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

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.

13 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Integrated headphones by MBGMorden · · Score: 2

    But how long will anything have a plug that you can use them with?

    According to most tech companies lately a headphone jack apparently is obsolete, is known to cause cancer in the state of California, and most probably murders puppies for fun on the weekends.

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    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  2. Real Names? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    So it's virtual reality, but we'll need to log on with our real names?

    Why would Zuckerberg ever want us to log out of Facebook to enter a 'virtual reality?'

    It sounds a lot more like it would be 'Augmented Reality' with Facebook in charge of the augmenting. Which is kinda chilling, if you think about it very long.

  3. 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 Spy+Handler · · Score: 3, Informative

      You do not have to buy all your games from from Oculus store. You can get games from Steam or other places. All you need to do is go into Oculus settings and check "Allow 3rd party apps"

  4. 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.

  5. 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...

  6. Re:Integrated headphones by LoneBoco · · Score: 2

    Luckily it also includes a headphone jack.

  7. 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.

  8. Re: Integrated headphones by hackwrench · · Score: 2

    Yes they do. Have you really only bought one pair?

  9. Re:Integrated headphones by mindwhip · · Score: 3, Interesting

    you've never owned a Beats headset (since the Apple takeover) the cables on them fail even faster than an iphone headphone adaptor...

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    [The Universe] has gone offline.
  10. 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
  11. Re:Not VR by JohnFen · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA:

    Oculus Go will ship with a handheld controller and work with the same apps available on Samsung’s Gear VR headset. However, it won’t have any positional tracking, which means that high-end VR apps available on the Oculus Rift headset won’t run on the device.

  12. Re:For dorks world over by kwoff · · Score: 2

    When mobile/cell phones started becoming...popular (? enough that I saw them), I thought it was really weird. Someone would be walking down the street talking to themselves. It's normal now (though I still think it's weird. Then again, I'm a programmer who's never owned a smart phone, heh.)