First Impressions Looking Good For Oculus Santa Cruz VR Headset

Oculus is currently in the midst of finalizing their upcoming standalone VR headset called the Santa Cruz which will be providing 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF). We recently heard that they were being shipped to a select number of developers to start testing the upcoming headset. And while we know that it’ll provide an untethered experience, there really isn’t much else to go off of.

However, a few GDC attendees got to experience the Oculus Santa Cruz headset in-person and were quite impressed by the product. Dimitri Diakopoulos who works in R&D at Adobe recently tweeted, “I had a chance to demo the Oculus Santa Cruz today at #gdc18! Quick take: this is the standalone headset the world needs. Clear unknowns around what kind of performance devs can expect, but really solid progress on SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), controller FoV, and ergonomics.”

I had a chance to demo the Oculus Santa Cruz today at #gdc18! Quick take: this is the standalone headset the world needs. Clear unknowns around what kind of performance devs can expect, but really solid progress on SLAM, controller FoV, and ergonomics. pic.twitter.com/DkJND4m0QX

— Dimitri (sleeping for 72 hours post-gdc) (@ddiakopoulos) March 24, 2018

One of the users asked if he had “any problems with tracking closer to the chest” to which Dimitri replied, “I did test how close-body interactions worked (i.e. controllers close to chest about making a throwing motion). More robust than the Windows MR controllers.”

We understand that the Santa Cruz will have new controllers to go along with the headset that will focus on the analogue sticks and buttons. But we aren’t sure what the specs look like inside the headset itself. Hopefully, we’ll get to learn a little bit more about the upcoming HMD in the upcoming months such as Facebook’s F8 conference.