Re:Oculus Rift S
by throwaway34241 on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @07:45PM
(#19448120)
The 'tether' part is a big deal though in addition to the cost. Having tried both, I would prefer less realistic graphics vs having to keep the cable position in the back of my mind (I don't think I quite realized how much it subtracts from immersion until it went away). If you can assume the system is wireless, I think that actually frees up game design quite a bit to involve more rapid movements around the play-space that might be impractical or dangerous with a cable.
I think the future of PC headsets is wireless streaming to standalone VR devices (I'd much rather have one $400 device that can do both than pay for separate PC and mobile ones). I think Oculus said they were actually investigating wireless PC streaming for the Quest, but obviously that wasn't a design requirement up front so who knows if they will get it working. If they do get it working, it seems like that could basically kill sales for the Rift so I can see why they might not want to put too many resources into it.
I'm here to say that being tethered to a PC is a feature, not a bug.
The advantage to being tethered to a PC is processing power. Any standalone headset is going to be running purely off of batteries. That means there are MASSIVE trade-offs in processing power, especially for the graphics. The GPU in a standalone headset like the Oculus Quest is going to be about as powerful as your phone's GPU or a Nintendo Switch, meaning it won't hold a candle to the power of a mid-grade desktop GPU. Yeah, sure, games are going to be made with that in mind, but it will definitely limit the graphical quality. You might think "Well I don't care much about graphics", but you'll find many game devs unwilling to make a lower quality port of their game in order to support lesser hardware. In other words, there just simply won't be as many games made for the Quest as their will be for desktop. Every PC will have the power to run a Quest game, but Quest will not have the power to run every PC game.