Are you excited about virtual reality, but not sure where to start when it comes to buying a headset? Here’s the 4 most important things we think you should know about VR before you buy a headset.
1) What is 3DOF and 6DOF?
“DOF” stands for degrees of freedom. Think of moving vertically, horizontally, and rotating – these are all different degrees of movement. 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF) allows you to move around and interact with a virtual environment. Meaning, your head, controllers and body movement in the space are all tracked.
3 degrees of freedom (3DOF) only rotation is tracked. That means that only the rotation of your head and the direction your controller is pointing is tracked. 3DOF is most suited for videos and experiences, where 6DOF is used for more immersive VR games and experiences requiring movement**.
How Virtual Reality Positional Tracking Works (Venturebeat)
2) What’s the difference between tethered and standalone headsets?
A tethered headset is one that uses a cable running from the headset to a powerful computer that’s capable of running VR games. The computer does the processing and provides power to the headset. The headset is simply used ad the computer screen.
Standalone means there are no cables attached, and all the computing happens inside the headset. There’s no need for a powerful computer, so you can take standalone headsets anywhere you want!
3) What are tracking cameras?
VR headsets need a way to locate the player and track their movements in the virtual world. They do this using a sensor similar to a camera.
6DOF headsets use one of two types of tracking. External or outside-in tracking uses sensors mounted on walls or tripods to track the player in the virtual world, and inside-out tracking uses cameras on the headset looking outward track changes in the player’s position.
3DOF headsets like the Oculus Go don’t have external tracking sensors for locating the player, but they can track head and controller movement using other sensors inside the headset.
Image: Ishii, 2010
All the headsets are different in terms of what kind of equipment is required to use them, so check out the table below.
4) How much does VR cost?
To make things easy, we made this infographic to show how much each different headset costs.*
Hopefully this helped you decide which VR headset you’d like to buy! If you have more questions, feel free to get in touch with us or chat to us on Discord. You can also check out or Frequently Asked Questions to find out more.
*Please note prices are current as of November 2019.
**Richie’s Plank Experience is available to play on most 6DOF headsets, including all the headsets mentioned here, except for Oculus Go.
Thanks a lot for this article, it was very helpful for me, it gave me the base that I need to continue reading and understanding the VR world.
I’ll be happy if you can answer my questions, is there any compatibility between these VR sets? Can the Quest, work on PS4 console?, also what is the compatibility in the OS, and in running the games (and apps), between Quest & HTC Focus
Hi Maged, so glad the article was helpful to you!
Generally, there is no compatibility between the headsets in terms of hardware. The Quest is it’s own standalone headset, not requiring any other hardware. The Oculus Rift won’t work with HTC Vive sensors. The PSVR only works with PS4 console. However, HTC Vive, Vive Pro and HTC Cosmos, along with Oculus Rift and Rift S are what’s usually referred to as PC (computer) based VR. This means that they all require a computer and run games either from Steam or from each headset brand’s proprietary launcher.
For Oculus headsets it’s just the Oculus software, for HTC headsets it’s Viveport, and of course for PSVR it’s the PlayStation store on the console. Oculus Quest and Rift/Rift S have separate storefronts because applications are not cross-compatible due to the headsets having different software requirements. This leads into your second question, to which the answer is similar to above.
For PC based VR, apps are cross compatible because they have similar software/hardware requirements and can use a common launcher (Steam). For VR headsets that have their own processing system inbuilt like Quest and Focus, the apps are built specifically for each headset, so there is no software compatibility between them.
If your question relates more to “if I have X headset, can I play games that are available on Y?”, and this is true only for PC based VR. Developers have to port their applications to other headsets like Quest and Focus with a bit more difficulty (in our case, we had to rebuild Richie’s Plank Experience essentially from the ground up), so any games you see that are on more than one platform were basically redeveloped after the devs made a conscious decision to bring the app to that platform.
Of course, it benefits us to have a version of the game available on every platform that’s feasible for us to port to, which is why you’ll see Richie’s Plank Experience (and many other apps) available on more than one platform. However, this doesn’t mean that platforms honour your purchase on the Oculus store if you also want it on Steam or Viveport for example. It’s similar to owning a game on Xbox but also wanting it for PS4, you’d need to go and buy a PS4 copy.
Oculus has a “crossbuy” system in place which means that if you own a title on the Quest store, you can also own it on the Rift store at no extra charge, but this is still at the discretion of developers to opt in to this as there’s a considerable development cost of porting to Quest.
Thanks for reading my essay response! Hopefully it cleared some things up for you. You can always chat to us directly on Discord as well 🙂
The quest does not need a computer or playstation it is wireless but it does need an app on your phone called oculus