6 ms·

I really want to know why this is feasible for the Quest but not the Rift S, given that both have Inside-Out tracking (ie. IR cameras mounted on the headset). I

by gegtik 6y ago

I really want to know why this is feasible for the Quest but not the Rift S, given that both have Inside-Out tracking (ie. IR cameras mounted on the headset). In fact, the Rift S has 5 cameras to the Quests's 4 so it should be at least as capable shouldn't it?

Impossible 6y ago
Internal company politics and prioritization of Quest. It's possible that hand tracking will come to Rift S, but it might be a side effect of wanting to support it with the Quest link cable.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  Just the reality that headsets like Quest are the true future of VR, PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage. I own both and demoing my Rift on a high spec system my friends were blown away and the first question was "Can it run on my macbook?" Then thats where the idea of owning VR died for them. Demoed my Quest and one person bought one within 2 minutes of taking the headset off, took his to a family BBQ and two more people there bought it after trying it for a few minutes. I still enjoy many PCVR games but this is just reality.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    PCVR capabilities are too high for it to be a dead end. More niche, absolutely, because mobile VR/AR has somewhere from console to smartphone-level growth potential--but a smaller, higher-paying market for premium experiences is going to continue.
    - Impossible 6y ago
      It's unlikely that PC will ever be mass market, but when/if VR makes more in roads in productivity applications PC will be key. There is a lot of promise in art creation, game development and 3D content creation, and of course HN's traditional programmer dream of infinite terminals, but the real killer app is telepresence for remote meetings. All of those use cases need better software and hardware
      - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
        >There is a lot of promise in art creation, game development and 3D content creation Absolutely agree with this, literally anyone who can use the headset is able to sculpt a 3D model in Oculus Medium that resembles what they want. Same can't be said for any non-vr 3D modelling software, huge potential in the creative industries. Still niche and not mainstream though.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sevaris 6y ago
    > PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage. PCVR is no more niche than the demographics for Far Cry 5. If you have the hardware to run a modern AAA game on PC, all you're really missing at that point is the headset. And I don't see Ubisoft refusing to make games for PC because there are too few people with powerful enough PCs. As GPU tech continues to develop and higher performance reaches lower price points, it'll also become more accessible to more people. Though you can already pay 200-250 Euros for a decent GPU now and it'll be more than sufficient for VR gaming.
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      Far Cry 5 runs on mid range PC, high end PC, PS4 and Xbox One and it's funding would have relied on the combined profits of all those installs. High end PC is a small fraction of those installs.
MikusR 6y ago
Quest does the processing in the headset and it is very probably accelerated.
- boolcow 6y ago
  Rift S is connected to a far more powerful gaming PC. It seems like Oculus simply treats the Rift S and their customers as a second-class.
  - mentat 6y ago
    Latency even over a few feet can matter.
    - mrlala 6y ago
      By that argument aren't the controllers experiencing more latency on RiftS than Quest already? I realize there is more post-processing with hand tracking, but given that it already experiences the latency of having to process the control actions... not really sure how this could affect it that much. Also, you could argue the hand tracking calculations could be done faster on a PC, so even if there is some perceived latency it could balance out or be better... would really need numbers for all of this, but it does just seem very suspect that they are trying to push more things on the Quest intentionally..
  - rubicon33 6y ago
    This is definitely looking more and more true. Consider the fact that the Rift-S has been out of stock for months. Oculus continues to re-stock the Quest (which sells out within 24h), but we haven't seen a restock of the Rift-S in probably 3 months? Their "Del Mar" which is coming up, is very likely not going to be a tethered headset. My money is it will be standalone like the Quest. Oculus is trying to get the masses to adopt VR and I salute them for it. There will always be headsets like the Valve index for enthusiasts.
    - saurik 6y ago
shafyy 6y ago
I would be suprised if it's primarily a technological reason. My thinking is: The Rift S is 99.99% used for "serious" gaming and PCVR will always be that way. For serious gaming you'll probably need some kind of controllers for the near future, since you want that fidelity and haptic feedback. Now, controllers could be replaced some day by braceletes or what not, but this is not going to happen next year. The Quest and its successors (i.e. stand-alone VR), on the other hand, is and will be more and more used for lighter gaming, video, browsing, productivity, fitness, social etc. Often times, hand-tracking will be enough without the need for controllers. Therefore, they focus their resources on bringing hand-tracking only to the Quest.
- aylmao 6y ago
  +1. Also worth noting, the implementation would be fundamentally different. On the Quest it's running on-device on specific chips, whereas on the Rift S this processing would be done on the user's PC. It's doable, but you probably can't just drop the implementation for hand-tracking on one platform and have it work on the other.
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  My guess is it's partly that but also mixed in with aligning to their mass market consumer ambitions. I've given my Quest to countless people to try out and while every single person is blown away, many / most of them are challenged to use the controllers as anything more than simple pointing devices without significant training. With hand tracking that all goes away. You just use your hands how you normally use them and it "just works". It's similar to how the original iPhone captured everybody's imaginations because it offered such intuitive gestures to control its UI. If you see the Quest as their "mass market" device and then you consider that their top priority is to knock over every barrier that stops it spreading like wildfire, then it's a no brainer to eliminate the controllers.
- Caligatio 6y ago
  The Quest can link to your computer and essentially act as a Rift using a USB cable (needed to be USB 3.0, a recent beta update knocked that down to USB 2). I can easily see the Rift being removed from the product line in the future.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
What's the point of a Rift since you can stream to your Quest now?
rpdillon 6y ago
It's a quirk of the Qualcomm chipset they used in the Quest. It has an extra DSP accelerator that was originally unused, but they managed to repurpose it for hand tracking. It was an opportunistic play, as I understand it.
- jachee 6y ago
  Couldn't they tap into the Host PC's compute power for tethered headsets? It feels like they're trying to exclude anyone who wants to play non-Oculus-published games.
- SimpleMinds 6y ago
  Could you link to a source about that dsp being specifically used for hand-tracking? My quick google didn't found a result that could confirm that and it would explain a bit. Thank you!
  - corndoge 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMIDaomx0GA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMIDaomx0GA It's in here somewhere. It's also extensively covered in the hour breakout session by the folks who implemented it, which is uploaded somewhere though I can't find the link atm.
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    Carmack's keynote that corndoge linked to is exactly my source. I'm not sure about one that's more searchable, unfortunately.
  - xdxdx 6y ago
    Also referenced in this paper (section 5): https://research.fb.com/publications/machine-learning-at-facebook-understanding-inference-at-the-edge/ https://research.fb.com/publications/machine-learning-at-fac...
    - SimpleMinds 6y ago
      Thank you everyone!
TwoBit 6y ago
Rift S could do hand tracking better than Quest, but it requires a separate effort that isn't currently a high priority. Source: I worked on it at Oculus.
- corndoge 6y ago
  How was / is your overall experience at Oculus?
rock_hard 6y ago
Different camera setup on both device would have required twice the amount of training data for the models So they rather doubled down on the more promising form factor

by gegtik 6y ago

Impossible 6y ago

Internal company politics and prioritization of Quest. It's possible that hand tracking will come to Rift S, but it might be a side effect of wanting to support it with the Quest link cable.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Just the reality that headsets like Quest are the true future of VR, PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage. I own both and demoing my Rift on a high spec system my friends were blown away and the first question was "Can it run on my macbook?" Then thats where the idea of owning VR died for them. Demoed my Quest and one person bought one within 2 minutes of taking the headset off, took his to a family BBQ and two more people there bought it after trying it for a few minutes. I still enjoy many PCVR games but this is just reality.
- Miraste 6y ago
  PCVR capabilities are too high for it to be a dead end. More niche, absolutely, because mobile VR/AR has somewhere from console to smartphone-level growth potential--but a smaller, higher-paying market for premium experiences is going to continue.
  - Impossible 6y ago
    It's unlikely that PC will ever be mass market, but when/if VR makes more in roads in productivity applications PC will be key. There is a lot of promise in art creation, game development and 3D content creation, and of course HN's traditional programmer dream of infinite terminals, but the real killer app is telepresence for remote meetings. All of those use cases need better software and hardware
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      >There is a lot of promise in art creation, game development and 3D content creation Absolutely agree with this, literally anyone who can use the headset is able to sculpt a 3D model in Oculus Medium that resembles what they want. Same can't be said for any non-vr 3D modelling software, huge potential in the creative industries. Still niche and not mainstream though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sevaris 6y ago
  > PCVR is an evolutionary dead end a very small percentage of people who can afford them want a gaming PC tower in their home, PCVR is a fraction of a fraction of percentage. PCVR is no more niche than the demographics for Far Cry 5. If you have the hardware to run a modern AAA game on PC, all you're really missing at that point is the headset. And I don't see Ubisoft refusing to make games for PC because there are too few people with powerful enough PCs. As GPU tech continues to develop and higher performance reaches lower price points, it'll also become more accessible to more people. Though you can already pay 200-250 Euros for a decent GPU now and it'll be more than sufficient for VR gaming.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    Far Cry 5 runs on mid range PC, high end PC, PS4 and Xbox One and it's funding would have relied on the combined profits of all those installs. High end PC is a small fraction of those installs.

MikusR 6y ago

Quest does the processing in the headset and it is very probably accelerated.

boolcow 6y ago
Rift S is connected to a far more powerful gaming PC. It seems like Oculus simply treats the Rift S and their customers as a second-class.
- mentat 6y ago
  Latency even over a few feet can matter.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    By that argument aren't the controllers experiencing more latency on RiftS than Quest already? I realize there is more post-processing with hand tracking, but given that it already experiences the latency of having to process the control actions... not really sure how this could affect it that much. Also, you could argue the hand tracking calculations could be done faster on a PC, so even if there is some perceived latency it could balance out or be better... would really need numbers for all of this, but it does just seem very suspect that they are trying to push more things on the Quest intentionally..
- rubicon33 6y ago
  This is definitely looking more and more true. Consider the fact that the Rift-S has been out of stock for months. Oculus continues to re-stock the Quest (which sells out within 24h), but we haven't seen a restock of the Rift-S in probably 3 months? Their "Del Mar" which is coming up, is very likely not going to be a tethered headset. My money is it will be standalone like the Quest. Oculus is trying to get the masses to adopt VR and I salute them for it. There will always be headsets like the Valve index for enthusiasts.
  - saurik 6y ago

shafyy 6y ago

I would be suprised if it's primarily a technological reason. My thinking is: The Rift S is 99.99% used for "serious" gaming and PCVR will always be that way. For serious gaming you'll probably need some kind of controllers for the near future, since you want that fidelity and haptic feedback. Now, controllers could be replaced some day by braceletes or what not, but this is not going to happen next year. The Quest and its successors (i.e. stand-alone VR), on the other hand, is and will be more and more used for lighter gaming, video, browsing, productivity, fitness, social etc. Often times, hand-tracking will be enough without the need for controllers. Therefore, they focus their resources on bringing hand-tracking only to the Quest.

aylmao 6y ago
+1. Also worth noting, the implementation would be fundamentally different. On the Quest it's running on-device on specific chips, whereas on the Rift S this processing would be done on the user's PC. It's doable, but you probably can't just drop the implementation for hand-tracking on one platform and have it work on the other.
zmmmmm 6y ago
My guess is it's partly that but also mixed in with aligning to their mass market consumer ambitions. I've given my Quest to countless people to try out and while every single person is blown away, many / most of them are challenged to use the controllers as anything more than simple pointing devices without significant training. With hand tracking that all goes away. You just use your hands how you normally use them and it "just works". It's similar to how the original iPhone captured everybody's imaginations because it offered such intuitive gestures to control its UI. If you see the Quest as their "mass market" device and then you consider that their top priority is to knock over every barrier that stops it spreading like wildfire, then it's a no brainer to eliminate the controllers.
Caligatio 6y ago
The Quest can link to your computer and essentially act as a Rift using a USB cable (needed to be USB 3.0, a recent beta update knocked that down to USB 2). I can easily see the Rift being removed from the product line in the future.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

What's the point of a Rift since you can stream to your Quest now?

rpdillon 6y ago

It's a quirk of the Qualcomm chipset they used in the Quest. It has an extra DSP accelerator that was originally unused, but they managed to repurpose it for hand tracking. It was an opportunistic play, as I understand it.

jachee 6y ago
Couldn't they tap into the Host PC's compute power for tethered headsets? It feels like they're trying to exclude anyone who wants to play non-Oculus-published games.
SimpleMinds 6y ago
Could you link to a source about that dsp being specifically used for hand-tracking? My quick google didn't found a result that could confirm that and it would explain a bit. Thank you!
- corndoge 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMIDaomx0GA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMIDaomx0GA It's in here somewhere. It's also extensively covered in the hour breakout session by the folks who implemented it, which is uploaded somewhere though I can't find the link atm.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  Carmack's keynote that corndoge linked to is exactly my source. I'm not sure about one that's more searchable, unfortunately.
- xdxdx 6y ago
  Also referenced in this paper (section 5): https://research.fb.com/publications/machine-learning-at-facebook-understanding-inference-at-the-edge/ https://research.fb.com/publications/machine-learning-at-fac...
  - SimpleMinds 6y ago
    Thank you everyone!

TwoBit 6y ago

Rift S could do hand tracking better than Quest, but it requires a separate effort that isn't currently a high priority. Source: I worked on it at Oculus.

corndoge 6y ago
How was / is your overall experience at Oculus?

rock_hard 6y ago

Different camera setup on both device would have required twice the amount of training data for the models So they rather doubled down on the more promising form factor