For anyone wondering about where to order: a year ago, I ordered the Oculus Quest from Amazon.com for launch-day shipping within minutes of preorders going live. The night before it was due to arrive, it still hadn't shipped, and Amazon changed the delivery time to "by 11pm". So I canceled the Amazon order and ordered from BestBuy for pickup, got it during lunch at work on launch day. This year...who knows?
Also, for fun, here's my initial Oculus Quest 1 "review" for my friends after my first real in-depth gaming session of a few hours:
- Thoughts: the Quest rests a bit heavy on your cheeks, not great for long sessions. Built-in audio sucks for music-based games (especially Dance Central, sheesh, the game takes place in a club, without headphones you can barely hear the music).
- I really like being able to just pick it up, put it on, and use it (and take it off when done). It's weird how much better that feels, especially compared to the Pimax, which has a number of steps to get it going (including running the Pimax software, customizing settings for the game you want to play, then opening SteamVR). I figured the articles were exaggerating about the convenience, since that's the main selling point of the device, but it does make a real difference.
- I need to maximize the space in my room, even after rearranging there wasn't enough room to make the Quest happy for what it considers the optimal size
- Tracking is great, the only time I ever ran into tracking issues was a controller issue in Dance Central, where the interface is a cell phone. I held the phone up to my face, and tracking crapped out - right in front of the headset is a tracking dead zone
- Loading times are horrible, the built-in flash RAM is dog slow, and there is no support for external storage
- The displays are very sharp and detailed, great black levels and contrast (I played the Apollo 11 experience, so got out in space to test that). When games take full advantage of them they look amazing. God rays are present but far better than basic Oculus Rift, only shows up with very bright colors on pure black. Pixels (and the space between them) are present, but high enough resolution you generally don't notice them unless you are looking for them
- Holy cow, Vader Immortal is sweet. Not the most interactive adventure, but just enough, and very immersive, seeing everything in scale is great, Vader is tall! Best graphics on the Quest (though with a cost, you can't physically move very far without it darkening everything and telling you to move back). The beginning reminded me of the old Disneyland Star Tours ride, or the Mass Effect ride at California's Great America