That is a bit odd. I think it’s aimed primarily at people who don’t already have a Rift. It’s a mid-life refresh rather than upgrade.
It all makes perfect sence. We hardcore flight simmers are a minority, and should be concentrating our efforts on the business enterprise solutions (WMR) while most gamers and some sim enthusiasts will be better off with the mainstream, low spec, easy to use, console-grade solutions.
I’m not holding my breath for a Rift 2, though…
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Interesting read…
The r/Oculus subreddit is twisting themselves into knots trying to find positive things to say about Facebook and the Rift S. It’s always been that way.
They were against how WMR style ‘halo’ rings would fit and be comfortable, until they suddenly weren’t at the Rift S specs reveal. They were against WMR style inside-out tracking, until they suddenly weren’t. They were against LCD black displays, until…
It’s ok to be a fan of stuff, but the subreddits sort of stopped being about VR and started being about which team you support. 
Well, that aside, are they wrong about OLED vs. LCD and that the difference will be subjective?
For “our people” (LOL)…I’d imagine Elite Dangerous would be the test-bed for that…
Don’t know, as just like the author, I haven’t tried the Rift S. They only thing he said was (a) everyone don’t worry and (b) it’s all subjective. Being on top of r/Oculus and being pro Rift-S then it’s probably a paid post (companies have marketing budgets for Reddit, where do you think it goes? )
I’ve tried the Oculus Go and the screen is nice, but the black levels were not good, as in, I would prefer the Rift CV1 for something like Elite Dangerous rather than the Go.
As for the technical reasons for OLED vs LCD, there’s so many other things that make up the display of the backlight tech, the lens, the mura settings etc. It’s not as simple to say OLED good, LCD bad, but all the headsets we’ve seen so far do sort of show that.
Let’s wait for reviews with real games. I would suspect that the Rift S will be similar to the CV1, but not as bright/contrast as some of the other screens on the market.
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It will be interesting where the Rift S screen maxes out to 80Hz, that ASW kicking in will set the framerate to 40 fps for a lot of sims (ASW will show 80, but interpolate every 40 fps, i.e. half).
I’m not sure if it is possible to detect the difference between 40 fps and 45 fps in something like DCS, but people always get weird when talking about ‘framerates my elvish eyes can detect’.
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Elves think they are so superior…
That’s why Trolls don’t like elves.
Here’s a little secret for you. Liv Tyler isn’t a real elf.
Will be interesting to see how the market receives the Rift S. I’m not ruling it out, since I’m no elf…
The Rift S looks like a nice replacement for the Rift CV1. If my CV1 broke and I needed to buy from Oculus then I think it looks great. The tracking with all those cameras will be better than WMR, but not probably better than the constellation sensors of today.
The rumor mill is now starting on the new Samsung curved OLED headset (a ‘HP Reverb beater!’ apparently), the always mythical Valve headset (perhaps for our children, or their children’s children 
) while the Facebook rumor train is getting on the ‘There will be a Rift Pro edition next year, early 2020!’ next stop.
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Yeah, there will always be a next shiny new thing juuuust around the corner.
And I agree that the Rift S is nothing special…
But it will probably be available in Europe. Yes, Samsung, I’m thinking about you.
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Yep! The S is not for walleyed people…
My IPD is in the normal category, so I’m good.
My Rift tells me my IPD is 68 so I should be ok. It’s crazy that they chose not to make the Rift S IPD mechanically adjustable.
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No, not crazy.
It’s one of the corners they chose to cut, by going with a single screen.
Luckey feels strongly about the core values of Oculus, and why they invented the Rift. VR for the masses. Now days, Oculus is more about cheap VR, for the masses, and Luckey don’t like.
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True, but in this case, I have to agree with him. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how well the headset works out. I’ll be buying from Amazon, which has a great returns policy.
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Some choice Palmer quotes:
Yes, I own almost every HMD ever made, and I keep up with developments in the VR marketplace, but I am completely tied to the Oculus platform. I buy my games from the Oculus Store, I launch my games through the Oculus UI, and I develop VR applications for the military using the Oculus SDK.
It is the singular option, a full replacement for the now-discontinued CV1. Anyone who can’t use Rift S is going to be effectively locked out of the ecosystem, including people who have invested thousands of dollars into their content library.
For a guy who got $700 million out of the Facebook acquisition, he certainly lacks self-awareness.
He’s claiming about 30% of people won’t be able to use the Rift S. I would guess that is a bit high, but maybe? For those that didn’t read the entire article, his suggestion is that they offer a ‘high IPD’ and ‘low IPD’ sku versions, as that would cover the 95th percentile.
In some ways this just looks like a continuing clash of ‘old Oculus’ being engineering spirited, with PCVR still important and the ‘new Oculus’ being more PR and mainstream, with the emphasis on the mobile ecosystem and ‘console’. His main dig is that the ‘Everything is Fine’ mentality is ultimately harmful for a product.
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I would assume Palmer has a non-compete clause for X years? Not a fan of his side antics (nor FB), but he does have a passion for VR and it would be interesting to see where he’d like to take the hardware.
Those don’t really work in California. Palmer probably has a (heh) vested interest not to go completely off the reservation, but he has set up a couple of new VR companies already. His work for the military is around the Border Wall, and using VR tech to track people for that.