Wireless VR is upon us folks and theOculus Quest will be one of the first truly wireless HMD’s on the market at a price of $399 without those annoying cords! Of course the HTC Vive Pro will also have wireless capabilities but at a much higher starting price targeted at more of the hardcore gamer crowd, and the current Oculus Go is wireless but with overall lower specs. Granted the official move to wireless VR was just a matter of time and much needed in the space to move things forward.

The Oculus Quest will be a full standalone VR system with positional tracking and hand controllers. The Quest requires no PC, no wires, and no external sensors, not to mention 50 titles to start with for launch. Also apparently the tracking range is huge at 4000 square feet of space from what Barra described. Barra also mentioned porting games from the Rift to the Quest will be an easy feat, so we shall see.

Oculus Insight is the breakthrough technology that powers inside-out tracking, Guardian, and Touch controller tracking. This system uses four ultra wide-angle sensors and computer vision algorithms to track your exact position in real time without any external sensors.

The Oculus Quest will provide a display resolution of 1600×1440 per eye which is on par with the Oculus Go. Oculus Quest has also boosted their built-in audio with enhanced sounds and deeper bass. Overall, the Rift is still the most powerful which connects to a PC through a graphics card, while the Oculus Go is more affordable and easier to jump into VR, the Oculus Quest seems to be a nice fit in between the Go and the Rift.

The Quest is definitely a good mid tier move for Oculus and most likely will bring in many new people to VR. Now that Oculus has 3 products with 3 different price ranges, it definitely paves the way for mainstream VR on their platform.

Another exciting note is the planned titles for the Oculus Quest, not just VR games but a broad variety of genres which should please most people. One of the big ones is the Star Wars Exclusive ‘Vader Immortal‘ which is a VR series launching on the Oculus Quest in 2019. There’s many more titles planned like a Dark Knight Trilogy, Call of Duty and Blade as well.

Recently released Red Dead Redemption 2 which is currently available only on Xbox 1 and Playstation 4 has some potentially exciting news…

The companion app for the game which is available for iPhone and Android was data mined(ie.data mining is defined as a process used to extract usable data from a larger set of any raw data.)and specific file names were found including “PARAM_companionAutoConnectIpPC” and “CommandIsPcVersion(void) 000000000166A12C” which suggests a PC version could be in the works. Also there were several mentions ofOculuswhich could mean a possible VR port as well.

Granted this is all myth and lore at this point, but Rockstar Games have incredibly well polished titles and would without a doubt increase sales for Oculus if this does happen. Personally if and when they do make a PC port with VR functionality, we could very well see it available on the HTC Vive as well, unless Rockstar strikes an exclusive deal with Oculus.

For now though, we have to wait and see, but this would be a massive win for VR if they do plan on bringing Red Dead Redemption 2 to PC.

Today was a big day on the VR front as Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the Oculus Connect 4 Conference earlier in San Jose, which was alsolive-streamed on Facebook. For news, the Oculus Rift price will be permanently dropping down to $399, which effectively improves on the Oculus Summer Sale for anyone who missed it.

One of the reasons for the continued price drop was the mention of a new wireless standalone headset called “Oculus Go”, which will be coming in at around $199 in early 2018.  Granted the Oculus Go won’t compare to the Oculus Rift just yet, but should be compared more to Gear VR and a step in the right direction for wireless VR in general.

Having lower end wireless VR will increase mainstream adoption at a much quicker rate which is why we’re seeing price drops across the board from the higher end HMD’s like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If all goes well, higher end wireless VR should become a reality towards the end of 2018 but for now cheaper hardware is needed and is a good thing for the VR landscape to grow. This is a big step for Facebook and if sales take off for the Oculus Go, it could be a game changer for the company.

In a recentBloomberg article, Facebook plans to unveil a $200 wireless headset in 2018. This includes the device functioning without the use of a computer or phone, which currently isn’t possible. Right now all high end VR headsets are currently tethered and connected to your computer or phone. We all know in the future, VR headsets will eventually be wireless, but will it happen as soon as 2018?

Facebook is definitely on the forefront of taking VR to the mainstream consumer and a $200 price tag for a wireless HMD is a good starting point. I don’t believe it will replace the Oculus Rift right off the bat, but it very well could be the start of the wireless VR revolution. If Facebook does release their $200 wireless VR headset there’s a good chance there will be a higher end version on the back burner. Not to mention competitors like HTC, PlayStation and others going the wireless route is only a matter of time, the question is, who will be the first to do it…

Read the full article at Bloomberg here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-13/facebook-said-to-plan-200-wireless-oculus-vr-headset-for-2018

For 6 weeksOculus Rift and it’s Touch bundle will be almost $200 cheaper at $399 for the summer months. The summer sale is an incentive for potential buyers sitting on the sidelines to make the push for VR which includes sales on theOculus Store as well. After the summer sale concludes there will be a permanent price drop of about $100 according to Oculus VP of content Jason Rubin.

The Oculus Rift and Touch bundle won’t be sold together after the summer sale ends, but it’s good news as Oculus seems to remain competitive with their hardware price points. Others have questioned if the HTC Vive will drop in price because of Oculus’s move, but for anyone wanting to get into the VR game, now is a good time. To use the Oculus, buyers will still need a high end computer and GPU, which still remains the expensive part of the VR experience.