Oculus Updates

Today at the GDC 2018 conference, Oculus provided more details about their upcoming Santa Cruz headset during their Inside Oculus 2018 session.

It was already known that the Santa Cruz will be a stand-alone 6-degree of freedom device that pairs with positionally tracked controllers. Today they confirmed that the future controllers will use analog thumbsticks, unlike the current design (shown at Oculus Connect 4) that uses a trackpad. They’ve also added two top buttons, so it looks like the ergonomics will be the same as the existing Rift Touch controllers.

One other point they emphasized was performance. Although the device will use the same sort of processors that are in mobile phones, it won’t be subject to having processing power curtailed by other requirements like the existing phone based VR (i.e. Google Daydream or Samsung Gear VR). According to Oculus VP of Content Jason Rubin, “We optimized the device for VR, not for being a phone.”

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My Take

I love the feel of the current Touch controllers, and I’ve never cared for any trackpad I’ve ever used, so I’m psyched for the change. I also think that whatever design they land on, it should be uniform across all their devices to minimize disruption when their users migrate from one device to another.

As far as the performance, I’ve used several phone based VR solutions before and they’re not in the same ballpark as an actual Rift or Vive. I’m skeptical that this will be either, but hopefully their optimizations—combined with 6-DOF tracking that most present stand-alones lack—will be enough really provide a sense of presence.
Either way, I can’t wait to try one out.

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