Slashdot Mirror
Zuckerberg Teases An 'Affordable' Standalone Oculus VR Headset (techcrunch.com)
At the Oculus Connect developers conference today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased a standalone Oculus VR headset that fits somewhere imbetween the Gear VR consumer headset for Samsung Galaxy users and the high-end Oculus Rift headset designed for professional gamers. TechCrunch reports: The hallmark feature of the new prototype standalone headset is positional tracking. In a brief demo video, the headset appeared to be a modified Rift with a compute module embedded into the back of the headset. This positional tracking technology allows the headset to understand where it is in physical space and adjust the onscreen content accordingly. With 360 videos, you're limited to a spherical viewpoint from a fixed point, but with positional tracking enabled you can walk through an experience and see a story from every angle. There's a reason that plenty of enthusiasts refer to this as the hallmark feature of "real VR." Zuckerberg said development is still incredibly early, but that it's on the product roadmap. Unbelievably the word "affordable" was mentioned at some point. Oculus did also announce that its Oculus Touch motion controllers will be coming out on December 6th. They will cost $199, and will put the combined Oculus Rift price at roughly $800. Pre-orders for Touch start on October 10th.
I'll believe it when I see it. Oculus was supposed to be half it's current asking price.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Good to see you are enjoying your free speech rights, glad that you are giving the same consideration to others.
Reasons I don't like Facebook and don't intend to purchase Touch or CV2:
- Oculus runs 24x7 and connects 24x7 to Facebook servers constantly wasting power, network and system resources to stalk people by at the very least uploading list of every VR program they've ever ran even third party software totally unrelated to Oculus home.
- Random forced updates of low quality and no back out with proven track record of breaking shit.
- North Korean style privacy policy granting insane rights including rummaging through your computer and extracting complete inventory of all content and software.
- Online install without any offline download. This is intentionally engineered to allow Facebook to retroactively waltz in and fuck everyone over with more draconian bullshit at their pleasure as if existing updates were not bad enough: Random breakage, introducing hardware DRM, retroactively imposing artificial system requirements that turn working systems into broken ones for no reason other than laziness and indifference.
- External sources toggle is a FU hoop intended to artificially advantage Oculus home.
- Oculus home required to run whether you want it or not.
- Account required to install CV1 even if you don't want one and don't intend on using their app store.
- CYA warnings show up every time you use it and can't be stopped even with registry hacks.
- Facebook legal department asserts physical product is in fact a "service" and only recourse for not agreeing to new service terms is stop using product you paid >$600 for.
- Instantly killed off all community shit that made Oculus and attracted attention to the platform the very second CV1 rolled out.
- Facebook is incapable of having a vision for VR HMD beyond cyber stalking, advertising and walled gardens. It's what they do.. it's what they are. It's all they care about.
I manage a museum that has both Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard available for the public to use. The unanimous opinion of hundreds of people who tried both is that there's no comparison between even the best phone versions and the Oculus. I can only assume that your experience with the Oculus has been with a substandard computer because seriously... there is no comparison.