On October 11th and 12th, Oculus held its annual conference called Oculus Connect where it showcased all its latest advancements and announced a lot of news.

I was quite hyped by the conference and I hoped that Oculus may surprise us all. I forecasted some standalone devices and AAA games announced, but I really wanted to hear something that could make me blow my mind, as for instance a CV2 or an augmented reality device by Oculus. Actually, I came out pretty deluded.

Oculus Connect just announced the things we were all expecting and little more. Disruption can wait and I think that Oculus, since acquisition by Facebook, is more interested in developing commercially viable solutions than true innovations. That’s not necessarily bad, it is a choice that has sense from a business point of view, but the innovator that is in me wants something more!

Anyway, let’s start talking about the news, in random order.

Zuck wants 1 billion people in VR

The main keynote was held by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, with the help of Hugo Barra, head of Oculus. Zuck went on the stage and made a bold claim, saying that he wants 1 billion people to enter VR. This is the main goal of Oculus. He didn’t say when he wants to obtain this goal, nor how to obtain it. So, it is basically as I walked on a stage and told that my goal is having 1 billion dollars and have more women than Hugh Hefner. Everybody claps the hands and we are all happy, but in the end it has just no sense.

I mean, it is a bold claim to be made by Facebook right now, when if we sum the sales of GearVR and Rift, we maybe arrive at 8-9 millions of devices… so Zuck is at less than 1% of his goal. There’s a long road to go and with VR that at this moment is in the Trough of Disillusionment, with lots of journalists claiming that it is dead, I’d stick to the more concrete goals of making people understand NOW why VR matters and make them buy VR devices, instead of thinking about having the whole world using VR somehow at some unknown moment in the future.

Furthermore, as spotted thanks to NWN, Philip Rosedale, founder of High Fidelity, pointed out that to handle a social VR experience with 1 billion people, Zuck would need 50 million servers and this is just impossible…

… unless that Facebook adopts a distributed architecture (with someone suggesting even the use of blockchain)

Anyway, from this goal is clear one thing: Facebook sees VR (and AR) as the next computing platform: considering that we have 2+ billion smartphone devices in the world, aiming at 1 billion VR devices means that basically he wants VR to become almost widespread as smartphones, so that in the future it can substitute them.

Oculus Go

This has been for sure the most hyped news of this conference. In its road to reach 1B people, Oculus has announced the Oculus Go headset. What is Oculus Go? Well, it’s Facebook’s new low-tier standalone VR headset.

Just to recap some features:

• It is standalone, so it works on its own, including the processing unit, the screen, etc…
• It has built-in spatial audio speakers, integrated into the headset. If you have ever used HoloLens, you know what I’m talking about: there are little speakers integrated into the strap, near the position of the ears of the user. This way, the user can have amazing 360 audio without wearing any headphones. Anyway, since this means that everyone can hear what the user is hearing and that’s no good (especially if the user is experiencing something personal or intimate), there is the possibility to add personal headphones;

• The screen is a high-resolution fast-switch LCD and not an OLED. This is a solution similar to the one of Pimax 8K and has been adopted because this helps in reducing the perceived screen door effect (OLED use Samsung’s Pentile pixel arrangement and this is no good for SDE). Screen resolution is 2560×1440;
• According to Road To VR, It uses Oculus’ “next-generation” lenses, “offering a wide field of view with significantly reduced glare”;
• 3DOF tracking of the headset, that is: NO POSITIONAL TRACKING, NO ROOM SCALE;
• Control through a 3DOF remote, very similar to the one of Gear VR;

• Gear VR platform: a game made for Gear VR, works flawlessly on Go: this means that since Day 0, this device will have lots of interesting VR apps;
• Amazing price of $199.

Basically, it is a device very similar to an S8 + GearVR, but sold as standalone and for only $199. Road To VR reports that it will be available for users at the beginning of 2018, while developers can ask for a dev kit even now… and they’ll receive it in November. Oculus says on its website that there is limited availability, so maybe they’ll send it only to selected developers.

No one has been able to try the device (not even a prototype) and even specs are not that clear.

Everybody went crazy for this piece of news, but I have not been that hyped. The reasons are:

• Oculus Go hasn’t surprised me, since a Bloomberg report of some months ago already revealed its existence, features and price. If you follow that link, you can read that the device name was previously “Pacific” and that it should be produced in collaboration with Xiaomi (even if during OC4 there was no mention of Xiaomi):
  

  Oculus has plans to enlist China’s Xiaomi and its network of contract manufacturers to produce the new headset for global distribution, people familiar with the arrangement said. The device will feature Oculus branding around the world, except a custom version for China will feature Xiaomi branding and run some Xiaomi software applications, the people said. Hugo Barra, recently put in charge of Oculus’s VR products, was previously a Xiaomi executive. Xiaomi declined to comment.

• As I’ve already told you in my post of yesterday, I have doubts about Go’s utility. I think that a GearVR-like experience is not that amazing in VR. GearVRs are good to watch Netflix, 360 videos, chat with people in VR and make minigames. That is exactly the vision of Facebook… because watching videos, chatting and playing little games are exactly the tasks that we all do on that social media. But VR is much more than a Facebook-like experience! VR is movement, is touching things, is having our full body, is being really inside an adventure and get amazed. I don’t like the Facebook-approach. Furthermore, people may be attracted by the price, but they still don’t know why they should spend $200 for a VR headset… the general consumer has no idea about what is the use of VR, so won’t buy a VR headset for $200, not even for $100. Cardboards are free everywhere, but people do not use them!

IMHO, Oculus Go offers VR enthusiasts that do not own a Samsung phone, the ability to enter VR for only $200. It also offers people that currently use Gear VRs in exhibitions, a cheaper and more easy-to-use alternative. That’s it…. for these niches it is great, but it is not that appealing for everyone. In fact, according to Upload VR’s Ian Hamilton:

I also found Oculus CTO John Carmack surrounded by developers pinging him with questions and asked him how big he expects sales to be for Oculus Go. He echoed Mitchell’s assessment, suggesting expectations for the headset to fall between Rift and Gear VR sales.

This means that Oculus expects to sell just some million devices. People are talking about the disruption of VR market, but Oculus just thinks about selling less Gos than Gear VRs! The road towards the billion users is still very very long…

Oculus Santa Cruz

Everything that Oculus Go lacks is present in another headset presented by Oculus: Oculus Santa Cruz. If you follow my blog since a long time, you surely remember this name: it is a device that has been showcased in super-preview at Oculus Connect 3.

What is Santa Cruz? It is an Oculus Rift, in standalone form factor. This is not a wireless device, it is a standalone one, exactly as Oculus Go. But it has some big differences with Go, that I will highlight while talking about it. Notice that, apart from official images, we have no pictures: no one has been able to take photos or videos of it, so I can’t show you that much. I will make you imagine how it is, as I’ve imagined it by reading reviews.

So, imagine an Oculus Rift, without a companion PC and so without cables. The rear part of the strap is not that solid triangle, but it is more soft, more rubbery, so it is far easier to put it on your head and it is also far more comfortable. There are no headphones: as with Oculus Go, there are integrated speakers that you can mute using custom headphones.

Optics are very good: new Fresnel lenses, OLED display. Screen door effect correction, mura correction and resolution are higher than the Rift. Road To VR journalist hypothesizes that the resolution may be something around 2,560×1,440. What scares me is that the same journalist talks about an experience with low graphical power (low poly count) and 75Hz of refresh rate. I mean, we’re talking again about a Gear VR-like experience. That’s so bad. Of course a standalone headset can’t reach the same power of a desktop PC powered by a GTX1080, but I was hoping for something more.

Then there are controllers: 6DOF Controllers, very similar to Oculus Touch. Just take a Touch Controller, remove the upper buttons and thumbstick and add a touchpad there to substitute them all; furthermore, rotate 90 degrees the half-moon circle full of IR sensors; and voilà, you have a Santa Cruz controller! Controllers are one of the two features that make Santa Cruz far superior than Go: with Santa Cruz YOU HAVE YOUR HANDS IN VR. Not just a remote, that is useful only to watch movies. You can interact naturally in VR!

Tracking is made by 4 IR wide-angle cameras, that are put on the 4 corners of the faceplate of the headset. These are used to perform inside-out tracking for controllers and headset. Using 4 cameras, Oculus has been able to obtain a great tracking volume for controllers: to make them exit from the tracked area, you have to perform really weird moves. If you do them, you may have the impression of the controller to snap in your view when it gets tracked again… but then everything works again flawlessly.

This tracking solution is far better than the one of Windows Mixed Reality because of two reasons:

• It has a bigger tracking volume for controllers: it is easier with MR devices to have your controllers out of the tracking area;
• It uses IR tracking, so it is more immune to lighting changes and can work in the dark (even if it can be prone to IR interferences);

I think that this was the way of Oculus to say “B*tch please” to Microsoft… and actually they said something similar during the conference…

… and Alex Kipman of Microsoft hasn’t been that happy about that

The tracking quality is good, even if Road To VR reports a bit of jitter, both in head tracking and controllers. And the fact that Ars Technica noticed “a flat painting mounted on the ceiling that had a mostly square-grid arrangement of ceiling tiles and skylights”, something useful to help tracking, makes me think that the Santa Cruz tracking still needs some adjustments.

In fact, it is still a work-in-progress: Oculus engineers have said that a lot of things may change in these months.

I’m pretty excited by Santa Cruz: it is a full-fledged VR device, with no cables, no PC, but still room scale and ergonomic 6DOF controllers! It is a standalone Rift, wow! Imagine playing a game like Robo Recall (but with less cool graphic, since we’re on a mobile device) without cables, without limitations, everywhere you want to experience it! Because you can put the Santa Cruz + controllers in your suitcase and take it with you and play everywhere! And jump, crouch and shoot like in real life! Can’t wait for it!

We don’t know anything about price and availability. Price will be higher than Go for sure and the device will be sent to developers next year (we don’t know when) and later released to consumers.

While you wait for it, my advice is reading some reviews from Road To VR, Upload VR and Ars Technica. Especially Road To VR one, it is very detailed.

Oculus Rift CV1 gets permanent price cut

Good news for us all: Oculus Rift price will be $399 from now on, so the device will come to the price that it had during the Summer of Rift. This is fantastic and will surely increase adoption of VR headsets.

I think that this decision has been taken to fight the upcoming Windows Mixed Reality Headsets. On November, 6th Samsung will officially release its Odyssey headset, that offers much more than the Rift (higher resolution, inside-out tracking, etc…) for $499. Rift couldn’t have the same price, so Oculus has taken the smart decision of lowering the price to $399 again. This way the Rift offers a little less, for a smaller price. That’s perfect.

The best thing about this decision is the video they made to advertise the new price of Rift. It is one of the best VR marketing videos I have ever seen. If you have 2 minutes, watch it.

Oculus For Business

This has been in my opinion one of the most important news of the OC4, even if a lot of magazines almost ignored it. Do you remember that when comparing Vive to Oculus, I highlighted the fact that Oculus didn’t have a business licensing model? Well, finally it has. So, the Rift is not a consumer-only product anymore and you can use it for enterprise applications without being an outlaw.

Oculus has launched Oculus For Business: spending $900 you can obtain an Oculus bundle containing all the hardware for a 360-degrees VR experience, some facial masks, and special warranty & support.

The price may seem high, but it is normal that commercial solutions have higher prices. Furthermore, it is still $300 less than buying the Vive Business edition. Oculus now can compete with a low price with Vive even in the enterprise space. I think that Vive tracking solution (with Trackers and such) is more suitable for certain kind of enterprise applications (like arcades), but for the others, Oculus can be great. They, for instance, showed the collaboration they’re making with various big companies like Cisco and Audi.

New Oculus Home

Rift runtime will reach version 2.0 (named Rift Core 2.0) and with it there will come two big news: a completely redesigned Oculus Home and Oculus Dash.

New Oculus home is… a-ehm, a CTRL+C, CTRL+V of Steam VR Home Beta. It is your personal place that you can customize and where you can invite your friends to stay together. There will be present artworks, toys and your achievements of games…  I mean, you can read the description of SteamVR Home. It is the same stuff. The only difference is that to launch games you will use old-style gaming cartridges.

Finally they have updated the current Oculus Home, that was a 2D UX inside a static 3D world, into a true VR hub. And since we know that the application has been made with Unreal Engine, we’re sure that the graphics will be really awesome.

The update will come for free in December 2017. Get ready for a truly immersive VR menu.

Oculus Dash

Oculus Dash is the other big news of the Oculus Runtime. It is a dashboard that you can recall whenever, wherever, with just a key of your controllers (I bet it will be the Menu button). It will include functionalities of Oculus Home and Universal Menu.

Basically, since Oculus Home has become a 3D world, there is now the need for an easy to use 2D menu and this is Dash. Through Dash, you can set some settings, but especially you can launch every kind of VR experiences. So, for instance, imagine that while you’re playing Robo Recall, you’re getting bored (impossible!) and you want to play Face Your Fears. You have just to open the Dash and launch Face Your Fears directly from there… easy, isn’t it? No more need to close the game, go back to Home, find the menu and launch the new game. Just a fast shot.

But the coolest part is that you will be also able to launch Desktop 2D apps: Chrome, Visual Studio, Unity, Firefox… they will open inside a 2D windows that will be overlayed on top of the VR world. And you can open a lot of them together… so basically you have a screen of infinite size in VR! You can just use all your PC apps just within VR, without removing the headset! And you can even pin it inside your VR world: this means that while you’re modeling within Google Blocks in VR, for instance, you can keep a window with Chrome and Youtube there opened in the corner, so that you can keep listening to your favorite music. Or you can leave a Visual Studio studio window open in VR while executing your VR app, to debug it directly in VR. That’s astonishing.

This means hard times for apps like Virtual Desktop and V Dashboard. Especially V Dashboard, that will lose almost all its utility .

Oculus Dash + Oculus Home are a great duo for the Oculus user experience.

Facebook Spaces updates

Facebook Spaces, the Oculus social VR platform, is getting some interesting updates:

• Users will be able to live Facebook Live 360 videos together in streaming. This will be great to live together experiences, like a concert in VR;
• Kits: a system that will let “anyone assemble items into games or activities that they can save in their space and share with friends”. So, creation of mini-games inside Spaces;
• Quillustrations: Spaces will be integrated with Quill and people will be able to experience together 3d paintings and artistic experiences made with Quill;
• Upcoming collaborative projects with developers;

Together with these updates will come also 3D Posts, the ability to share on Facebook (with every people having Facebook, not only VR users), 3D elements created in VR. The first application to support 3D posting will be Medium, but more are to come. So, Medium artists will be able to easily share their 3D masterpieces on Facebook with everyone! Wow.

No one of these updates is particularly disruptive, but they show that Facebook is still working to improve a lot its VR social space.

The real disruption is in the last revelation: Spaces will come to other platforms, that is SteamVR and PSVR. We still don’t know when it will happen, but it will happen. Of course Facebook has the interest to include the most number of users possible: as they take smartphone users from iOS, Android and Windows Phone, they have no interest in getting only Oculus users inside social VR. If the next-gen Facebook wants to be pervasive as the current one, they have to target ALL users.

Oculus Venues

Oculus is interested in offering a platform to let us watch events together, that’s why it is launching Oculus Venue.

According to Road To VR, Mark Zuckerberg described Venues this way:

Venues lets you watch live concerts and live sports, and premieres of movies and TV shows all around the world with your friends and with thousands of other people at the same time. It’s another example of how VR is going to bring us closer together in ways that might not be possible in the physical world.

Furthermore, they stated that the system should allow for 1000 people simultaneously viewing the same event. Further details will be shared in the next months.

I want to highlight one sentence of the above quote: “how VR is going to bring us closer together in ways that might not be possible in the physical world”. Zuck has spent much time of the keynote explaining how it is not true that VR is isolating. Since VR allows us to do together things that are impossible in the physical world, as:

• meeting with people that are far away from us;
• live together fantastic adventures like playing with frisbees at zero gravity;

it is social empowering and not isolating. His one is a very interesting point of view and having enjoyed social VR by myself, I partly agree with him. It is still true that while VR connects us with other VR users, it mostly disconnect us from non-VR users.

New Oculus Avatars

Current Oculus Avatars are pretty simple: you just have some possible customization choices and nothing more. For instance it is weird being of a monochromatic color.

That’s why Oculus wants to make avatars more personal, more similar to us: it will be possible to customize better the avatar, so that now you can better show who you are. These customizations will include having the proper color of hair and face, but also clothing and accessories. Look at the avatars below to get an idea:

Furthermore, Avatars will get automated eye movements and lip sync! This means that the avatars will automatically follow what we’re looking and will change the shape of the mouth according to what we’re saying! Awesome!

That’s cool, but I think that the true revolution lies in the fact that Oculus is making Avatars SDK cross platform! This means that developers can choose to use Oculus Avatars in SteamVR and Daydream! This is important because lets every one of us keep its virtual identity coherently among all the VR experiences. This is very powerful. We need to have a VR identity and Oculus is trying to give it to us.

All this epic update will roll out in 2018. The eye movements and lip sync updates will come “later next year”… and this makes me think that later next year there will be an Oculus device able to track the eyes… so, is this the time scheduled for the CV2 release? And does this mean that the CV2 will include eye tracking? We’ll see!

Anti-harassment tools

Harassment is a big issue in social VR ecosystems. That’s why Oculus wants to address it, offering social VR experiences developers a set of easy tools to let their social VR users report and block annoying people.