It was apparent pretty quickly after I started messing around with it: Oculus Quest is the best virtual reality platform out there and it isn’t even close. But I still wonder how far it can really go.

In video games, graphics tend to get the most fanfare. If something is dull but it looks especially pretty, it’s generally going to attract a more favorable response. So when we see some new VR tech announced, like Valve’s high-end Index, the focus tends to center on resolution. How much better does this new hardware look compared to all the rest?

SEE ALSO: Oculus Quest review: A new milestone for VR

Quest, which is out on May 21 alongside the second-generation Rift S, challenges that notion. It’s wireless VR, but with significantly more power than mobile solutions like Gear VR or cardboard. What you see inside the headset doesn’t look bad by any stretch — far better than mobile options, certainly, and roughly on par with the Rift — but the thing that makes it appealing is its all-in-one design. 

You don’t need sensor stations or an external PC. There’s a smartphone app that handles day one setup, casting, and store purchases (there’s also an in-headset store), but that’s it. All of the heavy lifting is handled by the Quest; you just put on the headset, spend a minute or so setting up your play area, and you’re off.

The experience sells itself. All it takes is a couple rounds of Beat Saber, a game that I’d argue is the first real “killer app” for VR. It’s a rhythm game where you hold different-colored lightsaber-like energy swords in each hand. You play by slicing boxes in half as they slide down a Guitar Hero-like note highway. Arrows on each box tell you which direction to slice. There are also obstacles to dodge and bombs to keep your swords away from.

The soundtrack is filled with fast-moving techno beats that are meant to get your body moving. It’s an astonishingly powerful VR experience regardless of the hardware you’re using, but Quest feels like the ideal home for Beat Saber. You’re not wired to anything, so you’re completely free to lose yourself to the rhythm.

New VR tech is coming along too quickly for early adopters to realistically keep up.

I can’t get enough of it. I think it has the immediate stickiness that a lot of other VR options lack because of the low fidelity of experiences (on the mobile side) or the complexity of setting everything up (on the PC side). It’s plug and play.

It’s also a newcomer in a crowded market for a young technology that hasn’t exactly found its generational cadence just yet. I’ll bet most of you out there in reader land don’t know the difference between a Vive and a Vive Pro without looking it up. Or a Rift and a Rift S. And now there’s this Index that came along out of nowhere, offering modest improvement on hardware that, in the case of the Rift S specifically, isn’t even out yet.

It’s a confusing time to be a VR enthusiast, to be sure. Most of us have already spent money on one platform or another. That doesn’t mean we’re locked in forever, but this is expensive gear we’re talking about. New VR tech is coming along too quickly for early adopters to realistically keep up.

In a vacuum, the Quest is an incredible proposition: $400 gets you a fully self-contained VR gaming console, the first of its kind. I just don’t know if there’s an audience for it right now. The Quest is already less powerful than a Rift or Vive paired with a recommended spec PC, and we’re only a month or two from seeing even more powerful next-gen PC headsets hit the market.

At the other end of the spectrum, people who don’t game on PC already have a range of options available. Gear VR and cardboard for the mobile crowd and PlayStation VR or (in a more limited sense) Nintendo’s Labo VR Kit for the console folks. 

So where does Quest fit into that picture? That’s the problem. It doesn’t really fit. The headset is arriving in this between moment for the developing tech. I think the experience itself delivers perhaps the truest realization of VR’s promise. But it’s at risk of being outpaced by next-gen products that are already dated for release.

Oculus Quest has the potential to deliver what VR is missing most: an inflection point. The pitch isn’t better specs or richer graphics, but rather an experience that feels like an overall game-changer. The timing couldn’t be worse, though. Oculus needs an audience, but the ideal audience for it is so caught up in a fast-moving market that Quest is at risk of being lost in the crowd.

A traffic webcam in London has a popular visitor. 

Transport for London — the city agency responsible for overseeing public transit in the sprawling metropolis — has 177 live cameras keeping tabs on traffic. A sassy looking bird has been photobombing one of the cams, just above the Blackwall Tunnel (which runs under the River Thames).

Over 2 million people have taken a look at the transit agency’s most recent twitter posting of the white-headed bird, posted on April 30. Who is this attention-seeking creature?

Bird expert Kenn Kaufman had no trouble identifying the animal, a type of gull (there are some 50 species of gull). 

“The bird is an adult Herring Gull, and it’s an impressive species — smart, tough, adaptable, able to make a living in a wide variety of surroundings,” said Kaufman. “There are lots of Herring Gulls around London at all seasons, including right in the middle of the city, so it’s not surprising for one to show up on a traffic cam.”

A different population of Herring Gull (some ornithologists think different species) inhabits the North American continent too, also finding a means of survival in our heavily-trafficked urban lands. 

Gulls, present on every continent, are certainly robust species overall, capable of making a living almost anywhere. They now thrive on the former super-maximum security prison that is Alcatraz Island, and feast upon the pink salmon leftovers discarded by Alaska’s famous bear cam bears.

SEE ALSO: How flocks of birds got trapped inside the eye of Hurricane Florence

Gulls are often called “seagulls,” though no such animal exists. Kaufman doesn’t mind the popular name, but notes that the term doesn’t describe any particular species. In fact, most gulls don’t spend much time out at sea. Many are found inland, like London’s now-famous Herring gull. 

“You can see many more gulls in Kansas than you ever will out in the middle of the ocean,” Kaufman said.