Oculus has announced a new standalone VR headset called Oculus Quest. Oculus Quest is an all-in-one VR gaming system, meaning that – and contrary to Oculus Rift – you won’t need a PC system in order to play its VR titles. And according to John Carmack, this system is as powerful as the last-gen consoles, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
At Oculus Connect 5, Carmack stated that in terms of raw power, Oculus Quest is in the neighbourhood of the power of the previous generation of consoles like PS3 and X360. However, and while the Oculus Quest is in raw power as powerful as those consoles, its games will not look as good as the games that came out on these consoles.
In case you weren’t aware of, for VR games a PC – or in this case Oculus Quest – has to render the game twice. Not only that, but in order to avoid any motion sickness developers will have to develop games that will run at 72fps. So while the PS3 and X360 were pushing some impressive stuff back in the day, they were rendering their games at 1280×720 at 30fps. On the other hand, John Carmack claims that the Oculus Quest will be rendering games at 1280×1280 twice at 72fps with 4XMSAA (which is eight and a half times more pixels than you would have on an Xbox 360 game).
This basically explains why the Oculus Quest games are not looking as hot as the game that came out on last-gen consoles. Still, the Oculus Quest will have more texture memory and main memory, so developers may be able to use higher quality textures in order to hide some graphical shortcomings.
So yeah, while the Oculus Quest is as powerful as PS3 and Xbox 360, you should not expect a game looking as good as Metal Gear Solid 4 or Gears of War 3.
You can find John Carmack’s full keynote below.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I tried HTC Vive for 2 months. I was initially wowed but the novelty wore off and I realised VR is not the future of video games and will never be simply because the movement is highly restricted, all movement is basically point and click adventure style or no movement at all and everything comes to you while you stay in one spot. I bought an Ultrawide monitor after that and it offers far more immersion and comfort than VR could ever do. In my opinion VR is a dead end in terms of games, maybe it can be very useful is non-gaming applications.
I don’t know how anyone can go back to pancake gaming after one session in VR. I haven’t played a pancake game in over a year and a half (my interested waned years ago)but I use VR daily for a variety of things, including gaming.
The sensation of being IN a new world where you are your avatar rather than puppeteering a little digital marionette that’s confined within a tiny frame is just too different an experience to make me want to downgrade back to a gamepad/kb+m and flat screen.
Pancake gamers must be really, really lazy or just have really low standards to be wowed by clicking buttons while they stares at tiny characters on a small frame doing cool stuff. I can’t go back to that low-grade nonsense.
>I bought an Ultrawide monitor after that and it offers far more immersion and comfort than VR could ever do.
You’ve officially lost any credibility you’ve ever had about anything. lol A tiny monitor more immersive than VR. lmao Get off this planet.
Sitting close to a 34 inch Ultrawide is not tiny. Also immersion is more than just how u view the game. The details and content for me is what immerses me into a game and low budget simplistic VR tech demos just does did not cut it for me.
There are many great games for VR which are not only demos. Fallout 4 VR, Skyrim VR, The Gallery, Talos principles, Lone echo, etc. I can’t play these games now in just monitor. The immersion is much better for me with HTC Vive.
Only thing is almost all those games except for I think Lone Echo are available without VR. I played Fallout 4 for hundreds of hours but couldn’t manage more than 1 in VR because managing an inventory and the like in VR feels horrible IMHO.
Lone Echo was also painfully boring after about an hour. Felt like a walking Sim with minor gameplay elements sprinkled in. Never mind having to put up with that feminazi you’re paired up with.
BTW it’s possible to have better immersion on a nice monitor if you legitimately dislike having 2 strapped to your eyeballs.
Inventory in Fallout 4 VR was not easy but I got use to it. I played many tenth hours in it and can’t play the game now only in monitor. It is much more better in VR for me. I would never play Lone Echo in monitor too. In VR it something completely different. When you are in the game environment, it is much more better for me to play. So this whole think is just subjective. Somebody can’t use to it, other person like it more.
I agree. However, I think what the VR platform lacks most are decent games. Immersion is only one factor in a great game. I do enjoy my Rift, but I havent used it in months because the gameplay just isn’t up to par with “pancake games”. Never mind the price hike on VR games which are usually shorter as well.
I hate being tethered to a wire too, I have a bungie system on my ceiling, but its still annoying.
Switching to an Ultrawide monitor was probably a good idea, since I’m sure eventually the VR tech and game selection will get better by the time you jump back in.
72 fps are not enough for VR and the whole idea of moving the rendering into the headset is nonsensical. Those things need to get as light-weight as possible and they’re adding more stuff to it that doesn’t need to be in it. I understand the problem of latency and getting caught up in cables but come on. If Carmack is convinced this is the format that will see VR succeed then it’ll be good enough for the end consumer in 2030 or later. You’re waiting for the point in hardware evolution where the slimmest of cellphones can run near-photorealistic graphics at 180+ fps (90+ for each eye). When is that happening? Not this decade, that’s for sure. I doubt that all of these VR companies can stay afloat on just “enthusiast” customers for over a decade. Imo public perception is right now: They said VR was just about to “happen” and that was years ago. So it’s already delayed. What went wrong? Where is it?
I might edit this post after watching the keynote.
no one other than autists care about vr, cormack needs to shut the fck up.
I dont know why people thought it would be anything but weak. It runs on mobile phone hardware.
Not mobile PHONE hardware. Mobile hardware. There is no telephony hardware on the boards included in the Quest.
The “mobile” hardware is shamefully under powered for good VR. I have an i7 and 1080ti and I still find it lacking. I think the biggest problem is the headset resolution. It needs a significant bump up, way higher than Vive Pro level, which would require even more horsepower to support.
I disagree that VR is dead. I started with PS VR & HTC Vive and upgraded to a HTC Vive Pro. I thoroughly have been enjoying playing Skyrim & Fallout4 VR both being heavily modded. The immersion in both of these games has kept me wanting more. I for one am looking forward to the technology advancements for VR and remain positive.
The same way console gamers say “PC gaming is dead” some PC gamers are saying “VR is dead” because they’re afraid of it. They think VR will somehow take something away from them and they can’t divorce themselves from their comfy office chairs and keyboards.
VR is just going to be another expressive, artistic medium that will have more in common with the Internet and smartphones than it will with board games, which is what pancake gaming is derived from.
So even weaker than the nintendo switch.
For who this underwhelming product is designed for? Who is the target audience?
no one other than autists care about vr, cormack needs to shut the fck up.
Found the **** ******
Yes. Yes. Give this to me so much. Getting at least three of these at launch. This is the Holy Grail headset I’ve been waiting for. So many use cases and potential for this kind of kit. Only a little over two years in and we get a premium standalone 6DOF headset like this.
I feel like Dave Chapelle in Half Baked when he went into the weed room in that lab and just started freaking out and laughing as the bags of weed rained down on him. Cannot wait for Quest.
Gaming like it’s…. 2006? No, thanks.
The simple point that is that VR will be nothing more than a curiosity until it has a few of those “must have/only can play on VR games” in it’s line up. Oddly enough, many people still seem to just enjoy -sitting down- while playing a game in front of their 4k setup.
I’m still holding out for a holodeck…
Its sad when PS VR and HTC Vive etc is like 200e-400e and there is like 10 good games, no replay value those games 🙁
Most games are also $10-20 more for being VR too. They do this because the market is smaller and they know people who can afford VR can probably afford to pay more for less.
So its an upgraded Samsung VR headset with the Oculus store. Should have been out years ago already. Glad I won’t have to sell my Rift for a while now at least.
72 fps is unplayable garbage, 90 is approaching smooth, 120 is good, 200+ is ideal.
it’s not sanity, it’s simple hardware limitations. they want to deliver it now and under certain price, size, heat and what-not constraints so 72 fps is what you get for now. if you had listened carefully you would have heard that the predecessor of this device only pumps out 60 fps and that Carmack would prefer 120.
72fps is to reduce motion sickness, thats why 60 wasnt enough and 90 would be unecessary.
do you really believe that there is a magical cutoff point between 60 and 72 where nobody gets motion sickness anymore?
So is the Switch…..so what’s your point exactly?
A drastically weaker VR…This seems like a really bad idea. Almost like if sony decided to make a playstation 3 pro as it’s newest console…gotta pass
So which is it? Looking at PS3 and 360 exclusives, we certainly know which console is far more powerful. So why not just say it is as powerful as PS3 unless it actually isn’t?
John Carmack is my tech hero! He is an absolute genius!
That being said…Oculus Quest is not for me! But, I can see many ppl using it….Its exactly for the audience shown in the promo ad., and not for hardcore PC games!