For the record, here is how Facebook/Oculus described their new device during the actual announcement, as reported by Gizmodo yesterday:
“This is it,” Mark Zuckerberg said to a crowd of developers and press at Facebook’s annual VR developers conference, Oculus Connect. “This is the all-in-one VR experience that we have been waiting for. It’s wireless, its got hand presence, 6 degrees of freedom, and it runs Rift-quality experiences.”And here is how Oculus' CTO described the Quest at the same conference, as reported by arstechnica:
In a wide-ranging and occasionally rambling unscripted talk at the Oculus Connect conference today, CTO John Carmack suggested the Oculus Quest headset was "in the neighborhood of power of an Xbox 360 or PS3."
That doesn't mean the Quest, which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, can generate VR scenes comparable to those seen in Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though. As Carmack pointed out, most games of that generation targeted a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. On Quest, the display target involves two 1280x1280 images per frame at 72fps. That's 8.5 times as many pixels per second, with additional high-end anti-aliasing effects needed for VR as well.
"It is not possible to take a game that was done at a high-quality level [on the Xbox 360 or PS3] and expect it to look good in VR," Carmack said.So... it's wireless, but needs a four-camera room-scale setup to work, and it aims to provide a Rift-quality experience, but can't because it just doesn't pack enough processing power. Also, count on it, Quest will cost significantly more than the Go, if only because of those cameras... and Oculus Go isn't exactly flying off shelves. Why does this exist, again?
I know that the gaming world idolizes Carmack because he made Doom, like, 25 years ago (fuck, I'm old), but some of this other musings of the day leave me wondering if he's completely lost it... or if he spent any time at all discussing the capabilities of Oculus' VR products with the people who are tasked with selling them. Or even with his boss. Because Zuckerberg and Carmack both talked about Oculus Quest this week, but somehow ended up describing what sounded like two pieces of totally different hardware.
Don't believe me? Well, just for you, here are my favourite of arstechnica's list of "other interesting tidbits from Carmack's meandering talk":
While most serious gamers wouldn't choose Quest over a high-end console or gaming PC, Carmack said that "realistically, we're going to end up competing with the Nintendo Switch... they'll pick up Quest as mobile device, just like Switch."
[No, they won't. The Switch already has far more content available than any Oculus device, and that app gap is only going to grow. Also... wow, what a step down from the Rift-quality experience that Zuckerberg announced just one day earlier.]
While the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR is by far the best-selling VR product out there (thanks in part to Samsung giveaways), Carmack says most users try it for a day or two then put it away except for rare occasions.
[So... pretty much like VR hardware, generally? I mean, there's a reason why some analysts are already calling it drawerware.]
Carmack expressed bemusement at Oculus advertising showing very active use of the headsets. "Athletic people jumping around is not going to be the way people use this most of the time... people tend toward a bit of laziness and inaction... If we want to sell millions and millions to people, it's going to be a lot of people who want to just sit down and move their thumbs in some way."
[Hitting the nail on the head, there... and totally stepping on his own company's messaging. Again. Why is Carmack so out of step with his own team? He's their Chief Technical Officer, for crying out loud!]
The dream of viewing a standard PC monitor in VR for work purposes has been "kind of a gimmick thing the way it's been seen," Carmack said. That's because, at a minimum legibility of 13 pixels per degree and current headset resolutions, a 1280x720 "virtual monitor" needs to be "the size of an IMAX screen... you spend all your time looking side to side."
[I've said it before, and I'll say it again; the prospect of workplace VR is a dystopian nightmare. If your employer ever announces that they're exchanging your office's desks for VR headsets, unionize immediately. I'm not kidding.]This comment on arstechnica's article nicely sums up the totality of this marketing disaster:
As a hater of hype, I feel compelled to agree. But as I've said before, about the only thing I hate worse than hype, is to see hype done badly. I honestly don't know whether to applaud Carmack's candor, or protest the fact that the top-level leadership of Oculus didn't care enough to get their messaging straight before they both headed to the same fucking conference.
Sigh.
VR is not a thing, people. Oculus Rift did not make it a thing, Oculus Go did not make it a thing, and Oculus Quest will not make it a thing, either... especially with the company's own CTO undercutting their empty hype like this. Oculus/Facebook can't even get their hype together, let alone their hardware, and I'm starting to seriously wonder how long even Mark Zuckerberg can get away with throwing good money after bad in the hope that future developments will somehow justify his ill-considered purchase of Oculus.