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Oculus Unveils the Rift S, a Higher-Resolution VR Headset With Built-In Tracking (theverge.com) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
Oculus VR unveiled the Oculus Rift S, a higher-resolution pair of virtual reality goggles that remove the need for external cameras by incorporating built-in tracking. The company partnered with Lenovo "to help it speed up manufacturing and to improve upon the design of the original Rift," reports The Verge. From the report: The result is a new VR device that is more comfortable, sports 2560 x 1440 resolution (or 1280 x 1440 per eye), and features the same inside-out tracking system that will ship on Oculus' upcoming standalone Quest headset, which the company calls Oculus Insight. That way, you won't need cumbersome cameras to enable full-body movement. In another twist, both the Quest and Rift S device will cost exactly the same at launch: $399, with the same pair of slightly modified Touch motion controllers included and the same integrated audio system (plus a headphone jack for external audio). That decision makes it clear that Oculus wants its VR platform to offer a choice not between two vastly different pieces of hardware, but by the more simple determination of whether you have the hardware to power PC-grade VR. The Rift S will support every existing and future game on the Rift platform. "The company is also enabling cross-buy and cross-play features," the report adds. "That way, you can buy a Quest and, at a later date, upgrade to a Rift S and still have your entire library intact. Additionally, multiplayer games that support both platforms will let players play one another, regardless of whether you're playing on a Quest or Rift device."

The Rift S and Quest will be shipping this spring.
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Oculus Unveils the Rift S, a Higher-Resolution VR Headset With Built-In Tracking More

Oculus Unveils the Rift S, a Higher-Resolution VR Headset With Built-In Tracking

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  • I've used Oculus headsets for a few short things, including some experiences at the Void.

    While they were pretty cool I could tell that even higher resolution would for sure help with fidelity, as sometimes you are looking at things you can tell should have more detail but the resolution is failing you...

    Hope they are finally getting around to having these headsets work on the Mac though. Ignoring a customer base with a lot of money seems like a pretty stupid play for VR makers, or at least opens up a giant

    • How big is the market though, really? Macs hold about 13% of the market, total. And what, maybe 5-10% of those have high performance video cards that could handle a midrange VR game nicely? Remember, you need probably about 3-4x as much video card power for a good VR experience as for a comparable quality FPS gaming experience - you have to double both the frame rate and the number of geometry transforms - that's not cheap.

      So, lets be generous and say good-VR-capable Macs are about 10% of the mac market

  • The screen has higher resolution, and is not pentile so it's actually even higher than the ~40% pixel increase. Interestingly it actually has less resolution than the Quest.

    The screen is LCD rather than OLED, so one might think it will have poor black levels compared to the CV1. However, CV1 is often driven with compressed blacks and so doesn't get that brilliant OLED "completely off" black in practice anyway. Will need to play with it to see.

    It also runs at 80hz rather than 90hz, though I suspect that may

  • It's a Lenovo Mixed Reality Headset (Score:4, Informative)

    by BenJeremy ( 181303 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @04:30PM (#58306562)

    Sure, it has more inside-out cameras (I think), but it no longer has mechanically adjusted PD and no ear phones.

    In some ways, it's a step backward. I'd rather have seen a hybrid approach to sensors - the inside out is great, but a couple sensor pods behind wouldn't be too bad. Oculus "partnered" with Lenovo on the "S" - and they basically swallowed up the Lenovo Mixed Reality headset (which can usually be had for a lot less than $399), and passed none of the cost savings onto consumers.

    Where's the wireless option? Go and Quest are standlones, and have their own issues... how about something like Vive's wireless option? Instead of pushing VR tech forward, they've just sidestepped into Microsoft's MR standard. It's not a terrible thing... the MR headsets are very good, and inside-out tracking is very slick, but it isn't a step forward.

    I want no tethers and galvanic stimulation to ward off motion sickness (and feel motion). I want OLED displays. I don't like losing the earphones.

    • Why are they using cameras instead of an IMU and do dead reckoning? Or does it have some sort of Kalman filter that integrates with the cameras?

      • The cameras in the Rift aren't made for tracking. They are made to correct IMU drift. The IMUs do the bulk of the work, but they drift hard and fast so you need something to correct that.

    • I think their branding of "S" as opposed to "2" is pretty important, and is a remarkably honest way to market the device.

      Compared to some of the later headsets (Vive Pro, some of the MS-based headsets) it's not much of an improvement (or a small step back). When compared to their current offering, though, it provides a number of quality-of-life benefits which are pretty substantial outside of the in-home market. First is reduction of the SDE, partially due to higher resolution, and also partially due to the

  • sports 2560 x 1440 resolution (or 1280 x 1440 per eye in Canada)

    FTFY

  • Figures. Yet another platform tracking user behavior. Is there a "Do Not Track" privacy setting, like in browsers? :-)
  • I really hope that pure inside out tracking doesn't become the new thing unless it improves significantly. I have a lenovo explorer WMR headset, and the tracking is horrible compared to my friends vive. It's especially annoying playing beatsaber when I lose tracking on a controller while swinging behind/to the side and it teleports into a mine. The controllers also jitter horribly, to the point that shooting games are near impossible to play with any kind of precision.

    • The WMR headsets only have 2 cameras, this thing will have 5, so it will be a lot better. But it won't be perfect. You'll probably have trouble with shooting games and things like Echo Arena. Anything that involves you manipulating objects close to or behind your head will go out of tracking range. Trying to grab an arrow out of a quiver won't work well. Holding onto a wall with your left hand while you look over your right shoulder might fail. Things like that.

  • Didn't Oculus claim gaze tracking was the next big step here after the last headset was released over a year ago? (having trouble finding any article now)

    And my reaction is "Lame"...I've seen a competing device with these resolution specs (1440p) and built in gaze tracking. Out for over a couple years now already. I'd been waiting on higher FPS and maybe from a bigger company.

    https://www.getfove.com/ [getfove.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Melkman ( 82959 )

      So basically you are waiting for the new Vive pro Eye ? To bad HTC pricing is so high.

  • I'm fairly sure that any and all activities of the player will be tracked to the utmost detail.

    It's Facebook, after all.

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