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Facebook Announces $199 Oculus Go Standalone VR Headset (variety.com)

Posted by msmash on from the cheap,-mass-production dept.

Facebook is going to ship a standalone VR headset called Oculus Go next year. The headset, which won't require a PC or phone to run, will be available early next year for $199. From a report: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially announced the new product during his keynote speech at Facebook's fourth Oculus Connect virtual reality (VR) developer conference in San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, where he framed the device as an important step towards bringing VR to the masses. "We want to get a billion people in virtual reality," Zuckerberg said. Facebook VP of VR Hugo Barra said that the company developed custom lenses for the headset, which allow for a wide field of view. The display is a fast-switch LCD screen with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, and it comes with integrated headphones. The company will be shipping first headsets to developers in November.

6 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Missing the Mark by t0qer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunately Zuck doesn't seem to understand what we want VR for, and what it was created for. We want to play our current games in VR. That's all. We don't want it to become a walled garden like the Occulus store. We don't want it for social media. We only want it as a display, nothing more. I don't see why all this money is being blown to make it into something people don't want.

    1. Re:Missing the Mark by mdm-adph · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Who's this "we?" You're not the target audience for this, nor ever will be. This is for the masses of people who gets their news on Facebook and spend 5+ hours a day there refreshing their feeds. Once they start getting blasted by ads for this thing, they'll start buying them up, especially since someone wearing a VR headset is a perfect captured audience for more ads.

      --
      It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
  2. Re:Integrated headphones by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most people don't want to deal with trying to wear two separate sets of gear on their head. You might be okay with the hassel, but you aren't going to buy a billion headsets and the software to go with them, so you aren't the market.

  3. Re:Integrated headphones by zlives · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the problem is 3.5 mm headphones don't fail, we need products that have a designed end of use date...

  4. Re:So... it will be... by JediJorgie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > a large part of the expense for LAST YEAR'S VR is the accurate position tracking.

    FTFY

    Inside-out tracking is mostly solved and being reduced to dedicated, soon to be commodity silicon. Tracking should be great.

  5. Re:What does it actually do? by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Its going to have a mobile SoC on par with the latest phones.

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    Good-bye