Rift S seems okay... but no more Rift? What about 360 demanding room-scale games?

[Cain_Bloodbane]

First I was excited about the Rift S... it has a lot of what I hoped to see in a new Rift headset. It also made sense to replace the current Rift. But the more I think about it, the more of a problem I see with this. Already the Rift is not being sold by Oculus in the US. I expect it will be the same in Europe and Australia soon as well.

The problem is Oculus knows and says themselves that there are blind spots for the Rift S tracking. I really like the inside out tracking concept... but there needs to be an alternative as long as inside out tracking is not 360 tracking. The Rift S is said to have 300 degrees of tracking, there is also a blind spot close to your face, and these 60 degrees behind you. That is a problem for several games I think. Especially Lone Echo, Lone Echo 2 and Echo VR.

How can Oculus justify this move, while having Rift exclusive games, some that have not even been released yet, that will have issues with only 300 degrees of tracking?

I have not even heard anything about predictive algorithms and 3DoF tracking while out of sensor range. What I have heard though, is that Oculus "might" make it possible to use the Rift sensors to help the Rift S with its tracking... but as I see it, they need to confirm a solution to this as soon as possible. They cannot make exclusive deals and then backstab loyal developers, and the people who will be new Oculus VR owners this way.

I am really looking forward to the Quest, but... if this is how Oculus is moving forward, burning bridges this way, I think I will wait for alternatives because they do not seem to have any loyalty to their users or developers.

Am I the only one who sees a pretty big problem here? I sure hope its not as bad as it seems.

[Zenbane]

Yes, this is what the last 2 days of debate have been focused on. With a dash of Lens changes, a dose of missing integrated Speakers, and some Lenovo Halo for dessert. Welcome to hell.

[DaftnDirect]

I don't think 360 or 300 tracking is covering the whole story. It's really about how well the 60 degrees that's not being tracked (if that's what it is) is going to be dealt with via the inertial sensors.

For that, you'd have to consider the length of time that your hands enter that 60, the number of times they enter it plus the accuracy of the inertial sensors.

And for a complete assessment of the tracking comparisons, you'll have to also add headset occlusion to the mix (I don't think it'll ever happen with inside-out. And whether your roomscale room is void of all objects that could occlude headset or hands (not all VR rooms are dedicated VR rooms).

I keep banging on about it but I really don't think it's going to be an issue. More than that, I think it's actually going to be better for the majority of people. I'm prepared to be completely wrong and I'm going to be reading/watching reviews with as much interest as everyone else.

[Cain_Bloodbane]

From what I have heard, we should be seeing some people give this some proper tests. I fear Oculus will just expect us to adapt, like WMR users, trying to accomodate for the limitations of the tracking to make it possible to play bow and arrow games for example, but standing in certain ways and shooting the arrows in certain ways.

The first day or so I was optimistic about the Rift S, and its tracking. 5 sensors is the best tracking yet for inside out headsets, and I did not even think about the Rift being outfased as a problem. But the more I think about it, the more worried I get.

It might just be the push I need though, to move on the Lighthouse based systems and get those promising Knuckles controllers. When it comes to high end PC VR, that seems to be where we have to go.

The Rift is great, but it just feels like its not really the same company that made the Rift and the Rift S. Its beginning to feel like its the same company in name only.

[DaftnDirect]

If there is negative feedback on the tracking, I'm confident it'll be addresses in future headsets if it can't be dealt with via software revisions. I may be the only one who's confident about that from reading some of the posts lately!

I'd rather it was introduced and perfected than not introduced at all as it offers some compelling advantages.

[CrashFu]

Realistically, how many times have you ever had to perform careful, dexterous movements directly behind your own head?   Never?  I'm guessing never. 

Compared to the old tracking method, the Inside-Out will have far fewer blind-spots, because there is no possibility of stepping / reaching outside of your sensor range and little risk of partial occlusion.  Not to mention your individual sensors can't be disrupted by getting bumped or a USB port acting up.  The Rift-S is a HUGE upgrade to the Rift in terms of tracking reliability.   But sure, focus only on a single unlikely scenario in which it wouldn't be, and use that as an excuse to condemn the entire product and the company that's spent years developing it.  That's reasonable.

[DaftnDirect]

don't hold back CrashFu 😉

If nothing else I know there'll be a lot of people exploring all the crevices of their respective man-caves, searching out the spots that could give them the plessure of knowing they got the right hardware.

That sounded way more unhygienic than it was meant to.

[RedRizla]

CrashFu said:

Realistically, how many times have you ever had to perform careful, dexterous movements directly behind your own head?   Never?  I'm guessing never. 

I'm guessing any Yoga software in development is scrapped now.

[jayhawk]

Headline makes me think of 3 things:

1. What percentage of games require this?

2. I thought inside-out was room scale out of the box, so wouldn't it do room scale better?

3. Another reference to Lone Echo. I'll reserve judgement when I see people playing the game using Rift S. I do know this for a fact: It will either work well, or it won't.

[Spuzzum]

Tested put out a video 'hands-on and impressions', where they interviewed Nate Mitchell himself. He says Insight is not as good as the external trackers, and that you'll have issues with it behind your back, too close to the headset, and when you cross one arm over the other. He says it's a trade-off, but they feel the experience outweighs the disadvantages. He then says Oculus is moving away from external trackers altogether. He also said the same team that works on the external tracking, is working on Insight. Norm then asked if they'd consider using external trackers along with the inside-out tracking...he said they'd listen to what the people wanted. I also came across something the other day saying the new Quest/Rift S controllers will also work with the Rift and external sensors, just the old Touch controllers won't work with the new headsets. If that's the case, then all that's needed, is a bit of coding, and an option within Oculus setup.