Oculus may have a more affordable “Oculus Go” in the pipeline

Last year, Oculus gave brief glimpse of a standalone headset concept called “Santa Cruz”. A full VR headset with desktop PC power. That’s the idea behind Oculus Santa Cruz, an untethered VR experience that promises the potency and graphical intensity of an Oculus Rift, but without the wires. Losing all the wires comes as a result of bringing onboard inside-out tracking for the headset utilizing four onboard cameras. All of the compute fits in the front-part of the headset. It’s unclear what processor and graphics hardware the company is using at this stage.

What hardware we know you won’t need, though, is any sort of sensor beacon in the room you’re using Santa Cruz. Unlike, say, HTC VIVE, which demands you install positioning beacons into the corners of your room, Oculus’ new system supports full inside-out tracking. The cameras on the headset itself are used to locate it within 3D space.

The new controllers look a lot like the Oculus Touch controllers that work with Rift. Interestingly, Oculus claims that the headset+controller combo “bring the power of Rift and Touch to the standalone category.” There’s also a touch pad, a back button, and home button, together with six degree-of-freedom tracking.

Oculus says the Santa Cruz developer version will start shipping in 2018.

Source: Oculus