Analyzing Oculus Santa Cruz patent images

Yesterday I was reading the comments on Reddit regarding my post with the predictions for Oculus Connect 5 and the kind redditor /u/SilverWhite2 provided me the link to the latest available patent with the design of Santa Cruz. In the patent, there are some pictures of how the Santa Cruz may be and so I’m going to share them with you.

The patent in question is the USD819635S and can be accessed at this link. Inside it, there is the proposed design for a headset that really looks like the Santa Cruz. Here you are some images from that document, with some comment of mine. As I will underline at the end of the article, this is the last patent that is publicly available for the Santa Cruz, so this does not mean that this will be the final design of the headset, since other ones may still be undisclosed. So, take this article with a grain of salt.

This is the front view of the headset. The first thing I noticed is that the four cameras are not exactly at the four corners of the device. The design is symmetrical, but only along the vertical axis. The two bottom cameras are more close to each other, while the two top ones are exactly at the corners of the faceplate. I wondered why they took such decision, but honestly I haven’t been able to find an immediate answer. For sure this has not been made by chance, so there must have been some experimentation that has lead to this design: maybe for the usual movements of the VR users, this setup is able to track the controllers with more reliability, especially when the hands are closer to the body of the user.

Another thing that is noticeable on the front is a led in the upper center region: looking at videos released by Oculus of people playing with the Santa Cruz, in that part I always see a lit led, so I guess that there is a led there that turns on when the device is in use.

On the right side, there is a mysterious cylinder and I will get to it later on.

The rear view is nothing special and from there you can just notice that inside the headset there is a sensor to detect if it is being worn by the user or not.

You can also notice that the strap is made with rigid rubber, so not something made with elastic fabric like the Oculus Go. As in the Rift, there is the Vive logo on the back of the headset 🙂 . While looking around in patents, I’ve seen that Oculus has patented some systems to use a knob to regulate the headstrap… but I continue seeing in the Santa Cruz the same fitting system of the Rift, with velcro stuff that you use to fit it to your head. Honestly, I don’t know why Oculus continues this way when IMHO the system based on rigid plastic and knobs is more comfortable, but I guess they must have their valid reasons, like that this way the headset may be used even if you lie on a bed.

The top view is nothing special, while the bottom one shows two interesting things:

• Volume regulation of the device;
• IPD adjustment lever;

So, there is a mechanical system to adjust IPD on the Santa Cruz and this is a great news for the comfort of the users. The volume is in the lower part of the headset and not in the top one as happens with the Oculus Go.

Let’s go and see the left and right side of the headset.

The first thing that is noticeable is that there is a 3.5mm port for headphones on both sides. This is something that has been confirmed in Ben Lang’s review of Santa Cruz at OC4. It is quite an original choice, to not say weird. It is the first headset featuring this and the reason is simple: almost no one has headphones with two plugs. I imagine this will mean that Oculus will sell its own headphones for an optimal audio outcome of the Santa Cruz or maybe they will be directly inserted for free into the official package. For sure having one socket for each side can offer a more comfortable experience in term of putting and removing the headset (with the Vive, for instance, I continue to make a mess with the headphone cable and the headset cable), but this may be an issue for people wanting to use their own audio set. Luckily, the Santa Cruz will feature integrated audio and so most of the time we won’t need headphones.

On the right side, I can see what seems a USB-C port and that little point over it may be another led to indicate if the headset is charging and the battery status. On the left, instead, there is the famous cylindrical hinge. What is it for? I have absolutely no idea.

I tried looking at all videos and images released by Oculus and I found no sign of the hinge in any media. Furthermore, in the video released for Oculus Connect 4, the USB port appears on the left side, while on the right side there is nothing. In these drawings, instead, we have a USB on the right side and a mysterious hinge on the left one.

I thought about that cylinder and I admit that I’m really puzzled: Oculus cares a lot about aesthetics and that cylinder is not beautiful at all, so if it is there, there must be a fundamental reason. The only headset that has such kind of strange thing on one side is the Magic Leap One, that uses it to track the controllers with magnetical fields… but we all know that Oculus actually uses optical tracking to track the controllers.

I thought about these possibilities:

• The headset uses a combination of magnetical and optical tracking to track the controllers in every possible condition, so that cylinder is for the magnetical tracking, as in Magic Leap;
• It is a little knob to regulate the position of the screen, so you can put it closer or farther from your eyes so to have visuals perfectly in focus;
• It is where you put your regular headphones that have only one jack;
• It is a place where to connect some special accessory for the device;
• It is the button to turn on/turn off the headset;
• It is an additional port for charging. For instance, you may use it to charge your device while keeping the USB-C port free for other uses (e.g. attaching Leap Motion through an adapter). Someone noticed that it looks a bit like the Microsoft Surface charger and that little line drawn inside it may be the led related to the charging operation.

There is another variable to consider in all of this: where the heck is the button to turn it on?? It seems there is none… again there are various possibilities:

• There is no turn-on button: the headset just power-ups when you wear it and shuts down when you don’t use it (seems weird from a power optimization standpoint, because this means that the device never shuts down completely);
• That thing on the right side that I thought was a USB-C port is actually the power button, and the strange mysterious cylinder on the left side is the USB-C port to which is attached some kind of adapter or the beginning of the charging cable.

I bet on the last possibility since it makes everything coherent with all the media present on the web regarding the device.

Anyway, as the Oculus expert Heaney555 has stated, this patent has more than one year, having been filed in 2017: it is the latest one available to the public for a headset similar to Santa Cruz, so it is the best we have, but in the meantime it is possible that the design has changed. Regarding controllers, for instance, the latest available patent is the one with the touchpad on controllers, but Oculus has said multiple times that it has switched to thumbsticks. Even regarding the two audio jacks, Oculus told Ben Lang that the solution for audio had still to be finalized, so maybe, in the end, they abandoned that setup. So, as I already said, take everything that is contained in this post as probable, but not certain. The only option we have is waiting 2 days and discover everything directly at the opening keynote of Oculus Connect. I’m so hyped!

(Header image by Oculus)