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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

kojack
MVP
MVP
I haven't tried close guns or archery yet. But what I noticed (before the death snow killed all pos tracking) was how bad watch interfaces are now, such as Dash and Arizona Sunshine.
To view a watch, you turn your hand so the tracking ring faces down, reducing it's visibility. You then move your other hand over to in front of it to point at the watch options, your right hand is now fully occluding the left tracking ring.

Eating the hamburger patty in Arizona Sunshine (grab patty and tap it near your face) will result in a bunch of people hitting their headsets. Ok, minor issue, but something to be aware of. 🙂

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

RedRizla
Honored Visionary

MowTin said:


SkScotchegg said:I didn't think it would lose tracking close to your face, I think I had this presumption going in that it would just lose tracking when you put your hands behind your back in Lone Echo. I really didn't think it would effect In Death which is pretty much my favorite game.



Most reviewers said that there was a blind spot close to the HMD. 

Here's a guy playing In Death on the Rift-S

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Rel6WlnUo



I think you are missing the whole point here which is, it's immersive breaking using a bow in this way. I couldn't use the bow like that in my games without thinking this sucks and is immersive breaking. You don't even aim with a bow like that in real life. I would have difficulty at first finding the invisible aim spot he has created for himself in that video. Another things he's doing is using the bow fast and tilted so he doesn't lose tracking.

This is like telling someone to use an XBox or Playstation controller tilted all the time because it doesn't work flat out in front of you. It's just uncomfortable and doesn't feel right. When I hold something it has to feel comfortable and trying to adjust to something other then my natural position just makes it feel awkward.

This link isn't working for me so can someone link a different one? I'd like to hear what he said. As for listing to YouTube reviews I won't be doing that again in a rush. I should have learned my lesson when Tested never mentioned godrays in their YouTube review of the Rift CV1.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/bsfgu0/closetoheadset_controller_tracking_is_being/

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Carmack just acknowledged the issue and said Oculus is working on it:

lytp8fc8ohqr.jpg

Then again, this issue is expected due to physical tracking limitations, and of course Carmack has known about it like forever 😉

Source: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1124334345689366528

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@RuneSR2 - I don't hold out much hope given they have had time to get this headset and software ready. Nobody told them to release these headsets now and nobody was even expecting Rift S. But why are they selling games like this on the store if they don't work properly?

Shame really when the fix is quite straight forward. Just enable the external sensors for Rift S 😄

EventlessHorizo
Explorer
I use a Samsung Windows MIxed Reality head unit in addition to my rift (and now Rift S) and from experience with inside out tracking for a long time I can tell that this is likely an issue that will be fixed. The WMR headsets only have two cameras at the front and I am able to play bow and FPS games with RELATIVE ease.. the Rift S has a far superior amount of tracking where the WMR HMUs go blind (sides and over head) and are forced to software/accelerometer  tracking for controller location. When using bow games on the S it feels like they are having an optimization issue with the tracking software. I have confirmed that the HMU can see my off-hand at a full back bow pull without issue - the problem is that when you go back that far it appears to start to enable off-camera tracking, and even though it's tracking you fine, the second you go to do something important like press the trigger it lags for about a second and THEN performs it. This is probably a double check on hand location prior to triggering the respective action - it's SUPER annoying... nothing like having your arrow fire a second after you press the trigger.. but for now I find if you adjust just a little bit you can draw just fine without hitting that analysis paralysis stutter spot. Given the head unit can see you though even full back I am sure they will be able to fix that issue with just a software update. Guns are the same deal, push out a tiny bit more than you are used to and you should be fine until they optimize the cross-eyed (super close) tracking. 

MowTin
Expert Trustee

RedRizla said:
I think you are missing the whole point here which is, it's immersive breaking using a bow in this way. 


I'm not trying to argue with you. It's the only Rift-S video I found with someone playing In Death. You said it was "unplayable." I believed you but here I find someone playing it. Now you're saying it's "immersion breaking." That's very different from "unplayable." 

Just take a deep breath and just be more accurate in your descriptions. 

I tried Skyrim. The bow was the first thing I tried. I shot a few arrows without issue. 

I'm not denying there is a problem. I don't have Pavlov, Onward or In Depth. I just want to know the extent of the problem too since I'm interested in playing Pavlov and I do like FPS game. 

I did try the scoped weapons in Fallout 4 VR and I had no problem. 

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to gather and present all the facts to get an accurate picture of the extent of the issue. There is certainly an issue. 
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 - I don't hold out much hope given they have had time to get these headset and software ready. Nobody told them to release these headsets now and nobody was even expecting Rift S. But why are they selling games like this on the store if they don't work properly?



Personally I think CV1 was too expensive, I'm guessing that Oculus did try to reduce costs by changing manufacturing methods and maybe lowering QA (all the posts about glue inside the lenses the last year on Reddit). I can't help thinking that much/most about Rift S is about economy. Of course Oculus needs to make money for investors - no business can survive in the long run without profits.
The Rift-S LCD is better res, but I also think LCD now is cheaper than OLED, and getting rid of external sensors probably results in very big savings (at least in materials) for Oculus. Some (many) had problems with the CV1 headphones (right headphone not working or cutting out, Palmer to the rescue or not... etc.), piped audio should fix that and is probably much cheaper too. New Touch seems lower quality according to several users reviews, and Cyber already broke his - could of course be a coincidence, but it matches the low quality reports. 
And no bundled games, no microfiber cloth and no stickers. Everything is cut down to the bare essentials. 
I don't think Oculus can fix tracking or rare incompatibility issues with all games - I suspect they've QA'd the top titles, remaining titles and SteamVR may be hit and miss for now. 2c.   

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary

MowTin said:


RedRizla said:
I think you are missing the whole point here which is, it's immersive breaking using a bow in this way. 


I'm not trying to argue with you. It's the only Rift-S video I found with someone playing In Death. You said it was "unplayable." I believed you but here I find someone playing it. Now you're saying it's "immersion breaking." That's very different from "unplayable." 

Just take a deep breath and just be more accurate in your descriptions. 

I tried Skyrim. The bow was the first thing I tried. I shot a few arrows without issue. 

I'm not denying there is a problem. I don't have Pavlov, Onward or In Depth. I just want to know the extent of the problem too since I'm interested in playing Pavlov and I do like FPS game. 

I did try the scoped weapons in Fallout 4 VR and I had no problem. 

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to gather and present all the facts to get an accurate picture of the extent of the issue. There is certainly an issue. 



@MowTin - How accurate do you want me to be when I've already being as accurate as I can be with my description? I've taken a deep breath now, so now let me ask you a question and try and sum this up again.

I don't know if you use a console, but lets just say you did as an example. If I told you that the XBox controller only worked when you held it tilted instead of flat out in front of you. Would you have any complaints about that or would you just say it's fine because the games are still playable?

I myself would find it not only uncomfortable holding an XBox controller like that, but I would also find games unplayable due to me having to hold it like that. I find it even worse using touch controllers in a way that doesn't mirror how I would hold something in real life. 

I hope Oculus do enable sensors or something happens to fix this because it will allow me to skip purchasing the Valve index if they do. I like my FPS and no compromise like holding something different can be made.

Here's an example of holding a rifle in an incorrect way all be it an exaggerated on 😛

5m1re2xkfpmz.gif


kevinw729
Honored Visionary

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 - I don't hold out much hope given they have had time to get these headset and software ready. Nobody told them to release these headsets now and nobody was even expecting Rift S. But why are they selling games like this on the store if they don't work properly?
....



Shame they did not come to the VR community and ask them to do a test of the Rift-S with the titles they proposed to release - this community would have been more than willing to help in an effort to help promote and offer the best experience on the tech they support!
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
I walked in to the Microsoft Store recently, and they hadn't finished setting up the Rift-S for demo. But they did let me wear it just to test out the comfort level.

I almost bought the damn thing right then and there! Wow, Rift-S is easily the most comfortable VR HMD I've worn to-date. Of all the Oculus HMD's and the Vive. The weight distribution is perfect, and there is no "pressing against the face."

I have read just about everywhere that the visual improvements are very notable and well worth the upgrade. Now I just need to see how Oculus handles addressing the "close to camera" tracking (Thank you, Carmack!!) and I'll be purchasing this HMD.