Oculus Rift S fully supported?

geralexandr

Hey, is the Rift S fully supported by Springboard and by the majority of the titles? Looking to replace Vive on some of the stations due to constant tracking issues

Jayson_Paglow

@geralexandr

Hey Alex,

Thanks for reaching out!

Unfortunately, no one can currently "fully support" Oculus. Oculus has a walled garden approach and is not currently working with any of the LBE software providers.

However, we do have basic support for Oculus hardware but only with SteamVR enabled content. This means you can use an Oculus headset and use any SteamVR content (AKA content from SpringboardVR licensing or Steam Site Licensing). BUT there is some downsides such as the Oculus button still opens up Oculus home.

We do have clients that use Oculus and while it may not be optomized or fully support it is still functional. If you're interested in moving forward with Oculus hardware I would suggest buying one to start with and experimenting to make sure it's what you want.

Thanks again for asking and if you have any follow up questions let me know!

EricKazda119300

Any update on this? I would love to use more Rift S rigs in my arcade, but I’m concerned about support.

thevrclub

Yeah me too. I will need to get at least one, eventually three, inside out tracked headsets when I move premises so that I can keep everything in one big open space. Vive Pro is overpriced and Valve Index is unavailable, Cosmos is garbage, so that leaves Rift S.

Jayson_Paglow

@thevrclub @EricKazda119300

Thanks for following up on this! Unfortunately, Facebook/Oculus have not changed their stance on this. We will announce here when/if this ever changes.

Even though the Vive Pro is higher priced we still highly recommend it for an arcade setting. Note: If you’re willing to sacrifice the warranty and phone support you do not need to buy the enterprise edition of the Vive Pro, with the Oculus you do.

thevrclub

Jayson_Paglow Here in NZ I can buy three Oculus Rift S for the same as one regular Vive Pro.
We also have a strict consumer guarantees act which forces companies to repair/replace faulty devices within the first 12 months. Besides that I can easily purchase replacement parts for Oculus direct from their online store, unlike both HTC or Valve.
Plus to go from Vive to Vive Pro or Index I have to replace my entire lineup of headsets at once since the lighthouse 1 and 2 versions don’t mix in the same space.
It’s frustrating since I’d like to stick with a lighthouse based system, it does perform the best, but to me it’s simply not worth the price point anymore.

colincentrevr

I thought I would give your our experience of the switch from Vive Pro (and Samsung Odyssey) to Rift S.

We started our flagship Centre VR store with 30 x Vive Pro, inc 3 wireless. Over the year we have had such a lot of broken cables, breaking ratchets, microphone and headphone failures, perishing nose pieces, and other small technical issues, (and the fact that the Lighthouse tracking stopped development at 2.0 with four base stations
when we were expecting the 16 to eventually be usable, not just identified) we decided to switch a few out for Oculus Rift S, after a trial. The issue with the Oculus home button is the only major flaw we have found so far, and the occasional loss of tracking/guardian. We have found that the dim lighting was mostly the cause of that, and have sorted it with some LED security camera floodlights. We also added some obvious markings to the walls to help the guardian software “see” recognisable elements. We also added the Bionix headphones to sort out the poor audio.

With the Rift S costing far less than the Vive Pro, using AA rechargeable batteries (meaning we don’t have to have 15 spare Vive Pro controllers) and no more chance of the expensive Lighthouses failing, we have found the move to be a good one. It also allowed us to remove our curtain that separated the sections of Lighthouse areas, so our play area is now one big open space.

Inside out tracking is getting better and better, with every major manufacturer working on the tech, and Lighthouse seems to have stopped being developed. I think even the Index will get an inside out tracking version at some point and that the Lighthouse tracking system will eventually die out. Unless by some miracle (and I still hope they might) someone makes 16 base stations work so that we can make real use of Vive Wireless and have a lower cost version of the Optitrack system. We have held 6 Vive Pros and 3 wireless back just in case 🙂

We are planning on purchasing 50 x Quests if SB runs on them to hire out in the UK. If any other UK company has similar plans please contact me as I think a network of cross hiring headsets will be viable in the future and beneficial to all companies who participate in sharing these resources.

geralexandr

We tested oculus rift s alongside with htc and we were excited initially, but after a while decided not to switch.
The issues were:
1) oculus home button. People mess up launcher and need more attention from the gamemaster than with htc. Solvable potentially with custom caps.
2) some of the games does not have any good way to switch back to launcher (e.g. superhot). Need gamemaster intervention.
3) this was the biggest. An additional layer of nonsense adds entropy to the system. With oculus you have oculus-steamvr- springboard-steam game. Any layer can update itself and fail or just screw up with no reason. Be prepared for unplugging Oculus USB from the PC in the middle of multiplayer session of one hour game for 4 players just to get back your audio. And then restarting everything for all players of course.
4) be prepared to explain every new hire how to do things above midsession. Or get chargebacks.
5) we run a lot of custom content and it is almost always not Oculus friendly even though they say they support it somehow
6) fabric cushion around the Halo ring is breaking apart. Probably there is a solution with custom cushion.
7) finally we decided that a couple of chargebacks for 4 players are more than any headset cost so why go with Oculus.