INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Four months after its release, the Rift S is looking pretty irrelevant.
My colleague Josh and I went hands-on with an early demo of Oculus
Link, a feature launching in beta in November that lets Quest users connect their headset to a PC and play games that require a bit more
horsepower than the Quest onboard compute can handle.
The differences between playing an upcoming title like Stormland on the $399
standalone Quest with Oculus Link versus playing it on the $399 PC Oculus Rift S are incredibly tiny and clearly not enough of a sell that
anyone but the snobbiest of VR snobs should bother buying a Rift S.
The display resolution sounds like it is currently better than what
possible on the original Rift but less than the full resolution of the Quest
The Quest will play the content at 72 frames per second as opposed to 80 frames that you&d get on the Rift S
You also will have one less onboard camera for inside-out tracking
A Facebook engineer at the booth detailed that latency on Oculus Link would be greater than on the made-for-PC headsets but that it should
still be comfortable for most users, he wouldn''t get into specific numbers.
To use the feature you&ll need a USB-C 3 cable, the charging
cable that came with your Quest won''t do
Oculus will be releasing its own cable after the beta ends that you&ll be able to buy separately.
Ultimately, playing is the true test,
things weren''t as buttery smooth as they might be on a 90fps (or greater) headset but that isn''t something the Rift S can even handle so
you&re still getting an experience that feels very very solid
You&re using your Quest — albeit tethered — and getting a PC experience
Textures were richer and environments were more complex but you&re using the same headset though you need a PC that meets Oculus recommended
specifications.
Ultimately, I&m not quite sure what this very cool technology does for Oculus.
It 100% cannibalizes Rift S sales, but I
can''t imagine too many Quest users will be going out to buy gaming PCs so they can utilize Link
Nevertheless, it a very cool platform and makes the Quest a better sell than it was for users that are deep into VR and already bought into
All I know for certain is that I would be very pissed if I bought a Rift S instead of a Quest.
