Facebook has been pretty hands-off when it comes to providing VR solutions for enterprise, although that may be changing with the entrance of bonafide enterprise versions for both Oculus Quest and Oculus Go.

As first reported by Variety, Facebook recently published a job listing for an Oculus software engineer that details the company’s plans to launch enterprise versions of Go & Quest sometime this year.

“Starting with VR, we are building an Oculus Go and Oculus Quest Enterprise edition expected to launch in 2019,” the listing states.
“This effort encompasses everything from hardware integrations, software platforms, enterprise-developer ecosystems and SDKs, SLAs, and more.”

While far from revealing, a company spokesperson confirmed with Variety that the upcoming enterprise edition products will be part of the company’s existing business offerings.

The job listing goes on to put emphasis on augmented reality as well, saying the company is looking for someone to “create the technology that makes VR and AR pervasive and universal.”

Oculus already sells both Rift and Go for Business, although these offer little more than a few extras such as commercial licenses, commercial warranties, “preferential” customer service, and some bits and bobs like extra facial interfaces and sensors (for Rift).

SEE ALSO
Rift and Windows VR Continue Growth Streaks at Expense of Vive in Latest Steam Survey

Some of the listed job duties may portend greater enterprise services coming from Oculus though:

  • Design and develop enterprise features into Oculus mobile VR system applications
  • Design and develop VR frameworks to enable enterprise use cases such as corporate training
  • Ensure security and privacy concerns remain a top priority and are identified and addressed
  • Work with external developers innovating on future-of-work experiences

To make matters more interesting, HTC recently announced their enterprise-focused Vive Focus Plus with 6DOF controllers. At the time it was a bit of a stretch to call it true competitor to the similarly-kitted Oculus Quest based on the fact that the companies were targeting different market segments. With Oculus’ parent company Facebook eyeballing enterprise too now, that might change here fairly soon.

We hope to learn more soon—possibly at GDC 2019 later this month—although the company could equally use F8 2019 (April 30th – May 1st) as a potential venue for further announcements. We still don’t know exactly when the $400 Oculus Quest is set to launch. Either venue fits into the company’s quoted launch window of spring 2019.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • JesuSaveSouls

    You get innovative quality and top notch tested tech and software with oculus. Extremely reasonably affordable with great customer service.In store purchases and returns too.Jesus Christ God’s Son died for you too,He is alive!

    • Jistuce

      Not very good at dying if he’s alive.

  • WyrdestGeek

    I’m #confused. “Enterprise”? I thought Rift was their high end offering, Go the low end, and Quest the mid range. I don’t understand what “Enterprise” means in this context.

    Except I think it means Facebook is pushing untethered VR to the max on the hope that it will be in position to define the entire next epoch in computing.

    • Brad Nguyen

      Enterprise means “For Business” use

      • WyrdestGeek

        I really wouldn’t have expected Oculus Go or even Quest to have a lot of business use cases.

        Can you give examples of where a business would want to compromise on the graphics/etc?

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          I’ve built an application to visualize and test the interior of custom build offroad recreational vehicles for a company specialized in creating these. Typical customers are retirees who sold their companies and now want to cruise through Africa in comfort. These are all “once in a lifetime” projects, quite expensive and the buyers have no experience with the specific constraints of a very limited space. We showed it 2017 at the world’s largest exhibition for these offroad vehicles, running on an HTC Vive.

          The old school crowd was pretty sceptical about our fancy VR setup, but usually convinced after a fews seconds because they could actually walk through the whole vehicle (they are around 5m/200″ long), squeeze into the tiny shower and put dishes from the sink into the cupboards placed just below the ceiling. It gave them a real feeling of the space and an idea why some wishes simply wouldn’t work. The main complaint was that the fire extinguisher didn’t work, so I had to add some particle effects during the first night.

          My main problem was keeping the thing running in what was basically a tent with uneven ground with lots of people running around, ignoring any cables, bumping into the lighthouse stations. The unexperienced users were always about to hit someone or walk just a little bit to far for the Vive cable length. Despite the success, we didn’t push the project much further, simply because the setup was too complex for the intended users/company employees, requiring an administrator and a nanny at all times.

          The project will get a second chance once the Quest is available. The whole point of the exercise is “experiencing the space”, so we don’t need high end graphics. What we showed at the exhibition was created in Unity/ProBuilder plus some light coding within about two weeks. But we need 6DoF and hand tracking working without any hassle or cables in an area the size of a half-size container. It has to be handled by a person trained in mechanics with very little clue about anything computer related. Expect something similar in every place that sells custom build kitchens in a few years.

          A similar project I did last year was a training simulation for logistics students, demonstrating (very simplified) the handling of containers between trains, trucks and ships with cranes and specialized forklifts the users controlled in first person. The main version runs in a browser via WebGL, so it has to work with low poly models and palette based textures. A (much more fun) VR version exists, but it was mostly a demo, again because the setup was too complex for the target group. Had the Quest been available, VR would have been at least considered as a valid option.

      • Icebeat

        no, it means $$$ for the same product.

    • Trenix

      They using inside-out tracking for business use, lol.

      • Kristy

        Affiliate job opportunities have become a trend in all over world now. A recent survey illustrates even more than 76% of people are working for online work from a home office with no issues. The Affiliate marketing world is thriving day by day and people are having an ocean of opportunities through internet to earn money from home. Everybody really want to hang out with his/her relatives by getting out for any attractive place in the world. So internet based earning allows you to accomplish the work at any time you want and enjoy your life. But determing the best strategy moreover establishing a right aim is our milestone toward success. Already plenty of people are earning such a good paycheck of $26000 per week by utilizing suggested and successful ways of make money online. You will start to get paid from the first day once you visit our website. TAKE A TOUR >>>>> https://mig.gs/ABnA

  • oompah

    The future is standalone & ppl are expected to buy 3-4 headsets per family (if prices are good) i.e. big business coming.
    Oculus has done done so much for VR, it should also develop:
    1. VR glasses based on waveguide optics. How ? use optical glass fibers woven as fabric , projected with RGB lasers and each end point of optical fiber should have fresnel lens like cut which would not need headset optics becuz the lens optics will be directly built into optical fiber. The final product would look like hololens 2 or even better like glasses.
    2. Haptics & touch ; so develop gloves, vests or body suits with cellphone like small vibrations.
    3. Game streaming using supercomputers
    4. Ray tracing on game streaming to provide experience indistinguishable from real reality.
    5. why not gestures based feedback using AI
    6. foveated combined with eye tracking will add value & reduce processing power required
    7. open standards (very important)

    • Baldrickk

      Game streaming is always going to suck no matter how good the computer is generating the visuals. Those pesky laws of physics getting in the way.

    • Jistuce

      1 sounds less like a coherent plan and more like a collection of buzzwords strung together in hopes that no one will notice.

      3 is just a terrible idea for a use case that needs as little lag as possible. The speed of light places a limit on how low lag can be, and you won’t get anywhere near that limit due to there being a complex and often-questionable network between your headset and the server.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      You’d be a champion at buzzword bingo.

  • It will be interesting to see how it will compete with HTC, that is currently the market leader in the enterprise niche

  • Looking forward to see how it will gonna perform & compete with other amazing vr headsets.
    Virtual Reality Games