![]() ![]() There are buttons, clickable analog sticks, dual analog triggers, plus the controllers even sense finger movement. They feel like a split apart PlayStation controller. The Oculus Touch controllers are the same ones that come with the new Rift S, and they can do just about anything, much like the Touch controllers for the PC-based Rift. The best part of the Quest hardware is the controllers. I don't miss having it, not at this price. Some VR headsets also use eye tracking to move foveated rendering around, following your fovea, the center of your vision, to only highly render what you're specifically looking at, but the Quest doesn't have eye tracking. If you look closely at the edges of the display, you'll see everything becomes more pixelated, because the headset uses fixed foveated rendering that reduces resolution at the periphery to get more performance out of the Snapdragon 835 mobile chip. The LCD display in the Quest, at 1,440x1,600-pixel resolution per eye, looks fantastic and crisp. The Quest feels like a fusion of the two. The Oculus Quest (center) versus the lower-powered 2018 standalone Oculus Go (left) and PC-based 2016 Oculus Rift (right). Also, never expose a VR headset's lenses to bright sunlight - it can ruin the display. Oculus suggests that the Quest only be used indoors, by the way. On a patio, it had problems sensing my play area. On the Quest, it sometimes had issues with bright light outdoors. The six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) tracking is like what many PC VR headsets now have, and Oculus Insight, the name for the tracking system, is also on Oculus' new Rift S PC headset. The Quest uses four in-headset cameras to track movement in a room, including ducking, leaning, walking and anything else. The 64GB version I've been testing seems like enough, but apps seem to range from several hundred megabytes to a couple of gigabytes, and there's no microSD card slot. The Quest has either 64GB or 128GB of storage. There are two headphone jacks, one on either side of the headset, but I always used the built-in audio. (There's a spacer for fitting glasses, but I didn't even need it.) Like the Oculus Rift, the Quest also adjusts the distance between lenses via a slider on the bottom, to fit for ideal inter-pupillary distance. It's particularly similar to what Oculus achieved with the Go: It's comfortable, has built-in spatial audio that pipes in from holes in the side rails where the straps attach, and worked perfectly over my large glasses. There's a set of plastic and fabric covered goggles, with adjustable velcro straps. The Oculus Quest's design looks nearly identical to the Oculus Rift, or even last year's Oculus Go. But in general, it's these controls that have stunned me, because I've never seen any mobile or self-contained VR that's worked better. Admittedly, it's not perfect: The self-contained tracking sometimes has hiccups and sometimes, in bright light outdoors, the Quest can't always track perfectly. The blindered goggles guarantee I can't multitask. Every second in VR is a second I'm not there. I'm with my family, taking in sun, enjoying a beautiful place. Taking time away from reality for VR, even a half an hour, is a big demand on a vacation getaway.The Nintendo Switch is miniature by comparison. The case took up a major chunk of my backpack. The carrying case made it something I could tote, but the stiff side straps mean the headset won't fold down as flat as you think. It packs easily, but it's still a bundle.A smaller area means the guardian boundary grid pops up a lot during gameplay, ruining the endless space illusion. That's more free space than most hotel rooms or office areas offer. And that means unobstructed by furniture, things, and definitely no random people walking around. Apps can be set to "stationary" mode and boundaries can be drawn around your space limitations, but Quest always wants those 6.5 by 6.5 feet. Also, getting the lenses exposed to sunlight can damage the VR display. Stay away from sunlight! Bright sun seems to throw the Quest's camera tracking off a bit.Most early apps were made to run offline, and the Guardian boundary system worked great offline. When I'm zonked at night, it's hard to get motivated to jump into virtual worlds. Getting geared up, even on the wireless Quest, and then doing something is an active experience. It's not easy to do VR! By that I mean, it's not a lazy thing like leaning back and browsing on an iPad.Scott Stein/CNET What I learned while using the Oculus Quest on vacation ![]()
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