosophy. I like a little more control over my devices, but I totally see the appeal of an "It just works" setup.
The thing I am struggling with is how they will determine play space. Not the sensors, and cameras, etc. If I start a game in a large open room then later continue in a smaller space, how will the games handle that? Right now you can see that a game requires a certain amount of space for roomscale and games are generally divided into seated, standing, and roomscale options. Will devs be expected to support all modes and all reasonable levels of roomscale for every title, since the room layout can change at every launch?
I'm really looking forward to full 6DOF, untethered VR, but it seems like this might be a bit premature and better suited for AR (environment variation would be to AR as 6DOF tracking was for VR). It's a convenience feature before other unresolved and non-standardized core MR features, like eye tracking, balance, simulation sickness, full body tracking, etc. I'm very interested to see how they handle the inside out tracking, but I fully expect it to be a little watered down (but hopefully better that the Windows MR implementation, which isn't terrible).
The Quest seems like a marketing decision taking precedence over a raw technological development path, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing here. VR hype is waning in the public eye and this is a very noticeable improvement for average consumers. It may have been a smart decision that will keep the conversation going, and the investment dollars flowing to devs.
I do wonder why this wasn't introduced with a GearVR 2, though. Charge $200 for a pair of controllers and the headset and it's salt the same system. It makes me wonder if they found dealing with varied hardware and an OS not under their complete control too burdensome, or if they just didn't see the numbers they were expecting.
I hate that I would have to buy a title twice to play it on either platform (I own both).
I also think this will help push VR onto office desktops. Companies I’ve visited tend to keep their VR gear in one central location or worse in a store. Use is sporadic so adoption is really low. Having a simple unit on your own desk is much more accessible and much less embarrassing to experiment with.
Also given the way the tracking works it should be reasonable to share data between devices and take part in shared VR in person. I believe there is a demo at OC5 where they are doing this already in a big hall.
In the end I think this is the right play, as much as some of us love PC Gaming it's pretty much niche compared to the audience Oculus are trying to get. I've blown some minds when I showed my friends my PCVR setup but none of them were willing to buy tower PCs to get it at home, $400 stand alone headset though? Definitely.
- light enough to wear for 8+ hours continuously
- not hot and no perspiring issues
- high enough resolution to read text comfortably and without eye strain
- VR gloves to simulate keyboard with haptic feedback and mouse/touchpad virtual device
- VR/AR mixed reality so that it can map close objects into view, like the coffee on your desk
- Work with external cameras to map bodies and put into VR, i.e conference calls / meetings with actual presence.
I think we'll start to see a shift and interestingly enough, none of these are difficult to do. I would say, give it 10 years and we'll probably be there.
When people think of computers (or, more broadly, devices), they mainly think of the screen and the inputs. If VR or AR can significantly improve on the experience of using a 2D screen + mouse, keyboard, or swipe/tap gestures, people will migrate to that superior user experience.
There are plenty of other factors at play, but ultimately usability will determine if VR/AR, which are mainly new interfaces for standard computing, become the standard for computer use.
Maybe around 5% of games have multiplayer support, so out of the 200 or so decent games for the Go around 10 are multiplayer.
VR Chat - https://vrchat.net/
RecRoom - https://www.againstgrav.com/rec-room/
I would love to see this succeed, but wonder how much longer FB will keep pumping money at VR if the sales for this disappoint.
All of this is within reach of anyone who is making their own hardware, though.
(disc: in its current iteration, for mainstream, excluding special cases like architercture or medicine: it certainly is the future, somewhere)
Oculus is Facebook
Have you used a Lenovo Mirage or similar?
"Expecting Rift-level performance from a self-contained mobile headset like the quest isn't realistic, Carmack said, partly for simple electrical reasons. While a high-end gaming PC often draws up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W, a tidbit that should be of benefit to the Quest's still unconfirmed battery-life statistics."
The $399 price isn't real until it ships. I'll bet it ships only as some "bundle" that costs well over $500. The Microsoft HoloLens has comparable hardware and that's several thousand dollars.