My predictions for Oculus Connect 5

Next week, on September 26th-27th, Oculus will perform its annual showcase event: Oculus Connect, that has now arrived at its 5th edition. The latest event, the OC4 has been full of news and interesting information, both on Oculus products and VR in general and I think that this year won’t be different. As all VR enthusiasts, I’m hyped about what will be announced there.

Of course, we still don’t know exactly what will be announced by Oculus/Facebook. It will be a surprise: we all have some ideas, but we can’t be certain about anything until the opening keynote starts. But this doesn’t prevent us from speculating and becoming hyped: “VR is 90% speculation” someone told me once, and I’m no exception on this. So, here you are my take on the most important things that I predict for Oculus Connect 5!

Oculus Santa Cruz

We’ll be all there attached to the live stream for this. Oculus should finally announce the Oculus Santa Cruz, the high-end 6DOF headset that Oculus is teasing since two years. We don’t know too much about it, apart from the fact that:

• It is a high-end mobile headset;
• It is a 6 DOF headset;
• It features two ergonomic 6 DOF controllers, very similar to Oculus Touch;
• There are four cameras at the corners of the front plate that are used to track the controllers;
• It has a design very similar to the Oculus Rift.

So, I expect Oculus to release the full specifications of the headset (or at least a part of them), announce some content for it and then announce also the release date and price. At that point, we’ll all go in full-hype mode. The Santa Cruz promises to be a very high-quality headset, and as all the headsets that Oculus is releasing (like the CV1 and Rift), it will have a wonderful design and comfort. And it will surely feature amazing content since Day 1.

Going in full-speculation mode, I expect specs very similar to the Vive Focus, that has these ones:

• Display: 3K AMOLED, resolution 2880 x 1600
• Refresh rate: 75 Hz
• FOV: 110 degrees
• Adjustable IPD: Supported
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 835
• Storage: MicroSD™ slot,up to 2TB MicroSD™ external memory
• Audio input/output: Built-in microphones, built-in speakers, 3.5mm stereo audio jack
• Connectivity: Wi-fi, Bluetooth, USB Type-C connector
• Power and battery: Built-in rechargeable battery, QC3.0 fast charging, up to 3 hours of active use time, over one week standby time

I say that because in my opinion, the Santa Cruz will be based on Snapdragon 835 VR reference design, unless Oculus has been able to switch to 845 VR thanks to the one year delay of the release after the Focus: in that case, it could reserve some surprises in terms of performances. Regarding the computational power, it won’t be like a PC, and won’t be able to run games like Robo Recall as someone is hinting. It will be a high-end standalone headset, but it will still be a mobile device. I bet that Oculus has squeezed all the computational power possible thanks to super-optimizations, as it has done with the Go, so it will allow some cool games to run on it… but I don’t expect miracles.

Regarding the use of Virtualink to connect the Santa Cruz to PC, I don’t think it will happen, for mostly three reasons:

1. There was a debate on it on Reddit and people more skilled than me told me that doing a compromise between a tethered headset and a standalone headset would produce a device that works rather well in both situations but that would need compromises and so it wouldn’t be optimal in neither situation. And Oculus wants to release optimal products, not decent ones;
2. The marketing will be all based on freeing you from the cable. A wired option would be confusing at the beginning for customers;
3. If the Santa Cruz can work as a Rift, no one would buy a Rift anymore and Oculus has said a bazillion times that it believes in its PC line.

Regarding price and release date. The price will probably in the range $400-$700. I don’t expect a price bigger than $700 because otherwise, people could start preferring the Pico Neo, and I don’t expect a price lower than $400, because otherwise, no one would buy the Go anymore. I bet for a version at $499 and another one at $599. This way, Oculus can again start a new battle against HTC, whose Focus heaset will be priced in the range $500-$600 but that at the moment has only one 3 DOF controller.

Release date: preorders starting on 6 January 2019 to remember the good old CV1 times :). (Again, this is full speculation… do not believe in anything that is in this post!) I don’t believe in an immediate release, so developers will have more time to produce content (one of the sessions will be on how to port existing PC games to Santa Cruz) and so the Go will be device to bet on in the Holiday season.

Oculus Monterey

For months there has been a lot of talk about Oculus Monterey. But what the heck is Monterey? It is a headset that could be produced by Facebook, about which no one knows its features, but every one of us has heard of. I have written an article regarding a rumor about it I’ve heard first-hand myself from a secret source. But there are many rumors and the name Monterey appeared also in Oculus jobs’ search page some months ago. According to the various unconfirmed news, Monterey could be:

• The actual name of the Santa Cruz. That is, it could be the internal codename of the Santa Cruz (the Go, for instance, was dubbed with the codename of “Pacific”) or the name with which the Santa Cruz will be put on the market. Honestly, I highly doubt that Oculus will change the Santa Cruz name at this point since it is already a powerful brand inside VR communities. Changing it would be confusing;
• A new version of the Rift. That is, Oculus could do something like Vive has done with the Vive Pro: it could release an upgraded version of the Rift to keep pace with the evolutions of the market, where now the Rift is one of the tethered devices with the lowest resolution;
• An upgraded version of the Santa Cruz. So there is the Santa Cruz One for $499 and the Santa Cruz Monterey for $599 because it features additional functionalities;
• A newly mixed reality headset by Oculus. This is what my source told me:
  

  one of the capabilities of this new device would be that it has a frontal camera that can see what there is in front of you and a feature to switch fast from VR mode to real-world mode. This way you can switch super-easily between being in VR and being in the real world doing your normal things in a completely effortless way.

  Having cameras in front of you would mean having mixed reality functionalities. And since in this period I’m playing with Mixed Reality on the Focus (I’ve just released Beat Reality, an app all focused on that), I can assure you that it is a game changer. According to my source, the headset should have been released in May at F8 conference, but due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook delayed the launch for the future. OC5 could be a nice moment to do that… even if launching this and the Santa Cruz together would be a terrible choice, so maybe Monterey would just be teased.

We don’t know if Oculus will tell something more about the Monterey, but I really hope so. Keep in mind that another trusted source told me that for sure Oculus is very smart in hiding its most important projects and also sometimes confuses ideas to competitors spreading misleading news… the “Monterey” could just be one of these fake news. Maybe there exist no Monterey.

Oculus Go utilities

The god of gaming John Carmack is working since months on a streaming capability for the Oculus Go so that the HMD can mirror its contents directly to the companion app. This would be very useful for people doing demos: yes, there are alternate solutions like using ADB, but having automatic streaming on the phone would be very handy. Some weeks ago, Carmack told that his work was almost finished, so we all think that this functionality will be launched at OC5.

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In my opinion, it will come with a series of other facilities for the Go, with a complete upgrade for the companion app.

PC VR

At F8 Conference, Oculus has teased the Half Dome, a varifocal PC tethered headset that allows you to focus on virtual objects on various focal planes. Of course, we were all hyped by it, but we all know that the Half Dome is not a short-term plan for Oculus. Most probably the release window of a Rift CV2 is 2019/2020 and I would expect an announcement at Oculus Connect 6 or 7. Anyway, Oculus has to keep the hype high, so I guess that it would further detail plans for PC VR and show new videos and photos regarding prototypes and experiments. If the Half Dome is the Rift CV2 and not just a lab prototype, then Oculus will talk about it and maybe will let some selected journalists try it, as it has done with the Santa Cruz early prototypes at OC3 and OC4.

So I would expect some more news, some more pictures or videos… maybe even some early reviews, but of course no full specs or something like that.

Regarding short-term plans, there is a session regarding PC SDK new features, so maybe some new features for PC SDK will be announced.

Rift Core 2.0 launch

The Rift Core 2.0 is one of the coolest things that Facebook has produced and it has transformed the static Oculus Home menu in a complete virtual house of ours, that we can customize and where we can welcome our friends. It is our little space inside the metaverse.

The feature is still in beta and I think that at this Oculus Connect 5 it will be finally launched on the market. I hope the announcement will come with new features (like a better multiplayer capability, to play together inside Home; better avatars; more environments; etc…) and that the official launch date will be revealed.

Facebook Cameras

One of the most shared content types in VR is currently 360 videos. There is a debate regarding if 360 videos can be considered VR, but actually who cares: 360 videos are a popular content and VR storytelling is becoming a thing. At the recent Biennale del Cinema in Venice, 30 VR movies have been showcased inside this very important kermesse and this shows how producing content for VR is becoming interesting for directors and screenwriters.

Facebook has already open sourced the design of a 360 camera and one year ago it showcased two high-end cameras to shoot 360 3D videos. People trying the resulting videos were astonished because they also contained depth information, letting you move a bit inside the video. Yes, we are talking about 6DOF videos. Not with room scale, but with little movements allowed, that are anyway something cool that can disrupt the industry.

In May Facebook has partnered with Red, a very famous high-end cameras producer, to produce together a high-end camera for virtual reality. I think that the OC5 can be a great opportunity to showcase something more about these cameras. There are various speeches regarding storytelling and shooting videos in VR and the whole event itself will be live-streamed in VR inside Facebook Venues with an innovative immersive technology. All these hints make me think that something will be announced or at least teased.

Of course, we are talking about high-end cameras, that may even cost $50000, so we poor people won’t be able to afford them. But we will be able to enjoy the content developed using them. Maybe there will be revealed a movie shot with one of these cameras, it would be cool.

Oculus has also hinted that the various game tournaments that will be held at OC5 will be live streamed using an innovative technology:

The esports tournaments will blend live cameras and multiple gaming inputs. We’ll also debut brand-new technology that creates immersive outputs from the game engines themselves, for a true 180°/360° observer view of the gameplay. This is the first time that viewers will be inside this rich, more immersive look at gameplay.

I don’t know what it will be, but this seems to me the teasing of a new esports / gaming streaming service by Facebook…

Content

Oculus is the top VR company for what regards fostering great content for the VR ecosystem. It has funded some of the best VR games out there, like Robo Recall, Echo Arena, Brass Tactics, etc…

I am sure that at Oculus Connect we will see a lot of amazing VR content announced. There will be new games and new partnerships. But there will also be updates about existing games and porting of existing games (e.g. new games ported to Rift or to Santa Cruz).

The spotlight will be on the games for Santa Cruz. For sure Oculus won’t release this headset without great content since Day 1. I know that some devs are already working on the device (Coatsink at the Gamescom told me that, for instance), so for sure we’ll see interesting titles announced for Santa Cruz. I bet that Oculus will try to take some cool franchises on the Santa Cruz boat: IMHO will be announced a Santa Cruz version for Superhot VR, Beat Saber, Echo Arena. If they would also manage to create a custom simplified version of Robo Recall, everyone would get crazy.

Then I expect the launch of Stormland, one of the most interesting games that Oculus is funding and also more news on the war game that Respawn is developing with Oculus.

Social

Oculus is Facebook and Facebook is a social media company. So I guess that we’ll see improvements regarding social integrations of Facebook inside the various Oculus devices. Reading the various sessions on the official schedule, I also guess that there will be another improvement over the Oculus Avatar system.

Of course, I also expect new functionalities embedded into Facebook Spaces, but I don’t know exactly what to expect.

Research

Probably there will be some showcase of the research that Oculus is carrying on regarding full-body tracking and hands tracking, as it has already done at F8. It would be cool seeing full body VR algorithms running on Oculus Rift Constellation cameras, with a showcase of a markerless full-body VR… something that I did with my early startup in 2014 (using Kinects) and that I can assure you that it is really cool. Also, photogrammetry experiments can be really interesting, considering that they can also be used in social VR experiments. And If Oculus would showcase also a device with mixed/augmented reality capabilities, it would be cool.

Honestly, I don’t expect any kind of release in this sense, just a lot of interesting info and a lot of hype.

John Carmack

He is alone a great reason to be hyped about the OC5.

And then in the audience for sure there will be Palmer Luckey, that according to a recent interview with Wired, will soon become a cyborg :D, so this is a great occasion to see him as still a human.

Other

Of course, there will be a lot of other interesting stuff like:

• A lot of demos. Journalists will be able to try new devices for sure and then will release a lot of hands-on reviews. All the attendants too will be able to try games and devices;
• A lot of cool sessions, with insights on how to produce great VR content and what are the predictions for the future of VR;
• Game tournaments: if you are a fan of e-sports, you will be amazed by the finals of VR games tournaments that will be played there;
• Cool experience: Oculus has partnered with THE VOID and the amazing Secrets of the Empire immersive experience will be available for people attending the conference!

Surprise

Everytime that there is a conference like this one, I hope for something that was not predictable, something that really amazes me and leaves me astonished. Well, I hope that Oculus Connect 5 will give me a moment like this. Please, give me a nice surprise box with a question mark on it…

And that’s all with my considerations. Do you agree with me? Do you have other ideas? What do you expect from this conference? Let me know all of this in the comments or on my social media channels! I would love to discuss with you about this.

Let’s see next week what will be revealed and how many things I will have predicted wrong and how many will be right… I’m super hyped, and you?

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(Header Image by Oculus)