This week, Facebook showed off improved facial tracking for these avatars, more accurately capturing the user’s facial expression.
The researchers use two headsets to achieve this tracking quality. The regular headset features three cameras facing the user. The training headset has these three cameras and six extra cameras which gives a better view of the user’s facial expressions.
The Facebook researchers train a neural network withh the training headset such that the model can be used to attain high quality results with the regular headset. The extra cameras on the training headset provide ground truth. Facebook claims that with a trained model there is “almost no obvious quality drop” from 9 to 3 cameras.
Facebook isn’t the only VR company working on face tracking of course. At GDC in March, HTC announced a lip tracking addon for the Vive Pro Eye. However, HTC stated that it currently has no plans for a consumer version.
Still Years Away
When Facebook showed off codec avatars in March, the company was clear to control expectations, stating that the technology was still “years away” from reaching consumer headsets. There is no indication that this advancement will speed up this timeline. Last month, the company’s Oculus division launched two new VR headsets (Oculus Quest and Rift S) but neither headset has cameras pointing towards the user’s face.
One of Facebook’s primary reasons for acquiring Oculus in 2014 was a belief in the power of social VR. It seems likely that the company’s next generation of headsets will include the hardware for face tracking- even if the shippable software isn’t at this quality at launch.
At E3 this week in Los Angeles I played an early demo version of official 360-degree songs from Beat Saber and learned to steer a kayak in VR.
Afterward, I went to get lunch with Senior Editor David Jagneaux and we found Jason Rubin “VP of Special Gaming Strategies” at Facebook at a food court in the Los Angeles Convention Center. We chatted for few minutes before realizing our interview was scheduled to begin soon. So we returned to the room, hungry, and chatted for nearly 30 minutes.
Below is a transcript of our conversation.
The Oculus Quest
Ian Hamilton: Its been a long path. Are you happy with where you are in 2019, is it where you expected it to be?
Jason Rubin: Yes, very happy. Where I expected it to be? Yes in some ways, ahead in other ways, perhaps a little slower in other ways. Look, if someone had told me the experience you can get on a PC give or take a little bit of graphic prowess and CPU would be available for $399 in a single box within 3 years of launching the PC product…so that’s ahead. Where are we behind? You know [pauses] I think that we still are exploring VR content to see what resonates. You’re looking at Beat Saber — there have to be hundreds of Beat Sabers out there, we should have hit more of them, right? We should have hit more VR-specific moments and I think we just need more developers and more consumers in VR in order to hit them. It’s inevitable and I think now we have the right hardware. Beat Saber — we’ve heard from them Quest is [one of] the best ways to play Beat Saber. But they developed Beat Saber before Quest existed. Now that Quest exists, now that you have this standalone device, I think developers will really start pursuing what really makes VR sing.
Hamilton: So I was reading the headlines out that and I saw Variety tried to get unit sales and I don’t think — you’re not saying unit sales? You’re not going to give us any indication?
Rubin: No I can’t. No, sorry. We’re doing quite well. I’m sure you’ve read the articles if you haven’t noticed yourself that it was sold out on Amazon. Just anecdotally…
Hamilton: I said [on Twitter] I brought one to this conference and someone replied to me and said ‘where’d you find it?’
Rubin: Yeah. I tried to get one from Best Buy because I wanted to have two of them at the house at one moment to try something multiplayer and there was a Best Buy pretty close to me. There were sold out and the website tells you how close they are. There was none in 250 miles….so the fact that it is sold out for all of L.A. is pretty impressive.
Hamilton: Without saying specifics can you say whether its the biggest launch for VR yet?
Rubin: Well I can say yesterday we announced we sold within a few weeks over $5 million worth of software. That was announced yesterday. I can say that Superhot announced that they had a 300% better launch than they did on Rift and they said it was their strongest launch…its an extremely strong launch. As I said, you know, anecdotally its sold out a lot of places and that’s been picked up. It couldn’t be much stronger when you don’t have units to get into consumer’s hands.
Hamilton: Do you think the price is so low that it is keeping others from releasing standalones as well?
Rubin: I believe but I do not know so I’m speaking now about what I believe that our inside out tracking — Insight — is ahead of a lot of other companies and I think that that more than anything is what’s keeping a lot of standalones from coming out. Two camera standalone not as high quality, hooked up to pc — it’s certainly possible. We’ve seen that. But all in one inside out tracking with Touch quality, or near PC Touch quality — I’m not sure that technology exists at other companies. I don’t know. And that’s required to put it in a box as a standalone. You can’t have it without that. So I can’t really answer that question because I don’t know for example that someone has a $599 option. I’ve seen nothing really comparable within a reasonable price point — nothing really working, so, I think we’ve done an incredible amount of R&D and I’m not sure that there’s anybody else out there doing as much R&D.
Oculus Insight
Hamilton: I found John Carmack at OC2 I think and I asked him about inside-out positional tracking and he said ‘I’d wish I’d had someone working on this for the last year.’ And that was at like OC2 [in 2015] and it seems like, obviously, the effort ramped up heavily after that.
Rubin: Heavily.
Hamilton: When did it become a top priority to get Insight right?
Rubin: Yeah.
Hamilton: And how big of an effort did that become?
Rubin: Well from very early on we knew inside out tracking was key to success not only in VR but, in the long term, its the key to success in AR. Nobody is going to be carrying around external sensors as they are walking around town with AR glasses. So inside out tracking and, more importantly, really small inside out tracking if you’re going to be using it with AR. And really fast inside out tracking — cause you don’t have the…if you’re wearing glasses that look like Ray-Ban’s you can’t have big, 20 cameras, you can’t have a large processor like — we have to nail inside out tracking for AR in the long run to work. And VR and AR, we’re working on both incredibly, uh, you know as much as we can at Facebook.
An Oculus Sensor for the original Oculus Rift released in 2016.
So from very early on inside out tracking was being worked on. Having said that, we also wanted to launch hardware because without an R&D kit out there — without a dev kit you can’t have software. Without software you can’t have consumers. Without consumers you can’t get feedback. So we had to launch Rift as quickly as we could to get dev kits out there, you know, and to get Rift into the marketplace to learn from the marketplace. We launched Touch a little bit later, unfortunately, I think we should have launched it with launch. But we were racing to get VR to be real so that developers you know, like, the developers you see on the walls around us, uh, the developers out there, could start prototyping. You know, Ready At Dawn needed Touch to get Lone Echo to work. Echo Arena, it was announced yesterday, is now coming to Quest. That’s awesome. That wouldn’t exist at Quest launch had we not launched pre-inside out tracking. So I think once we had that base from which developers could build software we could then divert at lot of resources to the future. Which we did. And you’re now seeing the fruits of that with Quest, and with Rift S for that matter which, is, you know, in my mind at least, a predominantly better way to do PC VR than to have the outside in tracking, and all of the USBs, or plugging into walls, whatever you’re doing, tripods, nobody needs that. Like that’s not that’s not adding in VR, it was necessary for VR.
Hamilton: Hmmmm, I think some of things we’ve put in our articles — is, esports level players, people that are pushing Echo Arena to its limits — whether they are going to find the experience meeting their expectations.
Rubin: Uh huh.
Hamilton: And I guess I’m wondering was that a discussion internally.
Rubin: Totally.
Hamilton: About whether you were going to be able to hit that bar?
Rubin: And this is an incredibly complex thing to answer because what most people don’t realize is that all of our tracking systems improve continually. Rift tracking today, Rift, not Rift S, the outside in tracking, is significantly better than it was the day that we launched it because we keep improving upon the technology. And the same will happen with Quest. As we are sitting here machine learning is getting better at the tracking. And as well we’re coming up with ideas that improve the tracking. So, it is impossible to say which one is going to be better because we don’t know where either of them would end up with endless continual work. What I will say is this. Right now there are different trade-offs. There are things you can’t do well with inside out tracking, for example, put the controllers right up to your ears or behind your back because the lenses can’t see it. At the same time there are things that outside in tracking do poorly, even with three or four sensors the motion of putting your two hands in front of each other when you’ve blocked the back sensors with your body and the front sensors are in front of you, it doesn’t work, and there’s not a great solution to get around that unless you combine inside out and outside in tracking. Which is possible but, you know, on a mobile device that now grabbing a lot of CPU/GPU. The point of this answer is to tell you which one is better or worse, it is to say we really are in an evolutionary process with all of our tracking systems that, even since launch a few weeks ago, things have changed and will continue to change and tracking will just get better. What I am sure of, and I will make a statement about, is that ultimately people don’t want the hassle of external trackers if they can get the same or nearly equivalent quality without it. We believe that strongly and the consumer has been telling us that and, we think post-launch, we’re hearing that.
Next Quests
Hamilton: Let me, I’m going to have to figure out a way you’re actually going to give me something useful here because…
Rubin: Ok [Laughs]
Hamilton: Is the future of Quest more graphical power or less weight?
Rubin: Yes.
Hamilton: Which is the bigger priority?
Rubin: [Pause] To answer that question you could go around Oculus and you could ask different people and you would get different answers. And that’s true, by the way, of the true vector of options. Is higher resolution screens more important than wireless transmission, say, from a PC if you’re making a PC headset? Hard to say, some people care about the resolution, don’t care about the wire. Some people say the wire kills it. I don’t care about the resolution I’m fine with where we are. And all of these things are trade offs. What I know is a few years from now you will have a lighter device that simultaneously has better tracking, higher resolution screens and higher CPU/GPU. All of those thing will come true. The balance of where we focus more or less is up for debate internally as we speak but all of those things will happen to these devices.
PC VR Market
Hamilton: I think the reason I ask that question is because of that PC connection, right, there is — were you surprised by the desire and the response when Quest hit of people begging, more or less, for some kind of a PC connection. I mean, we’ve seen how many different solutions to hack that — to hack that through?
Rubin: Yeah.
Hamilton: People trying to get their PC inside their headset. Um, so I guess I’m wondering.
Rubin: You know, on that you know Carmack…
Hamilton: Carmack has made some comments that its being worked on or its being looked at. I guess I’m wanting to know the priority level there.
Rubin: Right, well, first of all if all these people who have PCs are trying to get Quest to work with their PCs what that’s telling you is that they appreciate the tracking. So lets just put a pin in that, right. These are people who are willing to probably to be our users already, because they have a library of VR titles they want to use otherwise they would be fine with Quest, and they want to abandon their outside-in tracked system, whatever that is, because that’s all that’s out there, give or take Microsoft’s two camera solution, and they want to move to Quest. Which says to you there is a large percentage of people on the PC that prefer the inside out tracking of Quest, perhaps they want the IPD as opposed to digital IPD perhaps they like one strap over another because Rift S has a- you know, whatever. So, just put a pin in that.
We believe in the PC marketplace for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that the PC audience is willing to experiment and VR needs experimentation when it comes to software development. As a developer, I need the PC to feed the best quality ideas after consumers have vetted them to the more console-like audience that wants high quality, polished, large titles and not demoware in a more console-like universe. So those two systems have to both survive. And in that world it would be nice to build only one hardware but right now the solutions you’re seeing, hacking wise, yeah they work — yeah you can send one screen to another, great — experience-wise, not very good. So until we, Oculus, can get the quality level to a point where we believe its good enough, um, we won’t launch it. And just keep in mind, like, how hard we worked so that people would say there is a difference perhaps between the Echo Arena pro esport player, with regards to inside out tracking and Rift tracking and that’s the line we’re drawing — not “the tracking’s not as good on Quest” right, like, we have an extremely high bar for quality and we won’t release something till the quality is there. We’d love to have one device that does PC and mobile, absolutely, we would love to have that, but the quality has to be there.
Oculus Go
Hamilton: Um, where does Go sit in your lineup at this point? Because it just isn’t there. It doesn’t compare experientially to what Quest or Rift is.
Rubin: Yeah.
Hamilton: And I guess I’m wondering, like, with Quest sold out I imagine people are picking up Oculus Go by mistake thinking they are getting a Beat Saber machine, um, just because it is the only thing left on the stand at the store.
Rubin: Yeah.
Hamilton: They don’t know what VR is.
Rubin: Sure.
Hamilton: So I’m just wondering, where does Go go in this new world
Rubin: We are sitting at a game conference. When it comes to gaming it has been clear for a long time people want 6 degrees of freedom and they want their hands in there. Again, I say we launched Touch too late. We should have known earlier that Touch was an integral part of the VR experience for Rift. We learned that and that is what Quest has and what Rift S has because it is so important. When it comes to media viewing, those things aren’t as necessary. We’ve seen from our telemetrics that a lot of people that are playing with Go, or join Go, are using it as a media device. Whether it’s a…in Netflix TV that they are using, they only have one TV in a small dorm room, or whatever, and the other person is watching something you don’t want to watch, put on a Go, there’s a case, When it comes to games you are correct, I don’t know if anyone is making that mistake, if they are I hope they bought it from a place with a great refund policy because…
Hamilton: [Laughs]
Rubin: If they are buying Go for games — there are good games on Go, don’t get me wrong — but the use case is media.
Hamilton: The question I asked earlier about what the future of Quest looks like — what does the future of Go look like?
Rubin: That’s a good question, um, I don’t really have anything to announce there. The question for us is the media use case worth expanding upon, doubling down upon, continuing with. When it comes to Go it does an incredibly good job with the media use case. I’m not sure what we would do. We could add resolution to the screen to be sure, there’s not that much — we could make it lighter, but its not that heavy a device, its a pretty light device, we could improve the controller but you’re not really using the controller on Go for most of what you do with it. You’re really just starting and stopping and pausing. It’s not really a controller-based device. So what happens to Go is a good question, we continually watch the use cases, see how people retain, how much time they are spending with it, things like that. What we are absolutely positive about is that is it not a game device. It is not an interactive entertainment device. That device is Quest. And being sold out on Quest is, as you pointed out, points us to the fact that a lot of people are waking up to the fact that that’s what they want.
Oculus Rift Exclusives
Hamilton: Are you still developing new games, beyond the ones we’re seeing here today, for Oculus Rift first?
Rubin: Oculus Rift first? I’m not sure. If the right project… I mean yes there are some in production, but what we look at is if the right project comes that we think can only be done on PC, and needs to be done to prove something out, we would fund it. Because again innovation is what we rely on the PC for delivering.
We are not graphically married…we are not pursuing graphics as like a goal. So if someone just comes and says we don’t want to build it for Quest because we want to have cutting edge graphics and we don’t want to worry about porting it down the Quest, that’s probably not a title we would make. If it can come to Quest, we want it to come to Quest. So for the most part the titles that we’re looking for now will run on both (that we’re funding).
And developers that are experimenting, we point them at the PC and say do whatever you want. I mean crazy ideas. If somebody comes and says we’re going to build a beat based game with swords it’s a hard thing for us to like say greenlight that for a device where we’re curating the store. But Rift is a great testbed for something like Beat Saber. And sure enough, the whole world wants Beat Saber, very clearly, right? So we need Rift to do that experimentation.
David Jagneaux: The Respawn game, can you say whether or not that’s coming to Quest?
Rubin: As of today we’re not announcing whether Respawn’s game is going to be on Quest.
Pocket Compute For VR
Hamilton: Is there an option for a mobile compute with a wire that you keep in your pocket, a computer box you keep in your pocket and run your headset. Is that a model you’re looking at?
Rubin: That’s a model we’ve definitely explored. There’s a lot of upsides to it, like visually having the smaller glasses on your head, big advantage. Battery, keeping the weight away, the heat away from the screen, being able to separate battery. All of that is great. The problem is when you do it, cause we’ve tried it, you have a wire. And you don’t ever forget that wire.
So you’ve effectively ended up with a wired device again. I know it doesn’t seem like that because you can move 100 yards in any given direction, but that 100 yards the wire comes with you. The best way for you to experiment with this is to use the Magic Leap, because Magic Leap has that wire. That’s effectively the setup you’re asking about and while you’re using that ask yourself whether or not the wire ever truly disappears. What we want from a wireless device is no feeling of wire and no massive added weight because we’re streaming from another platform onto some two pound thing or six pound thing we’re sticking to the top of your head. And so we’ve tried it, it seems like it would be a great idea, in practice it’s kind of not getting rid of the wire.
Hamilton: So the reason I ask all these questions about platforms is that the 10 million person goal that has been stated by Zuckerberg…
The Oculus effort… you know you had Gear VR first, and then Rift, and then Go even, these are almost like different platform launches and Quest is like the fourth. And it’s confusing for consumers to look at headset after headset after headset and say when is it actually going to be here? But as you’ve repeatedly said there’s a lot of experimentation & exploration on PC and it seems like there are users on PC who keep coming back to their headsets and spending significant amounts of time…
Rubin: Absolutely.
Valve Index
Hamilton: …In their PC headsets. I’ve been spending time with the Valve Index. I enjoy the clutching & release sensation quite a bit and I guess I’m wondering… Number one, visual comfort on that headset is very very finely tuned and that increases the amount of time that I want to spend in VR in a different way than the wireless on Quest does. But it still serves an audience and makes the experience better and invites people into these virtual worlds that much more. What is the value of the releasing sensation? Is it something that you are going to want to give to developers over time?
Rubin: You’re absolutely right about experimentation. The VR market is extremely early. And unlike the 2D video game market where you basically are pushing things to a screen and there wasn’t as much to experiment with — there were major changes, CD for example, 3D graphics, 2D graphics — but it wasn’t on your body. It didn’t have the trade-offs that VR has. We are still on a long road of experimentation. Having said that, Quest is a success. Quest is clearly proving itself valuable, and we are going to focus on Quest and the Quest ecosystem for a good period of time.
So if somebody is waiting to get in, Quest is the right point. Quest is, we’re going to be there making Quest software for the foreseeable future. There are already great things in the store, we’re showing new ones today, we’ll continue to release new stuff, eventually third parties that we didn’t kind of pay to make or ask to make products early will get in and start making it organically because the devices is right out. You couldn’t get a dev kit without Oculus giving you a dev kit but we’ll get into the point at which people are submitting things to us we never expected. Quest is the right space to be in.
Quest is not the ultimate hardware device in the same way that the iPhone 1 was good, the iPhone 2 was better, iPhone 3 (you know the names change over time), they kept getting better. That’s going to keep happening. And like you can’t pick a point to go in.
To answer your question specifically, because I’m not dodging: I’m not sure… from our research Touch is kind of hitting a home run. And there’s definitely more we can do. If there are things we see others do that pick up a lot of traction we will definitely think about adopting them. But it has to come in at a price point where we’re not again putting ourselves in a position where the vast majority of people can’t use it. Facebook wants VR to reach the masses. And for all its strengths, the Index is not a mass market price device. And we don’t want to get into a world in which…
There are amazing things we could do for $2000 right now. I will tell you that. We would blow you away for $2000. You would leave the show and write a awesome article about what we could do for $2000. For ten grand, we would change your life — and exactly a thousand people would buy it. And so like there’s this interplay between the price point and what we can deliver rationally into an audience big enough to give developers an ecosystem. That we’re very cognizant of.
It is awesome that there’s competition out there. It is great that people are developing different types of controller. We look at all of them, and if people are like Index is just that controller, great. Let’s try to bring that into a price point where we can put it on the shelf for $399 or less, if it’s going to be our focus device. Who knows? I mean these devices will continue to change. But again to close: if you’re thinking about getting into VR and you are not a PC owner and you do not have that experimental cutting edge kind of focus — which there’s a Rift for that right, the Rift S or maybe it’s an Index for that — if you’re in it and you just want to put it on easily, have it work, love the content, know it’s high quality and know that anything you buy has been vetted, it is an awesome experience. Quest is there and it’s going to be there for years and we’re not going to make you regret it.
Quest Console Content Curation
Hamilton: The vetting. Are you happy with the messaging in this first month of of just letting people know how hard it is going to be to get on Quest, and are you happy with the level of support that you’re giving to those devs were there early but were unable to get in the queue to get on Quest?
Rubin: A couple of things. First of all we have a PC product we’re heavily supporting and we turn no developer way unless the thing is really really like not shippable on PC because we want to give them an opportunity to prove their idea has value. And in some cases it’s the idea that has value and not necessarily their instantiation. And another developer says that was a great idea and makes a better version and then somebody else makes a better one. That’s the game industry.
So we want that to be on PC and do not want that to be on Quest. We have never rejected software because we don’t like the concept, we don’t like the idea of the product, it is 100 percent based on quality. There have been a couple of developers that have been turned down for Quest who were not turned down for Rift, so let’s be very clear; Oculus did not turn them down. We said that the quality of the software that they were delivering could not go on Quest at the price point they were suggesting or could not reach the bar to have a price on Quest because it didn’t compare to the other pieces of software. None of those were based on what was in the content. I’ve heard people say “they don’t like a certain type of lifestyle”, that is absolutely untrue, it is 100% based on quality and value, not based on anything else.
The Oculus Rift S has a fairly hidden setting which changes the headset’s default resolution. The setting does not state the resolution for each choice, but we were able to discover it with some digging.
How To Find & Change It
To find the resolution setting for Rift S, open the Oculus app, click ‘Devices’ and then click on ‘Rift S and Touch’:
In the list of settings that appears, scroll down and find ‘Graphics Preference’:
You’ll now see the Graphics Preference panel. This lets you choose between ‘Quality’ and ‘Performance’:
The setting can be changed on the fly, there’s no need to restart the Oculus software or even to take your headset off.
‘Recommended’ Different Based On GPU
We tested on a GTX 970 and found that this setting was set to ‘Performance’ by default, which was Recommended. We also tested on an RTX 2070 where it was the opposite- set to ‘Quality’ by default.
We asked Facebook whether this is done to maintain the same recommended spec as the original Rift and a spokesperson confirmed it is. This setting did not exist on the original Rift, which had lower resolution than Rift S.
What It Actually Does
This setting changes the default 1.0x per-eye buffer resolution for the Rift S. By querying the SDK we found the exact values it uses:
Prioritize Quality: 1648×1776
Prioritize Performance: 1504×1616
This is of course only the default resolution. Some games let you scale the resolution factor in the menu. Many others use the Adaptive Resolution feature of the Oculus SDK, where the resolution scale is automatically changed on the fly based on your current GPU utilization. Alternatively, you can use the Oculus Debug Tool to override the resolution scale yourself.
If you have a lower end gaming PC you’ll want to use the Performance setting to maintain framerate. On a high end rig you should make sure it is set to Quality.
At Day 2 of F8 2019 today Facebook showed off a demo of body tracking with no markers or worn trackers. The tracking is able to track down to the muscle activation level, not just skeletal, giving a more detailed output:
This is just a research project, not a product, but the results look impressive. It’s described as being done with a single external sensor, not an array.
Body tracking is currently available for the HTC Vive by using Vive Trackers, but as each tracker is $99 and you need many for high quality result this isn’t close to affordable. Additionally, each tracker has to be kept charged and then worn whenever users want to use body tracking in VR.
A markerless approach from an affordable sensor could bring body tracking to mainstream VR one day. This would enable entirely new types of gameplay and greatly enhance social VR.
Facebook intends for this technology to be used alongside the photorealistic avatars it showed off in March. An avatar that looks like you and moves like you would feel, to a friend in VR with you, like you.
The company also showed off a larger scale body tracking demo where two players interacted with a virtual ball on a virtual pitch. This demo was key because it showed the latency was low enough for this kind of sport. They didn’t however say what amount of hardware was being used to achieve this. OptiTrack markers can be seen attached to the headset, so this was likely a multi-camera setup:
Facebook is the company behind the Oculus brand of VR headsets, so these technologies will likely eventually end up in Oculus products. The company did stress however that a consumer launch of this technology was “years away”. If Michael Abrash’s timeline given at Oculus Connect 5 holds up, it may be planned for around the year 2022.
Facebook’s latest VR headset, the Oculus Quest, is set to be quite different from the Oculus Rift. For starters, it’s an all-in-one device with no need for a PC. But Oculus is also approaching Quest with a stricter content curation policy than on Rift.
It calls this a “quality-first approach” that has seen at least one developer have their VR game rejected from Quest’s submission process. Recent comments from VP of Content, Jason Rubin, shed light on this approach.
In an interview with MCV, Rubin was asked if a more standardized platform may lead to more experimentation in VR games. “I think a lot of that experimentation will happen on Rift,” he replied. “Then we’ll take the best of the experimentation and bring it to Quest because we believe the Quest user wants to go to the store and say: ‘Everything here is good’.”
Indeed, most of the games Oculus has revealed for Quest thus far are ports of some of VR’s most popular titles. Those include the likes of Superhot VR and Beat Saber. Rubin, meanwhile, says that Rift will still be home to initiatives like Early Access games.
Rift Remains For VR Enthusiasts
“Whereas on Rift, the users are just in love with VR and they want to try everything,” he reasoned. “And we find that people are more than willing to go into half-finished software. Early Access is not really a console mentality. It’s a PC mentality: ‘I know this thing’s busted but I’m buying it anyway.’”
It’s true that PC VR is home to plenty of Early Access titles. But we still have questions on what Oculus’ stance on Quest curation means for some developers. Quest will be out later this spring at $399, with a new version of Rift named Rift S expected to arrive in the same timeframe for the same price.
Do you agree with Rubin’s comments? Or are you hoping to see the more experimental side of VR reach Quest too? Let us know in the comments below.
Editor’s Note: This was originally published on March 29th, 2016 and is being republished today for the Oculus Rift’s third anniversary. The author of this piece, Blake Harris, has a new book out about the history of virtual reality and founding of Oculus called The History of the Future.
“Wait, hold on,” said Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus, as he squinted with sudden confusion at the guests who had come to visit his company’s new Irvine office. It was December 2012, and there were four of these guys. Four of these guys from Dallas. “Wait,” Iribe continued, as his confusion grew to curiosity, “Who are you guys?!”
This is the story of who those guys were and how that awkward moment led to an intimate relationship and, ultimately, the creation of a foxy mascot named Lucky.
The Kings of Pop (Software)
Paul (left) and David (right) Bettner
In late 1997, when he was 19 years old, Paul Bettner began working at Ensemble Studios in Dallas. Six years later, Bettner’s younger brother David joined Ensemble as well. At some point between then and 2008—when the two would leave to start their own game company—Paul brought a chess board to work so that he and his brother could play a version of the game that can probably best be described as the opposite of speed chess.
Paul (left) and David (right) Bettner working in the library in 2008.
The way it worked is one player would make a move and then, the next time the other player passed the board, he would make his move (whether or not the other opponent was present). The game would continue in this fashion—toggling back and forth, each at their own pace—until one of the two won. Sometimes it would take days, other times it would take weeks. And then, when it ended, they would start it all over again.
Certainly, the Bettners could not have been the first to play chess in this manner, but they were the first to embrace the asynchronous aspect and bring it to the iPhone. And not just any game, but one that seemed ideally suited for the iPhone, which Apple had just recently brought to market. In terms of a gaming device, the iPhone paled in comparison to dedicated handhelds (like the Game Boy or PSP) in almost every way. Except for one: it was always connected to the Internet, which made it perfect for this newfangled idea of persistent social gaming.
Paul and David Bettner in their first office.
Text messaging meets gaming, that was the general idea, and in August 2008 Paul and David Bettner left Ensemble Studios to further explore this notion. To keep overhead low, they worked out of the McKinney public library and over the next few months they created a game called Chess with Friends. And in November 2008, Chess with Friends was released on Apple’s just-four-months-old App Store.
By no means was a runaway hit, but there was something unique about the release that kept the Bettners optimistic. Among those who did play the game, over half of them were still playing 30 days later. Compared to the love-‘em-and-leave-‘em games that populated the mobile market, the retention numbers for Chess with Friends were incredible. So the Bettners concluded that their problem wasn’t the gameplay, but rather the game itself. They needed something more fun. Something more playful. Something like…Scrabble.
The Bettners followed up their hit Chess with Friends, with Words with Friends.
In July 2009, with their business hanging on by a thread, the Bettners released Words with Friends. In July 2010, the game surpassed 7 million downloads. And in December 2010, for $180 million, Zynga acquired the Bettner’s mobile game studio (Newtoy, Inc.)
Although neither Paul nor David Bettner would ever complain about their windfall—they both felt grateful, and lucky, to have created something so valuable—the aftermath of the acquisition was a shock to their systems. At Newtoy, they believed they were making something more than games. “Pop Software” they called it, referring to a type of catchy, intuitive content that appealed to both traditional gamers and non-gamers alike. They felt that they had been on the forefront of something special and, without getting into the nitty-gritty of why they no longer felt that way, let’s just say that come 2012—two years into the four they had planned to stay—the Bettners left Zynga.
Following his departure, Paul Bettner didn’t know what he was going to do next. And he certainly had no idea that it would involve unleashing a fox in virtual reality.
Diversely and Relentlessly
Paul Bettner visits the Oculus headquarters in 2012. (Photo Credit: Oculus)
After leaving Zynga, Bettner expected some sort of happily ever after. With money in the bank, autonomy reinstated and a wife (plus two young kids) at home, this was supposed to be the beginning of the good life. Except, as he soon learned, he wasn’t very good at that. Quickly he grew restless—feeling a gnawing need to create, build and collaborate—and started driving his family crazy with pet projects and creative fascinations.
One such fascination was virtual reality, and the string of what-ifs that kept popping up in his mind. What if virtual reality could actually be a thing? What if technology had advanced far enough to actually make it possible this time? What if three or four years from now, my wife (or even kids?) could be buying their first VR headset? So he reached out to an old friend, someone he believed could help him answer the question better than anyone: John Carmack, who around this time just so happened to be asking himself the same sort of what-ifs.
Professionally, these conversations with Carmack didn’t provide Bettner with any increased clarity about what he should do next, but personally—as a creator, as a technophile—he grew increasingly intrigued. Enough so to be one of only seven backers to pledged $5,000 or more to Oculus’ Kickstarter campaign. And, by doing so, received a reward that included visiting Oculus for a day.
Bettner scheduled that tour-the-office visit to coincide with another trip he was making to Oculus, a sort of how-can-we-work-together meeting. So in December 2012, Bettner and three colleagues flew out to Irvine to meet with Brendan Iribe and Palmer Luckey (twice). One as a developer, the other as a benefactor; which is what led to Iribe’s sudden confusion.
“Wait, hold on,” Iribe said scanning the table. “Wait. Who are you guys?!”
“We’re the guys who did Words with Friends,” Bettner explained.
“Ohhhhh,” Iribe replied. “I thought that meeting was tomorrow. I thought you guys were here for a Kickstarter reward, just to visit.”
Laughs, smiles, recalibrated handshakes. And any potentially lingering awkwardness was wiped away by the awesomeness of trying the duct-tape Rift prototype.
By the end of this meeting, Bettner knew that this was what he needed to do next. “We want to make things with you guys,” he said. “We don’t really know what we want to make, but if mobile taught us anything it’s that we need to let go off our expectations and just figure out what works. So why don’t we start building things on, like, a month-to-month basis with you guys and we’ll see what comes with that?”
What came first was founding a new game studio (Playful Corp) and the idea of doing something like Wii Sports for VR. Not necessarily sports, per se, but a collection of mini games that showed off the potential of virtual reality. Not only did this seem like a logical creative approach (Wii Sports was the perfect vehicle to implement Nintendo’s “Blue Ocean” games-for-anyone strategy), but it also created a framework for Playful to experiment diversely and relentlessly.
Paul Bettner and the Playful Corp team.
During this time, they were churning out about one prototype a week. There was a Katamari-like game, where the player would subtly grow in size over time. There was a cooking game, where players would have to catch ingredients with a frying pan attached to their face. And there were a lot of games based around the mechanics of classics old and new (like Tempest and Doodle Jump).
Operating under the mindset that the fastest way to find the most compelling idea was just to keep building things, that’s exactly what they did. Brainstorming, building, bending (and then constantly re-bending) their expectations. And among the early batch of games, there was one concept that the guys at Playful had the most faith in: and it absolutely, positively was not Lucky’s Tale.
Super Capsule Brothers
One of Playful’s earliest platforming prototypes – the Super Capsule Brothers.
From the getgo, Bettner and his team loved the idea that VR could enable us to do things that were otherwise impossible. Like flying. That was the big one. They thought flying would be the coolest thing in the world and so, in game form, tried things like putting players on the back of a giant dragonfly. Except every time they tried something like this, it was never as good as they thought it would be. It always felt too flat, like a matte painting and lacked any compelling sense of depth.
Meanwhile, as Playful spent 2013 throwing spaghetti at the virtual wall, Oculus continued to take off. In June, they drew in $16 million of Series A funding and then, in December, they brought in $75 million more. As the scope of Oculus and what they believed the Rift could be grew larger, so did their hopes for what Playful could build; instead of a potpourri of mini-games, they wanted a big launch title. Hitting a home run instead of a spree of singles and doubles would be a challenge, but it was one that the guys and gals at Playful relished.
By this point, Playful had created forty games. Although none stood out as an obvious can’t-miss, there was one prototype they all believed in the most. But they had a little trouble admitting that at first because, in truth, it was among the ideas they thought least likely to pan out. This was the one idea that didn’t celebrate the first-person, immersive aspect that virtual reality offers; a third-person platformer called Super Capsule Bros. Inspired, of course, by Super Mario Bros., the prototype’s protagonist differed from its namesake. Instead of starring an Italian plumber, this one featured a blocky capsule (because that was one of the default shapes in Unity).
While the guys at Playful were initially skeptical about the type of game this was, they quickly realized why this concept worked: after decades touring the worlds of their favorite platformers (like Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom), they finally felt like they got to a place like this and explore. What they saw in that Super Capsule Bros. prototype was the first—and, still to this day, the only—VR experience that allowed for continuous, free-form locomotion through a virtual landscape without causing motion sickness. Or, put in terms that the kid inside of each of them was shouting through their skulls: magic.
Intermezzo: Q&A with Paul Bettner
Blake Harris: So you’ve got Super Capsule Bros., and it’s your favorite of the 40 games, but I was wondering if Oculus felt the same way?
Paul Bettner: I think, like us, they were surprised that a third-person game would work in VR. But after they tried it, they agreed that not only did it work, but they also saw the potential of what this could be. And another great thing about this game was that because it was a platformer, we didn’t need an excuse to put in whatever crazy mini-games we wanted. Because platformers have all sorts of crazy mini-games. So we were able to borrow from some of the other prototypes we’d built and bring elements of those into Super Capsule Bros., which, of course, soon became Lucky’s Tale.
Blake Harris: I figured that’s where this was headed. So tell me about how that happened. How did you go from capsule to fox? Were there other iterations in between?
Paul Bettner: Oh yeah. There were four or five major iterations of the character before we finally got to Lucky. Early on, we knew we wanted to do an animal and a fox ended up working really well. He was cute, my kids were into that, and he also evoked something nostalgic. He looks like he belongs in plenty of games you’ve experienced before.
Blake Harris: He does. Given that he’s a fox, it’s hard not to think about Sonic’s old sidekick. But I think that association with Tails is about more than just being the same species. There’s some other quality about Lucky that evokes characters from that era.
Paul Bettner: You know, it’s easy to gloss over this, but I really think that—and I believe this is the reason why Oculus signed Lucky’s Tale as a bundled deal, why this even happened in the first place—when you meet Lucky in VR, there’s this feeling of new meeting the old. You have this incredible technology, you’ve never been inside of a game like this before, and yet you are meeting something that is immediately familiar to you and that most people have some nostalgic memory of. A character, whether it’s Mickey Mouse or it’s Mario, you’ve met a character like Lucky. So it’s kind of this childhood dream come to life. That’s where Lucky came from. We were trying to evoke that. We were trying to create something that felt familiar. Immediately familiar.
Blake Harris: Well speaking of iconic, mascot-type characters like Mario and Sonic, I’m curious why you don’t think there hasn’t been one in such a long time. Obviously there have been some since then—like, say, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro; though even they are both from the 90s—but why do you think it’s such a rare thing?
Paul Bettner: I really couldn’t tell you. I could say that it’s hard, because it’s definitely hard. You could ask our brilliant director, Dan Hurd. We’ve struggled and it’s been an uphill battle to create someone who looks and plays like Lucky. So that might be what keeps people away. Or maybe, to be honest, it could be the lack of diversity that exists in our industry. Typically, that’s not the kind of game that middle-aged white dudes play, nor is it what they tend to want to make. I really don’t know. But here’s one thing that I do know: it’s very frustrating from a consumer standpoint. I mean, I’ve got these little kids—a 7 year old, a 5 year old, a 2 year old—and we love to play games together. But the menu of games that are available to us is so thin. Like how many times can we beat Zelda Wind Waker together? We’re desperate to play more games like this, but there aren’t that many out there.
Blake Harris: That’s where you come in. Lucky’s Tale: uniting families everywhere!
Paul Bettner: [laughing] exactly. But seriously, I think that there’s definitely an element of us wanting to fill that void a little bit. And to be honest, that’s part of why we chose this direction for our first game and why the company is even called Playful.
Blake Harris: What do you mean?
Paul Bettner: Well, technology allows for entertainment to evoke plenty of different feelings. VR especially can evoke several strong emotions and responses. Fear. Adrenaline. Excitement. But what we want, the emotion that we’re going for, is happy. We want to evoke happy. When people put on a VR headset, we want to make them smile. And so everything we’ve done in Lucky’s Tale, all these little elements in the game, they’ve all been about trying to evoke that feeling of just pure joy, childlike joy, and I hope that’s the way that people react to it when it ships this week.
Blake Harris: Speaking of shipping, my last question for you is about how that came to be. Lucky’s Tale is one of two games bundled with the Rift. How did that happen?
Paul Bettner: Oh, that’s a good story…
Let’s Go!
In November 2015, Playful sent a final build of Lucky’s Tale to Oculus. Not long after, Brendan Iribe called up Paul Bettner. “I just sat down and played two hours of Lucky’s Tale,” explained Iribe. “Two hours, non-stop, without coming out of the Rift. I’ve never done that before, that much time.”
“That’s amazing,” Bettner replied. “I’m so glad to hear this.”
After they talked back and forth about the game for a bit, Iribe brought up the idea of making it exclusive to Oculus [for a period of time, at least] and bundling it with the Rift. “We’re going to put a deal in front of you,” Iribe began, speaking with the same sort of magnetic, it’s-all-happening confidence that persuaded many to work for him at Oculus. “We’re going to put a deal in front of you and you’re going to accept it because it’s gonna be that good.”
True to his word, Iribe soon put a lucrative offer in front of Bettner. But if there was anything that Bettner had learned from his Zynga experience, it’s that his long-term vision is more important than any amount of short-term money. Which, of course, begs the question: what was Paul Bettner’s vision?
Visions are hard to put into words, and even harder to put into numbers. So perhaps the best way to try and express Bettner’s outlook and ambitions is by sharing a story that he mentioned during one of our conversations. “This is something that we tell ourselves internally,” Better explained. “Imagine if you could put yourself in Walt Disney’s shoes back in the day. He saw this amazing new cutting edge technology called motion pictures and he believed it was going to change the world. Because what he saw was an ability to bring a character to life and make an audience fall in love with that character in a way that you just couldn’t do before. And the first time that you see Lucky come out of his house, and he looks up at you, makes eye contact, waves hello…I think people will feel something that they’ve never felt before. Then he points at you, points over to the level and says, ‘Let’s go!’ You just feel so connected to him in a way that you couldn’t have felt if this wasn’t VR.”
Sharing and spreading that kind of connection—one of joy, adventure and friendship—is, at least in my opinion, what lies at the heart of Playful’s vision. And so when Iribe presented his godfather offer—one that generously compensated Playful, wouldn’t require them to part with their IP and ensured that their foxy new friend would be experienced by 100% of those first traversing VR’s seemingly limitless frontier—it was, of course, impossible for Paul Bettner to say anything other than what Lucky himself would say: Let’s go!
About the Author
Blake J. Harris is the best-selling author of Console Wars and will be co-directing the documentary based on his book, which is being produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Scott Rudin. Currently, he is working on a new book about VR that will be published by HarperCollins in 2017. You can follow him on Twitter @blakejharrisNYC.
If you were hoping to do some VR sculpting on Oculus Quest, you may be out of luck. The Rift app Oculus Medium won’t be coming to Quest. Facebook says it requires “the power and memory of a PC”.
Standalone VR is great- it’s affordable and wireless. Over the past few months and throughout GDC we’ve been hearing about plenty of games coming to the $399 standalone headset. Developers have been working hard to optimize their art assets and code to make them run on the Snapdragon 835 SoC.
Facebook is positioning Quest as a games console. The company has repeatedly told developers that the focus of the device’s content library is gaming. That’ll disappoint potential buyers who were hoping to unleash their creativity in VR.
Facebook’s other VR art app, Quill, won’t be coming to Quest either. But thankfully Quest will act as a Quill viewer. You’ll (though perhaps not at launch) be able to view Quill creations. At XRDC Facebook explained the efforts they’ve been taking to make this work, including making a custom Android renderer for the format.
Thankfully, there will be competing apps to Medium with a similar featureset. SculptrVR launched to PSVR last year, and is already available on Oculus Go. It’ll be available on Oculus Quest, allowing the same kind of sculpting experience, if not all the features.
GDC 2019 ended up being a weird event for the Oculus Quest. Facebook’s upcoming standalone inside out six degrees of freedom (6DOF) VR headset with two Touch controllers is coming very soon, but we basically learned zero new information about it.
We already knew it was coming in Spring 2019 and would cost $399 — they told us that at OC5 in September. We already knew it featured an inventive “Insight” tracking system that analyzes your world and lets you freely move around. We even knew about some of the biggest games coming to the headset like Superhot, Robo Recall, and more.
All we learned is that Beat Saber is coming, it works great, and we found out about three other new games (Journey to the Gods from Turtle Rock, Shadowpoint from Coatsink and Dead and Buried 2 from Oculus Studios internal “Strike Team”). That’s…basically it.
Other than that it was just a rehash of Oculus Connect 5 in a lot of ways since we still don’t know the launch lineup and we still don’t know the exact release date. If you want to read my original, initial first impressions of the Oculus Quest you can do that right here. I spend a lot more time detailing the comfort, specs, and details of the headset itself. We’ve got more specs and details here too.
Oculus Quest at GDC
Instead of new information, Oculus just solidified my excitement even more instead by showing off a new Rift S headset alongside the Quest that mostly underwhelmed. In fact, the Rift S has worse resolution, it has an LCD display instead of OLED, and it’s still got a tether to a cumbersome PC all for the same exact price of the full Quest setup. You’re getting a lot more fidelity due to the need for a powerful gaming PC, but for two unreleased products only one really has me excited for the future of this medium.
Let me put it this way: Oculus announced a new PC VR device in the Rift S headset that people have been buzzing about online for months and even after trying it I’m still more excited about a standalone device officially announced 6 months ago, aka Quest.
The prospect of being able to pack up and take a Quest with me, wherever I go, is extremely exciting and I can’t wait to introduce roomscale VR to a whole new category of people in my life. Comparing that type of paradigm shift to a marginal upgrade over a three-year old HMD is just no contest.
Oculus Quest Tracking
A topic I’ve seen come up a lot is the assumption that three external Rift camera sensors will be able to do a better job tracking your controllers than the inside-out tracking system of Quest. A lot of that analysis seems to be based on experiences with Windows VR headsets that only have two front-facing cameras. It’s important to understand that the Quest actually has four cameras placed in each corner of the headset’s front face. This means it can see partially above, below, in front, and to the sides up to a certain point.
In fact, using the sensors in the controllers and some other technical wizardry, the Insight tracking system actually does a pretty great job of keeping up even when your hands aren’t in sight. So when I played Beat Saber, for example, I didn’t have to hold my arms out in front of me, awkwardly, to swing at the blocks. I played with my arms out wide, followed through on swings fully, and generally played just like I would play on PC VR or PSVR.
And, more specifically, the Quest controllers are better than they were at OC5 in one major way. I noticed back then when I flipped my hands over and obscured the tracking ring from the camera view, the headset had trouble understanding where the controllers were located. That isn’t the case anymore at all from what I can tell after trying to break the tracking multiple times.
Something I talk about a lot with friends and colleagues is that every modern VR headset on the market comes with some sort of enormous limitation. In the case of the PSVR you need a PS4 console and it’s only a single camera so you can’t really walk around or turn around fully without occluding the controllers.
The Rift and Vive fare better in that regard, but they require expensive PCs and are still tethered as well without pricey add-ons. They’re far less portable too. Then in the case of the Oculus Go you’re solving all of that stuff, but now it’s only 3DOF and you can’t move around or lean at all. Once again, another major limitation.
Now with the Quest you solve all of those problems in a single device with a large, diverse store backed and funded by the full weight of Facebook and Oculus. Anyone could pick up a Quest and be inside a virtual world within seconds. Removing all that friction is crucial to helping the market grow.
Potential Oculus Quest Concerns
As of now the only real negatives I see to the Quest are mostly minor. Games won’t look or perform quite as great as they do on Rift in the case of ports and there will be some cases in which the tracking may not hold up great if you’re doing a lot of stuff behind your back or reaching out of view. I’m very curious to try out The Climb for this exact reason.
Additionally, there are still lots of unanswered questions. Will there be any social apps at all like Facebook Spaces, Rooms, or something else like VRChat or Rec Room? What does the launch lineup look like? Will there be any bundled apps or games?
And on the hardware side the battery life is a big concern. The Oculus Go only gets around two hours, give or take, and the Quest is more demanding, so a big jump in life is unlikely. Plus, there is no expandable storage and the base model comes in at only 64GB, which will likely run out pretty quickly. However, USB storage shouldn’t be an issue if you want to opt for that avenue. Same goes for an external battery pack to extend playtime.
Back during OC5 I called it the VR headset for everyone and I stand by that statement. After trying it more at CES and then again this week at GDC, I can honestly say that this is the most excited I’ve been for a VR product since 2016 before consumer PC VR headsets first launched. This is a headset I would recommend to any person at all without caveats. It truly feels like we’re about to enter the next era of VR content and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.
Let us know what you think of the Oculus Quest from what you’ve seen and what you know down in the comments below!
Amidst GDC 2019 today Facebook announced a new version of the Oculus Rift called Rift S. It’s priced at $399 and will release this Spring.
Rift S replaces the original Rift. Apps and games are fully compatible between both. Just like the original, Rift S is powered by your gaming PC so should work on both the Oculus PC Store and other stores like Steam.
Updated Screen & Lenses
The original Rift used dual PenTile OLED panels for a total resolution of 2160×1200. Rift S replaces this with a single LCD panel with a resolution of 2560×1440- the same panel used in the Oculus Go standalone. That’s roughly 40% more pixels, and each pixel now has three subpixels instead of just two.
This provides a higher detail image with reduced “screen door effect”. However, you don’t get the deep blacks of OLED since LCD displays use a backlight. The refresh rate is 80Hz compared to the 90 Hz of the original, but we didn’t notice a difference.
Arguably the main flaw of the Rift was the “god rays” in the lenses which occured in high contrast scenes. Rift S uses the “next generation” lens technology introduced in Go which almost entirely elminates this issue. There’s no word on field of view just yet, but expect it to be similar to other Oculus headsets.
‘Insight’ Inside-Out Tracking: 5 Cameras
The Rift used external USB sensors for positional tracking. They were difficult to set up and you needed to buy a third for full 360 degree roomscale. Like the upcoming Oculus Quest standalone, Rift S instead uses onboard cameras for “inside-out” tracking.
However whereas Quest uses 4 cameras, Rift S uses 5 and they’re in different positions: 2 in front, 1 on each side, and 1 on top. This should provide a wider controller tracking range than Quest and should eliminate many deadspots.
When we tried Asgard’s Wrath, controller tracking was very fluid and we were even able to reach behind our back to grab the shield. When we played Stormland, we were able to grab a part of a wall behind us to shoot in the opposite direction while hanging.
The controllers are essentially identical to the original Oculus Touch, but with the tracking ring on the top instead of bottom. This lets the IR LEDs inside the rings be seen by the headset. These exact same controllers are used on Quest.
Rift S isn’t compatible with the original Rift sensors. Facebook seems confident their five camera system is so good you won’t miss sensors at all.
Comfortable Halo Strap
Whereas the Rift used a semi-rigid strap, Rift S uses a much bulkier rigid halo system similar to PlayStationVR. We found it to be a noticeable step up in comfort, balancing pressure well across the head.
However, it is now a heavier headset overall with the new strap making it fit less easily into luggage or storage.
The nose gap has also been redesigned, so you’ll no longer see much light from the real world coming from below.
No Physical IPD Adjustment
Each person has a different distance between their eyes- their interpupillary distance (IPD). The Rift, like the HTC Vive and Samsung Odyssey, featured physical lens separation adjustment to let users adjust the lens IPD to their own IPD.
Like PSVR, Rift S’s lenses are fixed in position. Instead of hardware adjustment, you enter your IPD in software. This wil correct scale issues, but unfortunately people with a very narrow or wide IPD will still experience blur and other visual issues.
Strap Pipe Audio
The Rift featured integrated headphones. These were removable but used a non-standard connector so you couldn’t use your own headphones. Rift S removes these headphones and instead features the same audio system as Go and Quest (GIF of Quest):
Sound is piped through the side straps directly to your ears. Having nothing against your ear makes sound feel more natural and lets you hear others around you, but the downside is it can be heard by others in the room and the audio quality may be lower.
The headset also features a 3.5mm jack so you can use your existing headphones or any you buy in future.
New Guardian, Passthrough+
The Rift’s setup process involved tracing out Guardian boundaries without wearing the headset. These boundaries appeared in VR when you get near them, but couldn’t be seen during setup and had to be redone if sensors were moved.
Rift S features a “proprietary technology” passthrough mode Facebook calls Passthrough+. This uses computer vision algorithms to deliver “stereo-correct passthrough”- although the view is black & white, not color. It can be activated at any time in Dash.
Passthrough+ is integrated into the new Guardian system. You now set up Guardian by drawing the bounds inside Passthrough+ and if you walk outside the bounds in VR, Passthrough+ will auto activate so you don’t bump into things.
PC Requirements & Cables
Despite having a higher resolution display than the Rift, Rift S maintains the same CPU and GPU requirements. That’s likely because it uses a similar default render resolution.
Whereas the Rift used a 4 meter HDMI cable, Rift S uses a longer 5 meter cable with a DisplayPort end. Just like Rift you’ll need 1x USB 3.0 port for the headset too, but since there’s no sensors anymore that’s the only USB port you’ll need.
There’s a Mini DisplayPort adapter in the box for laptops. There’s no word on VirtualLink support yet- there may be an adapter in future.
An email sent to Oculus developers by Facebook suggests ‘Rift S’ will be formally revealed at GDC 2019.
UploadVR confirmed with multiple people the email mentions ‘Rift S’ alongside ‘Oculus Go’ and ‘Oculus Quest’. This suggests we should expect a formal announcement in the near future of the PC-based VR headset succeeding Oculus Rift.
The original Rift released this month in 2016. In 2019, stock of the VR headset has been running out at retailers worldwide. Rift is no longer available in the United States at Amazon, Best Buy or Microsoft. Newegg removed the listing entirely.
Oculus Rift S
Rift S was first revealed in a TechCrunch report in October of last year. The report revealed the headset would be an iterative update, increasing resolution and changing to the same inside-out tracking system as the upcoming Oculus Quest VR console. Last month, we discovered references in the Oculus PC software code to a ‘Rift S’ with onboard cameras. Our findings also suggest that Rift S will have software-based IPD handling, as opposed to lens separation adjustment found on the current Rift.
Oculus Insight is the tracking system used on the Oculus Quest standalone headset. We believe it will also be employed on the PC-powered Oculus Rift S.
For those unfamiliar, the first Oculus Rift required USB-powered sensors placed around the room and wired back to a PC . We expect Rift S to use its on-board cameras and the “Oculus Insight” tracking system to eliminate this requirement.
Oculus Rift started around $600 with a gamepad included with the headset. Its last price drop brought the headset down to around $350 bundled with Touch hand controllers. We believe the new headset may be positioned to bring the Rift’s price even lower.
We’ll have hands-on reports of whatever Facebook shows at the Game Developers Conference here on UploadVR.com.
