Every year, games get increasingly realistic, getting closer to looking exactly like real life every year. These realistic games are great at immersing the player inside of the game’s world. However, another way to immerse the player inside of a game is by using virtual reality. I love virtual reality, over the years I have spent over five thousand hours playing a variety of virtual reality games. As someone who has been playing virtual reality for over six years, I have seen the rise and fall of many virtual reality games, accessories, and headsets. From the days of the first Oculus Rift, then the HTC Vive, to the Valve Index, and now the “Meta” Quest 3, I have been a part of Virtual Reality for most of its life. I started by watching YouTubers play with these “new” headsets and then I tried phone virtual reality, however when a new Oculus headset was announced, I knew I had to get it. As a few of you know, and wow thirty thousand views is definitely “a few” I started my virtual reality journey on the “best” virtual reality headset, the Oculus Go. Being one of the first adopters, I got a taste of what real virtual reality is like, playing games, watching videos, dealing with tracking issues, and recording videos. I made quite a few Oculus Go videos, all of which I have now either unlisted or flat out deleted. Throughout the life of the Oculus Go, many changes have happened in the virtual reality space that have made this unique headset become lost to time. Today, I am going to discuss the predecessor to the Oculus Go, the announcement of this headset, how I feel about the headset itself, the modifications that made the Oculus Go a memorable product, the future of this headset, and the inevitable death of the Oculus Go.
Predecessor
When many think of the Oculus Go, they tend to consider it the first standalone virtual reality headset, which it is, but few talk about what came before it. Before the Oculus Go was announced, Oculus was in a partnership with Samsung for the creation of the Gear VR headset. The Gear VR is one of the most interesting headsets to talk about, innovating mobile virtual reality space in a way that nobody else could predict. Using the “new” Samsung Galaxy Note 4, which was released in October of 2014, anyone can connect their phone to the Gear VR and play virtual reality with ultra-low latency three degrees of freedom tacking. The Gear VR revolutionized mobile virtual reality, and introduced a whole new type of phone VR app. At the time, the most popular phone VR headset was the google cardboard, which is a basic cardboard box with lenses that lets anyone watch 360-degree videos through their phone, the Gear VR is a step up in every category. Many applications made use of the Gear VR’s controller and superior performance compared to its competitors, from GunJack, a space shooter, to Oculus Arcade, a collection of many classic arcade games, to even Minecraft, which had a Gear VR version that has since been abandoned. According to Upload VR, during the life of the Gear VR over five million headsets were sold. While other companies tried to compete with what Oculus and Samsung were able to achieve with the Gear VR, such as Google’s DayDream headset, which caused Google to all but entirely leave from the virtual reality space, no company was able to match the success of the Gear VR. While the Gear VR is not perfect, suffering from many issues that plague the mobile VR space at the time, what the Gear VR headset did was introduce the world to better virtual reality using a phone. While mobile virtual reality has long been abandoned, with Samsung ending its XR support in late 2020, the Gear VR had an impact that ripples to today, changing the trajectory of the virtual reality industry as a whole.
Announcement
The rumors of Oculus creating a standalone virtual reality headset began when Bloomberg posted an article talking about a new Oculus headset that would bridge the gap between the cheap Gear VR headset and the expensive Oculus Rift. As rumors spread, more and more information about this new headset was revealed. This new device, codenamed “Pacific” was rumored to run off a Qualcomm Snapdragon phone chip. Leaks said that this device would be more powerful than the Gear VR headset and would be designed for communication, gaming, and entertainment. On October 11th, 2017, during the Oculus Connect conference, they officially announced the Oculus Go. Their new device that they were calling a “standalone” virtual reality headset was set to be released in early 2018. The Oculus Go was a new concept for the virtual reality space, which to most was an expensive product that was adopted by the vast majority of people, or a super cheap barely functional product that was used more as a tech demo for what the future may be like. At a time when virtual reality was used mostly for businesses, the Oculus Go seemed to be the first step to making virtual reality a mainstream product that any consumer could buy. At the consumer electronics show or CES in January of 2018, Oculus revealed more about their partnerships with both Qualcomm and Xiaomi, talking about the Chinese version of the Oculus Go, the Mi VR Standalone. Very little information was revealed about the headset until the day came that the Oculus Go was released, May 1st, 2018.
Product
The device itself was not that unique, coming in a gray color and having a glossy finish. There were two different models of the Oculus Go, the 200-dollar 32 gigabyte model and the 250-dollar 64 gigabyte model. The device ran using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 mobile processor and had a bunch of built-in apps that could be used immediately after setting the device up. The app came with Oculus Gallery, a way to look at pictures taken inside the headset or uploaded onto the device. Oculus Video allowed the user to look at movie trailers and videos in a bunch of different customizable environments. Oculus TV lets people log into apps such as Facebook Video, Pluto TV, Hulu, and Netflix to watch shows and movies inside of the device. The headset also came with the Oculus Browser which is your standard web browser although using Mozilla Firefox WebVR a bunch of applications can be launched through the web browser. Lastly, the best app available on the headsets launch was Oculus Rooms. The Oculus Rooms app allowed users to create a customizable home, much like Oculus Home on the Oculus Rift headsets. Users could choose the time of day and place four different activities that would appear in the world. After creating their space, people could invite other users from their Oculus Friends to join them and watch videos, play board games, chat, or launch other multiplayer applications together. Many applications were ported from the Oculus Rift to the Oculus Go, games such as Catan VR, Thumper, Bait, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Virtual Virtual Reality, and more were all ported from the Rift and modified to work on the Oculus Go. The Oculus Go was received well, and many said that it was a great device for virtual reality for the masses.
Modding
The Oculus Go made a significant impact on the Virtual Reality space, but there is one feature that made the Oculus Go a much better product, modding. One of the more hidden features of the Oculus Go was the ability to sideload content. Using a developer account and computer, anyone can put any APK file onto the headset. As many of you know, and wow 30 thousand people is a lot thank you, I started my virtual reality journey on the Oculus Go. I played PCVR using a sideloaded version of Virtual Desktop to connect to my computer. Since many of you asked for it, here is a short tutorial for how to sideload. The first step is to get a developer account, this can be done by visiting the Oculus developer website and setting up your account. Then you must enable developer options and allow USB debugging, plug your headset into a computer, then all you must do is find some APKs and using ADB commands or using the SideQuest app, sideload those APKs onto your headset and they will appear in the unknown sources section of the app list. Sideloading can provide so many opportunities to do so much more with an Oculus Go. Play a ton of apps that were not supported before and do anything you can think of. Several applications were made for the Oculus Go that can be played using the power of sideloading. However, not only can you play games designed for the Oculus Go, but you can also play any games created for the Oculus Quest. Modding allows anyone to do anything using the device, and that is something every Oculus Go user takes advantage of. The Oculus Go is not the greatest device, but with the addition of mods, that opens so many more opportunities for it that can improve the experience of this flawed device.
The Quest
After the success of the Oculus Go, a new product had to come to fully expand the idea of portable virtual reality. A more premium version of the Oculus Go was announced to be coming at the same time as the Oculus Go was announced. This device codenamed the “Santa Cruz” would feature improved quality, full six degrees of freedom motion tracking, and an abundance of new games and features. During the Oculus Connect of 2018 on September 16th, the device named the Oculus Quest was fully revealed. This new $399.99 virtual reality headset was better than the Oculus Go in every way, using cameras to track the environment and have proper tracking that made playing virtual reality so much easier and a much better experience for everyone who tried it. It is obvious that Oculus had no plans to support the Oculus Go for a long time after the success of the Oculus Quest. A headset that was once the best in the entire market was now beaten by its own company, left abandoned only for those interested enough to find. The expansive library of the Oculus Quest featured an extensive list of apps that were exclusive to PCVR, but because of the power the Oculus Quest possessed, they were now able to become available to anyone on standalone virtual reality devices. One of the core features of the Oculus Quest that made it much better was the consistent updates, it seemed that every month a new feature was added to the device that made the product so much better, from hand tracking which was added in a major update the Quest software, to the addition of Oculus Link allowing those with powerful virtual reality capable computers to be able to play PCVR games through the Oculus Quest using a link cable. The Oculus Quest truly seemed to be the pinnacle of virtual reality technology, however, it was not.
A line of Quests
During the Oculus Connect of 2020 the upgraded version of the Oculus Quest was announced, the Oculus Quest 2, only a year after the original Quest was released. While this announcement bothered those who bought the Quest, the Quest 2 was a major improvement over the first one. Boasting a $299.99 price tag, a hundred dollars cheaper than the old device, along with it being a much more powerful and improved product. The Oculus Quest 2 was backwards compatible with every original Quest app, but with better tracking and improved quality and power. The Oculus Quest 2 continued the trend of getting major content updates almost every month, receiving features like account sharing, letting up to three accounts be on the same headset and share paid apps with each other, Air Link which made Oculus Link possible without buying a link cable, and the Passthrough API which can be used for games to be played in augmented reality or AR showing a game over the top of the user’s actual room. A few years after Oculus Quest 2 was released, a more premium version of it was announced, known as the Quest Pro. This device, which was made for virtual reality enthusiasts, was priced at $1499.99. The Quest Pro was intended to be used with mixed reality, featuring for the first time in one of their standalone headsets, full color passthrough. Not only was the passthrough on the Quest Pro improved, but this new headset also features a brand-new controller that is compatible with the Quest 2 that has cameras on it to improve the tracking. The Quest Pro did not sell very well after its launch, which lead to the price of the headset going down to $999.99 only a few months later. The most recent headset in the Quest line is the Quest 3. The Quest 3 is not as big of an upgrade as the Quest or Quest 2, but it has major improvements on the tracking, receiving a cheaper version of the Quest Pros controllers, and including full color passthrough. This headset is still quite new, but it is not going to have the same impact as the Quest 2, because it is much more expensive, which is the main reason the Quest 2 was as popular as it was.
Competition
Oculus, (I will never call them meta) has done a great job of making virtual reality a mainstream product. Everyone who thinks of virtual reality now thinks of the Quest 2, Oculus has so much money that it is impossible to compete with the Quest line of headsets. While many people may not have realized this because most competitors have failed to make a mark on the standalone market because of the power Oculus has. Some competitors have tried to challenge Oculus and every single time they have failed because they just cannot keep up with the constantly changing market. The headset with the most potential was the Pico 4, which was a headset that is very similar to the Quest, even having its own app library. However, because the Pico 4 is owned by Byte Dance, the same company that owns TikTok this has forced the headset to never be able to release in the United States, especially after all of the court trials that have taken place against them. Other than the Pico 4, no other headset has really had the chance to compete with Oculus, but that does not mean other standalone devices have not been released. One of the largest virtual reality companies is HTC, who is most known for creating the HTC Vive VR headset, which revolutionized what a virtual reality headset could be all the way back in 2016. HTC has been working on making standalone VR headsets for several years, but none of them are designed for the mainstream VR market. Ever since the failure of the Vive Cosmos, HTC has shifted their focus from the consumer market to enterprises, creating more expensive headsets that can be used by professionals in the workforce. HTC’s standalone line of headsets, the Vive Focus, is designed just for businesses, which means that it has not had a mark on the consumer market. Recently, HTC released a new consumer VR headset that is meant for casual users, the Vive Flow. As said by them, the Vive Flow is designed for wellness and mindful productivity, which is their way of stating that they are not trying to challenge the market Oculus is dominating. While many have wished for HTC to return to the consumer space with a new headset, it might be a while before that happens. Oh wait, that already did happen. The most recent HTC headset is the Vive XR Elite, which is very similar in concept to the Quest Pro, a powerful device designed for virtual reality enthusiasts. Without bringing much to the VR space to make it unique, the Vive XR Elite is not worth the price and has failed to change the market. While HTC has been a major part of virtual reality in the past, until they make something revolutionary again, that time of being the most important company in the VR space will forever remain in the past.
The Legacy
While the Oculus Go may not have been a great headset, it is the reason virtual reality is as mainstream as it is today. Without the Oculus Go, Oculus may not have expanded their business into the standalone VR market, which has now become their primary business. Virtual reality is continuing to change and expand every year, and all of this started from this tech demo of a virtual reality headset. The Oculus Go has been discontinued for many years and so has the Quest 1, in fact, the Oculus Go received one final update that gave users root access to the headset, letting them use it even after the Oculus servers go down forever. In an ever-changing market of virtual reality headsets and accessories, it is nice to look back at how exactly we got to this point. What once was something dreamed up in movies as an example of the future, is now something that many people are taking for granted. Virtual reality is one of the craziest industries, in a time where all games seem stale and every game seems like a clone of another one, virtual reality is still growing and is full of hundreds of unique games all made by incredibly impressive indie studios. The legacy of the Oculus Go is one that is important to the current industry of virtual reality because of the impact that this strange headset has had, but its legacy is also one that will be forgotten and has been ignored by the majority of the industry. For as much as people make fun of phone VR, you must admit that it is the reason the virtual reality industry as a whole is as known as it is. While virtual reality may not be as popular as it was a couple of years ago, it is still just as impressive as it was all those years ago. The only way to go into the future is to look at the past and the legacy of everything, then you can go to new and better horizons.
