Oculus Rift-S Review Thread

[chass32 138]

1 hour ago, DennyA said:

Got my Rift S today from Amazon. Despite the lukewarm reviews and the minor upgrades in specs, Matt Wagner's commentary on its clarity in DCS made me order it from Amazon (where I could return it easily if not impressed).

I'm *not* returning it. Spent the evening flying flight sims in it and it's clearly a worthwhile upgrade for sim fans. You would think it had much higher resolution than the CV1, given the additional clarify. Screen door is just *gone*. (At least, for my eyes.)

 

Thanks Denny!

Remove that veil that turned P3D and all sims in a neverending cloudy day (due to SDE) was one of my priorities. I remember to be in Athens with P3D in mid-summer, thinking that looked like it was going to rain despite there were no clouds.

I´m happy to hear that is gone.

Cheers

Carlos

 

 

[andreh 125]

10 hours ago, mwilk said:

I'm running a 6700k @ 4.2 GHZ with a GTX1070ti. I don't run with sliders way to the right in P3D. Am I going to have to turn my visuals down even more to get acceptable performance? I'd like to jump on the Rift S because I'd also use it with DCS but I don't want to make the investment if performance is going to be an issue.

Similar system to mine and I'm quite happy with the visuals and performance I can get with the original Rift and PMDG birds. They are lower than on 2D screen, especially with detail in the distance, but never the less perfectly acceptable. You can't see 200nm out in real life anyway.

I've adapted my settings to look good from the VC only, ignoring external views. Anything you can't see from the VC is turned off. That saves some processing power. Alot of the demand for super clear details in the distance I think stems from people using external views, zooming out and then expect to see waving blades of grass and mooing cows on the fields 200nm miles away.

The major performance draw is still autogen buildings, but in some areas I can have it at Dense and High draw distance. Sometimes I have to lower it (e.g., over London etc.) Normal is acceptable all around with p3d v4.5

Likewise, I have Scenery draw distance at medium which looks perfectly OK in VR and most of everything else one or two steps from max. ActiveSky is set to 75nm visibility and cloud draw distance the same.

Point is, the loss of some quality is absolutely worth it for the VR experience.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by andreh

[HiFlyer 9,360]

SETUP

Setup was very simple, following the onscreen prompts, and anyone who has set up a Rift previously wil find themselves up and running in probably 15 minutes. Of note is the much appreciated passthrough system and the accompanying ease of setting up the guardian boundary system

IPD

A worry among some in the community, including myself was regarding the Rift S fixed IPD (interpupillary distance) But having now used the headset, I find that the "sweet spot" of the lenses is such that I found no notable downsides when using the headset with a 70' IPD

SOUND

Sound is a general suck-fest with no bass response to speak of and a loss of softer sounds in anything but the quietest environments. You will end up using your Rift S at max volume to hear anything, and even then I was much less than impressed.

CONTROLLERS

Controllers are still currently the best in the business. They are light, intuitive, small and unobtrusive, and have the longest battery life out there. The only downside I noted is that unlike the previous controllers, it's much easier to place one in the wrong hand and not notice until you try to press the grip button and find it not there. Oooppps!!

FIT

Super comfortable and quite unlikely to cause headaches or 'VR-Brow" like some other headsets, notably the Samsung Odyssey.

VISUALS

I would have to say that the Rift S seems to be a big win for simming.

I'd been wondering for quite a while why Oculus did what seemed to be only a minor upgrade to the Rift S specs, but now I suspect the new specifications were were firmly geared towards legibility.

For sim cockpits, this means gauges and displays are now very crisp/sharp, and can be read from the rest position, or in the case of very small text, by leaning forwards just slightly, rather than having to press your nose against the instruments to read the display. 😄

I would say the feeling is akin to the jump from the original iPads to the Retina displays, and essentially gives you what you were hoping VR would be like from the very beginning.

COLORS

Colors do not "POP" like the Samsung Oddsey's Oled displays, but they're fine, and less blurry than the Samsungs. In fact, I actually find the Rift S more legible, As the display is less "soft" which makes reading text while manipulating the virtual Desktop very comfortable. As for the OLED vs LCD controversy, I would say that it's absolutely true that on the new Rift, Blacks are NOT pure deep blacks, but more of a dark grey. Whether this is tolerable will depend on the user, but it seems quite apparent that for people in a space game (for instance) the difference from an OLED will be quite noticeable.

FPS

FPS is roughly the exact same as on the regular rift, and I notice no artifacts from the slight refresh rate downgrade.

TRACKING

No loss of tracking so far. I would say that for simming, tracking will be a complete non-issue, and I will be glad to rip the previous generations tracking cameras from my walls.

That's it for quick first impressions, I will answer any other questions that come up!

[glider1 90]

Since the HMD refresh rate is 80Hz what does P3Dv4.5 lock to in sim? On the original rift it would lock to 45/30/22 which is 1/2 1/3 1/4 of 90Hz without using ASW. I guess that on Rift-S that is now 40/27/20?

Thanks for posting your observations. The Rift-S is actually available in my country.

Edited May 23, 2019 by glider1

[HiFlyer 9,360]

20 minutes ago, glider1 said:

Since the HMD refresh rate is 80Hz what does P3Dv4.5 lock to in sim? On the original rift it would lock to 45/30/22 which is 1/2 1/3 1/4 of 90Hz without using ASW. I guess that on Rift-S that is now 40/27/20?

Thanks for posting your observations. The Rift-S is actually available in my country.

I think you are correct, and this might actually be good for some sims that have problems with higher refresh rates. What also might be helpful is that Oculus has just updated their ASW software, which might improve things even further in regard to achieving smoother appearing framerates in Vr despite low actual framerates. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-launches-asw-2-0-asynchronous-spacewarp/

[blueshark747 1,843]

Just tried the S....SDE is still there and overall image still can't beat my Odyssey Plus.

Me going with the Rift would be a downgrade.

I actually come to appreciate the O+ soft filter even more..I like smooth better than sharp.

[HiFlyer 9,360]

1 hour ago, blueshark747 said:

Just tried the S....SDE is still there and overall image still can't beat my Odyssey Plus.

Me going with the Rift would be a downgrade.

I actually come to appreciate the O+ soft filter even more..I like smooth better than sharp.

I have the Odyssey plus and I'm gonna sell it. 😋

My reasons include the fact that the higher resolution can mean FPS issues, especially in sims that already run like turtles.

The colors (and blacks) and brightness are better in the Odyssey, but the anti-SDE technology of the screen causes a "softer" and "blurrier" feeling image, whereas the Rift S feels quite sharp, and that shows up especially in text readability in the cockpit.

I am not a fan of the O+ controllers.

The Odyssey "sweet spot" is tiny, whereas the Rift S sweet spot seems huge, comparatively.

Rift S tracking seems better.

Odyssey is relatively uncomfortable (even painful) to wear until I splurged for one of these: https://www.studioformcreative.com/

I found the software cumbersome.

I didn't like the really short O+ controller battery life.

Most games were/are expecting Vive or Rift controllers, so compatibility is often in question.

In the end, all I can say though is....

Vive la différence! 

Edit: Hmmmmmmm, I did have Oculus tray tool with SS at 2.0, so that probably helped a lot, too.

[Ident 198]

21 hours ago, DennyA said:

Got my Rift S today from Amazon.* Prepar3D v4.51 probably sees the most significant improvement, with instruments just dramatically easier to read. Everything looks sharper as well.

Great notes and review. Are you using FlyInside for P3D or native P3D VR?

[DennyA 8]

38 minutes ago, Ident said:

Great notes and review. Are you using FlyInside for P3D or native P3D VR?

Thanks! I'm using native P3D VR. I used to use FlyInside, but the native VR has gotten quite good and it's less cumbersome.

[joepoway 241]

14 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I think you are correct, and this might actually be good for some sims that have problems with higher refresh rates. What also might be helpful is that Oculus has just updated their ASW software, which might improve things even further in regard to achieving smoother appearing framerates in Vr despite low actual framerates. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-launches-asw-2-0-asynchronous-spacewarp/

The following comes from the link describing ASW 2.0. I wonder if P3D and the add-on aircraft have this depth information encoded to be able to use 2.0? I would assume they do unless this info is something unique.

 

Not all applications will work with ASW 2.0 right out of the box, but many will. Oculus says that “most Rift apps on the Oculus Store built on Unreal Engine 4 and Unity already provide the depth information required to make ASW 2.0 work,” but those that don’t will need to be updated to take advantage of the functionality, otherwise they will fall back to ASW 1.0.

 

Joe

[grandfred29 180]

this new rift still don't use usb-c plug 😞 

[andreh 125]

Got my Rift S now and I've had a chance to test it out on the stuff I use VR for, which is P3D, First Person Tennis and Elite Dangerous. I'm not going to write a long review, I have nothing to add to what has already been said above by numerous other users except to confirm I am very happy. Clarity, image quality, tracking, IPD - all good, no issues for me. 

I can note thought, that even without supersampling the image clarity in a PMDG bird in P3D is better than the original Rift no matter how much I supersampled. I now use 1.2 which translates into performance gains compared to 1.7 that I used with the CV1. 

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by andreh

[flytrumpet767 68]

Thanks for your reports guys. I'm very close to press that buy button. I also use project cars 2, so I think it would be pretty nice for this as well. Any issues with PMDG planes in P3D V4.5? What about things like Envforce and Tomato? Any weird visual artifacts?

Thanks

[andreh 125]

^^No issues with PMDG planes. Works very well.

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,360]