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Facebook’s Oculus Quest

Facebook’s Oculus Quest to Get a New UI Revamp

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The coronavirus has impacted the tech world the same way it has hit the healthcare industry. The presence of the COVID-19 and its aggressive transmission across Europe and the US, has led to the mass cancellation of conferences. Across the world, major tech companies are having no option but to cancel their developer conferences and meetings. Some of the major conferences canceled have come from Facebook, Google, and even the Microsoft Build conference. However, Facebook seems to be compensating by indulging in other announcements. While their Game Developers Conference could not take place as planned, Facebook is now creating ripples by making Oculus-related announcements. Here’s a look at everything you need to know regarding these announcements and what this means for the tech world.

Game Developers Showcase

Facebook has been making announcements regarding the Oculus series via a Game Developers Showcase. The biggest news which has come through is that Facebook’s Oculus Quest will be undergoing a huge UI change which will help the company implement more VR functionalities. The UI now works through a somewhat confusing menu system that floats around a space that resembles a virtual living room. This menu appears whenever the user presses the main Oculus button. However, the new menu will get rid of this style, and replace it with a more minimal, and easily navigable menu. Also, this new system will bring all the applications available under one access system, which will make it easier for the user to access any application, right from the home screen. The new menu will also enable users to access the Quest’s volume and brightness controls. The immersive overlay also helps users access several functionalities such as live streaming, casting and approving updates.

Additional Features

Furthermore, the new system will host a new feature that supports multi-window functionality within the Quest’s in-built browser. This will help users rearrange their windows, open new ones and close existing ones with ease. Therefore, from now on users will be able to watch a football game in one window while handling their work emails in the second one and even check their Facebook profile on the side using the third screen. Also, the company has announced that the same feature will soon be available for AppStore and Chats. Facebook explained that these added functionalities would help the system support new VR technologies. The VR set of the future requires people to be able to multitask with ease, while also staying connected with loved ones efficiently. Everything from the gaming industry to the entertainment field will be transformed by this new update and VR will finally grow to become the next biggest thing in computing.

The Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest is essentially a game console now that is highly self-contained, which is exactly how Facebook markets this product. Over 20 titles released by them has brought in more than $1 million in revenues for Facebook, just from Quest alone. Also, the company says that studies show that almost 90% of the people who bought the headset in the holidays, had never owned a product by Oculus before. On Christmas day alone, Oculus stores sold merchandise worth over $5 million, as per Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Hence, Facebook believes that this update will usher in a new age for the company, with more people getting introduced to the world of VR as a result of the product.

These new updates will start hitting the stores by the end of this month. All users have to do to enable them is go to the Settings, click on Experimental Figures and then switch the update on. In 2019 alone, the company boasted over 45,000 employees and this will only increase as the company keeps investing in the company to expand its VR capabilities. Also, supporting these claims is a report from Apex Construct which revealed recently that their game’s Quest version has been the best performing when compared to other versions. Similarly, the Quest version of Red Matter sold more than its Rift version in as little time as a week.

The success of Quest can be primarily associated with its accessibility, fast updates, reliability, and portability. This huge success has also lowered the entry barrier into the world of VR, helping more and more people get introduced to this concept. The demand has been so high that Facebook has failed to match production to demand. The headset went out of stock several times in the past couple of months with the holiday season increasing sales tremendously. Furthermore, the COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant impact on production, leading to a decline in the availability of not just the Quest, but also various other electronics products. However, this new update has excited fans from all over the world, who will now be closely watching the tech space to gather more updates regarding the release of this new version.

Palmer Luckey : The Home School Kid Who Brought a Revolution in the Virtual Reality

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An idea really can change your life, and if the idea is related to the technology, it is definitely going to turn your life around and give you many perks. The virtual reality was far from reality and only limited to the science-fiction stories and movies. But, a teenager brought the fiction into reality with its Virtual Reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift. Palmer Luckey is the mind behind such creative idea, that has changed the world of gaming and has opened new ways for Virtual Reality. The spotlight-shy engineer gives the credit to his home-schooling for his invention and the success that he earned at a young age.

Early Life

Palmer Luckey was born on 19 September 1992, in Long Beach, California, to parents Donald and Julie. His father was a salesman at a car dealership. Luckey did his initial schooling at his home, and it was her mother who tutored him. He grew an interest in the field of electronics and engineering at an early age and taught himself the same, through online classes. He grew up playing video games and watching sci-fi movies, developing an interest in virtual reality. During his childhood, he also went for the sailing lessons.

Palmer Luckey
Image Source: forbes.com

His passion for electronics engineering and virtual reality led him to try his hands on projects like coil guns, Tesla coils, and lasers. Also, based on the virtual reality, he created over 50 different head-mounted displays. One of his most expensive experiment was the development of a PC gaming rig using the elaborate six-monitor setup, costing him tens of thousands of U.S. dollars.

Along with the homeschooling, to earn the funding for his experiments, he worked at many places as a part-timer, including a groundskeeper job, youth sailing coach job, and a computer repair technician job. He also repaired and resold the old iPhones, earning at least US$36,000, from the business.

After completing the basic education, he took the community college courses at Golden West College and Long Beach City College, at the age of 14. He later took a journalism course in the California State University, Long Beach, and wrote for the student-run newspaper, Daily 49er, as an Online editor. At the same time, he started working as a part-time engineer at the Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) at the Institute for Creative Technologies and worked on a cost-effective virtual reality project.

Oculus Rift

Fascinated by electronics, lasers and virtual reality, Luckey at the age of 17, started experimenting with the head mounted virtual reality gears as he was not happy with his PC gaming rig. As it was not serving the purpose of creating a 3D environment for the gaming. In 2010, he developed his first prototype named PR1, followed by some other prototypes exploring features like 3D stereoscopy, wireless, and extreme 270-degree field-of-view. After developing the sixth generation VR box, he put it on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. By the year 2012, he received thousand of request regarding the availability of the VR box, and he dropped out of college so that he could focus on the advancement of the device.

During the process, he met the former executive of Gaikai and Scaleform, Brendan Iribe, and discussed the scope of the device, in the gaming world. Iribe liked the product and invested a thousand dollars in the production of the VR box for the Kickstarter campaign. The two started a company named Oculus VR, Iribe becoming the CEO and appointed Michael Antonov, as the chief software architect of the company. Luckey presented the VR box in front of Gabe Newell, Valve’s Managing director, Michael Abrash, a few gamers, as well as at many gaming conventions, including PAX, Gamescom, and QuakeCon 2012.

The Oculus Rift raised $2.4 million funding, during the Kickstarter campaign. Before the Kickstarter campaign, Luckey had shared that he is expecting to earn enough money that could compensate the money spent on the costs of parts, manufacturing, shipping, and credit card/Kickstarter fees, with about $10 left over for a celebratory pizza and beer. In fact, he had earned 974% of the original target, enough amount to buy a new office space and employ more staff for the company.

In March 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $3 billion, resulting in Luckey’s estimated net worth equal to $700 million, in 2015. Luckey continued working on Oculus within the Facebook office, till 2017. In 2017, he left the company without disclosing any particular reason to the media.

Personal Life

Luckey, even after, achieving so much at a young age, does not consider himself as a celebrity or a VIP. In fact, he is often seen in a casual look with a pair of sandals. After gaining the profits in the Facebook deal, Luckey bought a party house in the ritzy Silicon Valley town of Atherton, where he lives with his seven friends. He also spent $120,000 to buy a Tesla Model S. saying, “Elon Musk is a cool guy who deserves my money.”

Facebook Unveils the Latest Standalone VR Headset Oculus Quest

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Oculus Quest
Image Source: businessinsider.com

Oculus Connect conference took place in San Jose, California, on Wednesday. The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s latest VR headset, during the event. The VR headset is called the Oculus Quest. Facebook had already unveiled its prototype two years ago that gave a hint of its being similar to the Gear VR pro or the Rift lite.

Now, when it has been showcased, in the yesterday’s event, we found it most similar to the Rift, but without having a PC base. The new Quest is a wireless, independent VR box that lets you move across 4,000 square feet of space. The Oculus Quest is embedded with the inside-out tracking technology, i.e., the headset has its inbuilt movement detection sensors, rather having it on the external bases.

The Quest supports the 6DOF (Six Degrees of Freedom), i.e., the headset can measure the user’s position in 6 different directions, in the virtual environment, with accuracy. It has a 1600×1440 resolution display that makes the experience more realistic.

Along with the Quest headset, Facebook also unveiled the Touch Controllers, a set of controllers. The controllers are similar to the Rift’s handheld motion Touch Controllers and are made compatible with 50 existing Oculus applications.

Facebook also previewed new and more realistic Avatars for the VR developers. The Avatars will be more expressive with their eye movements and lip sync properties. The Oculus Quest is Facebook’s first all-in-one standalone VR system, that doesn’t need any computer-based setup and gives you the freedom to walk around freely. This amazing product will cost around $399 (Rs. 28000) and will come in the market by the spring of next year.