Oculus Quest hands-on: Everything I've ever wanted in a VR headset

The time to come of VR for most people is wireless. Google, HTC, and Oculus have all demonstrated a desire to movement in this management, simply removing the cable has always meant some kind of sacrifice to functioning. Moving around in VR without a tether, taking a step backward in graphics isn't what I desire either. Last year at its Oculus Connect conference, a select few including myself were taken into a back room to see early prototypes for what was then called Santa Cruz. Oculus made it clear during these previews the overall goal was to evangelize something with "Rift quality" graphics without a tether. At the time, Santa Cruz wasn't quite in that location. The tracking was a little funky, and the graphics weren't quite at that place.

A year has passed, and the image known as Santa Cruz has been officially announced equally the $399 Oculus Quest. You lot'll be able to purchase one for yourself this Jump, and after a few hours with the headset, it couldn't be more than articulate this is my new favorite headset. In fact, I'one thousand going to have a lot of trouble picking upward my existing VR rig when I get home.

Gloriously untethered

My starting time demo started out in a brightly-lit room with the all-besides-familiar characters from Superhot on the walls. The headset I was handed felt exactly similar a cantankerous between an Oculus Rift and an Oculus Become. The outer material was fabric, with a plastic shell on the front and a nice padded department for your face. The side straps for Oculus Quest experience very familiar if you've ever used an Oculus headset before, with iii adaptable straps and a flexible jump system so you can slide the headset on, kind of like a baseball cap.

I wear glasses and was perfectly comfortable wearing them while I was in the headset. There was enough space on either side of my frames, no light bleed, and the drinking glass from the display was far enough away I didn't need to worry well-nigh my glasses pressing up against my eyes. Oculus has clearly continued to refine this role of the experience, and to be honest it makes the headset the near comfortable of the three Oculus makes past far.

Oculus Quest is a fully standalone headset, which means the processor and display and tracking sensors are all baked into the headset. Oculus isn't sharing the exact weight of this headset only all the same, but it felt great on my head. It's slightly heavier than an Oculus Get, yet, the strap design does a great task distributing the weight across your head. I feel like I could wear this headset for hours. Similar Oculus Go, there are speakers tucked into the straps to deliver spatial audio without headphones. They sound great, but Oculus Quest also includes headphone jacks for when y'all'd prefer to exist a piddling more isolated. Even in this noisy convention eye, the Oculus Quest demos I've had didn't really need standalone headphones. The speakers were more than than enough, and not anywhere almost max book.

Oculus Quest is clearly the future of VR.

There are no tracking sensors with Oculus Quest because this headset uses inside-out tracking. Four fisheye lenses sit down on the outer edges of the headset and map the earth around you. According to Oculus, this tracking organization allows the software to map the room you are in and discover surfaces using a mapping engine which looks very similar to how a Microsoft Hololens functions. Oculus isn't ready to make this a mixed reality device just yet (that's hybrid reality rendering, not Windows Mixed Reality) simply it'south on the roadmap for the future. The tracking on Quest, from my experience, has been flawless. Information technology moves and reacts just an Oculus Touch controller when moving around a room.

What isn't the same as an Oculus Touch controller is the design of the controller itself, and the "hand presence" you go with Oculus Touch. The controllers flip the tracking ring around then information technology'south easier for the headset to runway the controller, and the controller shaft is angled differently from Touch, as well. But the big deviation is the finger gestures. In many Oculus Rift games, you can extend your index finger on a Impact controller and see the alphabetize finger of your Avatar motility to lucifer, which is super cool. Oculus claims these controllers accept presence, merely the fingers in each Quest demo didn't move quite as much as I am used to. The experience is nevertheless not bad, simply clearly non a i:one identical experience between the two controllers in these demos.

Ready for activeness

Oculus claims the Quest headset offers "Rift quality" graphics, and that requires a bit of boosted explanation. The games on Oculus Quest are very skillful, but the Oculus Rift is capable of delivering more than visually impressive experiences thanks to the massive PC is continued to. That line feels a little fuzzy, and it'south probably on purpose.

But until we have technical details to really see what the hardware under the hood is capable of, all I have is await and feel. And based on the last couple of hours, Oculus Quest really does feel like an Oculus Rift virtually of the fourth dimension. The demos of Superhot and Dead & Buried I was treated to felt exactly similar the Oculus Rift versions of these experiences. And while information technology's not the most graphically demanding affair you can do in VR, Superhot is a great demo experience considering it exists on almost everything. The Oculus Quest version of the game feels a lot better than the PlayStation VR version of the game, for example, and that's kind of a big deal.

The almost impressive function of playing in Oculus Quest isn't even the games, it'south the spatial realism. The impressive Dead & Cached demo hall Oculus has lets you lot run effectually in a massive maze with other people, and the experience is flawless. The Oculus Guardian system keeps the boundaries in identify even as I rolled effectually on the floor to avoid enemy fire, and best of all in that location are no wires to get tangled up in! Oculus says the headset will allow everyone to ready multiple rooms in Guardian as long equally those rooms don't exceed an eight-meter square, and Quest will retrieve those rooms and keep the boundaries in identify. That means I tin accept a purlieus system set up up in my office and my living room and not need to set them up each time I want to play. Equally an Oculus Rift user, that sounds like magic considering what you have to go through now.

And really, that's the most important takeaway of Oculus Quest. Information technology doesn't actually demand to be exactly the aforementioned visual allegiance as Oculus Rift, because yous can practise and so much more with it. The liberty of being untethered means developers will create experiences here that simply aren't possible on Rift, or anywhere else for that matter. And I will really want to bring this headset with me places, to share with friends and family unit. I become all of that for $399? Yes. Yes, please.

There is still quite a bit about this headset nosotros don't know. Oculus Quest is technically running Android, just not in the same limited fashion as Oculus Become. At that place will be more than 50 games available at launch, including some titles unique to Oculus Quest, but this conference has a heavy focus on how like shooting fish in a barrel it is to port a Rift experience to Quest in hopes that many more games will be at that place come launch then who knows what the actual launch lineup will expect like. Battery life is a mystery likewise, though with a USB-C port onboard information technology is possible fast-charging will be a characteristic at launch. But even with this incomplete picture, I'm excited. Oculus is blowing minds left and correct at this event, and Quest is clearly the future of VR for a lot of people.

Check out more than Oculus Quest details in our handy guide!

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