Oculus Announces the Rift S Headset for $399, Developed in Partnership With Lenovo

[Raevenlord]

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.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Prolly has SuperFish preinstalled.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Prolly has SuperFish preinstalled.

As bad as Superfish is, it might be the least of the problems, curious if Facebook has any hooks in yet like they do with Samsung & their version of Oculus.

 

[Vayra86]

Prolly has SuperFish preinstalled.

Heheh bloatware in VR , I do wonder what that'd be like.

 

[Deleted member 50521]

Good direction. Still the most important thing to sort out now is locomotion. Pimax 8k is already pushing the limits of a full fat RTX Titan so resolution of HMD is not that important IMO.

 

[Crackong]

That USB-C on my RTX card finally come to use, has been a half year long wait.

 

[radekr]

What a massive fail...

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...

 

[Franzen4Real]

What a massive fail...

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...

The Quest should have had a Virtual Link connection with DP/USB adaptor (for those /wo VL cards) with a video pass through chip to allow it to be mobile as it is, or tethered to a PC. It's hard to believe they are selling the S for the same price as the Quest when it has no internal hardware and lesser screen panels... There's no reason the S and Quest should even exist together in my opinion. The Rift should have been canned, and the Quest with pass through as a stop gap until CV2. I mean really, how much more $$ could it cost to just add pass through... I would have gladly paid extra for that feature. It's frustrating as a VR enthusiast.

 

[radekr]

The Quest should have had a Virtual Link connection with DP/USB adaptor (for those /wo VL cards) with a video pass through chip to allow it to be mobile as it is, or tethered to a PC. It's hard to believe they are selling the S for the same price as the Quest when it has no internal hardware and lesser screen panels... There's no reason the S and Quest should even exist together in my opinion. The Rift should have been canned, and the Quest with pass through as a stop gap until CV2. I mean really, how much more $$ could it cost to just add pass through... I would have gladly paid extra for that feature. It's frustrating as a VR enthusiast.

That's exactly what I thought about when I compared the technical specifications for Quest and Rift S.

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 ...

 

[Franzen4Real]

That's exactly what I thought about when I compared the technical specifications for Quest and Rift S.

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 ...

Exactly. Even from Facebooks perspective, why would they want to have 2 different screens from different suppliers, different tooling for the HMD cases, etc. Seeing as they are on the downside of CV1's life cycle, a stop gap Quest with pass through just makes more sense even from a manufacturing/supply perspective. At the very least if they insist on having separate products for mobile/pc to increase sales as you mentioned, why not just use the same screen panels across the stack until CV2 arrives. I'll be passing on the S as well, and that Reverb does look mighty tempting. For me PiMax has always been out of the question (I have no faith in the quality) so Reverb is what I'll be watching closely for a high res alternative.