Oculus Quest’s secret trick: It can double as a wired PC VR headset
Enlarge / Not pictured here: the USB Type-C cable needed to connect the Quest to a gaming PC to take advantage of today's announced news. (credit: Occulus / Getty / Aurich Lawson)
SAN JOSE, Calif.—At Wednesday's Oculus Connect conference, the virtual reality company took the wraps off a secret that it had apparently hidden in its recent high-quality Oculus Quest headset all along. The $400 device has been marketed as a standalone wireless VR system, but thanks to an incoming "Oculus Link" update, coming in November, it will soon double as a wired-PC option.
Should you have a lengthy USB Type-C cable handy, you can expect to plug a Quest VR headset into a compatible "gaming"-caliber PC, then use that computer to power whatever VR games and software you want to run, as if it were the PC's Oculus Rift system. It's an official alternative to using the Quest's built-in hardware, which revolves around a Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip (SoC) like the ones used in the Google Pixel 2 smartphone.
Since Quest already has an array of inside-out tracking cameras, this PC use case won't require additional cameras or sensors. You should expect to plug a Quest into a compatible PC, run a room-calibration test, and be on your way—just like with certain Windows Mixed Reality headsets and this year's Oculus Rift S.