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Oculus Rift S

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Re: Oculus Rift S

#51
post #35

I bought an Oculus Rift a couple months ago, and this seems like a mixed bag. Per https://uploadvr.com/oculus-rift-s-official/ : > The original Rift used dual PenTile OLED panels for a total resolution of 2160×1200. Rift S replaces this with a single LCD panel with a resolution of 2560×1440...This provides a higher detail image with reduced “screen door effect”. However, you don’t get the deep blacks of OLED since LC…

It seems to me the Rift S is targeted more at people new to VR, not at existing Rift owners. The focus seems to be mainly on making setup easier, and improving comfort and ergonomics, not on pushing the boundaries spec-wise.

Yeah, it looks like Oculus is kind of conceding the high end of the market for now. What would probably be best is to wait another generation or two so I can get even higher resolution, picture quality, and FOV in addition to inside-out tracking.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't tethered to a PC Can I tether it to a PC if I want to? My primary use case is PC gaming.

You should probably just get a Rift with the bases. I got mine for around 350.

I have one; I just find the tracking pretty fragile. I often need to set it up again on a weekly basis.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#53

I've used a Vive once (a guy at work brought one in). Little sensors at the corners of the room, headset, hand grips. It was really neat. How does this rank next to Vive? I've been thinking of getting one (my kids would love the 3-d "drawing" app I tried). I have a good PC, should I be looking at getting the Rift S? A Vive? Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!

The objects in the corners of the room aren't sensors with Vive, they're lighthouses. Vive's tracking system is inside-out, there's only one cable and it runs from your computer to your head. There need to be two lighthouses, and all they need is power and line-of-sight to each other

Oculus's tracking system is outside-in, the stations in the corners of the room are cameras, and the headset has infrared lights on it. You need three base stations, and they all need to be connected to your computer in addition to the connection for the headset itself.

Oculus has arguably nicer controllers (grips vs wands), but Vive is launching "knuckles" controllers soon so that relationship might flip.

I chose Vive because of the close integration with Steam, easier setup with fewer wires, and more titles (at least at the time, idk about now).

The screen door effect doesn't bother me, so the main feature of the Rift S isn't a draw for me.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#54
post #42

One of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of VR seems to be the cost. Is there a reason why it doesn't make sense for the manufacturers to do a subscription service? Seems like everything from phones and consoles to game streaming subscriptions is the trend (and makes sense). If nothing else, it can help increase distribution and awareness -- at the end of the day, more people using the devices is probably gon…

I doubt if there's a strong market for VR even if a great headset was $50. Do people who are not enthusiasts really want to immerse themselves like this? A good chunk of the population doesn't seem interested even in game consoles. I imagine a subset of them are interested in VR gaming. Outside of VR gaming, there's little mainstream content designed for VR.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#56

I've used a Vive once (a guy at work brought one in). Little sensors at the corners of the room, headset, hand grips. It was really neat. How does this rank next to Vive? I've been thinking of getting one (my kids would love the 3-d "drawing" app I tried). I have a good PC, should I be looking at getting the Rift S? A Vive? Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!

I worked in a VR lab at my university for a year before graduating so I got to experiment with a bunch of the current headsets (no Rift S though since it was just announced obviously).

My personal take away is if you are going for the maximum immersion, have space and the money, go with the Vive or Vive Pro. The Rift (likely applies to Rift S as well since they are so similar) was more comfortable than the Vive for me at least and I liked the controllers more but the tracking quality was not as solid especially in even medium sized rooms. The visual quality on the Oculus is not quite where the Vive is either. Additionally the Vive is a pretty open platform so there are lots of third party accessories you can play with (once again if you can stomach the costs). I love using Vive trackers on my feet to track my foot motion so I could run in place in games to move. That kind of ecosystem doesn’t exist for Oculus. Additionally Valve will likely release new controllers soon with full finger tracking (and then you could use your old controllers as Vive trackers)

Re: Oculus Rift S

#57
A significant portion of people (most maybe?) who are interested in this would like to see the specs and not some Apple inspired dumbed down web page with little actual substance about the product. Even apple gives you prominent access to tech specs. This page tries to get your email address three times. Very poor.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#58
post #40

For those with VR headsets of any kind: how often are you using it? Are we there yet with VR? If not, is it the hardware, the content, or both? For now, I'd define "there" as at least 0.5 * time spent on console or PC gaming per week.

Tracking is a joke with the Rift v1 (consumer version). Decent for a few hours and then randomly everything gets all screwed up, requiring a tracking reset which sometimes doesn’t even fix the issue. It’s way too involved to set up, and even following the instructions it takes sometimes 20 minutes to finally get the tracking sensors synced with the controllers and your System. I found that really frustrating and made it prohibitive for anything other than killing time. Furthermore, for some reason it always makes me set it up from scratch even if I haven’t unplugged the three different USBs (2x tracking, and one for the headset) needed to get the whole thing operational since the last use.

Echo VR is super super fun to play, as one concrete example, but I’d say the Rift is still not good enough other than as a toy to show off to people. The driver updates are also absurdly huge. I didn’t use it for a month and I had a 14gb driver download (pretty sure it wasn’t any game/app updates)

We are far away from VR being even in the comparable to general purpose “everyday” computing IMO.

Re: Oculus Rift S

#59
I would love to trade all these monitors for a virtual workstation. Every time there's new VR tech I hope that it's possible. 1280x1440 is definitely an improvement. I'm patient.
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