A few days ago, we were able to see the next Oculus Quest for the first time. Now, the sequel to the best VR headsets has a possible release date: September 15.
That’s according to the Twitter filter WalkingCat, who published another photo of the headphones with that date as the title.
September 15 🧐 pic.twitter.com/11Sgr4nEnF July 24, 2020
So what can we learn from these shots? Well, it doesn’t seem like Oculus is planning to reinvent the wheel here. At a glance, leaving out the new black and white colors, there is very little difference between the two headphones. But there are definitely changes, some more welcome than others.
For starters, it looks a bit thinner and lighter than the previous version. It is objectively a good thing, since the heavier a headset is, the more uncomfortable it is to wear it for long periods.
Other images of what appears to be an early production unit were leaked to Reddit, so here’s a better look at what you’re likely to get without the glitz of the press shot.
There are other changes that feel a bit more neutral: the straps appear to have been redesigned with dropped velcro in favor of something completely different. The built-in cameras for tracking also appear to have fallen lower. Assuming this does better monitoring, then it’s hard to argue that it’s not a good thing since aesthetically it makes almost no difference.
the right side pic.twitter.com/Uqh0vCm2X624 July 2020
But there is a change that sounds small alarms. While the original Oculus Quest had an IDP (Interpupillary Distance) slider at the bottom of the earpiece, nothing is seen here. The IDP was there to enhance the owners’ experience by allowing them to adjust the distance between the lenses, and its absence here is a bit troubling.
That could mean Quest 2 will switch from using dual displays to a single display as seen in Oculus Rift 2. That in turn could suggest a change from OLED to LCD display technology, which may sound like a downgrade given what It means for contrast, but it could help improve the 72Hz refresh rate that we have in the current generation Quest.
The WalkingCat images appear to be press shots, which certainly suggests that a formal announcement is imminent. We hope it will be in time for the Oculus Connect developer conference, but thanks to the current state of the world, no formal date has been given with just “later this year” linked to the digital-only event.
