Note: All of this products are from CES 2019 ( https://www.ces.tech/About-CES.aspx ) and has not been out in the market as of this posting.

Oculus Quest (Prefered VR)

The Oculus Quest is a new product from Oculus, presented during the CES 2019. The Oculus Quest is an all-in-one gaming system built for Virtual Reality (VR) games. It eliminates the need to be tethered to a PC just to play VR games. Before the Oculus Quest is able to track your movements without the external cameras, you will need to use the Oculus mobile app to set it up.

However, the Oculus Quest lacks the power of the current PC-powered headsets like the original Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The next thing of worry is the battery life of the Oculus Quest, currently there is not any information about how long the Oculus Quest can last. The final worry about the Oculus Quest is about the balance of the head set, as it might be even heavier than Oculus Rift as all the components are stored there.

Overall I pick Oculus Quest as my prefered device for VR in CES as it will be the first consumer grade portable VR system that does not require to tether to any other devices or use a smart phone as its screen.

NReal Light (Prefered MR)

From right to left: Toast, Light, Oreo

The Nreal Light is a lightweight mixed reality (MR) glasses that allow for inside-out tracking. You can add a controller(Oreo) that has a pressure and touch sensitive touchpad and has 3 degrees of freedom (DoF) tracking. The glasses(Light) is tethered to a Nreal proprietary external Android-powered computing pack (Toast). The hardware platform of the toast is Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, and its software development kit (SDK) is available on Unity and Unreal. The Light has 6 DoF tracking, plane detection, object recognition and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). It has a FOV of 53 degrees and it is better than the average for MR.

I picked the Nreal Light as the prefered MR device as it looks like a normal sunglasses in a glance and it is light-weight which makes it really portable. (A total weight of 170g + 85g + 23g = 278g)

List of interesting devices

NORDICTRACK VR BIKE

Cybershoes

Digilens Crystal

VR: Oculus Rift

The Oculus Rift was first released in March 2016 as one of the first consumer VR headsets in the market (if you discount Nintendo’s Virtual Boy), and it is still going strong as one of the best PC-tethered VR headset on the market. The headset displays a 1080×1200 resolution for each eye with a 110 degree FOV at 90Hz refresh rate. The pricing has been slashed several times from $599, down to $399, and more recently $349, making this headset a lot easier on the pockets for consumers.

Pros:

• Significantly cheaper than HTC Vive at $349 USD
• Touch controllers better mimic hand presence
• Lighter and easier to deal with
• Built-in audio

Cons:

• Poor tracking with 2 sensors for a full room experience
• Requires 3 USB 3.0 ports can flood USB bandwidth

MR: Magic Leap

The Magic Leap glasses allows you to experience an enhanced world with digital objects while interacting with the real world objects. The pricing is steep at at $2295 with the justification that the glasses has the capability to replace many devices like your smart phone and computers. You may be wondering how a silly looking pair of glasses can actually contain enough computing power to replace modern devices but it actually connects to a wearable computer called the Lightpack. This device opens up a lot of possibilities in the mixed reality field, and I am interested to see what they can bring to the table in the future.

Pros:

• Glasses allow for tracking without setting up base stations and calibration unlike traditional VR headsets
• Novel mixed reality experience
• You get to look like Dr. Octopus
  

Cons:

• Get ready to lose $2295 USD
• Does not play well with glasses
• You get to look like Dr. Octopus