No more dealing with tangled cable wires plugged into a computer or fumbling to attach a mobile device to a VR headset. In the near future, a standalone virtual reality set will be able to do it all, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe says.
Iribe told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Thursday that the virtual reality headset, named the Santa Cruz prototype, resembled the Rift, but that they "modified it and added a full computer, plus an inside-out tracking system so you can walk around, look around and it can track your every position."
Interestingly, this announcement on the headset, made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Oculus Connect, comes a few days after Google's announcement of its VR headset, Daydream View, earlier in the week. However, when questioned about comparisons to Oculus' products, Iribe described the Daydream View as a "simple device" and more similar to the Samsung Gear VR than it is to a Rift or Santa Cruz experience.
Price advantage seems to be on Google's side with the Daydream View being sold at $79 per headset, while the similar Gear VR's price tag is at $99. But Iribe doesn't feel the pressure to compete to sell headsets at a lower cost because the company's product isn't aimed for the "mass market of hundreds of millions of people."
"We are right at the beginning where it is good enough for enthusiast audiences to jump in and enjoy the product," Iribe said. "If you think of it like the Apple 2 days, this is going to continue to grow. It is going to continue to mature and the technology will get a lot better."
Iribe shared his excitement for the future of VR and innovation after claiming millions have already tried the Gear VR compatible with Samsung Galaxy phones.
"There are a lot of VR enthusiasts. We have seen a huge amount of adoption of VR," Iribe said. "This is a dream so many have had that one day we would finally step into that virtual reality world. Now it is a reality. Now it is possible."
Virtual reality is expected to grow into an $80 billion industry by 2025 and has continued to rise over 20 percent since the summer.