Haha…so I can listen to The Bachelor, my cat meowing, and my RWR all at the same time? Awesome!
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I’m hoping against hope they they or somebody else come up with a headphone attachment…
I think it has a jack…so you could I guess use some comfy and nice quality ear buds maybe?
Which seems slightly awkward to me. Oh, well.
I’m still interested.
I also like the HP headset on general principals, but suspect it’s going to be a son-of-a-gun to keep the frame rates up.
And we still have not seen the Kosmos…
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I agree with that. I have some serious doubts on the HP side with DCS and X-Plane. 
My dream scenario is that Wags (with his new Pimax 5k that he is using, according to a recent podcast) keeps pushing for DCS optimizations, they find the ‘sleep 10;’ line in the terrain rendering engine, optimize it 
and we push forward to better frames, meaning better potential resolution (even if less Hz).
The other thing is perhaps DX12 will pull a rabbit out of a hat, and the implemention of variable rate shading (allowing for a simple fixed foveated resolution on the outside of the lens focal points, as part of OpenVR/Oculus SDK) becomes a reality, i.e. Microsoft adds Variable Rate Shading support to DirectX 12 - Graphics - News - HEXUS.net
The Valve Cosmos is the wild card, but when it comes to Valve, they are a complete mystery as per usual. Generations of people have died waiting for the Gaben to say stuff but withered away… 
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I would like to see that one dude that does the through the lens comparisons do a new series for this latest wave of devices. I’m sure he will…
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I’m really glad I have an IPD of 64 mm. If you’re < 58 or > 70 then the software IPD adjust thing is problematic. Ironically it was something criticized on the WMR low end stuff (Lenovo etc), and the Oculus Quest actually has an IPD mechanical adjuster.
I do wonder why they didn’t just take the guts of the Quest and ‘PC’ it by taking stuff out for some nicer Rift S features. Like they said, the Lenovo partnership was really about getting this to market ASAP.
This.
I was expecting the S to build on the Quest…
I think everybody was.
Has anyone else stopped buying games from the Oculus store? If it isn’t offered on Steam, I won’t buy it.
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Yes. Ok, I had $15 store credit that was about to expire, so I bought Angry Birds. But other than that, I’m future proofing by shopping on Steam.
I checked last week, as got an email my store credit was expiring (which was nice of Oculus) and had $105 in there (3 redeem codes and that $15 of 'sorry we had an outage). I passed it on to my son, who covets the Rift like a dog with a bone, and he bought a bunch of things to use it up. I think out of what he bought he said that this was the most fun, even if a bit short:
I still have an unused Viveport code for a month to use as well. Time is the main issue…
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I bought Lone Echo with the apology rebate. Personally I am disappointed with the S announcement. The controllers are as important to me as the headset itself. I like the desktop sensors because they seem to give the Rift an edge on controller battery life. That’s worth sticking with what I have. The O+ experience instilled me with a real fear of upgrading without near-certainty that I will be happy with the upgrade.
It sounds a lot like they gave up investing their time on the PC side, and just licensed another very different product as a Rift replacement. It looks like they chose the Oculus ecosystem to be much more like console gaming, and let the the PC market to be lead by SteamVR or, most probably, WMR.
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I haven’t thought of it that way but this sounds plausible. And maybe it’s a good move. The Quest is their own system. A peripheral attached to a PC is really nothing more than another piece of junk littering Microsoft’s lawn.
I wonder if they probably knew that with a higher resolution only people with very expensive graphics cards would have a chance to run games smoothly.
But those make up a very small part of the market, so basically they looked at which resolution people with a 500 bucks graphics card (instead of a 1000+ bucks one) could still run decently.
The Rift S looks like a decent mid level VR device to me. Better than the Rift, relatively cheap, neither as demanding nor as expensive as the HP set for example.
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With space games (Elite Dangerous etc) it will be interesting if the choice of an LED panel will cause issues with grey/blacks.
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One interesting thing is that they stopped selling the Rift completely today. You can’t buy it anymore:
I heard they were losing money on the hardware, and the store wasn’t do as well as they expected, so maybe with this Lenovo partnership they see it as either a holding over period until new tech arrives or just a way to leave the PC market and concentrate on the mobile Quest direction.
I don’t think Facebook were ever shy about the fact that they saw the future of VR as a stand-alone non-PC device. It was just a happy accident that the PC stuff could run niche stuff like flight sims, but I don’t think it was anything they saw as interesting.
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Stand alone VR is probably a good idea if you want a large customer base… But those buyers probably won’t pay up the same chunk of green as a flightsimmer hooked on VR.
So, I kind of get the effort in stand alone VR.
I also think that their PC VR efforts make sense. If you’re aming for the present market, why should they go for a resolution that most users won’t be able to run?
So, the Oculus/FB efforts makes sense, to me.
But I put in months of my own spare time to build stick grips for maybe 100 flightsimmers, so I’m probably not the guy you should call for great PC hardware advice…
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