[tluyben2]

I haven't been following Oculus since I bought the first one on Kickstarter (which I had a lot of fun with); the Quest 2 has cameras to support AR or is that an add on? It looks like it on pictures, but there is little mention of it on most pages about it (at least at a quick look).

[timdorr]

Yes, the Quest 1/2 and Rift S do "inside out" tracking. They have 4 cameras (5 on the Rift S) on each corner of the front face plate that tracks the headset and controller positions in 3D space (in addition to internal accelerometers and gyroscopes).

This is, for the most part, what enables the Quest to be fully wireless. Because there is no base station or fixed position camera, you're not limited to where you can use it, nor how big your play area can be. If you're in a new space, you just draw a guardian border around your play area and you're good to go.

The "passthru" feature mentioned above lets you see the camera feeds composited together in the headset display. It's very helpful for things like moving a chair out of the way or finding your controllers if you put on the headset without grabbing them. This new API allows developers access to this camera feed and to interact with its display for AR applications.

[Duralias]

The first oculus headsets used camera base stations to track the headset and controllers, all of the recent ones have used cameras on the headsets itself to track everything, these can be used to see the real world, however since they are infrared cameras meant for tracking there is no colour and the resolution isn't as high as it should be for AR to be useful.

[cortesoft]

I had the first oculus, and it didn't have any base stations. It didn't track anything at all, in fact... it only detected rotational motion of your head, it didn't detect any other motion at all. There also were not any controllers.

[andybak]

Yes but those were developer kits not retail devices.

[cortesoft]

Sure, but they were still called an Oculus Rift.

[tluyben2]

Even that I forgot: mine was the dev kit indeed.

[baby]

It sounds like you’re talking about Oculus Go, which isn’t the first oculus.

[Zetaphor]

The original DK1 was 3DoF, and the CV1 launched with a single sensor and an Xbox controller. The CV1 didn't get proper 6DoF until after launch.

[mintplant]

DK2 had a separate camera for outside-in tracking. I have one in a box in my closet.

[baby]

The first oculus is the rift though

[cortesoft]

They released a dev kit that was called the oculus rift that came out before the one you are thinking of.

[taneq]

Once upon a time the original Rift only had 3DOF tracking. This was back in the "Palmer Luckey just met John Carmack" days.

[cortesoft]

No, I had the Dev Kit 1. It was called Oculus Rift.

[baby]

The Oculus Rift definitely had more than what you’re talking about, and it was the first oculus

[cortesoft]

I have one sitting next to me. It doesn’t have positional tracking… you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#Development_Kit_1