Oculus Rift S Review

Key Takeaways

[Music] what is going on everybody and welcome to a tech review of the new oculus rift s headset so I've had this headset now for a little over a day I've put in a few hours but I'm no stranger to the oculus rift headsets I've had them since the dk2 I've also got the cb1 headset and now this one so why did I get this one when I have the CV one well the big thing for me was the the biggest latest change and that is the inside-out tracking so this is a tracking camera you've got two down here and you've got one on each side of the oculus and this is so you don't have to deal with the room sensor things anymore so you used to have to place these get an extra one if you want a room scale so you need to like three of these placed around room there are not the most pretty things to sit around they'd get bumped or whatever and it was it was really annoying and there was some occlusion issues that you would get from time to time as well and so anyways this sounded really cool to me this has had a lot of mixed feelings and opinions as far as whether or not inside out tracking is going to work but if you ask me that's has to be the future of VR headsets so I think this is a move in the right direction now the other major change is like the headband I mean like this is like the most hardcore headband yet so to put this in perspective let me show you the DK 2 headset bang this was your headset a few straps and stuff and it would like always fall down your head and it was super super annoying then we had the C v1 headset which was a pretty good improvement a little better more rigid and stuff like that but this still wanted to fall down your face like if I put my finger here it still really badly wants to fall now with the latest it's actually quite nice if I if I put my finger on the headband it actually wants to balance like it doesn't actually necessarily want to fall right down if I tilt forward does want to fall town but the balance feels a lot better and playing with it I actually really liked it you have to actually pay attention like my natural tendency when I put on the rift is to put it like a little a little high on my forehead because then it kind of slowly falls down into place whereas this headset I actually found myself kind of pulling it down to get things to line up again so that's pretty cool so I'm so far I'm pretty happy this like loosens and tightens and there's a button here on the bottom that extends or retracts this for glasses people so mine's all the way out because I have glasses it does not solve your problems so I think over time these lenses will still get scratched if you're wearing glasses you can buy like prescription lenses to put in there or you can I've got a 3d printer now so I've actually I'm actually just going to print some of these and then I bought some lenses from xeni if anybody is curious about that you can ask in the description I found somebody put something on Thingiverse pretty cool anyways so yeah so that's the headset now the controller so these are the new controllers here really the biggest change from the CV one is like this little hoop thing is now at the top of the controller which as a subtle benefit that I'm not really sure this is what they were going for but now when you put the controllers down like you can actually set them down whereas this is one of the older this is the CV 1 controller there was like no good way to put these down like you could sort of do that but it still would like roll around these just nice bang done I love it they're also a little fatter so they feel better in your hand so I'm actually I think these are better it's just when you have this over your face I'm so used to finding the hoop and then like slipping my hand through the hoop I go it's just been become second nature for me so with these it's like the actual opposite and I find myself getting very confused when I'm in VR like trying to get these freaking on my hands I keep trying to do this and I'm like wait what's going on Oh anyway I just have to learn the new the new grips now but otherwise everything's pretty much the same in terms of like the buttons and all that no big difference so now in playtime I use my VR headsets for really two major types of games I play a driving simulator type game so it's like I'm just in a cockpit or like elite dangerous which again you're just it's like a space fighting game and again you're in a cockpit so you're really not moving around that much and then the other games that I play are like FPS games like first-person shooter games which is what really drove me to this headset because the room scale stuff is very difficult with these first-person shooter games so I've got a sunroom that I like to play in but setting that sunroom up to be I can't just dedicate that to a VR room so having it with inside out tracking what sounded like a really cool option so I've done that I've played probably maybe one to two hours in onward with the new rift s and I would say it's pretty darn good I don't really have too many issues with that their only thing that I've noticed is sometimes the the for whatever reason like when you start lining up the two controllers this one will get occluded which is not too surprising because the tracking is right on the headset so if you're like lining up your sights you might actually occlude the the controller's now with onward I mean this is a brand new headset and the way that they're doing the tracking with with your hands and stuff is in a way that doesn't really suit this it works and it actually works way better than I thought it would already but I know that they're working on updates already to fix that now now comes really the biggest issue I've had with this headset and that is this top camera I'm so I'm using this in my son room and my son room has ten skylights and as the Sun is coming over the Sun shines through the skylights and if it hits this which it often does depending on look where I'm standing in that room if it hits that and blinds of this camera everything just goes haywire and my hands are all over the place which makes no sense but if this gets blinded it's over even though like my controller like this isn't even see my controllers it's my controllers are supposed to be seen by like these mostly but for whatever reason if this gets blinded it's done so that's kind of annoying and and again I don't know if that's gonna get fixed by the changes coming to onward or not but right now I really just can't play when the Sun is like right high in the sky yeah so that's kind of annoying the other thing is like this this kind of headset was kind of had just in general a lot of mixed reviews with the inside out tracking and then the screen they actually changed to a slightly inferior screen type and then also went from ninety Hertz refresh rate to 80 Hertz refresh rate and these two changes had people up in arms and stuff and I'm gonna be honest with you guys for a while I was considering buying one of those the vive pro because I wanted to better more crisp screen but the price of the vive pro with like the stupid base station and the headset and everything just kind of I wasn't really so sure about it and but I will say if I bought the vive pro I spent $1000 on a headset and this was the upgrade I got I would be happy the the screen change here first of all there's way less screen door effects going on and just the clarity of the screen is I I would call that a massive improvement I'm super happy with it I wouldn't say my picture quality or color or a contrast for anything is noticeably worse but immediately when I put that headset on the first thing I noticed was holy crap this is super clear I just I could you could read text thing edges were actually edges and not blurs huge huge improvement I'm super excited about this and at this price point again I just don't think you can do any better set up was a breeze you really do just like plug it in hit next next next next next the controllers came paired so like I didn't have to pair the controllers the room scale setup is awesome so because we have these cameras you can enable this like pass through and that's another huge benefit is like so like while I'm playing in room scale if I just double tap this oculus button it turns on pass-through so I can see around my room that I'm playing in and to see where I am because sometimes you you know you're a little lost in the urge to pull off the headset and see where we are can be pretty strong sometimes they're like sometimes between levels or something you might want to change where you're standing so anyway just being able to double tap this see where you are double tap it back get back in the game awesome and then setting up the rim scale with this it's also a breeze because you just double tap this or I'm sorry we've set the RHIB scale you don't have to hit this you're just in the room and then you just paint your area and again what a great idea I mean it's just so simple and like resetting it up or changing things is unbelievably simple I'm a huge fan I'm sold on this thing that like I say the only issue I'm having is when sunlight just destroys this camera but other than that pretty cool the refresh rate honestly nobody was getting 90 frames a second if you say you were stop it I've been playing VR on the worst graphics card lately has been the 1080 Ti but I've played it on the Titan r-tx cards I was never getting 90 frames a second okay so stop it 80 frames a second is totally fine if you're getting 80 frames a second go by like a PI max 8k or something anyway yeah awesome headset really happy with it inside out tracking definitely the future we have a few little things to change and to fix and I'm really excited to see the changes that onward puts out to see if that fixes my occlusion issues and it might even fix this top sensor issue that would be really nice when they change Dax that's what goes haywire is like my character doesn't but my hands get all messed up because of this top sensor so we'll see how that goes and maybe I'll post a follow-up at some point but my initial thoughts on this headset is yeah it's amazing III love it I love it so very cool very excited to continue playing with it very happy with it so anyways sponsored in any way either I will put a link in the description to the headset on Amazon now and if you are interested you could buy it through that link and I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon but I really just bought it for myself and I'm super happy so anyways those are my thoughts I'll see you guys later