At the exact same time Amazon held an event to announce new Echo devices, Facebook decided to hold Oculus' annual developer conference.
Oculus executives took the stage to announce a handful of updates. Here's what you may have missed if you were too busy watching Amazon.
When is Oculus Connect?
Facebook-owned Oculus held its annual developer conference, called Oculus Connect, across two days on 25 September and 26 September 2019.
How to watch Oculus Connect?
Oculus Connect will be streamed live on OculusConnect.com Wednesday and Thursday, as well as on Oculus' Facebook page.
You can also watch a replay of Wednesday's keynote address above.
What happened at Oculus Connect?
Here are all the big announcements from the Oculus Connect keynote:
Facebook Horizon
Facebook described Horizon as “the first step into an ever-expanding world of connection and exploration where anything becomes possible”. It's basically where you create a legless avatar, and you can go socialise with your friends' avatars, and together, you all can create your own worlds. It's meant to replace Spaces and Oculus Rooms sometime in 2020, but it all looks very cartoony.
Oculus Quest
Oculus released Quest, its wireless VR headset, earlier this year. Now, Oculus is adding hand-tracking to the device sometime “in early 2020".
Also new is Oculus Link, which upgrades your Quest into a Rift-like headset, by linking it to a gaming PC. Oculus said Link will come out in November. It'll need a USB 3 cable to connect to a PC if you want to access Rift-only games. Oculus plans to release its own optical fiber cable to provide "maximum throughput to run Rift content and enough length so you can move easily in VR".
The final upgrade is Passthrough, which uses the device’s front cameras to let you easily see what’s in front of you in the real world.
Oculus games and content
Finally, Oculus announced new games for the Quest, including a new Star Wars title that's now out to play. There's also a Medal of Honor gaming coming in 2020. Oculus said games for its cheaper Go headset will arrive for the Quest “starting next week", too, and that FandangoNOW - a streaming service by Fandango - is coming to both Quest and Go headsets soon.
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