It’s been three years since the initial launch of Facebook’s Oculus Rift and this spring, Oculus will be launching two new versions of its headset. Both the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift S will retail for £399/€449 each, but after hands on time with both, it’s safe to say they offer radically different experiences depending on what kind of gamer you actually are.
The next iteration of the Rift comes with Oculus Insight – that’s full, six degrees of freedom tracking using five inbuilt sensors on the headset that offer room scale VR, right out of the box. This means no more annoying external sensors need to be placed around your gaming setup in order to track the movement of both your head and hands.
Whilst the Rift S still relies on PC computational power to run its software, the amount of cables needed to do this has been reduced to just one single five-metre cable. Not only is this much more convenient in the long run, it also opens up the possibility of playing on powerful laptops with a limited number of USB ports.
The headset itself is said to weigh only a little more than the original Rift, but as my go-to headset is a PlayStation VR, it felt remarkably light on my head. It’s also one of the comfier headsets I’ve worn, with a brand new, ergonomic ‘halo’ design to the headband that helped keep the visor snug against my face. This halo also made putting on or removing the headset much easier than other headsets that rely on velcro straps for adjustments. The mechanisms in place to fine-tune the visor position also felt very similar to those found on the PlayStation VR.
I played two games on the Rift S, Asgard’s Wrath and Stormland. Both games looked incredible thanks to the display resolution of 1280×1440 pixels per eye (that’s 2560×1440 total). As a comparison, the PSVR offers a resolution of 960×1080 pixels per eye, so for me everything seemed clearer, colours were brighter and objects remained crisp and sharp even at long distances.
Tracking on both Asgards’ Wrath and Stormland was perfect and I was able to swing swords and climb walls without experiencing any awkward controller drift. I played stood up in a relatively small space but the freedom to move around was refreshing after mainly playing PSVR from a seated position. I will admit I did get tangled up in the headset cable during a particularly aggressive sword fight in Asgard’s Wrath, but that’s a problem that affects all wired headsets at the moment.
And of course, all the games and apps purchased for the original Rift can be also played on Rift S, so if you’re looking to upgrade your existing Rift, your library will still remain accessible.
If the Rift S is for your big home PC system, the Oculus Quest is the VR kit you can pack up and take around your mate’s house. It’s a completely portable, all-in-one gaming system for casual gamers who want to play VR games but either don’t want or can’t afford a big gaming PC. Think of the Quest as a console as opposed to a PC and you’ll get the idea of where Oculus are going with it.