Oculus Rift S

Audi as mentioned has S models and they’re legitimately better than their non-S counter parts (S-line package is not the same)

The second problem is it's too expensive. Once there is enough demand to scale the technology better, costs can come down. And costs for better screens and chips will come down in time on their own anyway.

The third problem is a lack of content. For the amount of money Facebook has been pouring into VR developers, it's really just sad how few good games there are. The general consensus I hear from gamers is they've just given up on VR, and I don't know any devs who see it as anything more than an experiment right now.

There just isn't anything compelling about VR right now, at least not for me. Even the people I know who used to champion it almost never use it anymore, and many of my friends who used to work at Oculus have quit as they no longer believe in the vision.

All of this is anecdotal of course. The real data point is sales, and they are bad. Look at VR sales and compare them to the Microsoft Kinect, which MS has essentially abandoned and admitted to being a failure (at least for gaming and mainstream consumer applications). If VR is woefully trailing behind a technology accepted to be a failure that was practically force-fed down consumer's throats as MS tried to push it with their Xbox business, it's hard to see a bright future for VR.

It's been years and billions of dollars have been spent, and VR has a couple of indie hits and no killer app.

> The VR industry seems to think PC gaming is dead

Sad, if true. This is definitely how Oculus seems to feel about it, but maybe they're just ceding that segment to HTC.

> HTC hasn't released a marginally better headset in three years

Their upcoming roadmap seems promising even if it's only evolutionary changes. It also seems like they're not abandoning the high end.

> Future headsets are adopting inside out tracking despite it having worse performance than lighthouse

It's strictly worse in terms of sheer "performance", but it can be potentially so much better in other terms that it might be a better idea to dump engineering effort into improving the performance until it's good enough.

If I set up my tracking sensors perfectly and go through the calibration ceremony, my VR environment would be capable of higher-precision tracking than is possible with inside-out technology. At least, it is until a cat knocks into my sensor, or the USB connection flakes out, and I have to recalibrate the damn thing all over again.

This has happened before. You can (or at least could) get better photographs from film than from digital. CRT displays are (or at least were) capable of better image quality than LCD. Gas tanks can store more energy than the batteries in a Tesla and can be refueled faster than the battery can be recharged. The .30-06 cartridge is more lethal than the 5.56 NATO. Analog telephony has higher sound quality than digital.

However--digital cameras are far easier to use and make the photos themselves easier to share and store, so they got the image quality good enough. LCD displays are less bulky and more energy-efficient, so they got the image quality good enough. Electric cars are more eco-friendly and can deliver higher performance due to the mechanical simplicity, so they got the batteries and Superchargers good enough. 5.56 has less recoil, particularly in full-auto or burst fire, and you can carry more rounds because each round weighs less, and the rifle itself can be lighter. Digital telephony scales better and suffers less quality drop for mobile phones, and VOIP dispenses with dedicated telephony infrastructure entirely.