Facebook’s
virtual reality arm may soon find itself in the unfamiliar position of playing
catch-up with hardware competitors.
Last week, It reported that Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe had decided to leave
Facebook partially due to his “fundamentally different views on the future of
Oculus” and decisions surrounding the cancellation of a next-generation “Rift
2” project.
The
company’s prototype “Rift 2” device, codenamed Caspar, was a “complete
redesign” of the original Rift headset, a source familiar with the matter tells
us. Its cancellation signified an interest by Facebook leadership to focus on
more accessible improvements to the core Rift experience that wouldn’t require
the latest PC hardware to function. Iribe did not agree with the direction,
with a source telling us that he was specifically not interested in “offering
compromised experiences that provided short-term user growth but sacrificed on
comfort and performance.”
In the wake
of the overhaul’s cancellation, the company will be pursuing a more modest
product update — possibly called the “Rift S” — to be released as early as next
year, which makes minor upgrades to the device’s display resolution while more
notably getting rid of the external sensor-tracking system, sources tell us.
Instead, the headset will utilize the integrated “inside-out” Insight tracking
system, which is core to Facebook’s recently announced Oculus Quest standalone
headset.
The
“Constellation” tracking system on the current-generation Rift offers precise
accuracy thanks to the static external sensors that track the headset and Touch
controllers. While the Insight system would likely offer users a much more
simplified setup process, a clear pain point of the first-generation product,
“inside-out” tracking systems have greater limitations when it comes to the
lighting conditions they work in and are generally less accurate than systems
with external trackers.
While Oculus
has long led the way on hardware advances, this release could be seen as the
company playing catch-up with competitors like Microsoft, which has partnered
with OEMs including Samsung, Lenovo and LG to release headsets on its Windows
Mixed Reality platform that also feature inside-out tracking as well as higher
resolution displays than the Oculus Rift.
“While we
don’t comment on rumors/speculation about our future products, as we shared
last week, PC VR remains a part of our strategy and is a category we will
continue to invest in. In addition to hardware, we have a robust software
roadmap and are funding content well into 2020,” an Oculus spokesperson told
TechCrunch.
There are
some clear benefits for Oculus pushing iterative hardware in an iPhone-like “S”
manner, especially around affordability, as a more drawn-out device life cycle
gives both Oculus and PC component manufacturers time to reduce VR’s high barrier
to entry in terms of cost.
The
cancellation of its Caspar “Rift 2” project does suggest a less aggressive pace
of innovation for the company with its flagship premium VR product. The move
away from a redesign could alienate early adopters and send them to other
platforms. It also could lead Oculus into a situation where new titles that
take advantage of the latest systems aren’t compatible with Rift hardware.
At its
Oculus Connect developer conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that
the Oculus Rift, Quest and Go represented “the completion of its
first-generation of VR products.” As Zuckerberg continues to double-down on his
long-term goal to bring 1 billion users into VR, the need to build the Oculus
user base is growing more important, but it’s unclear how essential the company
believes leading the high-end PC VR market is to defining that early mainstream
success.
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