Facebook-owned Oculus today announced the launch of its standalone virtual reality headset called Oculus Go. The headset won’t require a PC or smartphone. Everything that it needs to power a VR experience is contained within the headset itself. The Oculus Go will be the most affordable headset yet from Oculus at $199.
It’s priced significantly lower than the Oculus Rift headset which not only costs $499 but also requires a pretty powerful PC to function. With the Oculus Go, the company is aiming to bring more people into the VR fold without having them worry about buying compatible smartphones and PCs.
This is part of the company’s ambitious goal to get one billion people in VR. This was confirmed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company’s fourth Oculus Connect conference. Since it’s an affordable option, it doesn’t have all of the features that the flagship Oculus headset has.
For example, the Oculus Go doesn’t have fully tracked motion controllers or inside-out tracking. It does, however, feature new lenses, a 2,560×1,440 pixel resolution screen and support for spatial audio. The controller is quite similar to the Gear VR remote that came out earlier this year.
Oculus is going to release the development kits of this new headset by next month. Oculus Go is going to be released to the public in 2018.