Many exciting things were announced at the Oculus Connect 6 conference, held by Facebook and Oculus. The Oculus Quest Virtual Reality Headset, starting at $399 USD, is a completely stand alone VR headset. It does not need a fancy computer, no phone needs to be inserted into it, it does not require external sensors, and it has 6 degrees of freedom, allowing you to really move in virtual reality. It will soon be even better starting in November!
A free update will be released to Oculus Quest owners sometime in November this year that will allow users to connect to a gaming pc and play Oculus Rift games. The service is called Oculus Link and will use a high-speed fiber optic cable. This is a huge deal because now Quest owners will be able to play the huge library of games previously available to Rift users only.
In other VR news, another free update coming early 2020 will allow developers to integrate hand tracking into their experiences. It is what it sounds like. Hand tracking will use the internal sensors on the front of the Quest headset to track the users' hands. There is no need for a glove, because the four tracking cameras on the headset track the users' hands in realtime and render them. Instead of a controller, using your hands in VR will increase the immersion even more!
Another significant announcement made was of a new game by Facebook, titled "Facebook Horizon." If you have seen the movie "Ready Player One", you already have a good idea of what this new VR experience will be like. According to Facebook, Horizon will be "...an ever-expanding VR world where you can explore, play, and create in extraordinary ways." You can sign up for beta testing now at https://oculus.com/facebookhorizon/?locale=en_US