Facebook announces $399 Oculus Rift S at GDC 2019

The wait is finally over.

After three years, Facebook-owned Oculus is finally replacing the original Rift VR headset for PC with the Rift S coming out in the spring.

The $399 Rift S isn’t a minor upgrade. With new features such as built-in cameras and sensors for tracking your hands in the virtual world, improved image quality, and a new head strap design that makes long-term wear more comfortable, the Rift S is everything the original should have been.

SEE ALSO: Oculus Quest is the savior VR needs

Right off the bat, you can see the Rift S looks different from the original. The soft-touch fabric is gone and in its place is a more durable plastic construction.

The Rift S is also equipped with five Insight sensors — similar to the ones inside of the standalone Oculus Quest — to enable 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) “inside-out” tracking, which work to detect your head, track the included wireless Touch controllers, and power Guardian, the virtual barrier that prevents you from bumping into your walls or furniture.

These sensors replace the need for separate sensors that plug into your PC and take up additional USB ports. On the Rift S, there’s a single cable that comes out of the headset and splits into two: a video display port and a single USB port.

Oculus VP of Content Jason Rubin told me in a phone interview, moving forward, Oculus will develop with the built-in Insight tracking system since both the Rift S and the Quest use it. Though the table-top sensors aren’t officially being deprecated, Rubin told me Oculus strongly believes its Insight tracking system is the future.

How the Rift S fits on your head is also improved. Oculus says it worked with Lenovo to develop the Rift S’s new “halo” headstrap. The beefier headstrap looks similar to the one on Sony’s PlayStation VR with a crown-like design that better distributes the weight of the headset across your head. On the back is a wheel to adjust the tightness. Rubin told me the comfier headstrap will make longer VR sessions possible even though the Rift S is just a little bit heavier than the Rift.

Everything inside of virtual reality also looks better through the Rift S thanks to improved fresnel lenses and increased display resolution.

The Rift S ditches the OLED display in the Rift for a “fast-switch” LCD. At first it might seem like a downgrade — OLED displays produce way deeper blacks than LCD — but it’s actually not. The Rift S’s improved screen is the same one used in the Oculus Go and comes with the same higher 1,280 x 1,440 resolution per eye (2,560 x 1,440 total) compared to the Rift’s 1,080 x 1,200 resolution per eye. The only downside on the Rift S appears to be display refresh rate, which is 80Hz versus 90Hz.

The Rift S also borrows a page from the Quest and Go. Rubin says the new headset comes with built-in stereo sound that shoots out of cutouts in the headband. However, if you prefer a more private audio experience, there’s still a 3.5mm jack to plug in your own headphones.

Minimum PC requirements for the Rift S isn’t too different from the Rift, either. Oculus recommends your rig run Windows 10 (duh) and have at least an Intel i5-4590 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X processor, NVIDIA GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics or better (an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 will work tho, but performance may suffer), and 8GB of RAM.

Your PC will also need a DisplayPort 1.2 or a Mini DisplayPort and a USB 3.0 port for the Rift S headset to plug into.

Reducing the Rift S down to a single cable and two ports will make VR more accessible and mobile Rubin told me. Besides the obvious setup benefit of a single cable coming out of the headset, Rubin says the simplified setup will also make more laptops viable machines for VR. And with the new Passthrough+ feature, which lets you see the real world in black-and-white, it’s possible to transport headset and laptop from one place to another without having to take off the headset. Rubin says it should greatly reduce the amount of friction that comes with PC-based VR.

Of course, a VR headset is nothing without content. Along with the headset, Oculus also announced at GDC a handful of new games coming to the Rift S, including Asgard’s Wrath, Stormland, and Vacation Simulator.

And if you’ve already built up a collection of VR content with the original Rift, you’ll be happy to hear all of it works with the Rift S.

With the Rift S and the Quest both launching this spring, it’s clear Oculus is using it as an opportunity to unify its PC-based VR headset and standalone VR headset.

Comparing the two, you can see they’re extremely similar. They both can run the same games and they both use the same head and hand-tracking systems. Oculus has really narrowed the gap between the two.

The only glaring difference is the Quest’s graphics and performance, and the fact that it’s wireless. Yes, the Quest’s Snapdragon 835 chip can’t push the same kind of high-res graphics and performance as a gaming PC, but that doesn’t mean it’s inferior. As I saw first-hand at CES, graphics aren’t everything. VR is first and foremost about immersive experiences. 

If you want a wireless experience, the Quest is the headset to get. But if you want the most advanced Oculus VR immersion, the Rift S has your name on it.

Oculus could have made the Rift S a much more powerful version of the original Rift, but I’m kind of glad it didn’t. Convenience and comfort matter just as much when it comes to VR, and the Rift S appears to deliver.