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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

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee

jkh0208 said:

"Tracking doesn't work for FPS & Archery games"...  I've had no issues playing Serious Sam VR (FPS game) or with archery in Skyrim on the Rift S.



Hello and thanks for your input. With regards to Serious Sam you hold your arms out in front of you so that would work fine with Insight tracking. We've already clarified in this thread that Arcade games work great with Rift S. 

The more realistic FPS games like Onward/Pavlov/Contractors where you use scopes and bring your hand close to your head are the ones that appear to have trouble with Insight tracking.

As for Skyrim, my experience was completely different, obviously the bow works, if you launch the game, pull the arrow back and let go it works but what I was explaining was when I tried to aim for long distance HS in games like Apex/Skyrim/In Death etc the bow would freeze when my right hand got close to the side of my head and I wouldn't be able to aim, it would freeze and jerk/stutter making it impossible to play.

If your just shooting from the hip or perhaps holding the bow in a different way maybe you can get around this but for me I just couldn't enjoy the game as it hurts my arms to hold the bow in an unnatural position.

My questions for people that claim Archery works fine for them would be:
  • How are you holding the bow? 
  • Have you not noticed jerking/freezing at all? Like ever? Even for split second or how many times during 1 hour of play time?
  • When you play Skyrim and other Archery games how long are you playing for? Because in terms of testing there's a big difference between 30 seconds to 5 minutes and 1-2 hours.
  • Also have you played the same games in VR on old CV1 or Vive? Or is Rift S your first time in VR?
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee

kevinw729 said:




Thanks for this, I'll give this a try tonight, at least then I can say I've eliminated every possible scenario on my end.

I must admit though I am a little bit weary of messing with the cable on the headset it's self but I'll give it a go and see if I notice any improvements. 
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

CrashFu
Consultant



jkh0208 said:

"Tracking doesn't work for FPS & Archery games"...  I've had no issues playing Serious Sam VR (FPS game) or with archery in Skyrim on the Rift S.



Hello and thanks for your input. With regards to Serious Sam you hold your arms out in front of you so that would work fine with Insight tracking. We've already clarified in this thread that Arcade games work great with Rift S. 

The more realistic FPS games like Onward/Pavlov/Contractors where you use scopes and bring your hand close to your head are the ones that appear to have trouble with Insight tracking.


You might want to edit the title of the thread, to eliminate this confusion going forwards.  The vast majority of VR FPS are based around 1-handed guns, and anything else that can be held out in front of you or hip-fired (where the lower-corner sensors can see)  work just fine...  your tracking problems have been with two-handed, scoped rifles specifically.

Maybe change it to "Tracking problems with Realistic Shooting Sims", or something like that.


SkScotchegg said:

As for Skyrim, my experience was completely different, obviously the bow works, if you launch the game, pull the arrow back and let go it works but what I was explaining was when I tried to aim for long distance HS in games like Apex/Skyrim/In Death etc the bow would freeze when my right hand got close to the side of my head and I wouldn't be able to aim, it would freeze and jerk/stutter making it impossible to play.

If your just shooting from the hip or perhaps holding the bow in a different way maybe you can get around this but for me I just couldn't enjoy the game as it hurts my arms to hold the bow in an unnatural position.

My questions for people that claim Archery works fine for them would be:
  • How are you holding the bow? 
  • Have you not noticed jerking/freezing at all? Like ever? Even for split second or how many times during 1 hour of play time?
  • When you play Skyrim and other Archery games how long are you playing for? Because in terms of testing there's a big difference between 30 seconds to 5 minutes and 1-2 hours.
  • Also have you played the same games in VR on old CV1 or Vive? Or is Rift S your first time in VR?


1.

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Is there more than one way to hold a bow???

2.   I had occasional jerking / freezing the first time I played  (just like what you describe when playing Skyrim), but after replugging my headset cable to make sure it was fully connected, and disabling windows power-saving features, and making sure Windows and all my drivers were up-to-date,  those issues went away.

3.  Usually a level or two of Apex Construct or a couple runs through the first level of In Death   (Anakhim usually gets me. :grimace: )

4.  I played a ton of In Death on CV1, and the constellation sensors were far from perfect.   Actually, I think they did pretty well when I was only using two (and confined to 180-degree tracking), but when I tried to set up a full 360-degree setup with four of them, the tracking started getting all wonky... probably a shortage of usb bandwidth.  Anything bumping the sensors would also just ruin everything..
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee

CrashFu said:

You might want to edit the title of the thread, to eliminate this confusion going forwards.  The vast majority of VR FPS are based around 1-handed guns, and anything else that can be held out in front of you or hip-fired (where the lower-corner sensors can see)  work just fine...  your tracking problems have been with two-handed, scoped rifles specifically.

Maybe change it to "Tracking problems with Realistic Shooting Sims", or something like that.

Yeah good point about the title of the thread, I'll edit it to be more specific.
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

Anonymous
Not applicable
I seem to have immensely improved my tracking with the bow in In Death.

I recently did a fresh install of Windows 10 and set everything up again and this time I plugged my Rift S into the USB 3.1 port on my motherboard. Went into In Death and my tracking was a bit better but still not great. I then went into the Oculus Settings and changed the Room Lighting Frequency from Auto (50Hz) to 60Hz and things are MUCH improved. Still a bit spotty in places at times but it's a lot better. I'm going to try Skyrim VR in a bit.

Once you get everything right (I think the 3.1 port REALLY helped!) then the tracking is reasonable in In Death. Not perfect but I'm pretty sure that Oculus and especially Carmack will do plenty of work with the predictive algorithms when the Touch controllers are close to the headset during these next few months. Remember, the WVR tracking was a real clusterfuck at times when they first launched and it took them a few months for them to nail everything down.

MowTin
Expert Trustee

RedRizla said:
The thread is about First Person Shooters being a problem and not Beat Saber to be fair.


Someone in this thread said they weren't able to play Beat Saber on expert on the Rift-S. 
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RedRizla
Honored Visionary

MowTin said:


RedRizla said:
The thread is about First Person Shooters being a problem and not Beat Saber to be fair.


Someone in this thread said they weren't able to play Beat Saber on expert on the Rift-S. 



Sorry, my bad. I thought you meant people were able to play Beat Saber, so should have no problem with tracking. Now I see you meant there's some people having a problem with Beat Saber too. 

I got my response from Oculus about the rifle issue after about 5 days and it was the usual thing about disconnecting the headset and going through the Usb fixes. I thought the whole idea of Rift S was that it would be easy to setup, so I hope there's a better solution then to mess about with Usb settings and disconnecting & reconnecting your DP going forward.

None of the Oculus Support suggestions fixed the issue though, but I didn't expect it to tbh. I think it's down to there being a dead spot underneath the headset where you would normally have your trigger finger on a riffle. I can see how Archery games might get fix though with the hand being near to the ear when pulling back the Bow string. I would expect the side camera to fix that problem at some point.

When using a rifle though my hand is much lower down from my ear though, so I'm not sure how that issue is going to be fixed. That's why I suggested it might have been an idea to place a camera on the bottom of the headset like there is on the top. That way I'm sure the headset could have constantly tracked the controller. There might have been reasons why they couldn't put a camera there though, but it's just a thought I had when I saw it didn't work with rifles well.

I hope eventually inside out tracking can work to track rifles properly, because if it can't I will have to go with VR headsets that offer external sensors and outside in from now on.

Luciferous
Consultant
I was thinking last night, if they allowed people to add cameras to the headset, is there a USB port on it still?

I bet the community could come up with some interesting solutions. Maybe for the back blind spot, a clip on camera that extends out of the back of your head and looks down. Maybe an aerial extension with a camera on top that looks down. It wouldn't have to be very tall just enough to get a little distance from the controller.

I had had a few drinks last night though.

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RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@Luciferous - Thankfully I won't have to do that if it becomes a mod, because I will have both Rift -S and Valve index shortly. Just waiting to hear about the Valve index more before deciding to purchase. it's definitely going to hurt my wallet all this because I'll soon be upgrading my Graphics card too.

Luciferous
Consultant
Well I would suggest you reserve it at least. I reserved mine 3 hours after launch. There is no obligation to buy and you don't have to put money down. They send you an email when ready to ship and if you don't respond in 7 days you lose the reserve. So nothing to lose but you may get one earlier if you do decide to go ahead.