Facebooks VR division Oculus yesterday announced that Xiaomi is the hardware partner for its Oculus Go standalone VR headset.
Facebook’s VR division Oculus, yesterday made an unexpected announcement at the CES. The company’s VP Hugo Barra took the stage to share some details about the Oculus Go, the standalone VR headset.
Well, it turns out, the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi is the hardware partner of Oculus for the Go headset. What’s more, they are also working on Mi VR Standalone, which is a VR headset based on Oculus technology exclusively for the Chinese market. Not only this, both the Oculus Go and Mi VR Standalone are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 mobile VR platform.
«We’ve worked closely with Qualcomm to deliver the highest possible level of performance to meet the high computing demands of the standalone VR product category,» reads the official blogpost.
Mi VR Standalone comes with the same core hardware features and design as that of the Oculus Go. The former also supports the Oculus Mobile SDK, which enables existing Oculus developers to easily bring their content to the Mi VR platform in China.
«Xiaomi is working directly with Oculus developers to localize some of the most popular content from the Oculus Store and to bring it to the Mi VR Store in China.»
The Oculus Go, which is a stripped-down version of the company’s high-end Oculus Rift, was announced back in October 2017. At the time of the announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the device will go on sale in early 2018 with a price tag of $199.
According to him, «it’s the most accessible VR headset yet.» While Hugo Barra called the device, «hands-down the easiest way for developers to get involved with VR.»
The Oculus Go is equipped with a «fast-switch» WQHD LCD screen with a resolution of 2,560×1,440 pixels, and spatial audio, which means it can be used without headphones. It is said be cross-compatible with all Gear VR titles.
The device also features lenses that have the same wide field-of-view as the Oculus Rift and will have a small controller similar to the one that of the Gear VR, so developers can easily build for all the devices at the same time.
Well, this is pretty much everything we know about the device at this moment.
