With Rift S proper around the corner, many human beings are approximately to locate that the headset’s on-board audio is lacking in pleasant and that the face gasket will make it challenging for some to get the lenses into the best role max readability and field of view. Luckily there’s a route ahead—the Rift S design is surprisingly modular, permitting both the head strap and the face gasket to be removed, which means that Oculus may want to (and need to) provide add-ons to improve the experience.
Rift S isn’t an awful headset using any approach; however, its enhancements come with a handful of downgrades compared to the unique Rift. For early adopters who sold into Oculus’ environment (and want to live in it), this offers a problem—are the upsides of Rift S well worth the downsides over the original Rift? Right now, it’s now not indeed a clear-reduce answer, and unique humans will probably come to exclusive conclusions.
But, Oculus may want to (and I think should) tilt the scales toward the Rift S by using addressing two-three with optionally available add-ons: audio and ergonomics. Luckily, the Rift S’ truly modular design has to make this smooth. And there’s already precedent within the VR marketplace for this kind of issue; in 2017, HTC launched the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap, which upgraded the headset’s smooth strap to a rigid strap with headphones. Though it cost $100, many consider it an essential accessory—on Amazon, the Deluxe Audio Strap is higher rated than the Vive headset itself!
However, the Rift S includes integrated audio rather than the on-ear headphones of the unique Rift; it uses small speakers constructed into the head strap. The concept is that the headphones won’t get in the way while putting at the headset or want adjustment, and ostensibly it’s a more excellent simple layout with fewer components. The hassle is that the audio pleasant on Rift S isn’t always worse than the authentic Rift. It’s pretty susceptible common.
When using the Rift S, I constantly have it set to one hundred% volume, or even then, I’ve now and then wanted it’d move louder. It’s not simply volume; the small audio system simply doesn’t have a superb frequency variety and entirely missing in bass. Oculus’ other headset, Quest, uses a comparable hidden audio answer; however, it seems to have a better type and more excellent bass.
There’s additionally the matter of positional audio accuracy. The sound is output from someplace above your ear on the Rift S, which biases all positional statistics in that path (because it’s the course of the most significant amplitude). It’s now not that you couldn’t get a feel of positional audio; it simply isn’t as clean because the Rift’s on-ear headphones direct sound more extraordinary evenly into your ear.
Yes, Rift S has a 3.5mm headphone jack on the side which everybody could plug their very own headphones into. Still, the VR market has genuinely shown over the last three years that only a few people want to place up with the annoyance of placing any other component on their head after the headset, not to mention every different cable dangling around their fingers. Even if you were willing to, locating headphones that could effortlessly fit across the Rift S head strap won’t be smooth.
So, how ought to Oculus repair this? There are alternatives. The business enterprise should launch on-ear headphones that snap onto the headband, just like the Mantis headphones for PSVR [Amazon]. These might plug into the three—5 mm jack at the aspect with a quick cable that doesn’t get in the manner.
A more stylish answer could be to provide a Deluxe Audio Strap, a complete substitute for the head strap with on-ear headphones constructed proper in, much like HTC did with the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap.
Compared to the original Rift, which had a wholly affixed head strap, this would be trivial for the Rift S because its head strap is removable from the visor via flipping a little switch and pulling the head strap off.
