The Oculus Go can be used without headphones – the sound passes through a plastic channel in the headband holder to the ear of the wearer. — dpa
Large VR headsets, like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, usually need to be connected by cable to a powerful computer.
Meanwhile, cheaper models like the Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream or Lenovo's VR headset require an expensive smartphone to act as a display.
However, the Oculus Go doesn't require either. Only during setup is a smartphone required to connect the headset via WiFi with an Oculus account on Facebook. That's how apps, videos, photos and other content is shared with the device.
Inside the headset is a Snapdragon 821, the same processor found many of the latest smartphone models. Here it can concentrate entirely on virtual reality. The screen is an LCD display with fast switching times (72 Hz) and WQHD resolution (2560 by 1440 pixels).
To achieve the best image quality, the headset uses a technique whereby content in the middle of the screen is rendered with a high resolution of 1280 by 1280 pixels while content on the edges receives only a fraction of that. This is only noticeable when you look at the edges, and overall the picture quality is quite substantial.
However, the Oculus Go only supports three degrees of freedom (3DoF), that's to say it only registers head movements (turning and tilting) but not the position of the headset wearer in the room.
The Oculus Go can be used without headphones – the sound passes through a plastic channel in the headband holder to the ear of the wearer.
This works surprisingly well with not much sound intruding from the external environment. Whoever wants things louder can always plug headphones into the device's jack.
When merely viewing content the battery lasts two and a half hours but it runs out a bit faster when playing games.
Already more than 1,000 apps are available for the Go and the device can also play titles developed for Samsung's Gear VR, including the board game Catan VR, the roller-coaster game Coaster Combat and music concerts filmed in 360 degrees using the MelodyVR app.
There's also a Second Life-like virtual world, Oculus Rooms, where users can chat and watch movies together.
Facebook-owned Oculus has deliberately positioned the Go not just as a device for playing VR games – it's also aimed at replacing televisions. The Go could also be the photo album of the future for pictures shot with 360-degree cameras.
All in all, the Oculus Go definitely deserves a place alongside the big boys of VR. It's very easy to set up, doesn't require an expensive PC or smartphone and to a large extent can match the picture quality of the bigger headsets.
The headset with 32 gigabytes of memory costs US$200 (RM794) in the United States, while the larger 64GB version costs US$50 (RM199) more. Currently available to 23 countries via the website oculus.com, the Oculus Go is expected to arrive in shops later in the summer. — dpa
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