From PC World: “The sweet spot.” It sounds like that’s going to be VR’s new focus, as we head into Oculus Connect’s fourth annual iteration. And what is that sweet spot, exactly? Not mobile VR, not PC-based VR, but a blend of both. No wires, but the same high-fidelity experience people get from the Oculus Rift.
That’s still probably a ways off, but Oculus took its first steps in that direction at Connect, announcing its new $199 Oculus Go headset, plus giving us our first look of the upcoming “Santa Cruz” prototype with inside-out position tracking.
Oculus Go is pretty easy to explain: Imagine Samsung’s Oculus-based Gear VR headset, but without needing a separate phone to power the experience. That’s it, really.
And really that’s all Oculus needed. The $99 Gear VR is a great piece of hardware, but its audience was always limited by the pool of people who own a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone. Oculus Go broadens that audience significantly, and at $199 it’s set to be one of the cheapest VR headsets on the market when it releases in early 2018—and without wires tethering you to the PC.
Oculus Go also includes built-in audio, which is a definite improvement over Samsung Go. It’s not the same oversized on-ear headphones found on the core Oculus Rift, but there is support for spatial audio and the speakers look like they’re built into the headband. I’ve come to depend on built-in audio for VR—its convenience trumps the fidelity (but added clumsiness) of separate headphones.
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