Oculus gives update on Santa Cruz prototype VR headset

Oculus has been announcing a few things today during its Oculus Connect event, with the VR company showing off the latest version of its Santa Cruz prototype VR headset.

Santa Cruz should end up as a higher-end version of its new entry-level Oculus Go headset, which is due in early 2018. Oculus' upcoming Santa Cruz prototype headset has a stand out feature of six degrees of freedom (6DoF) using inside-out tracking, with Oculus saying their Santa Cruz headset is the first standalone headset with inside-out tracking.

Oculus' upcoming Santa Cruz doesn't need any wires or external sensors, which would make the VR experience much easier to setup. The new prototype VR headset was also shown off with updated controllers, with Oculus calling them the Santa Cruz controllers - it must have taken months to decide on that name. The new controllers look and work like the current Oculus Touch controllers, except they're smaller. The controllers feature the same four sensors that the headset uses for motion and positioning tracking.

We should expect Oculus to drop Santa Cruz into developers' hands sometime in 2018.