Rift S...

[Gortron]

I got Bluetooth ear buds up and running and it seems to have eliminated the biggest gripe I had with the Rift S. Amazingly you don’t even need to change the speaker settings in the Rift as the Bluetooth buds just play what would come out of the Rift headset. It’s great, I can easily put the headset on and off without the headphone faff and even go downstairs and get a drink and just leave them in. Thanks @lreese for the suggestion!!

I think my next upgrade will be sticky tapping the adjustment wheel on the halo lol

Update: Having played a bit more with the Bluetooth ear buds they really do solve most of my problems.

I did sticky tape over the halo adjustment and it solved that problem too.

I can live with my Rift S now

 

[Cmdr Andrew Johnson]

I got Bluetooth ear buds up and running and it seems to have eliminated the biggest gripe I had with the Rift S. Amazingly you don’t even need to change the speaker settings in the Rift as the Bluetooth buds just play what would come out of the Rift headset. It’s great, I can easily put the headset on and off without the headphone faff and even go downstairs and get a drink and just leave them in. Thanks @lreese for the suggestion!!

Which ones are you using?

 

[Gortron]

Which ones are you using?

Just some cheapo ones from ASDA (Mixx audio Play 1 - £16). I didn’t want to throw good money after bad seeing if it worked.

It works really well so I might buy some better ones later but even these sound about 1000x better than the integrated speakers. They don’t sound as good as my over ear wired headphones but they make the whole experience far less frustrating.

 

[jnTracks]

So I've always had ED running with 5.1 speakers attached to my computer sound output. Nothing changed when I installed the VR version put the rift S on. Sound still comes from those speakers and I didn't have to set anything differently.
But Oculus home and all other VR apps seem to use the rift speakers, but when I launch ED it just never uses the HMD for sound.

 

[jnTracks]

So, a thing I'm seeing on this rift S (and this is my first HMD so I want some feedback about what's normal) is the focus sweet spot seems to be kind of narrow in the center of the viewable area, which I've seen mentioned here so might be just a fact of this headset, but for me it seems to be a bit to the right side. Like it's making me tilt my head slightly left to read text.

Anybody else seeing this? I feel like I've not got my IPD set right or something, but I have a really hard time telling the difference from between the highest and lowest settings on that. When I measure in the mirror I get about 62, but no matter what I set the thing to I don't know what visual difference I'm supposed to see.

Am I conflating things? Is there something wrong with my left eye?

 

[Gortron]

So, a thing I'm seeing on this rift S (and this is my first HMD so I want some feedback about what's normal) is the focus sweet spot seems to be kind of narrow in the center of the viewable area, which I've seen mentioned here so might be just a fact of this headset, but for me it seems to be a bit to the right side. Like it's making me tilt my head slightly left to read text.

Anybody else seeing this? I feel like I've not got my IPD set right or something, but I have a really hard time telling the difference from between the highest and lowest settings on that. When I measure in the mirror I get about 62, but no matter what I set the thing to I don't know what visual difference I'm supposed to see.

Am I conflating things? Is there something wrong with my left eye?

Unfortunately I understand what you are describing. I have to look almost directly ahead or it becomes blurred and I feel slightly cross eyed with my right eye struggling to maintain focus most of the time.

I’m adapting to it though. It’s a shame they decided to ditch physical IPD adjustment. That’s what is causing these issues.

 

[jnTracks]

Unfortunately I understand what you are describing. I have to look almost directly ahead or it becomes blurred and I feel slightly cross eyed with my right eye struggling to maintain focus most of the time.

I’m adapting to it though. It’s a shame they decided to ditch physical IPD adjustment. That’s what is causing these issues.

Hmm. So should I be throwing the IPD setting more in or direction or the other? If that's causing it, am I too narrow, or too wide?

 

[Gortron]

Hmm. So should I be throwing the IPD setting more in or direction or the other? If that's causing it, am I too narrow, or too wide?

I don’t know tbh. I found setting the IPD 1mm higher than my actual IPD improved things a little but I’m not entirely sure adjusting the IPD really does anything.

On the last gen Oculus changing the IPD had an obvious effect. On this one I can wang it from one end to another but it doesn’t seem to do much.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

The oculus IPD setting only adjust the worldscale setting that is reported to the game itself, and that is it, it doesn't do anything to reposition the displayed image or anything like that.

So, yeah that's the one true flaw for this HMD.
Problem is, it isn't as simple as just the distance between your eyes, there are far to many conflicting reports with this.

So ideally I think a VR HMD should be able to move the lenses and panels, not just sideways, but also laterally and in depth in order to truly nail it.

Seems I'm in the lucky group with the S, cause I have almost perfect readability all the way to the edges.

 

[Gortron]

The oculus IPD setting only adjust the worldscale setting that is reported to the game itself, and that is it, it doesn't do anything to reposition the displayed image or anything like that.

So, yeah that's the one true flaw for this HMD.
Problem is, it isn't as simple as just the distance between your eyes, there are far to many conflicting reports with this.

So ideally I think a VR HMD should be able to move the lenses and panels, not just sideways, but also laterally and in depth in order to truly nail it.

Seems I'm in the lucky group with the S, cause I have almost perfect readability all the way to the edges.

I’m jealous I can see mostly clearly around 5 degrees from centre and it seems to exponentially get worse as I look further away from zero. Even looking dead ahead it isn’t right though and it’s like my right eye has a -0.5 astigmatism.

 

[jnTracks]

The oculus IPD setting only adjust the worldscale setting that is reported to the game itself, and that is it, it doesn't do anything to reposition the displayed image or anything like that.

So, yeah that's the one true flaw for this HMD.
Problem is, it isn't as simple as just the distance between your eyes, there are far to many conflicting reports with this.

So ideally I think a VR HMD should be able to move the lenses and panels, not just sideways, but also laterally and in depth in order to truly nail it.

Seems I'm in the lucky group with the S, cause I have almost perfect readability all the way to the edges.

Ah this explains what’s going on; thanks!

So I guess It really is impacting the previewed depth accuracy of the 3D. I’ll probably stop worrying about it and focus more on if I have a better time with or without my glasses.
I can actually get them in there, and the distance is still right with them on. But I notice more fogging problems (which I can resolve after a minute or two wearing it as everything gets to be the same temp) and for me my left eye seems to have a harder time with radial lens blur. Makes the sweet spot even smaller.
So without my glasses my mild astigmatism kicks in and the entire view is slightly more blurry, but the sweet spot seems to be a bit larger and not so shifted to the right eye. And the extra comfort of not cramming glasses under the thing. Not sure if the general slight blur is worse than the glasses pushing into my face and extra radial blur. Probably doesn’t make a difference as to what I can read. Might even be easier without glasses since I’m not tilting my head to the left.

 

[VelEshti]

Just replaced my Vive with a Rift S and mind blown over just how much of an improvement it is. I can't express how much this purchase is worth it for ED. I was never happy with the Vive in ED so didn't use it much. Under the best settings the Vive was hyper-pixelated and muddy. A Station sitting off the bow was just a blurry, shimmering shape in the Vive. Forget reading anything on the hud or across the hangar.

With the Rift S I can now see every detail of the station. Still a bit of the usual VR haze to everything due to the faint SDE and LCD, but overall you really have to focus to see the individual pixels. I only register pixelation when looking at the target star while in hyperspace.

The LCD is brighter and some of the dark is greyish, but reducing the gamma made this less of a distraction.

Also the sweet spot, for me, is much wider. I was on a landing pad looking up through the Krait windscreen at a passing ship and only after the fact realized I was also rotating my eyes upward naturally with no loss of clarity. The ability to move the eyes around a bit more naturally is really, really nice. I don't know yet what my IPD is but not suffering for it. The ability to move the visor outward or inward to improve focus is also nice.

Audio I didn't even mess with. I don't like sharing my game audio and music with the world so I immediately fitted my HyperX headphones over the strap, tilting the cups to fit the top edges up under the strap before closing them over my ears. It fits very nicely and if anything the whole headset, headphones combo feels more secure together than individually. The HyperX plugs in via USB to the PC so I changed the oculus app's audio and microphone driver to Windows Default. Works fine.

The only issue I am encountering at the moment is that I get frame jittering when moving my head to look around. In normal flight and around asteroids it is smooth as butter if I don't look around too much. I do get some jitter in stations, but I had that on the Vive too. The head turning jitter might be tracking? I've played with the in game settings and will play with other settings when I get home later to see if I can fix it. I've seen several good settings recommendations on this thread. Thx for those inputs. If I find a solution for the headlook jitters I'll report back.

I'm running an i7 8700K with a GTX 1080 GPU. I would think that would be more than enough for VR in ED. However I notice the 1080 comes up over and over again when others mention frame rate problems. I may upgrade it.

 

[VelEshti]

Update as promised...

Got in from work and sorted the head movement jitter mentioned above. Treated it as a tracking issue first and I was right. I first checked where I plugged in the Rift S USB and sure enough, it was blue, but not quite the right color blue now that it's lit up by sunlight. So I found an actual USB 3.0 port to plug it into and all is working wonderfully. I even cranked the settings back up. Yay!

 

[Romeo Alpha]

To those using BT earphones ... do you get 3D sound?

 

[Gortron]

To those using BT earphones ... do you get 3D sound?

It is in stereo and the direction sound comes from changes as you move your head but I’m not sure if I’d consider it surround sound like a proper speaker set up.

I think I get more of a surround sound effect if I don’t use headphones and use the built in speakers but they sound so crap I don’t. With the odd exception of Star Trek bridge crew which works fine and has a great 3D effect. Probably because there isn’t much bass in the game.

 

[Cmdr Andrew Johnson]

Rift S going back tomorrow for exchange due to the ongoing issue of the mic cutting out. Hopefully the new one won’t have this issue. Oculus have been brilliant with their assistance.
Reconnected the CV1 and nearly blew my ears off with the audio volume!
Then cried at the lack of graphics quality.
Can’t wait for my replacement

 

[Romeo Alpha]

Been using the S since Sunday (had a CV1 for two years) and have been really liking it so far. The blacks are a bit less black but the sparpness, less SDE and almost no god rays make up for it, in my opinion. I even think the built in audio isn't that horrible. I do find it quite buggy but hopefully some firmware updates will address all that.

Just curious, though ... has anyone else experienced seeing vertical bands of light in your peripheral vision when looking straight ahead (and it goes away if you try to look directly at it). I thought I might have received a defective device but the second I tried had it, too. My only guess is that it's a reflection from the light coming from the lens hitting the plastic inside the headset. I noticed the S lacks the fabric lining inside that the CV1 had .

Anyway, was able to fix it by placing some black electrical tape to the side of each lens. Hasn't been an issue since but was surprised I haven't seen anyone else mention it. It was quite distracting to me and would have been a deal breaker if I couldn't fix it.




(photo of fix ... originally used a thin piece of foam but the electrical tape stayed in place much better)

 

[Cliché]

My Rift S died on Sunday. Only a week old. RIP.

I received a replacement from Amazon on Tuesday. So yeah, that's why I still have an Amazon account.

Did I do anything wrong? You tell me.

Everything was great. I thought I'd try a stand up game with the Touch controllers, but my USB headphones cord was too short. So I unplugged the headphones and installed an extension cable. When I came around to the front, the computer said it had detected a problem and was collecting data to shut down. After it rebooted, the Oculus software popped up and said I needed to run through the setup again. When I put on the HMD, all I saw was snow. So I changed cables around and tried again. Still no cigar. So I tried unplugging the cable from the HMD and re-seating it. This time I had snow with a thick black bar running down the middle. Sigh.

I checked the Oculus website first. No real help there, and they were backlogged with support requests. So I just took the easy route and I'll let Amazon sort that out. The new one is working fine. I was hoping it might be a little darker, but it's just the same. Oh well, still a great HMD for the money - assuming I can keep it running.

 

[jnTracks]

I can't say I've noticed that

My Rift S died on Sunday. Only a week old. RIP.

I received a replacement from Amazon on Tuesday. So yeah, that's why I still have an Amazon account.

Did I do anything wrong? You tell me.

Everything was great. I thought I'd try a stand up game with the Touch controllers, but my USB headphones cord was too short. So I unplugged the headphones and installed an extension cable. When I came around to the front, the computer said it had detected a problem and was collecting data to shut down. After it rebooted, the Oculus software popped up and said I needed to run through the setup again. When I put on the HMD, all I saw was snow. So I changed cables around and tried again. Still no cigar. So I tried unplugging the cable from the HMD and re-seating it. This time I had snow with a thick black bar running down the middle. Sigh.

I checked the Oculus website first. No real help there, and they were backlogged with support requests. So I just took the easy route and I'll let Amazon sort that out. The new one is working fine. I was hoping it might be a little darker, but it's just the same. Oh well, still a great HMD for the money - assuming I can keep it running.

Wait, so... you're trying to use USB headphones with Rift S? That's what you did wrong... I mean, I don't know which cable to bumped and broke while moving them around on the back of your computer, but what you want to do is use headphones with a standard 1/8" phono connection plugged directly into the Rift S audio port. You don't need another cable; Simplify your life!

 

[Cliché]

LOL, I didn't bump into or break anything. And I'm not trashing a great set of surround sound headphones with an excellent noise cancelling mic just so I can plug something, which I'd have to buy, directly into the Rift. I'm considering doing the 3D print/Koss modification, just for the convenience, but I'm waiting to see what Oculus does first. It's not that terrible dealing with separate headphones for now.

Anyway, I'm sure the failure was just infant mortality and a coincidence (although the HMD may have died hours earlier for all I know).