I have been playing with the Oculus Quest for the past day. First, let’s get the negative out of the way. The very first unit that I had barely worked, and I could not get the thing to track properly.
The second unit worked a little better, but was still failed to track some of my movements. Then, I decided to use two Energizer AA batteries I had, which made things work far more smoothly. I can imagine others will be having similar issues and returning their unit, thinking something is defective. This is a major quality control issue that could have easily been avoided by providing something better than cheap batteries.
But now that I have a unit that works and tracks perfectly, here are my first impressions:
The Oculus Quest controllers work very well with good batteries.
- The fit is comfortable. It’s still a little cumbersome, but Oculus has come a long way.
- Setup appears to be easy. It wasn’t in my case because of weak batteries, but for anyone else, it should be easy.
- This is awesome to use at a park. People will think you are a little strange, but you should never care what people think of you!
- I really like the controls — simple to use with a variety of functions.
- You don’t need your own headphones, but using them (especially noise-cancelling headphones) will make your experience more immersive.
- The battery life isn’t that great, but it’s easy to use with an external battery pack if you need to.
- The Power button is hard to reach when the headset is on. The volume rocker is a little bit easier.
- Someone commented, “This looks like some type of futuristic sex toy!”
- The screen door effect is still there — but I do notice an improvement in comparison to the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.
- Creed: Rise to Glory is my favorite experience so far. It really puts you in the ring. It’s not perfect, but it shows just how far VR has come along. If the Oculus Quest is to succeed, it needs more software experiences like this.
Creed: Rise to Glory
- The Oculus Quest is a great exercise machine. After playing with it in the park for an hour, I feel like I got an incredible workout. But oooh, my knees!
- The Oculus Gallery app, where I upload my own videos, is probably what I’ll use the most.
