Wednesday, March 20th 2019
Oculus Announces the Rift S Headset for $399, Developed in Partnership With Lenovo
Oculus today announced an improvement to their original Rift headset, the Oculus Rift S. The new headset from oculus builds upon advances in their view of a VR experience, as well as from learnings acquired through the development of the original Rift, the smartphone-only Oculus Go, and the standalone Oculus Quest, to deliver the new, ultimate VR experience in the Oculus field.
The Oculus S features improved panels with a 2560x1440 resolution (just like the Oculus GO), offering 40% more pixels and improving the pixel subsystem with groupings of three instead of two. It also features Oculus Quest's Inside-Out tracking capabilities, with five cameras instead of the Quests' four, alongside redesigned controllers.
The Rift S also features a new head strap, integrated audio and Passthrough+ technology, besides some other quality of life improvements such as "for increased comfort, better weight distribution and improved light blocking." It will also be implementing a single-cable system for a clutter-free experience," so long as you don't use the headphone jack - we don't know the nature of this single-cable system yet, but it better be based on VirtualLink.
Sources:
Oculus, via Tom's Hardware
The Oculus S features improved panels with a 2560x1440 resolution (just like the Oculus GO), offering 40% more pixels and improving the pixel subsystem with groupings of three instead of two. It also features Oculus Quest's Inside-Out tracking capabilities, with five cameras instead of the Quests' four, alongside redesigned controllers.
9 Comments on Oculus Announces the Rift S Headset for $399, Developed in Partnership With Lenovo
Oculus Rift 1200×1080 p/e (OLED@90Hz)
Oculus Quest 1600x1440 p/e (OLED@72Hz)
NEW Oculus Rift S 1440×1280 p/e (LCD@80Hz)
Samsung Odyssey+ 1600x1440 p/e (OLED@90 Hz)
Oddysey+ (released over 1 y-e-a-r ago!) is better in every way than Facebook's new Rift S.
Not to mention that new Rift S has worse display resolution than new Quest designed for casual gaming:)
btw - USB connectivity is already confirmed and it's going to be... 5-meter USB 3.0 + DisplayPort 1.2 cable, so still no VRlink...
Rift Quest with the optional possibility of connecting to a PC would be a hit. I do not see any reason why it has not been done (except that Facebook would probably love to sell two separate headsets to everyone - one for playing on a PC, the other for mobile gaming). Some will say that Rift S is better than the old Rift and that will be true. Why, however, does the new Rift have a lower resolution display than the new Quest... and a lower resolution than the old headsets from other manufacturers available on the market for many months. I was waiting for refreshed Rift, but looking at the specification I know I will not buy it. I'll wait for the HTC Cosmos or the price reduction of the new HP Reverb (2.160 × 2.160 per eye @ 90Hz!)
Facebook probably missed the fact that VR headsets are usually bought by enthusiasts who have enough GPU power and have done the headset, which will work well with 5-year old GTX 960 cards ...