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Rift S - Please read before you buy - Tracking problems with realistic FPS sims & Archery

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee
EDIT: NEW UPDATE PLEASE READ - Read this first before continuing - Oculus has now released a new beta update called 1.39 which fixes many of these issues - I have eddied my main post of this thread so newcomers to Rift S can read this good news on how to fix their issues before continuing...You have to go into your Oculus software, click settings, click the Beta TAB at the top, click the button next to "Public Test Channel" which will automatically download Oculus software 1.39 and restart Oculus. Once you have installed this software update you will see that tracking has been massively improved for FPS games when holding two handed rifles and aiming down scopes. I have tested this on Onward today and played for over 3 hours and now the game is very playable. Before this update I couldn't play any FPS with two handed weapons, now they all seem to work fine!! Well done Oculus devs and thanks for the software update!  🙂


Original post below:
Hey everyone, I got my Rift S on launch day and was initially really impressed. But since then I have tried a wider verity of games and have since discovered a glaring issue with Rift S which is the tracking.

Before Rift S launched I was worried about the sound, that was my only concern, and yeah the sound isn't great but when I used my own headphones that solved the problem so when I was playing Robo Recall, Beat Saber, and Audica etc it all looked and performed fantastic and I soon forgot about the sound as I was enjoying the games so much.

But last night I bought Contractors on Steam which appears to be a great multiplayer FPS with great graphics but unfortunately is completely unplayable on RIft S! There's simply no other way to say it.

FPS games like Onward, Contractors, Pavlov and Archery games like In Death/Sacralith just aren't going to work with Rift S. You can't aim down the sites, soon as you hold your right hand up to your face in the normal position to look down the sites of a rifle or to look down an arrow the tracking freezes in place and stops working and makes it impossible to aim.

So after playing with Rift CV1 for the past 2.5 years this is completely dreadful. And btw the first year or so with CV1 I only had 2 front sensors which worked perfectly, the only reason I bought a 3rd sensor in the 2nd year was for pavlov so I could pick up weapons from the floor, so since then I used 3 camera setup in my dinning room and the Rift tracking was 100% perfect and never lost tracking for me.

If your planning on only playing Arcade games like Robo Recall, Superhot, Beat Saber and Audica, you will be fine, go ahead and buy Rift S and enjoy the amazing clarity of the optics and increased resolution.

But if you want to play FPS games or Archery games, your basically buying a product that does not work, your wasting your money and would be better buying a 2nd hand Rift CV1 off ebay/amazon.

Of course we heard in the past that Oculus could enable the old CV1 room sensors through software, I desperately hope they do this, otherwise for people like me that enjoy FPS/Archery games as well as the usual Arcade games, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, because I like Rift S, but what am I suppose to do? Use Rift CV1 for half my games library??

I'm quite shocked and hugely disappointed by this, I think maybe what other people were saying about Lenovo was right, I don't think Oculus/Facebook should have partnered with them because if this is the outcome then, well, no thanks.

I feel sorry for everyone who has pre-ordered expecting to play Onward/Contractors/Pavlov/In Death/
Sacralith etc and expecting this to be good. I think we need to all sign a petition to Oculus to enable the old CV1 room sensors for proper tracking otherwise they will have a lot of refunds going in and also this is very bad for people new to VR. In fact I'd go as far as to say that all FPS and Archery games should be taken off Oculus store for Rift S owners until this is resolved because otherwise what's the point? Everyone buying those games will have to refund I suppose.

Sorry for the rant guys, but I felt compelled to inform the community of this. People need to know how bad this tracking really is.

And also before Rift S was released people were saying the future is inside/out tracking. Well I'm sorry guys, but you couldn't of been more wrong. Inside/out tracking only works for Arcade games, sim racing games, elite dangerous and maybe Quest if Quest mainly uses Arcade games too? I'll leave that part for Quest users to comment on.

I own Rift CV 1, Oculus GO and now Rift S, was planning on buying Quest too but I'll hold off on that for a while until I read more reviews. 
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!
356 REPLIES 356

There's probably slightly different mechanics in different games, bound to be some that don't work well with the S.

I have a feeling though the Bethesda offerings won't be updated as there are several existing bugs that never got sorted out, so as long as those games work ok with the S then I'm not too concerned. I think other devs will be more willing to sort out problems.

Morgrum
Expert Trustee

MowTin said:



The bow in skyrim works just fine.  Haven't tried onward yet since I just had knee surgery and can't stand for very long. 


Same. So, why is the OP saying that bow games don't work? Is it possible he lines up the bow like a rifle? 


You do line a bow and rifle up in very similar sight alingment.
Body position can be vastly different though depending on if your going for short range to long distance.
WAAAGH!

MowTin
Expert Trustee

Morgrum said:
You do line a bow and rifle up in very similar sight alingment.
Body position can be vastly different though depending on if your going for short range to long distance.


But you don't line up the tip and back of the arrow the way you line up the rifle front and back sights, right?
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

Morgrum
Expert Trustee
Very true but Im refering more to sights placed on a hunting bow and not the arrow itself.

Old school recurves are a whole nother subject where being a marksmen really is an artform.
That requires you to lead with the arrowhead and elevate the bow for distance to where you believe the target will be.
Skeet shooting is very similar to this without the need for much elevation alteration.

Rifles and such add the lining up of sights to ensure you are firing straight but you are using the same aiming principles. 
Breath control, Aiming, Windage, using your dominate eye to track your target.

WAAAGH!

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee
I don't know how to explain it, I just pull the arrow back to the right side of my HMD in "In Death VR Archery game" and it just freezes the tracking, if your shooting someone at 10 yards, 30 yards your ok but when your trying to do a HD from long distance say 50-100 yards your screwed.

And in Contractors that was the worst game so far, for me Contractors is completely unplayable on Rift S. the gun just spazzes out and freezes everytime you move your rifle up to normal position, even when your not really looking down the sites but your bring it up to your shoulder it just freezes and makes it impossible to aim.

Going back to "In Death", I've always been really good at this game, I've always enjoyed getting headshots from really far away but now I can't do it.

Also in Contractors I tried to hold riffle in a weird way to compensate for the tracking to see if it made a differance, I tried to hold it further out in front of me...not that you would ever do that when playing this game or any other game like it, but when I did try to hold it further away with both hands the tracking kicked back in.

If they really wanted this type out inside/out tracking to work they should have fitted maybe another 5 cameras on the headset which could see everything, even at close range.
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

Anonymous
Not applicable
Works very well for me

Anonymous
Not applicable
Played Apex Construct for a couple hours and never had an issue with archer....worked perfectly.  I'm incredibly impressed with the Rift S

I think people have alluded to this being a possible problem in the last few weeks and yeah, it maks sense.  Hopefully the developers will come up with some ideas in the near future.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee

rservello said:

Played Apex Construct for a couple hours and never had an issue with archer....worked perfectly.  I'm incredibly impressed with the Rift S



That's interesting, I'll be home soon and I have Apex Construct too so I'll check that one out. Is that game not more Arcadey then In Death though? I have quite a few Archery games but I find that In Death is the most realistic in terms of having the best bow mechanics.

I bought Apex Construct a few months back but only played it briefly. 
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee
The first four games I'm going to try when I get home are:

Pavlov, 
Apex Construct
Onward
Skyrim

And then I'll report back.
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!