Oculus Santa Cruz (standalone & portable 6-DOF VR) rumored to launch Q1 2019

[Wollan]

'Oculus Santa Cruz' (codename) will be the first standalone & portable VR headset that has full 6-degrees-of-freedom tracking for both headset AND controllers. Just like the high-end VR devices i.e. Vive, Oculus Rift & PSVR.
This will be a very important new category of VR devices to help adoption where there is almost no friction (no cables, no complex driver installs, no configurations, fewer and more automatic updates etc... just plug and play), you can bring it along anywhere and yet the experience is relatively high-end.

It is now rumored from several different sources to release Q1 2019 which is sooner than I anticipated.
Oculus Connect 5 will take place September 26-27th where the full product unveil is expected to happen.

Oculus Santa Cruz can be brought along like a Gameboy to your cabin or favorite spot of choice and played with zero wires and no external processing like a PC. Oculus has another portable Virtual Reality product with the budget-priced Oculus Go but it only has 3-degrees-of-freedom (it doesn't track your positional changes, only orientation).

https://uploadvr.com/oculus-santa-cruz-2019-rift/

Oculus is targeting Q1 2019 to launch its upcoming higher-end standalone VR headset, currently known by the code-name Santa Cruz. Multiple independent sources have said that Oculus has shared a Q1 timeline for wide release.

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Oculus Santa Cruz has a much larger tracking volume than other inside-out optical tracking VR headsets like Windows MR due to having 4 cameras instead of 2 :

 

[Bomblord]

So nothing on specs? I'm still in the camp that mobile hardware running VR may be more damaging to the perception of it than the positives that wider adoption could bring. A bad VR experience can literally make you throw up and once you hit that point you don't want to go back. Given the limitations that hardware would have to hit to fit into the headset itself I can't see it managing a good experience with a high framerate and adequate tracking for a free moving experience. I would love to be proven wrong though.

 

[Bookoo]

So nothing on specs I'm still in the camp that mobile hardware running VR may be more damaging to the perception of it than the positives that wider adoption could bring. A bad VR experience can literally make you throw up and once you hit that point you don't want to go back. Given the limitations that hardware would have to hit to fit into the headset itself I can't see it managing a good experience with a high framerate and adequate tracking for a free moving experience. I would love to be proven wrong though.

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Have you tried the Oculus Go? It is best mobile VR out and miles ahead of most of the mobile products on the market. I know we aren't going to get PC level experiences, but there are plenty of great experiences on Oculus Go that will only be further enhanced by having positional tracking and motion controllers.

I hope they manage to hit that Q1 date, but given their previous track record I am going to set my expectations at Q2.

 

[atomsk]

sounds like there's gonna be a lot more people with VR injuries.

 

[Bomblord]

Have you tried the Oculus Go? It is best mobile VR out and miles ahead of most of the mobile products on the market. I know we aren't going to get PC level experiences, but there are plenty of great experiences on Oculus Go that will only be further enhanced by having positional tracking and motion controllers.

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I haven't, only VR I own is a 1st gen Vive and even with it's incredibly accurate tracking and being hooked up to a 1080 and Ryzen 7 I frequently get low framerates/stuttering, drifting (probably reflective surfaces in my house), and run into issues in various games. To be fair the ones I'm thinking of are mainly Unity though but I've also had issues with Fallout 4 VR.

 

[Nacho]

So soon after the go? Weird, not gonna be good if their products line gets confusing and cluttered

 

[toa95]

So nothing on specs I'm still in the camp that mobile hardware running VR may be more damaging to the perception of it than the positives that wider adoption could bring. A bad VR experience can literally make you throw up and once you hit that point you don't want to go back. Given the limitations that hardware would have to hit to fit into the headset itself I can't see it managing a good experience with a high framerate and adequate tracking for a free moving experience. I would love to be proven wrong though.

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Honestly I feel the success of Santa Cruz lies 100% on Oculus getting developers to make specific versions for them. I could see stuff like Job Simulator, I Expect You to Die, Rec Room, and Beat Saber working wonderfully on this hardware even if it is close to mobile. Sure Skyrim isn't going to play on it but if we get something like Superhot VR or Robo Recall (downgraded graphics of course) then I think this thing could be the first VR product to take off mainstream.

 

[Durante]

What's the SoC in this?

It will be a shame for such (presumably) nice hardware in terms of optics/displays to be limited by mobile-level rendering HW. I wish they'd at least put a USB-C VirtualLink port on it. (I know it's not quite that easy in practice)

Oculus Santa Cruz has a much larger tracking volume than other inside-out optical tracking VR headsets like Windows MR due to having 4 cameras instead of 2 :

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Now they just need to put a camera on the back strap so I can take my arrows from the quiver :P

 

[Wollan]

So soon after the go? Weird, not gonna be good if their products line gets confusing and cluttered

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There's going to be a significant price-difference.
I'm expecting somewhere around $6-800 for this first generation of 6-DOF portable VR headsets. $199 vs $799.... so prices will have to come down before this new new category of VR devices will properly help adoption.

In regards to the experience itself the Oculus Go is pretty amazing considering its price-level and it absolutely *destroys* all mobile-phone VR experiences you might have tried i.e. GearVR or DayDream. Playing 'Virtual Virtual Reality' the game on it is a great experience.

 

[Bookoo]

What's the SoC in this?

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Likely snapdragon 835, but some are hoping to see 845. Oculus Go was running snapdragon 821.

 

[Wollan]

Now they just need to put a camera on the back strap so I can take my arrows from the quiver :P

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Since it tracks 80% of the quiver movement (the ultimate tracking test in VR :p ) then I think approximation for the last 20% will be fine. I asked someone the same question for Windows MR and they said it felt fine there.

 

[Dr Doom]

sounds promising. I bet it will be $+200 from GO

going to hold off from getting GO

 

[Jraphics Horse]

What's the SoC in this?

It will be a shame for such (presumably) nice hardware in terms of optics/displays to be limited by mobile-level rendering HW. I wish they'd at least put a USB-C VirtualLink port on it.


Now they just need to put a camera on the back strap so I can take my arrows from the quiver :P

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Can that sort of thing not just be fudged acceptably enough without optical sensors?

 

[Deleted member 12790]

There's going to be a significant price-difference.
I'm expecting somewhere around $6-800 for this first generation of 6-DOF portable VR headsets. $199 vs $799.... so prices will have to come down before this new new category of VR devices will properly help adoption.

In regards to the experience itself the Oculus Go is pretty amazing considering its price-level and it absolutely *destroys* all mobile-phone VR experiences you might have tried i.e. GearVR or DayDream. Playing 'Virtual Virtual Reality' the game on it is a great experience.

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The lenovo mirage solo is a 6dof stand alone headset and is $400.

 

[HyGogg]

So nothing on specs I'm still in the camp that mobile hardware running VR may be more damaging to the perception of it than the positives that wider adoption could bring.

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I think Switch has wonderfully demonstrated the difference between "mobile" in the generic sense of an ecosystem of varying specs and a general purpose OS, and a dedicated mobile device with a fixed spec and devs that can code to the metal on the spec.

While this obviously won't be able to reach the graphical fidelity of PC VR, I think it'll get closer than people realize, and paired with superior tracking it could provide a better experience than, say PS VR.

In theory, this could be the "console" of VR; something that thrives on its price point and ease of use when compared to the comparatively expensive and arcane PC ecosystem and its complicated specs and set up. I think that's what they're going for here rather than something "mobile." The appeal is being simple and self-contained more than portable.

That said there are a lot of factors working against it as well; VR's hype balloon is over and a lot of people have made up their minds based on negative experiences with cheap hardware or just a general negativity from others. It's also not able to take advantage of the library of software on PC and Mobile right now, and it's feature set provides challenges in porting from either in a way that really takes advantage of the hardware.

If Oculus can get a selection of its best first party titles onto this thing at or around launch and meet it with a good marketing push, it could be a real game changer. But that's a big ask.

 

[D65]

I really want this...

 

[cakefoo]

There's going to be a significant price-difference.
I'm expecting something upwards of $800 for this first generation of 6-DOF portable VR headsets. $199 vs $799.... so prices will have to come down before this new new category of VR devices will properly help adoption.

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There's no way Oculus will ask $800. It's essentially an Oculus Go with outward-facing cameras and Touch controllers. $300-400 max.

 

[HyGogg]

What's the SoC in this?

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They've been non-committal but I believe prototypes were believed to be Snapdragon based, and word is they're doing some additional cooling beyond what you'd see in a cell phone, suggesting possible overclocking.

If they're using an OC'd Snapdragon 845, they could outperform the Switch by about double. Which is enough to make things interesting, at least.

 

[Bookoo]

The lenovo mirage solo is a 6dof stand alone headset and is $400.

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Yea I am hoping to see $399-499. Lenovo Mirage seemed like a neat device, but was disappointed to find out it only used a 3 DoF controller.

 

[HyGogg]

There's no way Oculus will ask $800. It's essentially an Oculus Go with outward-facing cameras and Touch controllers. $300-400 max.

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I think it's a huge mistake to compare this to Go. I think the specs are going to be much higher end. Where Go is the "Game Boy" tier, this is meant to be the "console" tier, and Rift the "enthusiast PC" tier.

I think $800 would be a mistake, but $500 wouldn't surprise me. They need to keep the cost under the cost of a PS4 and PSVR if they hope to be successful though, because this is aimed most squarely at that market.

 

[Wollan]

The Oculus Santa Cruz default rendering is 72hz (which also is a 3x multiple of 24hz which is nice for showing video content).
Oculus Go has a 60hz (fps) default but it also has an overclock mode so it can go to 72hz if your game has a certain performance overhead.

I'm expecting the Oculus Santa Cruz SOC to have dedicated chip/cores for the camera-tracking and separate one for game rendering.

 

[HyGogg]

Can that sort of thing not just be fudged acceptably enough without optical sensors?

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It can, yes. Particularly since you can't see your hand when this happen, it's ok to crudely estimate it using accelerometors.

 

[I KILL PXLS]

I miiiight get one of these for the Oculus exclusives that don't work all that well with Vive controllers. Like this would be great just for Medium. Kind of depends on the quality of the ports though. I also imagine importing and exporting to a PC would be a lot more awkward.

Also yeah, I don't see this being more than $500.

 

[Wollan]

Another tidbit from the article:

One of the major topics up for discussion is porting Rift content to the Santa Cruz headset — which is something we've heard from multiple sources is a big focus for Oculus' launch lineup on the new headset.

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Please let this include a port of Echo Combat...

 

[Bookoo]

The Oculus Santa Cruz default rendering is 72hz (which also is a 3x multiple of 24hz which is nice for showing video content).
Oculus Go has a 60hz (fps) default but it also has an overclock mode so it can go to 72hz if your game has a certain performance overhead.

I'm expecting the Oculus Santa Cruz SOC to have dedicated chip/cores for the camera-tracking and separate one for game rendering.

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Someone mentioned on the Oculus Subreddit that a VR researcher (Doc_ok) seemed pretty confident that there will be a dedicated chip for SLAM stuff. I couldn't find the direct quote, but Doc_OK has been around the sub for a while.

Another tidbit from the article:
Please let this include a port of Echo Combat...

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I would love to see them pull this off. I am going to be punching all the walls in my house.

 

[1-D_FE]

I'm definitely interested in the potential of this.

There's going to be a significant price-difference.
I'm expecting somewhere around $6-800 for this first generation of 6-DOF portable VR headsets. $199 vs $799.... so prices will have to come down before this new new category of VR devices will properly help adoption.

In regards to the experience itself the Oculus Go is pretty amazing considering its price-level and it absolutely *destroys* all mobile-phone VR experiences you might have tried i.e. GearVR or DayDream. Playing 'Virtual Virtual Reality' the game on it is a great experience.

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You may be right, but it'll be sent to die if that's what they do. They really need to cap at 400 max. Especially if this is their end game. Which I suspect it is. I'm sure they'd much rather have a closed hardware hit and just transition away from the PC side to something they completely control.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Looking forward to how Santa Cruz pans out

 

[pj-]

This type of device is probably the most likely to go mainstream. Current mobile VR is cheap but lacks freedom. PC VR is good but it's expensive, tethers you to a computer, and is difficult to setup.

An "it just works" device will be amazing, even if it's limited to xbox360 era graphics.

 

[plagiarize]

Mark me down as very interested. I'm also very interested in whatever they're making that's meant to use the new USB-C standard, since they're part of that consortium... but untethered VR is probably more compelling to me than higher fidelity VR. That said, I want better than Gear VR/Go fidelity, which doesn't really feel like it's budged much since the earliest Gear VR dev kit (performance has definitely improved, don't get me wrong).

 

[Chessguy1]

oculusgo was my first vr experience and i dont think i could go wired, its just too convenient not worrying about where im playing

i have a gaming pc, so i would like a hybrid device if it was possible

im definitely interested, espically if they port beat saber

 

[StereoVSN]

Hisnis pretty nice but due to the fact that mobile SOC gets outdated so rapidly, I feel this is a bit meh. Now, if they built it so there was a "brick" unit you could pull and upgrade every couple of years, now you would be talking.