Oculus Quest VR Headset Review!
**A Comprehensive Review of the Oculus Quest VR Headset: Full Transcription-Based Article**
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### **Introduction: The Arrival of the Oculus Quest**
Jeremy from "tested" introduces the highly anticipated Oculus Quest VR headset in this special early episode. After years of testing prototypes, the all-in-one, six-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) VR headset is finally here. Priced at $399 for the 64GB model and $499 for the 128GB version, the Oculus Quest is set to ship on May 21st alongside the Rift S. Pre-orders are available through Oculus.com and major online retailers like Amazon.
The article will delve into every aspect of the Oculus Quest, including its specs, setup process, tracking system, comfort, audio quality, controllers, battery life, and the games available at launch. Jeremy’s team has been using the headset for a week, providing an in-depth analysis to help readers decide if this is the right VR device for them.
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### **A Brief History of Virtual Reality Headsets**
For those new to VR, it's essential to understand the evolution of VR headsets. Until recently, there was only one type of VR: PC-based systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. These required external sensors mounted around the room, a gaming PC with a high-end graphics card (starting at $1,500), and were tethered via long cables.
The Oculus Go marked a significant shift as the first standalone VR headset, but it was limited to 3DoF (head movement only, no positional tracking). The Quest combines the best of both worlds—6DoF tracking, all-in-one functionality, and no need for a PC or external sensors.
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### **Technical Specifications and Features**
The Oculus Quest runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile processor, offering impressive processing power for a standalone VR headset. Its Inside-Out Tracking system uses four wide-angle, global-shutter cameras on the corners of the headset to track movement and environment, along with infrared LEDs on the new Touch controllers.
Key specs include:
- **Resolution**: 1600 x 1440 per eye (superior to the original Rift).
- **Field of View**: Comparable to the Oculus Go and Rift S.
- **Refresh Rate**: 72Hz, which is sufficient for smooth gameplay.
- **Tracking**: Rock-solid 6DoF tracking with minimal latency.
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### **Setup and Guardian System**
Setting up the Quest is a breeze compared to PC-based VR systems. The first step is activating the headset, which provides a grayscale pass-through view of the world. This feature allows users to visualize their surroundings while setting boundaries for the Guardian system—a safety feature that detects obstacles and prevents collisions.
The Guardian system creates "Guardian Spaces" by scanning the environment, enabling safe movement within a defined area. It can store up to five spaces, making it easy to use in different rooms. Jeremy highlights how the system recognized his home’s unique lighting conditions, offering seamless tracking without prior calibration.
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### **Inside-Out Tracking and Controller Design**
The Quest’s Inside-Out Tracking system is a standout feature, eliminating the need for external sensors or lighthouses. The new Touch controllers are designed with upward-facing rings to ensure better visibility for the cameras. They feel familiar from previous iterations but have been refined for comfort and usability.
Jeremy notes that while the controllers are slightly top-heavy, they adapt well once you get used to them. The battery compartment is now on the top, making it easier to replace batteries without disassembling the controller.
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### **Audio System and Facial Interface**
The Quest’s audio system includes integrated headphones with a passthrough feature, allowing users to hear their surroundings while enjoying immersive soundscapes. Jeremy compares the audio quality favorably to the Oculus Go, praising its spatial audio capabilities in games like Beat Saber. However, he points out that bass response is limited compared to PC-based headsets.
The facial interface is removable and includes an IPD adjustment feature, allowing users to fine-tune the distance between the lenses for optimal comfort. While Jeremy wishes the headset were lighter (590 grams), he acknowledges its portability and balance.
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### **Battery Life and Accessories**
The Quest’s battery life is impressive, with a claimed 2-3 hours of use on a single charge. The included USB-C adapter supports fast charging, and users can continue gaming while charging the device. Jeremy tested this feature extensively during his review, finding it reliable though not recommended for extended sessions.
Included accessories like the carrying case, cleaning cloth, and interchangeable nose cushions enhance usability. A third-party solution for prescription lenses is expected to launch soon.
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### **Games and Content**
At launch, the Quest offers over 50 curated games and apps, including both PC-ported titles (e.g., Superhot, Space Pirate Trainer) and native Quest-exclusive experiences (e.g., Sports Scramble VR). Jeremy emphasizes that while the graphics may not match high-end PC games, developers have optimized these titles to deliver a smooth experience.
Games like Beat Saber, Creed: Rise of the Gladiators, and Rec Room showcase the potential of standalone VR. Jeremy notes that multiplayer experiences like those tested at Oculus Connect 3 are technically possible but limited by the Guardian system’s boundaries.
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### **Conclusion: A Revolutionary Device**
Jeremy concludes that the Oculus Quest is a game-changer for VR enthusiasts who want mobility without compromising on performance. While it may not match the visual fidelity of high-end PC headsets like the Valve Index, its $400 price point makes it an excellent choice for casual and multiplayer gaming.
The Quest’s intuitive setup, reliable tracking, and comfortable design make it accessible to a wider audience. Jeremy recommends the headset for anyone looking to explore VR without investing in expensive hardware.
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### **Final Thoughts**
The Oculus Quest sets a new standard for standalone VR headsets, blending power, portability, and ease of use. Whether you’re a casual gamer or an avid explorer of virtual worlds, this device offers a compelling experience that justifies its price. Jeremy’s team highly recommends the Quest as a must-try for anyone interested in VR.
If you have questions about the Oculus Quest or need advice on choosing the right VR headset, feel free to leave a comment below!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody no one from tested here Jeremy from tested and welcome back to projections we're with a special early episode this week we are reviewing the oculus quest it's finally here we've been toying with prototypes for a couple years now this is the all-in-one completely isolated six degree of freedom VR headset now a few bits of information up front this is gonna be on sale pre-order right now if you go to oculus comm as well as other online retailers s by Amazon that's right and we'll be shipping on May 21st along with the rift there are two SKUs there's the 399 SKU at 64 gigabytes and there's the double that 128 gigabyte for $4.99 that's right oculus provided us with the review in it and we've been using it for the past week if you're new to VR and you're curious about the differences between all these headsets a little bit of a history first it's allowed to keep in mind even for us because when we started out there is really just like one thing there was the PC headsets and that was basically the rift and the HTC vive and they were very much very similar they both had external sensors that you needed to mount throughout your room and they had the headset and a six degree of freedom controllers yes which gave you a hand presence we'd call that the first generation of VR headsets they ran the graphics and the complication of power off of your PC you would be tethered with a long cable essentially and of course you needed a gaming PC you need a gaming graphics card which start like like the whole thing in is like $1500 just to get going in VR because it's rendering not only graphics for one eye but for two eyes and a much higher refresh rate frame rate than on your normal gaming PC you need in a 90 Hertz refresh rate now since an oculus has released the oculus go which is a standalone VR headset so all of the graphics all the computational power is on this device but it's hampered by the fact that it is a three degree of freedom only device you can move your head around turn around but you can't actually move around right so you can look in any direction you just can't move and walk in any direction same thing goes for the controller which you can point in any direction but doing this does absolutely nothing essentially a laser pointer and so with the oculus quest it's basically taking the best of both those worlds and putting them in one device it is all self-contained you don't need to connect it to a laptop or a desktop it runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile processor and for its tracking it uses what Facebook oculus calls oculus insight and inside out tracking system there's an array of four cameras wide-angle global shutter cameras on the corners of the headset that look at the world and I don't look at the world but also look at its controllers they've come with the new touch controllers and these are going to be the same controllers that come with the new rift s as well but they're different than the previous touch controllers the Rings now face upward whereas the old touch controllers leaves face downward and they face upward so that the cameras can see them better because surrounding these are actually invisible to the human eye infrared LEDs that flicker and allow the headset to see them and track them throughout 3d space yes and so there is a little bit of setup and when you put on a headset the first thing you see is a pass through it's a grayscale monochromatic view of the world it's not particularly sharp it's almost like looking through fuzzy and a long television it is stereo it's just not perspective correct like it is on the S that's right and it sees the world allows you then to draw your your boundaries right this setup is far and away better than any of the PC setups that we've done in the past yes right because it in the traditional PC world you had to actually walk around your space on the computer screen you'd see a representation of your controller and you'd walk around your space you'd literally move around your room and draw a box essentially and then it would I isolate like an area within that and that would be your space but it was kind of a it was a tedious process with this you literally stand in one place and now that you can see with a pass-through system you point you to stand in point and draw your area around you you can do this within seconds I mean it's super super easy super fun and you can actually store five different guards they call them Guardian spaces in the headset and anytime you go back to own any of these spaces theoretically it will recognize it and you're good to go yeah and also knows where your controllers are something also does a little bit of augmented reality at least the barest minimum right highlights your right controller highlights the left troller so you're never fumbling to grab controller put on the strap and then put the headset on you can put the headset on and see all my controllers are right there they're highlighted grab the correct one put on your wrist tighten the straps and get ready it's a game and he mentioned the Guardian system and the Guardian system is that boundary it does recognize five of them and in my experience my house I mapped as many rooms as I could with the idea that could go maybe from room to room and have it Amelie recognized and I found there the memory to be about fifty percent accurate I had excellent success with the Guardian setup I set it up in three different rooms and any time I went back to one of those rooms it there was no it didn't even have to think about it it just knew immediately that knows where the space is I wonder if it's a matter of lighting or the amount of contrast that there is in this base but more things that might be changing if you move a chair around right no there's a chair around out lighting I think is a very important thing because these cameras are very sensitive to a certain spectrum of light for example that's why they don't work outside if you're in bright daylight if you're outdoors we tried testing this try creating a Guardian space try tracking on you know a grassy field none of it works the controllers don't work we have heard reports of people who have done it in a very overcast situation not a lot of sunlight right and you can technically be if it thinks of it as a large indoor space yes but by and large this is meant to be use indoors right so man definitely in a lit area like you said you can't use in a dark space because even though the controllers use infrared LEDs they the rest of the system works with the standard visible light optical system where it needs to be able to see the room yes and not only see the room but in a room that's not super reflective right mirrors or big windows you know close your blinds close your drapes when you're setting this up and normal room lighting even slightly lower than normal room lighting will work just not in a pitch-black room so that's most of the stuff we already knew going into it should we talk about our experience using it for the past week absolutely absolutely and with the Guardian system one of the big surprise for me was how well it blended with the menu and even game experiences right it's always in the background as a layer that's run and not only that bounded I may be in the oculus menu which in this case is than the go menu cuz I can actually walk around a little bit I can drag the menus toward me but I move beyond my guardian space the guardian fades in it's almost like the holodeck grid wall right the holodeck grid wall fades in when you get close to it either your controller or your headset yeah and if you then start to pass through it this cool like circle opens up around your head or hands and you can pass through it and if you pass your head through it it's very clever it because it then fades in the pass through system so you can actually see what it is you're about to knock your head into yes and that works in all the content it's always running it never broke for me and it just added a level of comfort and security when when using this in any of the environments you can also use it standing there's in the menu system you can click that I'm gonna in a seated or standing non room-scale environment and then I'll create a guardian that's more to a cone around you and it doesn't take up one of those five memory slots right and that's great for games where you don't want to be walking around you can even go into the menus into a developer menu and turn off Guardian completely in which case you have to agree to the terms and conditions yeah you're at your own risk but you can do that as well if you really just want to sit down and do it in a space that is very very temporary now what's also cool about this headset is that even though all the processing power is on the mobile device it actually is one of the better displays and visual experiences that we've seen in VR because it has a really high resolution display 1600 by 1440 for each eye right and which is equivalent to like the vive pro it is in it it's an OLED display so you get really really deep blacks every single pixel is its own light source it is a pentile display it's not the same thing it's Nora to be stripe and the VR nerds will know the difference between them but just rest assured it is a very high resolution display that is superior to the original oculus rift that's right and the field of view is I think comparable to what you'd see in the go in the rift which is the say it's it's I could I could use a little bit more fov but it's it's good enough it's basically the experience parity between all these devices it is running at 72 Hertz and in our experience semi true Hertz was good enough like I wasn't clamoring for for a nine or even more right I would rather take consistent frame rate because it is a mobile process we were used to that on the go although we didn't have the experience be able to move through the space I would say 72 is certainly good enough for four beats a bur for space fighter trainer for some fast paced experiences that we got to try it's definitely good enough in it I didn't find myself getting motion sickness due to any limitation of the headset and comfort wise it is really comfortable it's much better than the oculus go it's not quite a fully rigid head strap so the back here and what cups the back of your head is still kind of rubber rubber plastic but it does have the stiff side arms here which is inherited from the rift definitely more rigid and I definitely like this spring action you can put it on sort of like a spring-loaded cap it doesn't fold all the way up like the go does so it just does a 45 degree angle so you can put it on and the recommendation for full comfort because it is a little heavier than the oculus go is to make sure that you cup this around the back of your head completely and tighten the straps we measured it at 590 grams yeah which is actually a little lighter than I expected it to be you said it was very comfortable I spent several hours in the unit and I would say after about a half hour I felt it to be a little bit front heavy and and it felt like I got a lot of relief just from lifting it for a little bit I wish it was just a little bit lighter but there is so much compacted into this headset I have to forgive it I mean one of the very first prototypes that we saw of the quest before he was it called quest it was called the Santa Cruz part it's one two three years ago they had the processing in the back and I wonder if they'd experimented with different organ except maybe some of the battery or some of that compute in the back to redistribute the weight but I think clearly they want everything in the front here so therefore this can compact and it'd be easier to to move around the oculus rift has integrated audio in the form of headphones that come off the side and you can do like this to give yourself some room or popping down your ears and they isolate the rest of the world relatively well with the go they went with an internal system with this sound that gets piped back al the the strap and they did a very similar system with the quest how did you find the audio I found caught very comparable to go meaning that I got spatial audio games that make use of spatial audio like beat saber it sounds like the sound is coming from that direction but it also sounds like the sound is being piped you can kind of tell that those speakers are right in front of you rushing toward your ear and it doesn't have great bass response that's it like there's really very little low-end and and that's the one thing that I miss from from the rift however it's like the alternative of just having a headphone jack this is so far superior like you need to have integrated audio because you're gonna be passing this around you're not gonna want to deal with headphones all the time and it honestly I think it sounds better than the go I there were there were times when it when sounds would come out of games and I thought oh someone else is in the room like it really does a good job of that spatial positioning interesting because also does have two analog headphone jacks and oculus yeah will be song for $50 their own solution for in-ear headphones as an accessory for the quest that plug into both the left and right side so interesting choice to use both jacks from noise and so they're both stereo jacks you can plug an actual headphone into either one but their system uses one for each a left and a right the facial interface is removable scan pull this out and clean it and what's interesting here is that there is I have actually plugged in right here they include a intermediate spacer they can use for glasses glosses same thing with the go yeah so for me I use glasses and I'm pretty big claw says the spacer worked well for me decreases the field of vision just a little bit but I would rather have that then of the lack of comfort it does have an IP D adjustment yeah this is cool IP d adjust the bottom right there which is unlike via new oculus s so this is actually a headset that maybe can support smaller I PDS than even their PC solution at this point in time it probably supports somewhere in the high 50s to the low 70s in terms of millimeters between your pupils what's interesting though maybe this is because of the software is an updated yet is when you adjust the IPD I don't see an onscreen rotation of the number is you kind of just have to adjust it to where you find it most comfortable unlike other headsets if you know you're right you justit's your number specifically also because there's internal IPD adjustment you have the same kind of mesh interface on the inside here that you do on the rift and what that means is you can't pop out the lens covers here for the same type of interchangeable prescription lenses that you have on the go this is just fixed right I wonder if they'll come if there will be a third party that offers that eventually that snaps in somehow yeah somehow well how about the control oh yeah the control like we said these now face upward instead of downward and the system tells you which is which in case you get a little bit confused you do have to use the left and the left hand on the right in the right hand because of the internal trigger and the position of the analog sticks are kind of mirrored I've found it to be perfectly functional once you're in game it works great however the actually getting it on your hand it's a little top-heavy it's not as bottom heavy as these so the natural you know way that it falls isn't in line with gravity so it's like you have to sort of keep it upright yeah I had to remind myself constantly that the rings were on top and not bottom right and maybe it's after years of using the touch controllers on the rift I'm still getting used to them me too and another thing to note is that the battery slider is now on the top the battery started like of the original touch controllers that is a magnetically held in place and you put it takes one double-a battery which is actually by the way a great solution because if you run out of power you just pop another double-a you not to charge it but this goes back on snaps in a position and I found myself in some more intense experiences moving this off while I played you do not find that I didn't find that when you did that did it take the battery out not at all okay not at all it's just it takes me out of the game for a moment I have to remember not to squeeze it too hard so that I pull it back yeah and some people because there's both the menu button and oculus button on these accidentally hit those buttons there is now a setting in the menu to make those long presses it does replace the reset orientation but even if you're the person that accidentally hits those because you're gonna use the new ergonomic s' then you can turn that on in the menu one last point for clarity there has been some confusion over whether or not the new controllers are compatible with the original rift and it is not compatible oculus will continue to support the original touch controllers for owners of that device yes but they are interchangeable you can pair them if you have a rift s to essentially the same controller and just like with the go you can pair a Bluetooth controller if you want to use a gamepad for example on the quest although in our testing we couldn't get a wired gamepad work over USB see I hooked up an on-the-go adapter and a wired game had to it and it made a sound recognized a device but it didn't work in the menus like it does in the go so I just hope that a wired gamepad solution on the go adapter will work in the future particularly because that's how I would play my pinball games if they release a pinball game and also it is USB C which is much improved over the USB mini connect in terms of data transfer rate data transfer rate they also include a 10 foot long cable Yass is really nice with a l melted C adapter here so that makes charging really easy the battery insight they claim about two to three hours of use time we're just gonna depend on what type of experience is right no I definitely ran it all the way down playing journey of the gods which is probably a five hour experience and I just I found that you one can you can plug it in and play at the same time now that's this is something they don't recommend probably just because it's non-ideal and they didn't recommend it on the go but it worked there as well but it does work fine it charges at five volts at one point two amps so if you have a battery pack that can deliver that it will do it over USB C but it's not using the full potential of the current of the USB no they could have been doing nine volts than a faster charge for whatever reason they're charging at the pretty standard grade yeah I expect a lot of people to be adapting their headsets with battery packs which I think it's totally fine we're wearing it on your hip on your hip using a cable yeah alright let's talk about the games that please yes so this is when it launches on May 21st so it'll be about 50 games available these are games made by developers I've partnered with oculus to go through their approval process much like on the go it's there Kyle talked about it being more curated experience where I focus on games specifically we were able to play about 15 of the games for months which range from some ports of existing VR titles like superhot and Cree and space pirate trainer two games are specifically made for the quests like sports scramble VR sport scramble and face your fears - and I think experience wise parity with the rift like positional tracking yes in these games works with hand presence and not just the positional tracking which which is act absolutely great I mean Carmack tweeted at one point that he was refining the positional tracking of the controllers using beat Sabre because he wanted it to play better on the quest than it does on the PC so you're right that the actual tracking of the world in the hand the controller's I would say is as good as a PC experience and definitely better than any of the previous mobile inside out tracking experiences absolutely tried before absolutely but the graphics are what surprised me even more I mean we've used prototypes of this I was ready for the tracking to be good but the graphics I was honestly I was I had tempered my hopes I thought it might be more of an oculus go kind of thing because even though it has a faster processor it also has to do all of the inside out tracking using that exact same process there's a subprocess processor for all that stuff so I was expecting oculus go level geometry you know textures and honestly the PC ports that we saw were very very close to their PC equivalents I mean with the graphics quickly turned down on the PC for a space pirate trainer for exams it plays exactly like space pirate trainer does on the PC you don't get a lot of like the post-processing effects if I'm the PC version you basically take away a lot of those effects that's the version you get on the quest but but like with superhot could you really tap into I mean I think it's about graphical styling it is very much about graphical styling but it's also been I think there's been this six month period of optimizations that developers have put in and they're learning how to get the most out of this processor because it's the sky's the limit on a PC but with this they really have to temper things back they have to lower the number of draw calls they have to combine effects into a single you know effect and use textures instead of post processes all the stuff they're learning how to do that and I'm very impressed with what the first generation of products are able to pull out of this processor when it's got your resolution it's just gonna get better I absolutely and I think developers going to attune their styles optimize for what the the quest can do I think less reliant on graphics that have textures that try to emulate the real-world materials a concrete steel high detailed textures and more colorful games I can't wait to play rec room on this because I think that's gonna look great a game like we are the the tennis sports scramble was I think it looked really good one of the best looking games in the quest and be hard-pressed to have me decided that was a PC game or a mobile game because it was just of the our game right now we haven't played rec room yet there that is supposed to be slated for launch we have not been given access to that I'll be very curious about what that looks like but there's also games like racket NX which also we haven't gotten a chance to play but that's a game that is going to benefit so much from having no tether not because you can spin around and play basically racquetball in a 360 degrees sphere and you you'll come out of it not knowing what direction you're facing yeah we played a bunch of oculus and go games that were ports of rift games and tried to make it work for three degrees of freedom right like a table tennis game once you have that same game on quests playing ping pong game in quest was so fun well compared to go compared to even compared to riff cos I didn't feel right like the court on my shoulder I felt like actually jump around move around the space so that you can set the Guardian for it does have a cap on how big you can set that space right we figured it with our testing about 15 feet by 15 feet or about a little over 200 square foot if you draw a circle it would stop you which is not quite the arena scale that they pitched this at it's not full arena scale right it is room scale yeah but in that room very liberating that makes me wonder how did they pull off the multiplayer dead and buried experience that we played at oculus connect which was a what was at 3 B 3 yeah on it's basically a location-based experience using only the quest so that was definitely some custom custom traveled from the ground up in order to make that work short that is possible it's technically possible III wonder if it's because for safety or they're just not ready yet or because that passed through layer is always running in the background when you do hit the limit of your Guardian system it just doesn't let you draw any further out yeah so yeah that's how you find out what that limit is but then shapes by the way it can be any shape I mean it can be a crazy shape that goes around your furniture now back to the games you know beat Sabre super solid I think if you like beats a we're gonna be happy we can beat Sabre on here like you played through journey of the gods which is I'm a big fan this was a game that evolves in terms of what you do as a player what what you do in VR and what you're capable of you play as a god who's also capable of switching between human form and fighting into melee and and deranged style combat and it's that you know Nate Mitchell one point compared it to a Zelda like experience it's it's a great game the audio is surprisingly good and I'm excited to for that to come out on both platforms because I think that that's going to be one of the great launch titles for this especially given that it's also a new title yeah yeah other ports I played Creed I was a boxing game and when I'm into it again having untethered mobile VR people do kind of dance around that was really fun but also show me a little bit of limitations of the tracking for this because the places where the controllers don't track so well are one behind you and also very close in front of you and anyone can test this just even in that guardian pass-through setup if you move a controller right up to your head which I'm doing when I'm playing Creed cuz I'm holding my hands up right to boxing then I lose tracking and so maybe boxing doesn't work well space pirate trainer is another game that requires you to switch weapons by reaching over your shoulder yeah right and and this is an area where these cameras can't perceive and the like the theory is you can continue to use the IMU inside the controllers to track beyond the actual physical or optical sphere that this can see there's some modeling some inference and and to a certain extent they do do that and if you reach your hand back very quickly you can switch weapons but if you reach back for you slowly it doesn't work so that's an instance where the there is a limitation but you just learn how to play past it and certainly the the compromises are worth it yeah and after surveying the preview of games they've enabled for this this review unit I do feel like that the caliber of games are great on the quest but they're not going to be the same level as the full-blown PC games we've seen for the ripsi which rights both being developed by oculus studios do you feel like that's in terms of the graphical fidelity and the complexity of the geometry that kind of thing or is it a matter of time spent in the device I think I think both I think there's gonna be a sweet spot for number of hours spent in here I was doing you know about 20 to 30 minute experiences which doesn't say you couldn't be in this for you know an hour or 2 hours but there's gonna be some constraints you know even games like shooters apex construct or journey the gods these are 4 to 5 hour games or it may be a game like beat Sabre where it's us one mechanic you have multiple levels on that's about arcade experience is what I'm expecting more maybe a more akin to the mobile experience and that might be the dividing line I wonder I mean rec room we we spent three hours just going through a quest you and me and can sure many times so I'll be curious to see like what the battery life is like on this after you know there's many many uses as well as the comfort level like I I do wonder if there's a way to retrofit this strap to relieve some of that front weight yeah so yeah I might see what I can tinker with to do that yeah with that USB port you can't also move your own media files over just so you could with the go and if you envelop enable a developer mode you can also site load your own content if you are a developer as well just like you could on the oculus go but that's again that is the advanced user way to get titles on here that oculus would probably never carry in their store things like you know like a Virtual Boy emulator or something like that right and also it does not work as a PC tether headset and some people are wondering could you plug this in through and use the display use the optics which are great and with the old tracking system with PC render games no this is all is self content yeah John Carmack has said that they are experimenting with that but no promises I would I would be shocked at this actually ever comes to fruition I mean that is that is something that they have never spoken about never promised consider this an all-in-one devices is not a P the connection device and for something that's an all invoice that's a mobile device running on a mobile processor I think my big takeaway is that I'm surprised how few compromises almost no compromises yes there gonna be some technical limitations it has a run on a battery yes I'm not gonna run graphics to the fullest but the display looks fantastic the optics look fantastic the tracking is rock-solid and for that price for $400 for this I mean I think it's a no-brainer for me to to pick it up I'm gonna buy two because this is the first headset where I don't need to invest you know in thousand $1000 PC in order to have a multiplayer experience am I saying how so I want to play with my family that this is gonna be a lot of fun to do things like rec room quests together in the same room yeah I think that's gonna be a revolutionary device in that sense I mean there's $400 now to be fair like that is not a fair price point to the competition this is Facebook accelerating the adoption of VR by subsidizing essentially and selling is it very little margin then something that the competitors can't necessarily do but we as consumers take advantage of that at this point and this is a device that probably should not exist at this price and for consumers you also have to make the person's vision am i buying this device as a game console versus something like a Playstation or even a Nintendo switch which is cheaper and I think the quality of experience is overall probably there's more robustness on the other platforms yeah but those aren't VR like what you're getting for this is a whole different type of experiencing you've never tried VR don't bulk the fact that this is more expensive than a Nintendo switch you got a try VR and try getting hand presents because it really takes through VR gaming gaming experiences to home loan yeah I wonder if people think that the who have tried the oculus go because it is available at that small price point if they've tried that and they think well that's VR and this is a maybe a better version of the go I would say this is something completely different this is gonna if you've ever felt motion sickness in the go try this because now moving through space is a completely different level of immersion and comfort like those they they breast them one another's shoulders and it's a wonderful experience to be immersed in the space especially being able to see both of your hands and interact with the world it's a different level than what basically the best version of Google cardboard yeah 20:19 is a very very exciting year for virtual reality we have stuff coming out on the very high end from valve the valve index oculus has the quest and also the rift s which we'll be reviewing later on this week and in the coming weeks we'll be reviewing the games showcasing more the games as we get closer to May 21st on the quest to really get a bigger sampling of the type of experiences we can get with with mobile six degree of freedom VR but this is like we said available for pre-order now it will ship on May 21st if you have other questions about the headset please post them in the comments below and we'll see you next timeeverybody no one from tested here Jeremy from tested and welcome back to projections we're with a special early episode this week we are reviewing the oculus quest it's finally here we've been toying with prototypes for a couple years now this is the all-in-one completely isolated six degree of freedom VR headset now a few bits of information up front this is gonna be on sale pre-order right now if you go to oculus comm as well as other online retailers s by Amazon that's right and we'll be shipping on May 21st along with the rift there are two SKUs there's the 399 SKU at 64 gigabytes and there's the double that 128 gigabyte for $4.99 that's right oculus provided us with the review in it and we've been using it for the past week if you're new to VR and you're curious about the differences between all these headsets a little bit of a history first it's allowed to keep in mind even for us because when we started out there is really just like one thing there was the PC headsets and that was basically the rift and the HTC vive and they were very much very similar they both had external sensors that you needed to mount throughout your room and they had the headset and a six degree of freedom controllers yes which gave you a hand presence we'd call that the first generation of VR headsets they ran the graphics and the complication of power off of your PC you would be tethered with a long cable essentially and of course you needed a gaming PC you need a gaming graphics card which start like like the whole thing in is like $1500 just to get going in VR because it's rendering not only graphics for one eye but for two eyes and a much higher refresh rate frame rate than on your normal gaming PC you need in a 90 Hertz refresh rate now since an oculus has released the oculus go which is a standalone VR headset so all of the graphics all the computational power is on this device but it's hampered by the fact that it is a three degree of freedom only device you can move your head around turn around but you can't actually move around right so you can look in any direction you just can't move and walk in any direction same thing goes for the controller which you can point in any direction but doing this does absolutely nothing essentially a laser pointer and so with the oculus quest it's basically taking the best of both those worlds and putting them in one device it is all self-contained you don't need to connect it to a laptop or a desktop it runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile processor and for its tracking it uses what Facebook oculus calls oculus insight and inside out tracking system there's an array of four cameras wide-angle global shutter cameras on the corners of the headset that look at the world and I don't look at the world but also look at its controllers they've come with the new touch controllers and these are going to be the same controllers that come with the new rift s as well but they're different than the previous touch controllers the Rings now face upward whereas the old touch controllers leaves face downward and they face upward so that the cameras can see them better because surrounding these are actually invisible to the human eye infrared LEDs that flicker and allow the headset to see them and track them throughout 3d space yes and so there is a little bit of setup and when you put on a headset the first thing you see is a pass through it's a grayscale monochromatic view of the world it's not particularly sharp it's almost like looking through fuzzy and a long television it is stereo it's just not perspective correct like it is on the S that's right and it sees the world allows you then to draw your your boundaries right this setup is far and away better than any of the PC setups that we've done in the past yes right because it in the traditional PC world you had to actually walk around your space on the computer screen you'd see a representation of your controller and you'd walk around your space you'd literally move around your room and draw a box essentially and then it would I isolate like an area within that and that would be your space but it was kind of a it was a tedious process with this you literally stand in one place and now that you can see with a pass-through system you point you to stand in point and draw your area around you you can do this within seconds I mean it's super super easy super fun and you can actually store five different guards they call them Guardian spaces in the headset and anytime you go back to own any of these spaces theoretically it will recognize it and you're good to go yeah and also knows where your controllers are something also does a little bit of augmented reality at least the barest minimum right highlights your right controller highlights the left troller so you're never fumbling to grab controller put on the strap and then put the headset on you can put the headset on and see all my controllers are right there they're highlighted grab the correct one put on your wrist tighten the straps and get ready it's a game and he mentioned the Guardian system and the Guardian system is that boundary it does recognize five of them and in my experience my house I mapped as many rooms as I could with the idea that could go maybe from room to room and have it Amelie recognized and I found there the memory to be about fifty percent accurate I had excellent success with the Guardian setup I set it up in three different rooms and any time I went back to one of those rooms it there was no it didn't even have to think about it it just knew immediately that knows where the space is I wonder if it's a matter of lighting or the amount of contrast that there is in this base but more things that might be changing if you move a chair around right no there's a chair around out lighting I think is a very important thing because these cameras are very sensitive to a certain spectrum of light for example that's why they don't work outside if you're in bright daylight if you're outdoors we tried testing this try creating a Guardian space try tracking on you know a grassy field none of it works the controllers don't work we have heard reports of people who have done it in a very overcast situation not a lot of sunlight right and you can technically be if it thinks of it as a large indoor space yes but by and large this is meant to be use indoors right so man definitely in a lit area like you said you can't use in a dark space because even though the controllers use infrared LEDs they the rest of the system works with the standard visible light optical system where it needs to be able to see the room yes and not only see the room but in a room that's not super reflective right mirrors or big windows you know close your blinds close your drapes when you're setting this up and normal room lighting even slightly lower than normal room lighting will work just not in a pitch-black room so that's most of the stuff we already knew going into it should we talk about our experience using it for the past week absolutely absolutely and with the Guardian system one of the big surprise for me was how well it blended with the menu and even game experiences right it's always in the background as a layer that's run and not only that bounded I may be in the oculus menu which in this case is than the go menu cuz I can actually walk around a little bit I can drag the menus toward me but I move beyond my guardian space the guardian fades in it's almost like the holodeck grid wall right the holodeck grid wall fades in when you get close to it either your controller or your headset yeah and if you then start to pass through it this cool like circle opens up around your head or hands and you can pass through it and if you pass your head through it it's very clever it because it then fades in the pass through system so you can actually see what it is you're about to knock your head into yes and that works in all the content it's always running it never broke for me and it just added a level of comfort and security when when using this in any of the environments you can also use it standing there's in the menu system you can click that I'm gonna in a seated or standing non room-scale environment and then I'll create a guardian that's more to a cone around you and it doesn't take up one of those five memory slots right and that's great for games where you don't want to be walking around you can even go into the menus into a developer menu and turn off Guardian completely in which case you have to agree to the terms and conditions yeah you're at your own risk but you can do that as well if you really just want to sit down and do it in a space that is very very temporary now what's also cool about this headset is that even though all the processing power is on the mobile device it actually is one of the better displays and visual experiences that we've seen in VR because it has a really high resolution display 1600 by 1440 for each eye right and which is equivalent to like the vive pro it is in it it's an OLED display so you get really really deep blacks every single pixel is its own light source it is a pentile display it's not the same thing it's Nora to be stripe and the VR nerds will know the difference between them but just rest assured it is a very high resolution display that is superior to the original oculus rift that's right and the field of view is I think comparable to what you'd see in the go in the rift which is the say it's it's I could I could use a little bit more fov but it's it's good enough it's basically the experience parity between all these devices it is running at 72 Hertz and in our experience semi true Hertz was good enough like I wasn't clamoring for for a nine or even more right I would rather take consistent frame rate because it is a mobile process we were used to that on the go although we didn't have the experience be able to move through the space I would say 72 is certainly good enough for four beats a bur for space fighter trainer for some fast paced experiences that we got to try it's definitely good enough in it I didn't find myself getting motion sickness due to any limitation of the headset and comfort wise it is really comfortable it's much better than the oculus go it's not quite a fully rigid head strap so the back here and what cups the back of your head is still kind of rubber rubber plastic but it does have the stiff side arms here which is inherited from the rift definitely more rigid and I definitely like this spring action you can put it on sort of like a spring-loaded cap it doesn't fold all the way up like the go does so it just does a 45 degree angle so you can put it on and the recommendation for full comfort because it is a little heavier than the oculus go is to make sure that you cup this around the back of your head completely and tighten the straps we measured it at 590 grams yeah which is actually a little lighter than I expected it to be you said it was very comfortable I spent several hours in the unit and I would say after about a half hour I felt it to be a little bit front heavy and and it felt like I got a lot of relief just from lifting it for a little bit I wish it was just a little bit lighter but there is so much compacted into this headset I have to forgive it I mean one of the very first prototypes that we saw of the quest before he was it called quest it was called the Santa Cruz part it's one two three years ago they had the processing in the back and I wonder if they'd experimented with different organ except maybe some of the battery or some of that compute in the back to redistribute the weight but I think clearly they want everything in the front here so therefore this can compact and it'd be easier to to move around the oculus rift has integrated audio in the form of headphones that come off the side and you can do like this to give yourself some room or popping down your ears and they isolate the rest of the world relatively well with the go they went with an internal system with this sound that gets piped back al the the strap and they did a very similar system with the quest how did you find the audio I found caught very comparable to go meaning that I got spatial audio games that make use of spatial audio like beat saber it sounds like the sound is coming from that direction but it also sounds like the sound is being piped you can kind of tell that those speakers are right in front of you rushing toward your ear and it doesn't have great bass response that's it like there's really very little low-end and and that's the one thing that I miss from from the rift however it's like the alternative of just having a headphone jack this is so far superior like you need to have integrated audio because you're gonna be passing this around you're not gonna want to deal with headphones all the time and it honestly I think it sounds better than the go I there were there were times when it when sounds would come out of games and I thought oh someone else is in the room like it really does a good job of that spatial positioning interesting because also does have two analog headphone jacks and oculus yeah will be song for $50 their own solution for in-ear headphones as an accessory for the quest that plug into both the left and right side so interesting choice to use both jacks from noise and so they're both stereo jacks you can plug an actual headphone into either one but their system uses one for each a left and a right the facial interface is removable scan pull this out and clean it and what's interesting here is that there is I have actually plugged in right here they include a intermediate spacer they can use for glasses glosses same thing with the go yeah so for me I use glasses and I'm pretty big claw says the spacer worked well for me decreases the field of vision just a little bit but I would rather have that then of the lack of comfort it does have an IP D adjustment yeah this is cool IP d adjust the bottom right there which is unlike via new oculus s so this is actually a headset that maybe can support smaller I PDS than even their PC solution at this point in time it probably supports somewhere in the high 50s to the low 70s in terms of millimeters between your pupils what's interesting though maybe this is because of the software is an updated yet is when you adjust the IPD I don't see an onscreen rotation of the number is you kind of just have to adjust it to where you find it most comfortable unlike other headsets if you know you're right you justit's your number specifically also because there's internal IPD adjustment you have the same kind of mesh interface on the inside here that you do on the rift and what that means is you can't pop out the lens covers here for the same type of interchangeable prescription lenses that you have on the go this is just fixed right I wonder if they'll come if there will be a third party that offers that eventually that snaps in somehow yeah somehow well how about the control oh yeah the control like we said these now face upward instead of downward and the system tells you which is which in case you get a little bit confused you do have to use the left and the left hand on the right in the right hand because of the internal trigger and the position of the analog sticks are kind of mirrored I've found it to be perfectly functional once you're in game it works great however the actually getting it on your hand it's a little top-heavy it's not as bottom heavy as these so the natural you know way that it falls isn't in line with gravity so it's like you have to sort of keep it upright yeah I had to remind myself constantly that the rings were on top and not bottom right and maybe it's after years of using the touch controllers on the rift I'm still getting used to them me too and another thing to note is that the battery slider is now on the top the battery started like of the original touch controllers that is a magnetically held in place and you put it takes one double-a battery which is actually by the way a great solution because if you run out of power you just pop another double-a you not to charge it but this goes back on snaps in a position and I found myself in some more intense experiences moving this off while I played you do not find that I didn't find that when you did that did it take the battery out not at all okay not at all it's just it takes me out of the game for a moment I have to remember not to squeeze it too hard so that I pull it back yeah and some people because there's both the menu button and oculus button on these accidentally hit those buttons there is now a setting in the menu to make those long presses it does replace the reset orientation but even if you're the person that accidentally hits those because you're gonna use the new ergonomic s' then you can turn that on in the menu one last point for clarity there has been some confusion over whether or not the new controllers are compatible with the original rift and it is not compatible oculus will continue to support the original touch controllers for owners of that device yes but they are interchangeable you can pair them if you have a rift s to essentially the same controller and just like with the go you can pair a Bluetooth controller if you want to use a gamepad for example on the quest although in our testing we couldn't get a wired gamepad work over USB see I hooked up an on-the-go adapter and a wired game had to it and it made a sound recognized a device but it didn't work in the menus like it does in the go so I just hope that a wired gamepad solution on the go adapter will work in the future particularly because that's how I would play my pinball games if they release a pinball game and also it is USB C which is much improved over the USB mini connect in terms of data transfer rate data transfer rate they also include a 10 foot long cable Yass is really nice with a l melted C adapter here so that makes charging really easy the battery insight they claim about two to three hours of use time we're just gonna depend on what type of experience is right no I definitely ran it all the way down playing journey of the gods which is probably a five hour experience and I just I found that you one can you can plug it in and play at the same time now that's this is something they don't recommend probably just because it's non-ideal and they didn't recommend it on the go but it worked there as well but it does work fine it charges at five volts at one point two amps so if you have a battery pack that can deliver that it will do it over USB C but it's not using the full potential of the current of the USB no they could have been doing nine volts than a faster charge for whatever reason they're charging at the pretty standard grade yeah I expect a lot of people to be adapting their headsets with battery packs which I think it's totally fine we're wearing it on your hip on your hip using a cable yeah alright let's talk about the games that please yes so this is when it launches on May 21st so it'll be about 50 games available these are games made by developers I've partnered with oculus to go through their approval process much like on the go it's there Kyle talked about it being more curated experience where I focus on games specifically we were able to play about 15 of the games for months which range from some ports of existing VR titles like superhot and Cree and space pirate trainer two games are specifically made for the quests like sports scramble VR sport scramble and face your fears - and I think experience wise parity with the rift like positional tracking yes in these games works with hand presence and not just the positional tracking which which is act absolutely great I mean Carmack tweeted at one point that he was refining the positional tracking of the controllers using beat Sabre because he wanted it to play better on the quest than it does on the PC so you're right that the actual tracking of the world in the hand the controller's I would say is as good as a PC experience and definitely better than any of the previous mobile inside out tracking experiences absolutely tried before absolutely but the graphics are what surprised me even more I mean we've used prototypes of this I was ready for the tracking to be good but the graphics I was honestly I was I had tempered my hopes I thought it might be more of an oculus go kind of thing because even though it has a faster processor it also has to do all of the inside out tracking using that exact same process there's a subprocess processor for all that stuff so I was expecting oculus go level geometry you know textures and honestly the PC ports that we saw were very very close to their PC equivalents I mean with the graphics quickly turned down on the PC for a space pirate trainer for exams it plays exactly like space pirate trainer does on the PC you don't get a lot of like the post-processing effects if I'm the PC version you basically take away a lot of those effects that's the version you get on the quest but but like with superhot could you really tap into I mean I think it's about graphical styling it is very much about graphical styling but it's also been I think there's been this six month period of optimizations that developers have put in and they're learning how to get the most out of this processor because it's the sky's the limit on a PC but with this they really have to temper things back they have to lower the number of draw calls they have to combine effects into a single you know effect and use textures instead of post processes all the stuff they're learning how to do that and I'm very impressed with what the first generation of products are able to pull out of this processor when it's got your resolution it's just gonna get better I absolutely and I think developers going to attune their styles optimize for what the the quest can do I think less reliant on graphics that have textures that try to emulate the real-world materials a concrete steel high detailed textures and more colorful games I can't wait to play rec room on this because I think that's gonna look great a game like we are the the tennis sports scramble was I think it looked really good one of the best looking games in the quest and be hard-pressed to have me decided that was a PC game or a mobile game because it was just of the our game right now we haven't played rec room yet there that is supposed to be slated for launch we have not been given access to that I'll be very curious about what that looks like but there's also games like racket NX which also we haven't gotten a chance to play but that's a game that is going to benefit so much from having no tether not because you can spin around and play basically racquetball in a 360 degrees sphere and you you'll come out of it not knowing what direction you're facing yeah we played a bunch of oculus and go games that were ports of rift games and tried to make it work for three degrees of freedom right like a table tennis game once you have that same game on quests playing ping pong game in quest was so fun well compared to go compared to even compared to riff cos I didn't feel right like the court on my shoulder I felt like actually jump around move around the space so that you can set the Guardian for it does have a cap on how big you can set that space right we figured it with our testing about 15 feet by 15 feet or about a little over 200 square foot if you draw a circle it would stop you which is not quite the arena scale that they pitched this at it's not full arena scale right it is room scale yeah but in that room very liberating that makes me wonder how did they pull off the multiplayer dead and buried experience that we played at oculus connect which was a what was at 3 B 3 yeah on it's basically a location-based experience using only the quest so that was definitely some custom custom traveled from the ground up in order to make that work short that is possible it's technically possible III wonder if it's because for safety or they're just not ready yet or because that passed through layer is always running in the background when you do hit the limit of your Guardian system it just doesn't let you draw any further out yeah so yeah that's how you find out what that limit is but then shapes by the way it can be any shape I mean it can be a crazy shape that goes around your furniture now back to the games you know beat Sabre super solid I think if you like beats a we're gonna be happy we can beat Sabre on here like you played through journey of the gods which is I'm a big fan this was a game that evolves in terms of what you do as a player what what you do in VR and what you're capable of you play as a god who's also capable of switching between human form and fighting into melee and and deranged style combat and it's that you know Nate Mitchell one point compared it to a Zelda like experience it's it's a great game the audio is surprisingly good and I'm excited to for that to come out on both platforms because I think that that's going to be one of the great launch titles for this especially given that it's also a new title yeah yeah other ports I played Creed I was a boxing game and when I'm into it again having untethered mobile VR people do kind of dance around that was really fun but also show me a little bit of limitations of the tracking for this because the places where the controllers don't track so well are one behind you and also very close in front of you and anyone can test this just even in that guardian pass-through setup if you move a controller right up to your head which I'm doing when I'm playing Creed cuz I'm holding my hands up right to boxing then I lose tracking and so maybe boxing doesn't work well space pirate trainer is another game that requires you to switch weapons by reaching over your shoulder yeah right and and this is an area where these cameras can't perceive and the like the theory is you can continue to use the IMU inside the controllers to track beyond the actual physical or optical sphere that this can see there's some modeling some inference and and to a certain extent they do do that and if you reach your hand back very quickly you can switch weapons but if you reach back for you slowly it doesn't work so that's an instance where the there is a limitation but you just learn how to play past it and certainly the the compromises are worth it yeah and after surveying the preview of games they've enabled for this this review unit I do feel like that the caliber of games are great on the quest but they're not going to be the same level as the full-blown PC games we've seen for the ripsi which rights both being developed by oculus studios do you feel like that's in terms of the graphical fidelity and the complexity of the geometry that kind of thing or is it a matter of time spent in the device I think I think both I think there's gonna be a sweet spot for number of hours spent in here I was doing you know about 20 to 30 minute experiences which doesn't say you couldn't be in this for you know an hour or 2 hours but there's gonna be some constraints you know even games like shooters apex construct or journey the gods these are 4 to 5 hour games or it may be a game like beat Sabre where it's us one mechanic you have multiple levels on that's about arcade experience is what I'm expecting more maybe a more akin to the mobile experience and that might be the dividing line I wonder I mean rec room we we spent three hours just going through a quest you and me and can sure many times so I'll be curious to see like what the battery life is like on this after you know there's many many uses as well as the comfort level like I I do wonder if there's a way to retrofit this strap to relieve some of that front weight yeah so yeah I might see what I can tinker with to do that yeah with that USB port you can't also move your own media files over just so you could with the go and if you envelop enable a developer mode you can also site load your own content if you are a developer as well just like you could on the oculus go but that's again that is the advanced user way to get titles on here that oculus would probably never carry in their store things like you know like a Virtual Boy emulator or something like that right and also it does not work as a PC tether headset and some people are wondering could you plug this in through and use the display use the optics which are great and with the old tracking system with PC render games no this is all is self content yeah John Carmack has said that they are experimenting with that but no promises I would I would be shocked at this actually ever comes to fruition I mean that is that is something that they have never spoken about never promised consider this an all-in-one devices is not a P the connection device and for something that's an all invoice that's a mobile device running on a mobile processor I think my big takeaway is that I'm surprised how few compromises almost no compromises yes there gonna be some technical limitations it has a run on a battery yes I'm not gonna run graphics to the fullest but the display looks fantastic the optics look fantastic the tracking is rock-solid and for that price for $400 for this I mean I think it's a no-brainer for me to to pick it up I'm gonna buy two because this is the first headset where I don't need to invest you know in thousand $1000 PC in order to have a multiplayer experience am I saying how so I want to play with my family that this is gonna be a lot of fun to do things like rec room quests together in the same room yeah I think that's gonna be a revolutionary device in that sense I mean there's $400 now to be fair like that is not a fair price point to the competition this is Facebook accelerating the adoption of VR by subsidizing essentially and selling is it very little margin then something that the competitors can't necessarily do but we as consumers take advantage of that at this point and this is a device that probably should not exist at this price and for consumers you also have to make the person's vision am i buying this device as a game console versus something like a Playstation or even a Nintendo switch which is cheaper and I think the quality of experience is overall probably there's more robustness on the other platforms yeah but those aren't VR like what you're getting for this is a whole different type of experiencing you've never tried VR don't bulk the fact that this is more expensive than a Nintendo switch you got a try VR and try getting hand presents because it really takes through VR gaming gaming experiences to home loan yeah I wonder if people think that the who have tried the oculus go because it is available at that small price point if they've tried that and they think well that's VR and this is a maybe a better version of the go I would say this is something completely different this is gonna if you've ever felt motion sickness in the go try this because now moving through space is a completely different level of immersion and comfort like those they they breast them one another's shoulders and it's a wonderful experience to be immersed in the space especially being able to see both of your hands and interact with the world it's a different level than what basically the best version of Google cardboard yeah 20:19 is a very very exciting year for virtual reality we have stuff coming out on the very high end from valve the valve index oculus has the quest and also the rift s which we'll be reviewing later on this week and in the coming weeks we'll be reviewing the games showcasing more the games as we get closer to May 21st on the quest to really get a bigger sampling of the type of experiences we can get with with mobile six degree of freedom VR but this is like we said available for pre-order now it will ship on May 21st if you have other questions about the headset please post them in the comments below and we'll see you next time\n"