Saturday, November 4, 2017

Facebook's Oculus reveals stand-alone virtual reality headset

11:33 PM    
The Oculus Go will straddle the market

between the Rift and the Samsung Gear, a $129 headset that runs on some of Samsung’s higher-priced phones. It will be able to run the same VR as the Samsung Gear, leading Blau to conclude the Go will rely on the same Android operating system as the Gear and probably include similar processors as Samsung phones.
The Gear competes against other headsets, such as Google’s $99 Daydream View, that require a smartphone. Google is also working on a stand-alone headset that won’t require a phone, but the company hasn’t specified when that device will be released or how much it will cost.
Zuckerberg promised the Oculus Go would be “the most accessible VR experience ever” and help realize his new goal of having 1 billion people dwelling in virtual reality at some point in the future.
Two days earlier, a cartoon version of Zuckerberg visited hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico, in a livestream that was part disaster tourism, part product promotion. He and Facebook’s head of social virtual reality, Rachel Franklin, appeared as avatars within the broadcast from his profile as they “teleported” to different locations using Facebook’s “social VR” tool Spaces. In reality they were at the company’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters wearing virtual reality headsets.