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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Just got my Rift S yesterday too. upgrading from Rift CV1 to S. I must agreed with most of the feedback here.

Tested on ACC and AC
Track :Monza
RAce :20 racer
Postion start @ 10
FPS would maintain at 80fps most of the time unless we crash

My VR setting can be found here: Share your VR graphic settings
  • God Ray - Gone or almost Gone
  • Smudge -Gone
  • Screen door effect - about 80% lesser, however on white background if you are reading text, the brighter screen seems to make the reading on the web browser a bit more difficult for some reason
  • Graphical improvement - at least 1.5 times better, my dashboard are all viewable now, overall experience is like i have just went to an optician to get a new pair of glasses
  • Color - Brighter and more glaring colors, but it's kind of washout if compare to old rift with OLED. Personally I dont like the Glare and colors on new S.
  • Comfort and fit - x 200times better than original rift. I wear glasses and I couldn't fit nicely in the old Rift, with the new S, i could fit in nicely and didn't feel any sore or weight on my face after 2 hours of use. On the old rift, just slight above 1hr of play i have to take a rest.
  • Optics IPD - I have a IPD of 64.9, however i notice that the left and right extreme of the text seems to be a bit blur if i move my eyes to glance it. Not sure if this is normal, but on the old rift, i could not even read it as it is all blurred.
  • Audio - Cant hear S*ht with my wind blower and my Rig moving...
  • Cable - is alot longer and thicker, hence when moving our head, i could feel the cable alot more than the old rift.
  • FPS - if at max 70~80FPS while playing, i couldnt really tell a difference in the driving. (I am having about 80~90 FPS on my Rift. Running i7 9700k and GTX2080ti here, hence CPU bottle neck is minimised) However when i get into an accident in ACC where FPS drops and ASW kicks in, the whole experience is very bad. After trying our a few setting, i finally disable ASW on rift, and suprising, my FPS was at 80FPs most of the time and ran alot smoother then with ASW.

One small problem is i am having this white/snow flashing randomly on in my screen at times, tried to trouble shoot following what the Oculus website says but still in Vain. raised a ticket to them and let's see what they say. Other than that, I must say, upgrade from a Rift to Rift S is a pretty nice jump, if you can sell your Rift and top up for Rift S, i would say this is the way to go. No regrets.
 
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One small problem is i am having this white/snow flashing randomly on in my screen at times, tried to trouble shoot following what the Oculus website says but still in Vain. raised a ticket to them and let's see what they say.
I get them too, its only very occasionally though + a few other people have them too. It will probably be fixed in the next update.
 
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I've had it in iracing and PC2, (think I have in R3E) widely reported on the iracing forums. Seems extremely intermittent for everyone, mine is once in 20 minutes probably, people assuming it's a software issue, though not tested with the new nvidia drivers yet which have S support, maybe they resolve it.
 
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Got mine today..

Initial impressions are a bit mixed.. was expecting more improvement in resolution given some of the reviews.. but it's definitely better.. if only a little bit..

Don't care about the audio so no comment..

Very comfortable.. although the large piece on the back to tighten the headset could be an issue.. kind of props my head forward due to the headrest of the seat..

My biggest gripe is the tracking seems a bit off.. a tiny bit of latency which isn't there on the CV1..

I'll keep testing and see if my opinion changes.. so yeah initial thoughts are it's not quite worth the money to upgrade if you are happy with the CV1.. But curiosity always gets the better off me so I had to buy one!
 
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Got mine today..

Initial impressions are a bit mixed.. was expecting more improvement in resolution given some of the reviews.. but it's definitely better.. if only a little bit..

Don't care about the audio so no comment..

Very comfortable.. although the large piece on the back to tighten the headset could be an issue.. kind of props my head forward due to the headrest of the seat..

My biggest gripe is the tracking seems a bit off.. a tiny bit of latency which isn't there on the CV1..

I'll keep testing and see if my opinion changes.. so yeah initial thoughts are it's not quite worth the money to upgrade if you are happy with the CV1.. But curiosity always gets the better off me so I had to buy one!
I found tracking jitters if there wasn't enough light, or if there was some direct sunlight shining on the headset or touch controllers during play, but otherwise was great.
 
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Mine has just turned up - I'm a VR virgin so nothing to compare against thankfully. :D

Is there a dummies guide to setting up AC/Oculus software to get the best out of it?

New PC next month to get the most out of it, for now a lowly i7 4790K & GTX970 :(
 
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Mine is packed up ready to send back to Amazon. It’s not that it’s bad.. just not worth worth the money over the CV1 and has a few quirks that I can’t live with..

It must be said that i’ve Gone off VR in general so maybe that’s part of the reason too.. I kinda hoped the s would bring me back but no... I’ll be sticking to a screen for a while yet,,,
 
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From what I'm reading Oculus has been greatly improving ASW support. Most articles talk about ASW at 45 fps because of the large installed base of CV1's.

I think there is confusion about this point. Since ASW is a frame doubler, the complexities of converting 45fps to 80fps would be problematic unless it is just tossing every 9th frame. While it is "possible" that they have a short term kludge in there to use the existing 45fps, that would be a substantial waste of processing and Oculus is unlikely to have chosen that solution since it would negate any savings from dropping the frame rate and in fact the extra resolution would create a net deficit.

Oculus appears to have both a quality and performance advantage with their ASW vs Steam reprojection, so I would bet they are using ASW of 40fps to 80 for the Rift S.
 
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Inside out tracking means everyone with motion is out on this one, otherwise I would have bought one already. Don't know why they wouldn't launch it with backwards compatible support for the og camera tracking on top of the inside out.
I’m currently using a Samsung Odyssey (original) with a SimXperience Stage 3 and no problems at all. If it is picking up the motion of the headset I guess this doesn’t matter as it will just sync with driver as a car goes over a bump etc.
 
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