Does the Oculus Quest need external sensors?

Best answer: You don't need any external sensors or any additional hardware to use the Oculus Quest. Everything you need is in the box, and its sensors are built into the headset.

• Standalone virtual reality: Oculus Quest ($399 at Amazon)

Insight tracking

The Oculus Quest has an array of four wide-angle cameras built into the device. These are in lieu of any external sensors, towers, or cameras that are common among other headsets such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. These cameras help power Oculus Insight, the headset's tracking system that maps out the area you're in real life, tracks your movement and tracks your Touch Controllers.

The Oculus Quest supports six degrees of freedom tracking. This means that the Oculus Quest can track your movement up, down, left, right, forward, and back. As a result, the Oculus Quest can track your movements as move around a room in any direction. It's an essential part of gameplay for games like SUPERHOT VR which requires you to twist around, dodge bullets, and maneuver around enemies.

In addition to the headset tracking your movements, the Oculus Quest tracks your controllers. All of these sensors work together to create an immersive experience without requiring any external sensors.

While you don't need any external sensors, you do need to make sure that there's light in the room that you use the Oculus Quest. It doesn't have to be extremely bright, but as the device relies on cameras, they need to be able to "see" things. You can use the Oculus Quest in a room with a single overhead lightbulb though, so in most cases, you don't need to set up any additional lighting specifically for VR.

Guardian protection

When you setup a device that does require external sensors, such as the Oculus Rift, you should clear out a specific area that you want to use VR in and calibrate your sensors to that area. Because the Oculus Quest doesn't need any external sensors, you're going to use it in a much larger variety of spaces. You can use it in your living room, pop it in a case and take it to a party, and then bring it home and play games in your office. Because of this, the Oculus Guardian system is arguably more important than it is on any other headset.

The Guardian system allows you to map out a room and tell your Oculus Quest what area is safe to play in. You can set this up quickly and easily and then the device remembers the boundaries you've set up, even as you move around. This is especially important for games like SUPERHOT VR where you turn around, duck, walk around, and focus on enemies. It's easy to lose track of where you are in reality, so having a virtual grid helps make sure you don't end up punching a wall or kicking a sofa.

Our pick

Oculus Quest

$399 at Amazon

Completely untethered

The Oculus Quest has everything you need right in the box and doesn't require any external sensors. Its four wide-angle cameras map the room that you're in and track your movements so you can enjoy untethered VR without having to set anything up in each room.