The crazy April, 30th of VR: Oculus Quest, Rift S, Oculus For Business and Valve Index!

Yesterday was an amazing day for virtual reality, with the launch of probably the best standalone VR headset for consumers, the reveal of probably the best headset for developers, the announcement of new possibilities for enterprise customers,and… also yeah, there was something about the Rift S, but no one cares about it! 😀

In this article, I will just briefly explain the main news announced yesterday and give my opinion about them... and then I will detail the launched headsets in some more in-depth articles that will come in the next days.

Quest and Rift S launch

As we were all expecting (also thanks to the amazing speculations of the Best Buy guys on Reddit :D), Oculus has launched both the Oculus Quest and the Rift S during the keynote of the F8 event, that happened at 10AM PT.

Zuck has revealed other important things regarding Facebook (like a complete restyle of the website) and said things no one believed (like the fact that they will matter more about our privacy) and then he officially announced that it is possible to preorder the Rift S and the Quest from Oculus website. The Rift S costs $399 (Amazon link), the Quest 64GB costs $399 (€449), the Quest 128 GB costs $499 (€549).

The shipping won’t happen immediately, though: you will have to wait until May, 21st to put your hands on these devices. I found this choice a bit weird, but I guess they have their reasons.

We already knew almost everything about the Quest and Rift S, so we had no surprise announcement regarding them.

Oculus Quest is the all-in-one standalone device Oculus is betting on to gain mainstream adoption, while the Lenovo WMR, ehm, the Rift S is just a refresh of the Rift that makes the Rift less outdated and easier to be installed. With them, Oculus is trying to enter more into the mainstream market, and in my opinion, it will manage to fulfill this purpose in part. I forecast 1-2 million Quests sold this year.

Oculus For Business

This is a super-important news that has not been stressed enough by magazines: Oculus has announced a complete overhaul of its business offering, in part for the good and in part for the bad.

The good side is that there are more services: the company buying business Oculus devices will have a web portal through which configure all the devices they own at once. This means modifying the settings, installing the apps, and so on. This means that if a big corporate like Walmart has to configure hundreds of device at a time, it will be able to do that with a single click. This is a very important service, and it’s great that Oculus is offering it. Knowing the attention to details that Oculus has in everything it does, I am sure that this portal will be beautiful and will work very well.

From what I understand from the website, there will also be a Kiosk mode that will let companies start only one specific application without passing every time from the Oculus Store.

And then there will be a two-years warranty and dedicated support. This is a FUNDAMENTAL service for enterprise customers. Every problem they have could mean a lot of money and time lost, so it has to be solved quickly. Oculus is known to have a very good customer service, so companies will love it.

It seems all so fantastic, but… what is the downside? It is one: the price. In my opinion, they set a price that is quite high and absolutely not in line with the other prices offered by Facebook. The Business Quest is present only in the 128 GB edition and it costs $999. The Business Oculus Go, 64 GB edition, costs $599. Furthermore, after the first year, you have to pay every year a fee of $180/year.

This seems crazy to me: HTC has always been blamed for its high prices (well, $1400 for the Vive Pro was a bit too much…) but the Vive Focus Plus, that is an enterprise device, costs $799… $200 less than the Business Quest! The Pico G2 4K (business) costs $200 less than the Business Go and has a 4K display! Then there is the yearly price for the service that has to be added…

Another non-sense choice is the decision to force the users to buy the high-storage models. 128GB may be completely useless for a business application… most of the time enterprises want to experiment with simple but effective applications (like tours of 360 photos), not having Skyrim VIII on the device 😀

To me, it seems a choice similar to what Microsoft has done with Hololens 2. An artificial high price because they:

• Know they have a strong brand;
• Have probably the best standalone headset (but I have still to test it);
• Want to attract mostly big players (like Walmart) and ignore the little companies that can’t afford those prices.

It is a very aggressive strategy and I’m curious to see if it will pay off or not. It may pay off for the above reasons or may be a complete mess for the too high price. For sure enterprise customers are less interested in high prices than us consumers, so it may not be a defining factor, at least for big corporates.

Competition in the enterprise is getting crazy, with now HTC, Pico, HP, Acer and other companies being in the field. I’m grabbing popcorns to see what will happen.

In the meantime, if you need more info on the Oculus For Business program, here you are its website. And since I also do consultancies for companies… if you may need some help in integrating these VR devices in your business or in deciding what to buy, please contact me.

Valve Index reveal

Yesterday should have been only the day of the launch of the Oculus Quest, with the reveal of the Valve Index that should have happened today May, 1st. But someone at Valve has decided to ruin the launch of the Quest and so has decided to reveal the Index exactly at the beginning of the keynote of the F8.

Facebook set its embargo for Rift S reviews mid-way through its 10 am keynote at F8. About 2 hours before my hands-on time with Valve Index last week, a Valve rep emailed to say the company shifted its embargo time from May 1 to April 30 at 10 am. https://t.co/R3Yfb4dkNO

— Ian Hamilton (@hmltn) April 30, 2019

So, during the first minutes of F8, there was a lot of confusion: we were waiting for the Quest and at the same time reading about the Index. I had one eye on Zuck talking on stage and the other eye on Valve’s website. It was crazy.

We now know what the Valve Index is: it is an innovative device targeted at prosumers and developers. If the Rift S is meh, the Valve Index is great and makes us techies happy. The problem? It costs too much.

Here you are some Valve Index specs:

• Two 1440×1600 RGB LCD displays;
• Up to 144Hz framerate;
• IPD adjustment;
• Around 130° FOV;
• High-quality spatial audio;
• Integrated mic;
• Two frontal 960×960 RGB cameras;
• Frontal slot with USB 3 port to add whatever accessory (like Leap Motion);
• 5m tether;
• Ergonomic controllers (the Knuckles);
• Amazing Steam VR 2.0 tracking.

We are talking about an evolution of the Vive Pro, a very good evolution: same display resolution, but better lenses, framerate, FOV, and frontal cameras. The controllers are great and let you finally also throw objects in VR and give you all five fingers. Then it has this look that makes everyone that wears it look like Predator!

Finally, we have a headset that really is trying to push the current status of VR further. Finally, we see some innovations: the controllers are innovative, the 144Hz framerate is amazing and the two frontal cameras will allow for computer vision applications (like fingers tracking or environment reconstruction) that we developers can create. Finally, the Steam VR base stations are sold separately, so you will be able to build a multiroom setup on your own, installing 4 Steam VR 2 base stations in each room. This will let some people create cheap tracking solutions in their spaces, and will allow some LBVR centers to avoid using complex systems like OptiTrack.

https://gfycat.com/orangequaintgaur

But, there is no mind-blowing feature: no eye tracking, no super-resolution of the display, no wireless, etc… This is VR 1.5, not VR 2.0. Just think about the display: the upcoming HP Reverb and Acer ConceptD OJO have 2K per eye, that is already more than the resolution of the Index. 130° of FOV is an interesting evolution, but the Pimax has already more. 144Hz of refresh-rate is unexpected, but after 75Hz I guess that few people will notice the difference. It seems to me a great device, that will offer a very polished experience and will enable new possibilities (those frontal color cameras…)… it is a step forward for the ecosystem, but it won’t change VR.

And then there is the price, that shows that it will be a device targeted at prosumers and developers: the full bundle (Headset + controllers + base stations) will cost $1000 (!!), the headset alone $500 and the headset+controllers will be priced at $750. At these high prices, mainstream adoption is just impossible. It can appeal to enthusiasts and enterprise customers, but not people that just want to play games. In fact, I really love this device and I crave to try it… but I am a techie 🙂

Unless they will release Half Life 3, of course. But we had no mention of Half Life yesterday: Valve just said that it will release a “flagship game” in 2019 and it will be available for all SteamVR headsets. Nothing more.

If you want to discover more the Valve Index, click this link. Preorders are open from today May, 1st and shipping will start June, 28th.

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As you can see, yesterday we had amazing news that pleased everyone:

• The Quest will make more casual gamers happy;
• The Oculus For business program will please enterprises that want to integrate VR;
• The Valve Index will give new possibilities to developers and prosumers;
• The Rift S… well, no, it pleased no one.

In the next days, I will detail you the Quest, Rift S and Valve Index! So, stay tuned and subscribe to my newsletter to not miss these articles…

(Header image by Valve)