You remember 2018? It feels like a lifetime ago in tech years. Back then, if you wanted to experience VR, you usually had two choices: strap a literal piece of cardboard to your face or spend $1,500 on a gaming PC and a tethered headset that made you look like a deep-sea diver with a cable umbilical cord. Then came the Oculus Go virtual reality headset. It was sleek. It was grey. It didn't need a phone or a computer. It just... worked. Honestly, it was the first time VR felt like a real consumer product rather than a science experiment for nerds in basements.
I still have mine in a drawer somewhere. It’s a bit dusty now.
But looking back at the Oculus Go virtual reality ecosystem, it’s wild to see how much it got right while simultaneously being doomed from the start. It was a bridge to nowhere, but man, what a view it had from the middle of that bridge.
The weird, wonderful hardware of the Oculus Go virtual reality headset
Most people forget that the Go wasn't really built for gaming. Not really. It used a Snapdragon 821 processor—the same chip found in the original Google Pixel. It was mobile tech inside a plastic shell. But because it didn't have to run background apps like Spotify or handle incoming calls, it punched way above its weight class. The lenses were actually better than the original Oculus Rift (the CV1). They were Fresnel lenses that significantly reduced those annoying "god rays" that plagued the more expensive headsets.
The screen was a 2560 x 1440 fast-switch LCD. Colors weren't as punchy as OLED, but the screen door effect was drastically minimized.
The biggest "whoa" moment for most people was the audio. There were no headphones. Instead, spatial audio was piped through the headstrap struts. It sounded surprisingly full. You could hear someone whispering behind you in a virtual cinema, yet your ears were completely open to the real world. It felt futuristic. It felt like something Apple would eventually do (and they did, with the Vision Pro, though at 15 times the price).
Then there was the controller. Just one. A tiny little plastic wand with a clickable touchpad and a trigger. No joystick. No secondary buttons. It was basically a laser pointer for your face.
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It only had three degrees of freedom (and that was the problem)
Here is where we have to talk about 3DoF versus 6DoF. If those terms sound like jargon, think of it this way: the Oculus Go virtual reality experience was like being a head in a jar. You could look up, down, left, and right. You could tilt your head. But if you actually leaned forward to look closer at something? The whole world moved with you. It was jarring. It made a lot of people motion sick.
This is the fundamental reason Meta (then Facebook) eventually killed the line.
True VR—the kind that makes you feel like you've stepped into another dimension—requires six degrees of freedom. You need to be able to walk, duck, and move your hands in 3D space. The Go couldn't do that. It tracked your head rotation, but it had no idea where your body was in the room. This limited the games to "sit and stare" experiences. Roller coasters. 360-degree videos. Simple puzzle games. It was a glorified media player.
And honestly? That was okay for a while.
John Carmack, the legendary programmer behind Doom and the former CTO of Oculus, championed the Go for years. He loved its simplicity. He wanted a device that you could keep on your nightstand and put on for 20 minutes to watch Netflix on a giant virtual screen. He even pushed for a "low-latency" mode that made the Go feel more responsive than it had any right to be. But the market wanted more. They wanted Beat Saber. They wanted to move. The Go was a stationary device in a world that wanted to run.
What actually happened to the software?
In 2020, Meta officially pulled the plug. They stopped selling the Go and announced that no new apps would be added to the store. It was a "lifestyle" death.
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But the story didn't end there. In a move that almost never happens in big tech, Carmack convinced Meta to release an "unlocked" OS build for the Go in 2021. This was huge. It meant that developers and enthusiasts could gain root access to the hardware. Usually, when a cloud-dependent headset dies, it becomes a paperweight. Because of this unlocked firmware, the Oculus Go virtual reality community managed to keep the device breathing.
You can still sideload apps. You can still use it as a dedicated movie theater.
The Netflix app on the Go is still, in my opinion, one of the best VR UI designs ever made. You’re sitting in a cozy mountain cabin. There’s a fireplace. There’s a massive screen. It feels private. It feels personal. For people who live in cramped apartments or travel on planes, the Go was a godsend. It turned a middle seat in economy into a private IMAX theater.
The legacy of the "Budget" VR experiment
The Oculus Go virtual reality project taught the industry that price matters more than almost anything else. At $199, it was an impulse buy. It proved there was a massive audience that wanted VR but didn't want to spend $1,000. This paved the way for the Quest 2 and Quest 3.
Without the Go, the Quest would have likely been much more expensive and much more niche.
Meta learned that people hate phone-based VR (like Gear VR) because it kills your phone battery and makes the device overheat in ten minutes. They also learned that 3DoF wasn't enough to keep people coming back. The retention rates on the Go were notoriously low. People would buy it, use it for a week, show it to their aunt, and then let it sit in a drawer. It lacked "sticky" apps. It didn't have the social presence of VRChat or the physicality of Superhot.
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Can you still use an Oculus Go today?
Technically, yes. If you find one on eBay for $50, it’s still a great dedicated media machine. But there are caveats. Big ones.
- The Battery: These things are old now. Lithium-ion batteries degrade. Most Go units struggle to hold a charge for more than an hour of video playback.
- Account Issues: Setting up a "new" Go is a nightmare because the setup process often tries to ping servers that no longer exist or require legacy Facebook account links that are buggy.
- The Store: You can't really buy new stuff. You’re stuck with what you already have or what you can find in the sideloading community via SideQuest.
It’s a vintage piece of tech now. A relic.
Practical steps for VR enthusiasts
If you're looking at the Oculus Go virtual reality history and wondering what to do now, here is the reality of the situation in 2026.
Don't buy a Go for gaming. Just don't. You will be disappointed by the lack of movement and the dated graphics. If you want the spiritual successor, the Meta Quest 3S is the current "budget" king. It does everything the Go did but adds full room-scale tracking and mixed reality.
However, if you happen to own a Go and want to revive it:
- Download the Unlocked Firmware: Look up the official Oculus Go root release. It allows you to bypass certain boot requirements and gives the device a longer shelf life.
- Use SkyBox VR Player: This is the gold standard for watching your own local video files. If you have a NAS or a large movie collection, the Go is still a fantastic way to watch them in bed without disturbing your partner.
- ALVR or Virtual Desktop: You can actually stream PC games to the Go using these tools. It’s janky, and you’re still limited to 3DoF, but playing a flight simulator where you only need to look around is surprisingly viable.
- Sideload Retroarch: The Go is a beast for emulating old consoles. Playing SNES games on a giant screen in a virtual 90s bedroom is a vibe that's hard to beat.
The Oculus Go virtual reality era was a specific moment in time. It was the "netbook" of VR—cheap, limited, but surprisingly useful for a very specific set of tasks. It wasn't the future, but it certainly helped us get there. It was the first time we realized that VR didn't have to be a complicated mess of wires and sensors. It could just be a headset, a controller, and a seat on the couch. Sometimes, that's all you really need.