Playing with the Oculus Quest: consumer VR has arrived
I recently bought the new Oculus Quest VR headset and it’s incredibly impressive. I’m convinced that this will be the year that consumer VR goes mainstream and I suspect the Quest will be the smash hit this holiday season. The surge of new adopters will lead to more startups and investment in VR content kicking off a positive feedback loop drawing in new customers and content creators.
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I’ve been playing around with VR for years and while I’ve always believed in its potential there were very real drawbacks preventing wide spread adoption:
- Expensive: maybe $2,000 including the headset and a powerful computer
- Poor quality, due to low resolution screens, unreliable sensors, and / or a long cord that was a tripping hazard
- Onerous set-up: room-scale VR required positioning sensors around the room and dragging the controllers around the floor
The Quest overcomes most of these:
- $399 starting price, same as a video game console
- Decent resolution screen and great controllers
- Room-scale without external sensors (there are cameras on the headset)
The experience is magical, you just put on the headset, without any cords and immediately in a rich virtual environment. The quality of the room-scale experience is phenomenally immersive and I’ve enjoyed friends and family jump in and be blown away.
While previous generations of VR felt like a cool gimmick, I anticipate using the Quest almost every day for a combination of exercise (finally fun!), entertainment experiences, and social spaces. Hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to design to VR experiences as well.
Despite loving the Quest so far, there are a few downsides:
- The current content library is a little small and a bit overpriced, though I expect that to change rapidly
- A lot of the UX in both the OS and apps is clunky, but I’m sure these will improve quickly
- The headset is a bit heavy and uncomfortable after an hour of use
These are fairly minor quibbles, though, especially compared to past generations.
If you’ve been considering getting into VR, now’s a great time to jump in!