Oculus Rift Review - Review 2022

Editors' Annotation: This review has been updated to reflect the inclusion of the Oculus Affect controllers with the Rift, and its lowered price. The score has not been changed, but the revised value proposition has resulted in naming it our Editors' Choice.

The retail version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset finally arrived in 2022, afterward multiple development kits and several years of piece of work. Since so, the excellent Oculus Touch motion controllers were added to the Rift as office of a $598 parcel, slashing $100 each from the original toll of both the headset and the controllers. And since and so, the bundle's cost has been further cutting to $399. The Oculus Rift remains functional and immersive, if you have a computer that can handle information technology.

With the improver of the Oculus Touch controllers, the Rift is more appealing than the more expensive HTC Vive. While the Sony PlayStation VR is our Editors' Choice for its ease of use and lower bulwark to entry (you but need a PS4 as opposed to a powerful gaming PC), the Oculus Rift in its current form earns our Editors' Pick for PC-tethered headsets thanks to its approachable cost tag, Oculus Touch controllers, and back up for whole-room VR.

What You lot Need

Official requirements for the Rift ($427.81 at Amazon) are well-nigh identical to the requirements for the HTC Vive. Oculus recommends an Intel i5-4590 or better CPU, an Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 or ameliorate video card, at least 8GB of RAM, an HDMI 1.iii output, three USB 3.0 ports, and 1 USB 2.0 port. One of those ports is for the additional sensor of the Oculus Touch controller, and you tin can fix up the Rift itself with merely two USB 3.0 ports: one for the headset and ane for the external sensor. I tested it using the Origin EON17-X, which has a Core i7 6700K CPU overclocked to 4.5GHz, an 8GB GeForce GTX 980M graphics carte du jour, and 16GB of RAM.

For more options, check out the all-time Oculus bundles and Oculus-fix PCs we've tested.

Design

The Oculus Rift headset is simple and understated. It's a apparently black rectangular visor with rounded edges and little visual flair. The front panel is completely flat, marked only with an Oculus logo. The sides of the visor are similarly flat, and connect to arms that pivot slightly upward and downward and attach to the iii-strap harness for securing the device on your head.

A strap extends from each arm around the sides of your head, with a tertiary strap extending from the tiptop of the visor over the top of your caput, meeting at a padded triangle in the back. The straps are held in place with hook-and-loop fasteners, and can be hands adjusted. A set of on-ear headphones sit on the arms, able to separately pivot and flip upwards and downwards to properly fit on your ears.

On its own, the headset is adequately low-cal and comfy. You can article of clothing glasses with the Rift, but it will make the fit a bit tighter. I used my spectacles when testing the headset, which helped ensure that I saw well-baked and accurate visuals. But it also made putting the Rift on and taking it off a bit awkward, and depending on the size of your frames, they could injure your ability to clothing the headset for long periods of time.

The headset connects to your PC directly through a lengthy cablevision that splits off nearly the terminate into HDMI and USB 3.0 connectors. The cable winds down the left strap before running clear of the headset. It's a lilliputian more awkward than the over-the-top-of-the-head cablevision of the HTC Vive, and I found myself struggling to find a comfortable position where the cable didn't sit down distractingly on my shoulder. Only it's not most as big a business in use as the HTC Vive's cable, since the Vive is designed to work when you're walking around a set area.

The Rift on its own uses a single external sensor, a black cylinder that sits on a 9-inch-alpine metal desktop stand. The sensor can tilt upward and down, and must exist placed where information technology tin maintain a clear view of the headset when in use. A 2nd, identical sensor tracks the Oculus Touch on controllers, and the ii sensors work in tandem to improve tracking for all of the devices and cover a larger surface area than the stationary position just 1 sensor allows.

Once you're up and running, a 2,160-by-1,200 OLED panel is used to produce a ane,080-by-1,200 picture for each eye, separated by the lenses in the headset (just like the Vive). The lenses can be adjusted using a pocket-size lever on the correct underside of the visor. More on the visual themselves in a bit.

Controls

The Oculus Bear upon motion controllers originally launched as an optional addition, but accept since been added to the standard Rift package. They aren't the but command options included in the box, though. The Oculus Remote is a small, rounded bar with a big, circular navigation pad and Back, Menu, and Upwards/Downward buttons. The remote helpfully features a lanyard to keep information technology attached to your wrist when yous're using the Rift. The Rift also includes an Xbox 1 wireless controller and a Microsoft Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows with which you tin utilize it, which is handy for VR games that employ conventional, not-motion-based command schemes.

With the Oculus Affect controllers, the Rift's controls reach parity with the HTC Vive's, which has included move controls out of the box since its launch. Nosotros go into more detail in our review of the Oculus Touch on, only it's a very comfortable, natural-feeling control scheme with responsive physical components similar analog sticks and face buttons in addition to motion tracking.

Setup

Setting up the Rift is simple. You lot need to download the Oculus setup software on your PC, which volition then walk you through the relatively few steps necessary to go going. First, plug the headset and sensors into your estimator, using an HDMI and three USB 3.0 ports. 2nd, sync the remote past pulling out the battery tab and pressing a button. Finally (and optionally), plug the Xbox One receiver into a USB 2.0 port and pair the gamepad with it. Once these steps are consummate, you can slip the headset on and jump into the Oculus software.

At this point in the setup process, you lot can play whatever software available on the Oculus Store, merely you can become further with relatively little hassle. By setting the Oculus software to load apps from unidentified sources, you lot can get the headset to piece of work with SteamVR, only like the HTC Vive uses. The launch of Oculus Touch on ways you tin can now use all SteamVR games that support motion controls with the Rift. They register every bit HTC Vive motion controllers when you prepare them up for Steam, and work flawlessly with Vive-uniform games.

Thanks to the 2nd external sensor required for the Oculus Impact motion controls, the Rift now supports whole-room VR similar to the Vive. With the sensors placed properly, they can rails your movements over a relatively large (starting at five by 7 feet) space.

The Oculus Experience

The Rift shares the same resolution and refresh rate as the Vive, and as such the experience is very like between the two. Like the Vive, the Rift produces a crisp moving picture with smooth move and head tracking. In testing, the 3D effect of the stereoscopic images really gave me the sense that the virtual objects I was staring at were really in front end of me. Ultimately, the Rift headset is a brandish, then smoothness and graphical fidelity will depend on the power of your calculator and sophistication of the software. In terms of hardware, though, the Rift produces a compelling virtual experience for the optics.

I played a few VR titles available on the Oculus store, including EVE: Valkyrie, Farlands, and Lucky'due south Tale. I also tried Adventure Time: Magic Human'due south Caput Games and Virtual Desktop, launched through SteamVR.

EVE: Valkyrie is the star of the launch titles for the Oculus Rift. It's an online, multiplayer infinite dogfighting game sent in the EVE universe. Yous play a cloned pilot who runs sorties with your squad against other, similar squads. Information technology boils downward to the infinite version of team deathmatch in any first-person shooter, but it'due south an engaging and fairly deep flight game.

The format is perfect for using the Rift while sitting. The view puts you in the cockpit of your chosen space fighter, and you tin can freely await around information technology while staying in identify. The game itself is controlled with the Xbox One gamepad, piloting the ship with the dual analog sticks and firing with the triggers. Fundamentally, the VR aspect of the game is unnecessary; the experience is actually like to playing a dogfighting game on a normal monitor, just with the power to look freely around your cockpit (which doesn't offer any significant tactical reward). Notwithstanding, the immersiveness the Rift offers in completely engulfing you in this cockpit perspective really makes the game feel more engaging and tense.

See How We Test VR Headsets

Information technology isn't a complex economical MMO like EVE itself, and the way of combat is a flake arcade-like in how ships wing and burn, but information technology'southward enjoyable to wing around in infinite, shooting at people while they shoot at you lot. It feels like one of the most complete games made specifically with VR in mind.

Farlands is a xenobiological playground. You lot play a researcher on an alien planet, looking for new life forms. You lot can browse different creatures past staring at them, and improve your understanding of them past feeding them foods they want. It has a very mellow quality, looking for alien animals and watching them eat to slowly and steadily unlock new environments to explore. While the concept seems ideal for motion controls, it was simple to play with a conventional gamepad, using a reticle in the center of your view to highlight objects and move effectually.

Lucky's Tale is a standard cartoony third-person platformer where you command a drawing fox equally he runs through different levels trying to rescue his pet grunter. It's an eye-catching feel that doesn't really demand VR at all. Using the Rift in a game similar this lets you expect around easily from your above-the-action point of view. However, yous can't readily move the photographic camera to get a better view of a given position relative to the graphic symbol you're controlling, which proved to be very frustrating when trying to go Lucky to collect lines of coins set in specific arcs in 3D infinite; without the power to pan around Lucky, I couldn't easily marshal my jumps.

Our review of the Oculus Bear upon goes into item of what Oculus Rift games that back up Affect are like, merely to summarize the experience, the optional Touch controllers brand things similar spray-painting walls, aiming guns, and using telekinetic powers feel very natural.

SteamVR

I ran Gamble Fourth dimension: Magic Man's Head Games (ATMMHG) on SteamVR to see if the Rift could handle it equally smoothly every bit the Vive does. While SteamVR isn't the Rift's native platform, it displayed the interface and loaded the game perfectly, and I institute it was just as shine and immersive equally information technology is on the Vive (though, like with Lucky's Tale, the actual value of playing said third-person platformer in VR is still questionable).

I besides tried Virtual Desktop, a program that projects your computer's screen in front of you lot in virtual space. It was merely every bit functional and intriguing every bit it was with the HTC Vive, showing my monitor as a giant, curved display around me. The software tin can too generate a flat screen, and even show your desktop view as a tv set mounted on the wall of a home theater. Information technology'southward a handy manner to make VR useful, even without VR-specific software. If you want to spotter a video and it'southward non available on a client for the Oculus Rift or on SteamVR, you tin only load it with Virtual Desktop.

The simply downside is the resolution of the display. Since the Rift shows a 1,080-past-1,200 picture to each center, and the virtual screen appears as a floating object, information technology's actually smaller than the headset'south per-eye resolution. That means text tin appear blurry and grainy unless you discover a sweet spot from which to wait at the screen, and reading can cause eye strain. That said, watching video on Hulu and Netflix is very absurd.

Conclusions

The Oculus Rift comfortably produces an immersive, well-baked virtual reality experience that will proceed to improve with the development of new software, which has been steadily coming out on both the Oculus store and SteamVR. At present that the Rift costs two-thirds of its original $600 price and includes the Oculus Bear on controllers and second external sensor that enables whole-room VR, it earns our Editors' Pick for PC-based VR headsets. We nevertheless really like the even less expensive and easier-to-employ PlayStation VR, which retains its Editors' Choice as a VR headset designed for the PlayStation 4.

If you lot want to effort virtual reality, but you don't desire to spend at least $400, the new standalone Oculus Become is your best bet. It'southward simply $200 and lets you use VR without any cables or connected computer, but since it's finer a midrange phone permanently fastened to a Samsung Gear VR, it doesn't accept near the graphical capabilities, motion controls, or whole-room motility tracking of the Rift.

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Further Reading

• HTC Launches Vive Sync for VR Video Chats
• Magic Leap Lays Off i,000 Employees every bit Funding Dries Upwardly
• Save $200 on Samsung HMD Odyssey+ VR Headset
• Valve Blames Coronavirus for 'Far Fewer' Index VR Headsets
• HTC Tips VR Headsets With Interchangeable Faceplates, Teases Proton XR Glasses

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/consumer-electronics-reviews-ratings-comparisons/15231/oculus-rift-review

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