A quick question if I may? Am I likely to see an appreciable/worthwhile difference in visual quality/performance moving from a Rift S to a Quest 2 (I have the latter sitting here, with link cable, unopened and ready to return if the answer is “No”)? My Rift S performance is currently good using OTT but I would like better visual clarity of the instruments if possible. System: i7 97005 @ 5GHz; RTX 2080 overclocked; 32 gb RAM. Thank you.
I just picked up the Quest 2 the other day and so far it makes me want to puke. Lol
Yes and no. A real upgrade would be the G2, I went from a Rift S to a Q2 and although visual fidelity was better with the higher res, it’s the link situation which bothered me, no matter how high I set the bitrate compression is always a factor, especially in sim racing where cars are moving quick in front of you round corners as the data tries to keep up and the advertising boards are tearing, I ended up getting a G2 before returning the Q2 and sending back whichever I preferred for my sim situation. Took less than an hour including setup of the G2, to realise the G2 is far superior for simming and cockpit situations. I hear the hand tracking o the G2 is not great, but I will never use the hand controllers as I specifically use vr for simming.
Personally I would say:
If your only going to use VR for cockpit games, the G2 wins hands down, not even a contest really.
However if your planning on a more all round VR experience with stand up games, family using it etc, and you don’t mind the compression then the Q2 is most certainly an upgrade.
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Thank you both, very much appreciated. It looks like I might be returning the Quest 2 unopened which is a pity really as VR Flightsim Guy’s states in his recently posted YouTube video “Quest 2 Update! Everything Has Changed!” that the latest beta version of the Oculus software has made a Herculean difference to the performance of the Quest 2 in FS2020, putting its performance ahead of the Rift S and very close to the G2. His PC specs are better than mine though!
Remember that YouTubers live and die by the amount of hype and clickbait they can produce.
I am a very knowledgeable, 4+ year Oculus user, and the benefits that come with the current beta of v27 are not that big. The only thing I see of significance is that they fixed whatever was causing frame sync problems with MSFS and X-Plane, but this could already be fixed previously by setting v-sync to Fast in nvidia control panel. Other than that, I see no difference, except that it also has a major bug that forces everyone to run at 72Hz no matter what option they’ve chosen. Those two factors combined will add performance headroom and improved smoothness, but they’re things you could already do before.
Interesting and thank you SwirlyMaple7. Am I right in assuming then that you don’t consider the Quest 2 a worthwhile upgrade from a Rift S?
Whew… that’s a tough call honestly, because it has pros and cons.
The screen resolution of the Q2 is definitely a lot better. When you’re running native Quest apps on it, they look beautifully crisp. BUT – and this a big but – when you’re using Link for PCVR, it takes a ton of CPU and GPU to render with the same quality as the standalone apps, due to their (shortsighted, IMO) reliance on USB transfer and image compression/decompression. So while it has the potential to look a lot better, the reality is that unless you’ve got a supercomputer, it ends up looking more like a Rift S, just without the screen-door effect. In other words, it’s not really more detailed most of the time – you just don’t see the textured gaps between pixels.
If all you’re doing is PCVR, then the Rift S is better in almost every other way, IMO (and even the original Rift, for that matter). For PCVR purposes there’s not really anything about the Q2 that is better than those devices except the higher resolution screens and the wireless capabilities. Link is still not up to par with your wired display connection on Rift/Rift S, no matter what others claim – it has a higher motion-to-photon latency when comparing apples to apples, and is more taxing on GPU for producing an equivalent image. I guess the price point and hope for future improvements might be another pro in Quest 2’s favor, but honestly I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Oculus has abandoned their dedicated PCVR lineup, so I really doubt Link and the PC side of things will be getting the kind of focus it did in the past. It’s a shame, because the original Rift was an absolutely killer headset in its day. It was comfortable, lightweight, great screens, phenomenal controllers (those first-gen Touch controllers were a masterpiece of design – the ones that followed with Rift S/Quest were a travesty in comparison, though the Quest 2 controllers have upped the quality again, but still not as good as the originals), extremely fluid and fast head tracking, better color from its OLED displays – I still find it more immersive in many ways than my Quest 2 because the only thing it can’t compete with is resolution.
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Thank you (again) and for taking the time to provide such a detailed explanation which I am sure will be of help to others as much as it has been to me.
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In my Opinon the Quet 2 Is much better. Screendoor Effect is gone and for me it’s a lot more comfortable than the Rift S. I sold my Rift S. its so cool to play without any cables. The Quest 2 is a great VR Headset for sure! it just seems more “clever” than the Rift S.
Not to muddy the waters, but… I’ve struggled with the G2 with “just” cockpit stuff. Best I can tell, the poor WMR tracking extends to the headset as well as the hand controllers. I have an Index in the mail (perfect lighthouse tracking, noticeably worse resolution 
) and my G2 has been sent to HP for servicing, though I am 99% sure there is nothing defective about it that isn’t a problem with a fully working headset.
There is minor jitter in even the headset tracking that may have you wanting to tear your hair out after extended use. On a quick test flight, you may not even notice it, but once you start daily driving it and start interacting with navigation controls regularly and the AP button shifts out from underneath right before you’re able to click it for the Nth time, you may find yourself having a bad time.
I’ve had people confirm the behavior I’ve described, and I’ve had many people claim that their tracking is rock solid. Your mileage may vary. I honestly think the WMR tracking is just not very high quality, and depending on your sensitivity to such things, it may or may not bother you. I’ll report back both when I get my Index and when I get my Reverb G2.
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I have a Rift S, and just had an epiphany, and decided to run FS2020 with the Oculus Tray tool turned off.
I just increased the resolution of the render scaling within the FS2020 VR Graphics options upto the 2999 / 3k range, with most sliders set to medium/ high or Ultra.
Now the sim looks beautiful and clear. I was struggling for days prior to that since i would always use / open the OTT before starting MFS.
I do have a 3090 with an intel i9-10850, 64 GB memory. But even with that, the VR display was very poor, jagged, the objects on the horizon and a few miles out were blurry. Everything shimmerred and stuttered, lines looked jaggy.
But when i switched off the Tray Tool, and just increased the Render Scaling as high as it can go, WOW! everything became so crisp and smooth.
Oculus Beta V 27
Flew out of Santa Barbara, airport, California, and then Lukla airport , Kathmandu! What a joy to fly in VR. It makes it impossible to go back to 2D, even with a 49 inch ultra wide screen samsung !
Once you go GOOD VR, you never go back.
And with the Alpha yoke, Bravo Throttle, and Saitek Radio Panels, its a pure joy to fly (I fly VFR GA only)
Only thing i wish for now is a wider FOV.
Hi everyone,
I’ve got a Ryzen 5 3600 and a GTX 1080 along with 16 GB RAM.
I am considering getting a VR headset; but I’m worried that my pc might not handle the load properly. I normally fly the A320 and do most of my flying in IFR.
In my case, would you recommend the Rift S ?
Thanks a lot.
Love my rift s and if you can bump up the supersampling the better the detail.
With the 1080 you need to be wary how many pixels each headset will need to run. Given the shortage on GPUs unlikely you’ll be about to get anything to upgrade to soon without spending a lot.
I can vouch for the rift s, decent head mount, I did buy the clip on earphones though.
Image below gives an idea of pixels for each headset, still mind blowing flying through cloud in my Rift S and not too fussed about upgrading anytime soon.
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I use these shortcuts instead of running OTT, found it was a bit of a hog.
I have mine set like this on my desktop and double click the one you want before launching VR.
Paste the folders in the locations shown. Good thing about these are if you are on 1.4 and entering a city or denser areas you can just click on 18fps and still get relatively smooth performance without breaking VR immersion (other than looking at where to click lol)
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