Oculus Rift S - First Impressions

Posted this on iracing but might as well copy and post it here if it helps anyone, or anyone would wish to add re their experience or other sims.

Really great upgrade, I wouldn't want to go back to the rift OG. Seeing things I never saw in my CV1. Stopped on the track to check the distance you could pick braking boards out with real clarity, between 200-300 ft, pin sharp as you go between markers, that alone makes a huge difference, and that was tested at Watkins Glenn with the little white on black boards at the end of the first straight. All the onboard info, relative etc, crystal clear, just takes a glance now, no leaning in which I had to do previously, same with in car dashes.No real sense of a sweet spot anymore though that clearly still exists, and SDE pretty much gone.

Going round belle island was a joy with all the billboards sharp and clear. Best thing I can probably describe is in replay mode, previously it was fine, but mid distant objects and far were more 'well I know that's a tree'. Now they are clear trees. Is it a 1080p rendition, well not quite, but not so far short now that it's going to bother you given the immersive bonus of VR. There is a ton of extra detail to enjoy and things I'd never seen in VR before, from the clarity of grandstands, signage and car detailing, to waves on water and the rendering of grass. Any brake marker you want now you can have.

The sound is not too bad. I tried it with some Cooler Master MH751's and given all the extra fuss of separate headphones, I'll stick to the in build speakers for now, bright and crisp like the displays, though it will definitely annoy sound buffs. The spacial audio is also much better on the S with the build in than on the Rift OG. It gets the job done to start with, possibly better for some VR experiences, but if you want the real gruff sounds then headphones required.

It's a definite upgrade, I'd say a worthy one, and it's no more taxing on the GPU meaning you still have all your headroom for the other aspects of image quality, AA, SS etc.

Absolutely zero change in the experience going to 80hz. Great if you wear glasses too. Tracking perfect. Zero light bleed in the headset and yet to get foggy for some reason. FOV feels slightly wider to me, but it's marginal, certainly felt wider in tin tops.

Very very happy with it, VR feels right now, not just an impression of a great experience. Top upgrade for 400 in my opinion and a sensible path while waiting for VR 2.0. Don't get mega hyped that you are suddenly going to be in the VR world of your dreams, it takes a few hours to understand the delights of the S, but it's way more than a side upgrade and is a great fit if you don't want to upgrade your PC. Solid improvements, really big impact. Highly recommended on first impressions.

NB the only other game I've briefly tested in is rF2, and I have to say it's a bit of a game changer in that too.
 
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  • Deleted member 197115

I am also keeping an eye out for the HP reverb, how bad is the WMR in actual use if its only for iracing?
Headtracking is just as good as anything else.
Seems like a lot of people on reddit preferred Odyssey+ over Rift S. Rift S is cheaper MSRP though.
 
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I understand the disadvantages,
but I would guess a lot of sim racers -who have a rig anyway- won't mind the two extra cables. I don't need to upgrade my PC just for this. I upgrade regularly, I think many sim racers/gamers do.

The possible advantages with the Index being from an actual game oriented company and with specs improvements over the whole line, I would at least wait for reviews before buying anything new.

one last remark, although I have a very cheap second hand Rift I can't justify giving any money to those ad-pushers at Facebook.

In my case I am running VR in the laptop so having the sensors is a big issue not only because I need to run the through USB hub but also it was not working stable losing one of the sensors occasionally.
My system is not a slouch either Alienware M15 (2070MQ RTX) but I still struggled to get 90FPS with full grid all the time. I doubt you will be running AC and PC2 anything near 120FPS or Reverb's high resolution all the time either. Of course you will have better visuals when playing dedicated VR titles but for my needs it would be unnecessary investment and waisted headset's potential.
I sold the Original Rift one month before Rift S release for 420EUR. And frankly I am very happy. I don't understand people buying original Rift over S. I think Rift S is a very good upgrade at reasonble price. Index and Reverb are way more expensive.
The only disatvantage for me is that I am supporting Facebook...
 
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I haven't heard of anyone actually having problem on motion systems with inside out tracking. Is that your personal experience or just a guess?

Well I have the Rift cv1 and Odyssey +, the Odysseys inside out tracking makes driving in motion very "weird" for me. The cockpit seems to jump all over the place and I was having to recenter mid race much more than I do with my Rift. I also hate the fact that I cant put my head forward to look closer at the dash of a car as it just moves the entire picture forward with your head movement, was very annoying.
 
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Well I have the Rift cv1 and Odyssey +, the Odysseys inside out tracking makes driving in motion very "weird" for me. The cockpit seems to jump all over the place and I was having to recenter mid race much more than I do with my Rift. I also hate the fact that I cant put my head forward to look closer at the dash of a car as it just moves the entire picture forward with your head movement, was very annoying.
It's doing this because you are not calibrating your surroundings after putting on the headset. You need to at least calibrate the floor (by looking down) so it has a point of reference for your head position.
 
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Took delivery of the Rift S last night and put a few hours in (non-sim racing). For reference, I'm coming from Vive, Rift CV1, PSVR, and Odyssey+.

Wow, I know that the specs on paper are not that impressive, but this is what I had hoped VR was going to look and feel like when getting the Rift CV1 and Vive at launch. Everything is so clear and vibrant. The halo headstrap is MUCH more comfortable than the CV1 (for me at least), and the lens sweet spot is huge comparatively. I no longer need to keep adjusting the headset up and down, left and right during play sessions.

Tracking is good, but still managed to get random drops of my left hand while the right was occluding vision, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. The controllers themselves are fine, but a certain downgrade in quality and size compared to the original touch controllers, but I also have large hands.

Another issue was getting SteamVR apps to play nice with the S, only a handful seemed to work properly (Beat Saber and Raw Data, so far). Hopefully this is just a SteamVR problem, rather than a problem on an application by application basis, but we'll see.

I sold my CV1 to get the S and I would do it again. Again, the clarity cannot be understated. Comparison pictures online showing the CV1 screen and S screens side by side do not do it justice. It's something you need to see in-person with your own two eyes. This is how VR was supposed to look and feel from the beginning.
 
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  • Deleted member 197115

Well I have the Rift cv1 and Odyssey +, the Odysseys inside out tracking makes driving in motion very "weird" for me. The cockpit seems to jump all over the place and I was having to recenter mid race much more than I do with my Rift. I also hate the fact that I cant put my head forward to look closer at the dash of a car as it just moves the entire picture forward with your head movement, was very annoying.
Sounds like you have 4DOF instead of 6DOF registered, happens when you either didn't configure environment right or just lacking ambient light.
 
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Took delivery of the Rift S last night and put a few hours in (non-sim racing). For reference, I'm coming from Vive, Rift CV1, PSVR, and Odyssey+.

Wow, I know that the specs on paper are not that impressive, but this is what I had hoped VR was going to look and feel like when getting the Rift CV1 and Vive at launch. Everything is so clear and vibrant. The halo headstrap is MUCH more comfortable than the CV1 (for me at least), and the lens sweet spot is huge comparatively. I no longer need to keep adjusting the headset up and down, left and right during play sessions.

Tracking is good, but still managed to get random drops of my left hand while the right was occluding vision, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. The controllers themselves are fine, but a certain downgrade in quality and size compared to the original touch controllers, but I also have large hands.

Another issue was getting SteamVR apps to play nice with the S, only a handful seemed to work properly (Beat Saber and Raw Data, so far). Hopefully this is just a SteamVR problem, rather than a problem on an application by application basis, but we'll see.

I sold my CV1 to get the S and I would do it again. Again, the clarity cannot be understated. Comparison pictures online showing the CV1 screen and S screens side by side do not do it justice. It's something you need to see in-person with your own two eyes. This is how VR was supposed to look and feel from the beginning.

Thanks for posting your impressions Soulstoner. Glad you got a thrill out of it like me, not quite first ever VR experience level, but definitely a new VR world. As you say, on paper, but boy all those improvements add up
 
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Took delivery of the Rift S last night and put a few hours in (non-sim racing). For reference, I'm coming from Vive, Rift CV1, PSVR, and Odyssey+.

Wow, I know that the specs on paper are not that impressive, but this is what I had hoped VR was going to look and feel like when getting the Rift CV1 and Vive at launch. Everything is so clear and vibrant. The halo headstrap is MUCH more comfortable than the CV1 (for me at least), and the lens sweet spot is huge comparatively. I no longer need to keep adjusting the headset up and down, left and right during play sessions.

Tracking is good, but still managed to get random drops of my left hand while the right was occluding vision, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. The controllers themselves are fine, but a certain downgrade in quality and size compared to the original touch controllers, but I also have large hands.

Another issue was getting SteamVR apps to play nice with the S, only a handful seemed to work properly (Beat Saber and Raw Data, so far). Hopefully this is just a SteamVR problem, rather than a problem on an application by application basis, but we'll see.

I sold my CV1 to get the S and I would do it again. Again, the clarity cannot be understated. Comparison pictures online showing the CV1 screen and S screens side by side do not do it justice. It's something you need to see in-person with your own two eyes. This is how VR was supposed to look and feel from the beginning.

I have a CV1 and have disabled Steam VR so all games including those in Steam using Oculus only, try doing the same?
 
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rfactor2 isn’t VR native so I don’t know if it has this option to disable steam VR. Sims like AC or Pcars are VR native so you can launch them from oculus library . You can with OpenComposite Utility witch works with rfactor2 and R3E.
 
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Taking down my cv1 right now and boxing it up. I also picked up an S and its soo much easier to set up (i travel for work,, so i might take the S with me and play in the hotels).

Watching movies in Virtual desktop with home theater setting is pretty damm nice too!
 
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