Oculus Announces New Controller, $250M Investment in VR Content, Untethered Headset Prototype and Social VR Features

Oculus shared its latest developments in VR hardware, software and content in its third Oculus Connect (OC3) conference earlier this week. The announcements include:

• The launch of the Oculus Touch VR controller. The Touch launch lineup consists of 35 titles in multiple genres. The controller will go on sale on December 6^th. The price is $200 for a pair.
• Increased investment in VR content. In addition to the $250 million already invested, Oculus committed to spend $250 million more to jumpstart the VR content ecosystem.
• An untethered VR headset prototype called Santa Cruz, which has no cables and needs no connection to a PC. Instead, it has its own built-in computing module at the back of the headset. The sensors that in the current Rift have to be positioned externally to capture the user's movements are built in to the headset, a feature which Oculus calls inside-out tracking.
• Oculus Avatars, a platform feature that lets the user customize his or her VR identity. There are more than one billion permutations available.
• Oculus Parties, which lets the user start a voice call with up to eight people from anywhere in VR.
• Oculus Rooms where one can instantly meet up with friends in VR to hang out, watch movies, or launch the same app simultaneously. The user can express emotions to friends by inputting gestural commands into the Oculus Touch controllers.
• Oculus Earphones for the Rift
• Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW), a technique that allows a game to run at half framerate (45fps) and look nearly as good as the native 90fps framerate that the Rift uses. ASW makes possible lower CPU and GPU requirements. The min spec allows a $499 AMD-based computer to run the Rift. ASW works by taking a pair of frames and creating synthetic frames between them that makes up for their differences.