Oculus Quest Hands On: A Fun VR Escape, But Watch Out for Walls

Facebook's Oculus Quest is then engaging yous might walk into a wall. But information technology's poised to become the first VR headset to offer a truly untethered VR feel.

The $399 Oculus Quest, launching in the spring with l titles, does away with cables, too as the need for a gaming PC or external sensors. It's intended to provide a completely standalone virtual reality feel that lets you walk, jump, and duck inside virtual worlds without fear of tripping over a cord.

I tried the Quest at this week's Oculus Connect developer briefing and came away thinking it might be what the industry needs to take VR mainstream.

Oculus Quest 2

The Oculus Quest isn't the start standalone VR headset. Earlier this year, Facebook launched the more affordable Oculus Go, just it's more of an introductory VR headset that does non track your concrete position.

The Oculus Quest does what the Go does not; information technology'due south fitted with four wide-angle sensors on the headset's edges that'll scan your surroundings and your position relative to them. This means y'all tin can physically walk in the existent world, and accept your movement translated into VR.

Oculus demoed the Quest using several games in an area about the size of a typical living room. I slipped on the Oculus Quest headset and grabbed ii affect controllers, ane for each mitt.

Project Tennis Scramble

Once inside the headset, I found myself on a drawing-like lawn tennis court for a game of Projection Tennis Scramble. Using a touch controller, I grabbed a racket and began hitting a tennis ball dorsum and along with another homo player. The Oculus Quest detected all move, from the swing of our hands to our bodies moving from ane side of the courtroom to the other.

In some other demo, I played Superhot VR, where I dodged and ducked virtual bullets. The headset accurately registered nigh of my movements as I traveled from ane stage to some other, knocking down enemies by shooting them with a pistol or punching them.

The whole experience felt like I'd entered a larger world—a world so large that I was almost tempted to venture out and run every bit far equally possible. To forbid crashes with real-globe surroundings, the Oculus Quest volition render neon-colored purlieus markers in the game. Cross a boundary and you'll terminate up hit something real, like a piece of furniture or worse.

Oculus Quest 1

Despite these virtual guardrails, I did, at one point, most run into a wall. Fortunately, Oculus VR staff were on mitt to help prevent a collision. But one wonders what actual owners of this production volition end upwards crashing into at home.

Nevertheless, the experience was fun and blood-pumping; it reminded me of 2006's Nintendo Wii, which also offered novel gameplay built around physical movement. The Oculus Quest may hold the same appeal by giving the public a truly unique gaming feel that can also help you burn some calories.

Oculus Quest 6

That said, the Quest may disappoint hardcore gamers looking for VR hardware with more than computing ability. The 2 games we played were rendered with relatively elementary graphics; nothing looked too realistic.

Oculus VR has non however released total specs for the Quest, simply it's built with a smartphone bit, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, used in several flagship handsets final year. The Oculus Rift, in contrast, works by connecting to a PC that's running a defended Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

There'due south also no word on battery life, just don't expect a lot. The headset has a display resolution of 1,600 past 1,440 per eye, which will probably require a lot of juice to run.

Withal, the Oculus Quest does bring us a step closer to a Ready Thespian One reality where everyone is running around wearing VR headsets. Sure, we may all await ridiculous, just at least it'll be fun.