‘Oculus Rift S headset does not suit thirty percent of the population’

Palmer Luckey, one of the co-founders of Oculus, argues that the new Oculus Rift S headset is not a good fit for 30 percent of the population. This concerns the distance between the eyes, which cannot be adjusted with a mechanism with this new headset.

Luckey writes that the Rift S is “very cool” and that it will be a “great head-mounted display”, but immediately notes that this will only apply to 70 percent of the population. This is related to the interpupillary distance, or the distance between the pupils of the two eyes. According to Luckey, it cannot be adapted to the Rift S.

The co-founder of the Oculus describes that the distance is just under 70mm for him and 59mm for a friend. With the consumer version of the Oculus Rift from 2016, this was not a problem for either of us, because a mechanism is built in that provides a perfect optical experience for anyone with a pupil distance between 58 and 72 mm.

Luckey describes that the Rift S, like the Oculus Go, uses two lenses with a distance of 64mm from each other. He refers to scientific research showing that the average distance in adults is around 63mm. That means most users should be comfortable with the Oculus Rift S.

However, according to Luckey, others who come close to the 64mm will already have to deal with a reduced experience, which is even more the case for those with an even greater deviation from this average. According to Luckey, the details are vague, the distortion is wrong and everything is in the wrong scale. A software adjustment can somewhat solve this, but according to Luckey does not offer a complete solution.

Incidentally, the Oculus founder and designer of the Rift glasses, who left Facebook in March 2017, doesn’t think the Rift S should have had a mechanical adjustment for this problem. He argues that with head-mounted displays it is difficult to find the right balance and that compromises are inevitable when designing. In addition, Luckey says that the broader category of interpupillary distance tolerance is more important than the distance factor alone. This tolerance is about a number of factors that determine whether someone can use a particular headset. A mechanical adjustment for the pupillary distance is only one of the factors.

Oculus presented Rift S last week. This is a new version of its Rift VR headset. The Rift S features built-in cameras for inside-out tracking, eliminating the need for external sensors. The VR headset has LCDs with a resolution of 1280×1440 pixels per eye.