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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Oculus Quest, a fully wireless VR headset, shipping spring 2019 for $399 [arstechnica.com]

Facebook used its latest virtual reality conference, the fifth annual Oculus Connect, to finally confirm retail plans for its most ambitious standalone VR product yet: the Oculus Quest. Originally known by its prototype name, Oculus Santa Cruz, the Quest will ship in spring 2019 for $399.

In terms of the sales pitch, this is the Oculus holy grail: a wireless, hand-tracked, "six degrees of freedom" VR system with apparently legitimate 3D power and no required PC or phone.

The headset will include two bundled handheld controllers, and more than 50 games will be available at launch. The headset has a 1600×1440 per eye resolution (3200×1440 total resolution), compared to 1280×1440 per eye for Oculus Go or 1400×1600 per eye for HTC's Vive Pro, and has 64 GB of internal storage.

Vive's wireless adapter gives the best VR experience lots of money can buy [arstechnica.com]

Any consumer-grade VR headset you buy these days has its share of compromises. Buying a self-contained or phone-based headset (e.g. Oculus Go [arstechnica.com] or Samsung's Gear VR [arstechnica.com]) means giving up the power of a full-scale PC GPU and, usually, the freedom of full-scale head and hand motion tracking. But buying a tethered headset (e.g. Oculus Rift [arstechnica.com] or HTC Vive [arstechnica.com]) means being permanently tied to a bulky computer tower via an obtrusive cable.

HTC's new Vive Wireless Adapter does a fine job fixing that last particular compromise for Vive owners. With it, you can get the immersive graphical power of a high-end gaming PC and the freedom of being able to move around in a large VR space unencumbered by wires (or a bulky backpack laptop [arstechnica.com]). It's a best-of-both-worlds solution that we recommend highly—if you can spare the $300 in additional cost, that is.

Related: VR Without a Tether? Strap on a "Backpack PC" [soylentnews.org]
HTC Cancels U.S. Release of a Google Daydream VR Headset, Reveals Own Standalone Headset [soylentnews.org]
HTC's Vive Pro to Launch on April 5 [soylentnews.org]
Facebook Launches Oculus Go, a $200 Standalone VR Headset [soylentnews.org]
Oculus Launches Venues App for Live Entertainment, Sports, Etc. [soylentnews.org]
HTC: Death of VR Greatly Exaggerated [soylentnews.org]

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