New Oculus Quest VR headset leaks – gamers are going to be happy

The Oculus Quest is one of the best VR headsets you can buy right now – especially with software updates meaning it can be used with PC Steam games –  but you may be best holding off a while longer if you’re tempted.

The reason? A new version has been tipped for some time, and now a leaker with a decent track record has added a bit more credence to the rumors with a picture of what the headset may look like.

Twitter user WalkingCat provided the picture without comment, which you can see below.

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As you can see, there’s not a great deal of difference between this and current Oculus Quest, but there are notable changes. The color is the most obvious one: while the original Quest featured black fabric and plastic, this time around it looks like we’re getting a white body and black mask area. 

It looks decent enough but, bluntly, nobody wears VR headsets to look stylish. On a more practical level, it looks like the straps have been redesigned to feature a simplified adjuster at the back and it looks a little slimmer than before, too. The external cameras are also lower than the previous version which hopefully is something Facebook has found leads to more accurate motion tracking. 

So far, so good, but there is one possible worry here. The Oculus Quest had a IDP (interpupillary distance) slider on the underside of the headset. This allowed the user to improve their experience by adjusting the distance between the lenses – but it’s missing here. It’s possible that it’s relocated to the side, but it’s also possible that it’s been removed, given that’s exactly what Facebook did between the Oculus Rift and the Oculus Rift S.

The leak comes with no information about pricing or release date, but an article from the Nikkei Asian Review last week said that the company is planning to start mass producing a new headset before the month is out. 

Fingers crossed that means we’ll hear something at the upcoming Oculus Connect developers’ conference. No date is set yet, but it’ll be in “later this year” – in a digital format  for obvious reasons. 

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