I bought my Rift a month ago. I’ve had a good amount of time with it. I was not expecting, in all honesty, for a new Rift to be announced so soon after. Perhaps I should have seen the writing on the wall, but alas, I did not. Granted, this announcement on the surface makes perfect sense. The rift was quickly becoming outclassed, in terms of specifications (particularly resolution) by just about everything else being released in the virtual reality space. Even HTC, Oculus’s main competitor at the time, came out with a Vive Pro (a better headset than the original for a much-too-high price). The ball was in oculus’s court. And so they reacted. Just yesterday the Rift S, a follow up to the original Rift, was announced. A headset that, unlike the Oculus Quest, connects to the PC. A headset that on paper would be great. Let’s look at its specifications.

Screen resolution: The Rift S sports a single 2560×1440 screen – an LCD panel. This is unlike the Rift’s dual OLED panels which have a total resolution of 2160×1200.

Lenses: The Rift S comes with what supposedly are much better lenses, which according to many nearly completely eliminate godrays, this really annoying aspect of the Rift where scenes are sometimes much too bright because of rays of light. The new lenses apparently significantly mitigate this issue.

Refresh Rate: The refresh rate is lowered from the Rift’s 90hz to 80hz, a moderate decrease. This is actually kind of a big deal. While a lot of people claim that 80hz is just as good, I’ve also read that the lower the refresh rate is the higher your chances are of getting sick. This is more of a wait and see situation than anything, for me. I find this unfortunate though, because more people will get sick with lower refresh rates. Higher is naturally better. I feel that Oculus, while attempting to make vr accesible and widespread, is ignoring a key factor to making it accesible and widespread – good specifications.

Audio: The built-in headphones that were in the rift are not in the Rift S. The audio, instead of through headphones, gets delivered through the side straps. This is an unfortunate downgrade.

Field of View: While there hasn’t been word on the field of view, it’s said to expect it to be similar to the other oculus products.

Tracking: Gone are the sensors, instead replaced by five cameras on the headset itself that track your controllers and provide positional tracking for the headset. The tracking is said to be of similar quality as the Rift with three sensors, and given I only have two sensors I wouldn’t be surprised were it to be better than my current setup.

IPD adjustment: Since the Rift S uses a single screen, gone is the manual ipd adjustment. Adjusting your IPD is now done through software, which means that if your IPD is too low or high (think lower than 60 or higher than 70) you may experience some issues getting things to look right.

Price: Four-Hundred US Dollars, compared to the Rift’s 350 and the Quest’s 400.

This is the gist of it in terms of specs. When I first read up on the Rift S, what it was about, I was left confused. Thing is, I wasn’t expecting another Rift at this point in time without at least 90hz and 1600p. That they’ve went in this direction I can’t help but find disappointing, if I’m being completely honest. My graphics card is the gtx 1060. In the hypothetical scenario where they went in the direction of high-end, I just might have bought a pc solely for VR. I’m dead serious. I love the Oculus Rift. It’s a brilliant device that is limited because of when it was made, yes, but highly impressive all things considered. It works perfectly for roomscale, fitting snuggly on your head, and its controllers are brilliant.

Now that they have revealed the Rift S, while dissapointed, there’s another thought across my mind. I have the chance to quote-on-quote upgrade without a better system. When you consider that the refresh rate is lowered, the Rift S shouldn’t be much more of a hog on machines as the original Rift. In that specific sense, this is perfect for me. But is this really what I wanted?

Ultimately, you have to wonder why the ones looking for higher end aren’t being accommodated here. Facebook has pools of money. You’d think a company valued at I-don’t-know-how-many-billions could afford to make a high-end headset alongside the Rift S. In fact, they definitely can. So why aren’t they? I understand the need to accommodate the mass market by keeping costs low, but a few solutions immediately pop up inside my head, and I’m no VR engineer. If Oculus is open to releasing multiple PC headsets, why not just release a higher-end headset as well? It keeps fans happy, gives credibility, and if priced correctly probably doesn’t lose you much. If the company isn’t comfortable with releasing multiple, the Rift S is still kind of underwhelming. I mean – just release the thing with higher resolution screens and lower the rendered resolution by default. This pleases practically everyone, and seems a bit too simple considering that’s what the Quest’s quite literally going to do.

This whole situation is very odd. It just seems odd to me that they know this thing will be powered by PC’s, and yet they’re skimping on specs more than they did with the Quest. With the Quest its wholly justifiable as well, especially at its price point. The S is different. This thing costs the same as the Quest. They’re both four-hundred. This is despite the fact that the Quest has, specification wise, pretty much everything over the S. It has an OLED screen, manual ipd adjustment. It’s…honestly a better device, except for the Refresh Rate which sits at 72hz. This is without saying the Quest is standalone. Like, the graphic card and processor are built-in and all. And both devices still cost the same. At three-hundred, the Rift S would be a great offering, and would make sense. At four-hundred I’m struggling to see why that extra hundred was added.

Will I buy the Rift S, though? Despite my reservations, if this thing ends up priced at four-hundred Canadian a few months down the road I probably will sidegrade. The upgrades just seem worthwhile enough for the change to be worth it. Barely any god rays, higher resolution, similar specifications required. I don’t like that they lowered the refresh rate, but if there really isn’t much of a discernible difference this won’t stop me from purchasing it. Basically, I’m going to be waiting for reviews. These are my thoughts.

As a final word, apologies for the lack of posts on this blog as of late. I’ve actually been producing a lot of content, it’s simply that most of it hasn’t been for my blog. I want this to change, so from today onward I’m posting every week. Stay tuned for more articles.