Valve will be doing a full reveal of the Index tomorrow, and based on what we know so far it will be more expensive and vastly better. At the very least it will be a headset designed for PC gaming by a company that cares about it, rather than a rebranded Windows Mixed Reality headset with a few extra cameras.
I'm actually happy to see this. Strongly feel that the current generation of headsets are not good enough and VR needs at least one more cycle of pushing the envelope at the high end price point before finding mass market success.
Unfortunately, GPU performance per watt/$ seems to be capping out just short of the goal.
If you already have the Vive, you can get just the HMD for $500. It's compatible with the Vive's v1 lighthouses and controllers. Or, you can just get the controllers and continue using your Vive.
Elsewhere on the Oculus site indicates that the Quest has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835.
This lovely article [1] states that:
• The tracking system has been massively changed, and
now functions from the inside-out- only needing one
[I think, not sure] tracking device.
• The same single switching 1280 x 1440 display, but
there's an improved lens setup that should help
reduce the screen-door effect
• Interpupillary distance adjustment is now
digital [this seems really useful]
•Mounting system has gone through a complete
redesign, thanks to a partnership with Lenovo.
Ouch, that's painful. 90Hz is arguably too low already, and 80Hz is definitely so. Especially with Valve's offering coming in at "120Hz with an experimental 144Hz mode"... Yeah, that's a hard pass on the Rift S for me.
80Hz is not "Definitely" to low. I use Oculus Go with a 60Hz refresh rate and have no issues. Its true that some will get motion sickness at 80Hz, but most will not. It will of course be more apparent in high speed games
The Vive probably has a way better screen, but the Oculus has way better controllers. At least they are way better for Beat Saber which is arguably the most controller motion intensive game available.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the Index controllers beat the ones for the Vive. (they're being sold standalone for people with a Vive already)
Either way, controller fidelity is nothing if you can't use the headset without motion sickness, and framerates (+latency) are really important for that.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that there was that much more to it than I thought. If I could, I would edit the parent to say "IPD can be tweaked to a certain, limited degree, in software, per [link]", but I'm way outside of the edit window.
I have pretty great (30/20) vision (no stigmatisms / etc., either), but my eyes are a little further apart than average- and every VR headset I've tried has been fine (including Cardboard), so I guess I was blind to the issues that can happen here.
I suppose the best option that doesn't require manufacturing a bajillion SKU's would be some flavor of mechanical assembly with servo's in it / etc. so that the adjustments can be per-user (like some fancy drivers' seats) instead of manual, which can be irritating to find the perfect setup with- getting projectors perfectly square comes to mind.
