Is the 2018 Oculus Go worth it?... TLDR: YES!

Unity Engine
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The 2018 Oculus Go V1
This is my personal review of the 2018 Oculus Go VR headset and controller.

I usually limit my postings to purely objective engineering talk (Qs and As), but Oculus have stirred my heart here and I have to share:

Over the past few years I’ve collected many VR headsets: DK1, DK2, OVR2, GearVR1, GearVR2, Daydream, Cardboards, Plastic cardboards on ebay etc.

When I ordered my Oculus Go I was expecting a GearVR with slightly weaker performance, I’ve been pleasantly surprised:

My current nearly finished WIP game (MechZ) has been written to push daydream/GearVR devices to their limits, the scenes are procedurally generated and I have the ability to wind back triangle count if I need to for weaker platforms.

So knowing Oculus Go utilizes older Qualcomm 821 chipset… I was expecting to have to wind back the triangle count in order to hold 60Hz… Now here’s the kicker… I’m able to hold 72Hz and I have not had to reduce triangle count. I only had to enable fixed foveation to achieve it, which by the way is unnoticeable (does not reduce perceived visual quality) in my game.

Hardware Headset
The headset ergonomics are good, I have a relatively high and pronounced nose bridge, on many other headsets I am unable to get my pupils in the sweet spot without putting pressure on my nose bridge, not so with the Go, it’s super comfortable for me, and It has been for every other person I’ve had try it.

Thermal management is also excellent, the front panel being a plate of aluminium with heat pipes routing to SOC… I have never seen temps raise much more than 10°C above ambient.

HMD battery life: Yes… it’s relatively short at <2 hours, but… I just keep it plugged into my PC via USB during dev and debug and it basically just stays charged. So despite Oculus recommending against using while charging… it looks like you can, perhaps operating in high ambient temperatures it could be a problem and I am not advising any players to do this (play while charging) just mentioning that it’s possible.

Facial interface is synthetic lycra like fabric over memory foam, you can easily pop it out to wash.

Headmount/Strap: It’s ski goggle style, but the facial interface foam is comfortable enough that it’s not an issue.

Hardware Controller
Comfortable for me and all testers I have handed it to, perfect ergenomics IMO. The trigger is a great addition and has a pleasing tactility.

The controller operates on any old single 1.5V A cell even when its voltage is relatively low, so it’s employing a charge pump (aka Joule thief) in order to feed the CMOS logic, I really love this… the scheme will squeeze mega Joules of otherwise wasted energy from old batteries people have hanging around.

Scrutinizing the controller up close… the injection moulding is perfect quality and finish, same as the whole headset.

Optics
Resin hybrid lenses (convex with fresnel), I was preparing for the inevitable “god rays” that I’m accustomed to on fresnels… what is this sorcery? no god rays to speak of and a super wide sweet spot, chromatic aberration is acceptably low right to the edge.

The screen is full RGB rectangle triplets per square subpixel, I can’t perceive any “screen door” unless I really look for it. Usually with all my other HMDs… If I look at a contrastful stationary objects and slowly yaw my neck I can see the image racing over the static pixel array, i.e. I can perceive the stationary pixels of the display if I look for them, I can’t see that on Go. I am guessing that Oculus is sub pixel interpolating, i.e. the effective horizontal resolution is 3X, so a pixel may be RGB or GBR or BRG, this works out perfectly because most neck movements are Yaw.

It’s the best looking VR display I have experienced full stop. I was expecting gray blacks because not OLed, but the blacks look very black. No noticable pixel persistence, it just looks and feels “solid” and really pops presence when running 72Hz, I like it a lot!

Audio
The sound pipes on the head strap work well, I was expecting a puny bass response, but the sound is surprisingly full, I don’t hanker for any more bass really. Turned up to max… psytrance tunes are kicking it!

It’s super convenient, certainly for developing: just lift the HMD up to my face and I’m visual/audio interfaced in seconds.

Have yet to test in built microphone (I do plan using it for in game VOIP eventually).

Software
The hardware/software synergy Oculus have achieved is crystal solid, It feels like John Carmack got free reign here, the thing flies!.. No background Android processes interfere with VR, every clock cycle on this thing is dedicated to VR and it shows.

Fixed foveated rendering works well, hiding in the lenses edges it is not easy to perceive when in action, this coupled with single pass stereo rendering enables big scenes to run buttery at 72Hz.

Integration with Unity is great, if you’re already building for GearVR, it’s pretty much just plug and play.

We can employ all cores nicely: Thanks to great thermal management you can put stuff on a seperate thread without worrying about early throttling, I’m running FMOD radio player on a thread and it just chews through it without noticing. Usually with phones: Putting stuff on a seperate thread is a losing battle because you can achieve thermal saturation with just one core and thus if you go onto other threads your just going to get your main render thread throttled which sucks. Go frees the cores, it’s more like a console or PC like that.

Problems I encountered
No fault of Oculus: I initially had problems achieving ADB connection to my Go, as others have to. Even after updating the Go ADB drivers to V2, I could not see the device in ADB… turns out I was running an old version of Android platform tools ADB.exe, to check if you have latest version, open CMD prompt on your dev PC and type “adb version” you should see latest version like below, if you dont… fix it using Android Studio.

C:\Users\userx>adb version
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.39
Version 0.0.1-4500957
Installed as C:\Android\sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe

Final verdict
For ~200, I can say with hand on my heart: Oculus Go is the best value gaming system (including non VR systems) I have ever purchased in my life. The Joy to ratio is high. The quality of the entire system hardware/software is excellent for such a low price.

My overall rating:

9.5/10

Anyone thinking of experimenting with Unity and VR… no brainer… Just get one.:slight_smile:

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I’ve also had the Go for few days and pretty much agree with everything you said. What you get for the price is simply amazing from an user and developer perspective.

For rapid development and vs most other mobile VR things I like the headstrap with the builtin audio which you can also easily rotate upwards and put the headset towards your face to quickly check things just by holding it by your hand. You can still hear the audio clearly.

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Agreed. Like you, I was expecting it to be very similar to the phone-based headsets I’d worked with before. It’s not. Everything is so smooth, so polished, and the whole experience is so frictionless — it crosses a threshold from “not worth the trouble” to “totally into it” for me.

I’ll even go so far as to say: I don’t have a Vive, but just last week I spent a few hours with one at a friend’s house, and didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy my Go. I found it sweaty and uncomfortable, while the Go very comfy. I like not having to worry about cables, and I really like not having to run an expensive Windows PC.

Let’s be honest about the drawbacks, though: the head-tracking is 3DOF, as is the single controller. That’s not as much of a problem as I was expecting; clever software design can actually hide this limitation remarkably well (I recommend “Pet Lab” as an excellent example). But it’s still a major limitation. I really hope and expect that by next year, we’ll see headsets as polished (and hopefully as low-cost) as the Go but with 6DOF tracking and controllers.

(And in the meantime, I’m considering adding support for Nolo’s 6DOF add-on trackers… don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’d be interested in opinions about that.)

But, yeah. The Go is totally where it’s at. I expect this thing to outsell Vive and Rift put together, pushing into (or beyond?) PSVR kinds of numbers this year. It’s the headset that finally makes VR practical.

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Totally agree. Most of the reviews everywhere are glowing and most don’t even mention the incremental small stuff that is good like the drastic reduction of lens fogging and almost never overheating.

I’ve had pretty much every VR headset and it’s my favorite. Sure it doesn’t do positional tracking but the ease of use is huge. My Vive and Rift for the most part collect dust after the Window MR headsets came out, and now I’m sure my daydream and Gear VR will do the same now that the Go is out.

Love it!

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@JoeStrout ,

Yes, having standalone HMD and controller with 6DOF would be real nice. I’m guessing 6DOF mobile chipset standalones maybe in 2 years with Qualcomm 845s in them or something.

Supporting Nolos: very good idea, because it means your game will be ready for mainstream 6DOF mobile systems in future. Also we as software devs should show Nolo and their customers (both pioneers) some love I will be grabbing nolo set/s soon and make my next mobile VR game 6DOF ready from the get go, wish I had with my current game to be honest.

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Well I’m in… order placed five minutes ago. Looking forward to it!

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I agree that the Go is an amazing piece of hardware for the price.

I already have a S8 Gear VR (previously had a Note 4 version) and was expecting it to be a very similar experience. It is from a software perspective, but the hardware absolutely blows it away. The lenses are the most impressive part for me. I have a large IPD (72mm+) and on the Gear VR always have to put up with things being a bit blurry. On fixed IPD Windows MR headsets things are basically unusable. The wide sweet spot of the Go means that I was able to use it with everything being in great focus.

Obviously the lack of positional tracking is a bummer, but for media viewing isn’t a problem.

The biggest compliment I can give the Go is that despite already having that S8 Gear VR I am seriously considering buying a Go to watch movies on some upcoming international flights.

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Yeah, I was very skeptical of watching TV or movies on a VR headset. It just seems silly — you can watch on your phone, which has a crisp, clear picture (pixels too small to see) and a reasonable viewing angle when placed a short distance in front of you.

But when I actually tried it on the Go, I was surprised at how effective it is. It really does feel like you’re watching on a giant screen. I wouldn’t say the experience is better, necessarily, but it’s certainly not unreasonable. I can see why people like it.

Come to think of it, this has been my experience with VR in general. The experience keeps turning out better than I expected.

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I am very pleased with my birthday present this year! I hadn’t bothered to get a Rift or Vive, but was very excited to get a Go. Having everything all-in-one, as opposed to being tethered to an external computer, is killer. Indeed, I started developing a VR puzzle game before I even had the device, and am planning to release a WebGL demo build very soon.

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Also very impressed with the system at that price point. At last, I feel I have an affordable platform to develop for that people are going to be impressed with.

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Back at @SiliconDroid , totally agree… it’s a great little unit!

I got my Go yesterday, spent about four hours on it last night and got an initial port of my Jetpack Kurt game going, using VR controls. All without vomiting!

My Jetpack Kurt (non-VR!) game is out on mobile here already:

iOS: ‎Jetpack Kurt on the App Store
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.plbm.jetpack

Coming soon to the Oculus store, but long before that I’ll have some Alpha/Beta channel builds up (not yet).

I just wish dearly they had included an analog stick a-la the Nintendo Wii nunchuk, but hey, what about that $200 price point? What a bargain!

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It is indeed.

But what about the analog touch disc? Can’t that serve the same function as an analog stick? (EDIT: Or, for that matter, using the controller’s spatial orientation?)

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I’m not super-enthused about the analog touch disc control. I find it the equivalent of asking players to tap mid-high-center on a two-hand iPad game: it feels like a reach and I feel like I’m barely controlling it. It feels awkward.

I’m really hoping to get this nailed down, get good filtering on this input (exponential tables, time-damping, etc.), good nulling (zeroing), etc., and I hope that will make the tilt control into a really good fine-grain analog controller.

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That sounds good. In a flying game like yours, perhaps you can tell the player to hold/use the controller as if it is a flight stick. So straight up is neutral, tilt forward/back for throttle, and tilt left/right for steer. Seems like that should work.

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It depends on the game a joystick has built in feedback that you can actually feel for how far and what direction your pressing. Touchpads on the other hand have the ability for swipe based controls, splitting into multiple buttons, or an approximation of a joystick. On the PC side there are games I prefer a touchpad and others that I prefer a joystick.

In general that’s one of the reasons along with setup time that my rift and vive tend to collect dust and I use my mixed reality headset a lot more, because it has both on the controller.

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It’s a bit on the rough side, but here’s my Jetpack Kurt (now called JetHeads for VR) after some initial experimentation: (link to APK on dropbox included)

One major bug: I am failing to take into account your root rotation, so don’t spin in the chair. You can look all over and that works fine, or you can use the swipe pad, but it relies on your primary body direction remaining constant from your launch.

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