thelab » latest reviews
$649|WWW.OCULUS.COMOculus Rift S
More Oculus Rift 1.5 than a true successor.
T
he Oculus Rift S
should represent
the next leap
forward for the
company’s high-end,
PC-based virtual reality
experiences. But in
practice, this is more of a
baby-step – the Oculus Rift
S is not a true “Oculus Rift
2” successor.
First, the fit. Whereas the
Rift (and Quest) used a thin
rubbery strap that went
over your crown and around
the back of your head to two
firmer points over your ears,
the Rift S adds a padded
plastic curved mould where
your forehead and base of
the skull are. There’s still a
velcro strap for positioning
the headset, but it’s now
primarily tightened by a
dial on the back headrest.
It’s comfortable enough,
though it in fact feels
heavier than the original
Rift in terms of its frontal
weight distribution.
There’s a good reason for
this though – the Rift S does
away with external motion
tracking sensors, which
previously required you to
use up USB ports on your PCwhat is happening in the
game world around you.
Internally there are
changes too. The Rift S
swaps out the first Rift’s
dual OLED screens for a
single LCD upping the
resolution to 2560 x 1440
for what should be a
sharper image.
But it also reduces the
refresh rate from 90Hz to
80Hz. This is intended so as
to keep the price down as
well as keeping the
minimum specs for the
device the same as that of
the Oculus Rift, letting more
people get onboard without
having to upgrade their PC
gear. But it also runs the
risk of aggravating those
that suffer from VR-induced
motion sickness, with the
screens not updating at a
rate your brain perceives to
be natural.
The Oculus Rift S has had
to sacrifice greater audio
and refresh rate to make it
more accessible, and does
very little to appeal to those
that have already invested
in the Oculus ecosystem.
On top of that, the actual
experience of wearing a VRand trail cables around your
room and desk, in favour of
outward facing cameras.
These are used to track your
position in the room and the
movements of the superb
Oculus controllers in your
hands (an included part of
the package here).
A pair of touch controllers
ship with the Oculus Rift S,
and these are slightly
different to their
predecessors. In play, you
won’t notice any difference
against their older
stablemates.
However, not all the
changes are necessarily for
the better. Firstly, the R ift S
has ditched the Rift’s
over-ear earphones in
favour of directional
speakers in the headband.
On the one hand, they offer
a reasonable sense of
directional audio in relation
to what’s happening in the
scene in front of you, while
also letting your
unobstructed ears listen out
for what’s happening in the
real world. After all, with
your senses obscured by the
VR world, it’s handy to be
able to have an ear out forheadset has, for better or
worse, remained more or
less unchanged – whether
that’s something you’ll find
fascinating and
comfortable, or isolating
and nauseating, or
otherwise.
Which makes the decision
to not jump in with two feet
and push the limits of VR
even further forward tough
to extrapolate. Who is this
for? If the original Rift
didn’t coax the casual, I’m
not certain that an
improved set-up experience
will shift the dial for those
still on the fence. And so not
to cater to the dedicated
hardcore VR fan leads us to
believe that Oculus runs the
riskoflettingitsmostloyal
fansbegintoeye-upthe
ValveIndexinstead.
Gerald LynchVerdic t
A good first VR, but certainly not an
upgrade for existing owners.VRHEADSET