SETUP

Setup was very simple, following the onscreen prompts, and anyone who has set up a Rift previously will 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 pretty 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 its 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!

Nicely written.  👍 Two things:

1: My computer room environment is 'subdued' in that at night we have just one desk lamp on. In daytime it's, well, daylight. I heard that tracking is an issue in less than bright light. True?

2: Sound. I'm by no means an audiophile so sound nuances are lost on my. But can sound from the 'speakers' be heard by others in the room. I'm already told off for talking too loud on Teamspeak! I don't think she would take kindly to Merlins screaming out as well.

EDIT: I think I ought to mention that I ONLY use flight sim so I'm sitting down not prancing around waving my arms about.

1 hour ago, Ron Attwood said:

Nicely written.  👍 Two things:

1: My computer room environment is 'subdued' in that at night we have just one desk lamp on. In daytime it's, well, daylight. I heard that tracking is an issue in less than bright light. True?

2: Sound. I'm by no means an audiophile so sound nuances are lost on my. But can sound from the 'speakers' be heard by others in the room. I'm already told off for talking too loud on Teamspeak! I don't think she would take kindly to Merlins screaming out as well.

As long as its bright enough for you to not worry about tripping over your own feet, it seems fine, though there is also a high light and low light option in settings.

The headphones let everyone in the area overhear your conversation...........

19 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

The headphones let everyone in the area overhear your conversation...........

I was afraid of that.

Anyone know what the tracking is like close to windows that face outside?

Edited May 23, 20197 yr by glider1

38 minutes ago, glider1 said:

Anyone know what the tracking is like close to windows that face outside?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Are you talking about tracking exposed to direct sunlight?

2 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Are you talking about tracking exposed to direct sunlight?

Thanks. Yes or even just varied daylight streaming through maybe overcast light outside. Does it loose track? Does it need closed blinds?

Edited May 24, 20197 yr by glider1

11 minutes ago, glider1 said:

Thanks. Yes or even just varied daylight streaming through maybe overcast light outside. Does it loose track? Does it need closed blinds?

It should work fine. Just make sure that the lenses are never exposed to direct sunlight.

The basic's tutorial mentions this:

 

I hit the buy button!

On 5/22/2019 at 3:19 PM, HiFlyer said:

SETUP

Setup was very simple, following the onscreen prompts, and anyone who has set up a Rift previously will 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

 

This is my first experience with VR and I can't even get this Oculus Rift S to work at all.

It shows on the software that everything is setup correctly and it's working. I have all green checkmarks by the headset and hand trackers within the software, but all that I can see through the lenses is one rectangle with three lights flashing on a black background.

If I move the hand trackers around I will see some blue streaks around the rectangle but everything around the rectangle with three lights is just black.

It don't seem like any of the games that comes with it will even start up, so I can't even check it with that.

I am starting to get really frustrated with it and just have to put it away for a while and go fly using TrackIR5....whew...🤔

6 minutes ago, signmanbob said:

This is my first experience with VR and I can't even get this Oculus Rift S to work at all.

It shows on the software that everything is setup correctly and it's working. I have all green checkmarks by the headset and hand trackers within the software, but all that I can see through the lenses is one rectangle with three lights flashing on a black background.

If I move the hand trackers around I will see some blue streaks around the rectangle but everything around the rectangle with three lights is just black.

It don't seem like any of the games that comes with it will even start up, so I can't even check it with that.

I am starting to get really frustrated with it and just have to put it away for a while and go fly using TrackIR5....whew...🤔

What are your system specs? For instance, are you using windows 10? Latest drivers and updates?

Also, have you setup your Oculus account correctly?

1 minute ago, HiFlyer said:

What are your system specs? For instance, are you using windows 10? Latest drivers and updates?

Let me check if my Windows 10 has updated lately.

It says that it checked for updates last night.

 When I run the Oculus Compatibility software I get: "Some of the hardware that powers your USB ports is incompatible with Rift. Here is the hardware that is incompatible:
• VIA USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 0.96 (Microsoft)"

I have no idea what that is.

I'm using an i7-3930 CPU with a GTX1080Ti graphics card and 64Gigs of RAM in Windows 10 Professional.