Facebook owned Oculus has been working on a new VR headset, since the release of the Oculus Rift back in 2016. The newest version of the Oculus family is called Oculus Quest. 

The Oculus Quest is unlike its sister model, Oculus Go, a standalone headset which released back in 2018. The Oculus Quest provides six degrees of freedom (6 DoF) to allow the user to move and walk around the virtual reality world, without the need to be connect to a cable, as we have seen in the past model of HTC Vive. 

However, we also learned that HTC Vive Cosmos is another similar headset has may have potential to line up with the Oculus Quest for competition. 

The Oculus Quest is less powerful than the Oculus Rift, which requires Nvidia 960GPU or better. However, it does not operate less effective in performance than the Rift. We are looking at a untethered standalone headset that is able to compete with the Rift, which run on an expensive computer. 

The headset will be shipped later this year containing over 50 titles. These titles include Superhot VR, Moss, Stormland, Star Wars’ Vader Immortal, and more. These game will all be optimize for the standalone experience, and will all utilize the Oculus touch controller and the 4 tracking sensors located on the side of the VR headset. 

The Oculus Quest will be priced at $399USD, definitely an attractive pricing that we can’t wait to get our hands-on. 

The Oculus Quest has all the built-in components to allow the processing unit to run games and VR experiences. However, as a standalone, you really get what you paid for. This means you are not going to have the option to upgrade the headset, as you can possibly do with a desktop computer. The best thing about standalone headset is really the mobility that you can have to take VR anywhere you go. 

Some of you may be concerned about having a untethered headset. After all you are going to use it and be immersed in another virtual world. What if you accidentally bump into something, and physically hurt yourself in the actual world while in VR? That would really suck right? But don’t worry, the engineers at Oculus have a guiding system that will prevent you to, let say, walk into a tree or fall down a flight of stairs. 

The Oculus Quest can track up to 4,000 square feet of space, pretty much all you need in any particular virtual reality experience, unless it’s some kind of marathon game. The tracking area is a huge step up from what we have witness before with previous headsets on the market. This area of coverage should provide you the ability to setup VR in your house, backyard, or even at small field inside a public park. 

We still don’t know much details on the specifications, but it seems that the Quest will provide similar resolution as the Go, which 1440x1600 pixels per eye. 

A focal slider is located at the front of the headset, as seen previously on the Rift and Go. This is what allows you the option of adjustment focal distance. This would particularly matter to those that wear glasses. The volume rock is found under the front of the headset. 

There are built-in sounds on the headset, so in case you do not have a headphone ready, the sound would still play. However, a standard 3.5mm auxiliary jack is available, if you have your own headphone to use. 

The headset is made out of a soft cloth material, which fits nicely over the head. It feels like you are wearing a very well fitted hat. The straps that goes around the head also feels softer than the more rigid plastic strap as found on the Rift. 

You may be wondering what games will be available when the Quest is released, and there is quite a few. According to Oculus, over 50 games will be featured during initial release. Some of the titles include

• Star Wars "Vader Immortal”
• Quest ports for Dead and Buried
• Superhot VR
• Face Your Fears
• The Unspoken
• The Climb
• Robo Recall and Stormlands

We can anticipate that more games will be announced prior to shipment, and all these titles will be optimized for standalone mobile VR. 

The display quality of the Oculus Quest is very good, resolution of the gaming experience was crisp. But if compared side-by-side with the HTC Vive or Vive pro, you can still spot some significant differences in terms of power and performance. To make things mobile, this standalone headset had to make a few compromise of visual quality for the mobility it has to offer. Therefore, it may be possible that some games will be exclusive to the Rift and not the standalone.   

One thing to keep in mind about getting the Oculus Quest, or any type of standalone headset, is that you are sold as-is. We are certain new headsets will come out periodically, but you will not be able to make any upgrades. 

You should also expect the battery life to have its limitations. after all, a standalone headset is required to display video, send out audio signals, and to communicate withe the controller simultaneously. That’s a lot of computing power to put together onto a single headset. 

The Oculus Go can run for about 2 hours after a full 2~3 hours charge time. We reckon it will be similar for the Quest. 

Original article found on Techradar