Quest does the processing in the headset and it is very probably accelerated.
Also, you could argue the hand tracking calculations could be done faster on a PC, so even if there is some perceived latency it could balance out or be better... would really need numbers for all of this, but it does just seem very suspect that they are trying to push more things on the Quest intentionally..
Consider the fact that the Rift-S has been out of stock for months. Oculus continues to re-stock the Quest (which sells out within 24h), but we haven't seen a restock of the Rift-S in probably 3 months?
Their "Del Mar" which is coming up, is very likely not going to be a tethered headset. My money is it will be standalone like the Quest.
Oculus is trying to get the masses to adopt VR and I salute them for it. There will always be headsets like the Valve index for enthusiasts.
These kinds of things are likely non-issues for your average gamer who isn't moving really fast, and isn't requiring ultra precise controls. For some people though, it's a huge deal breaker.
I'm personally very grateful for both Valve and Oculus. Oculus is serving the mass market, and doing a great job of it. I just hope in the process, we don't lose the high end consumer gear like Valve Index.
It's entirely possible if that Linux Tech Tips review was more than a month or two ago, things might look considerably different now.
He talks about "lag with lag compensation" when referring to some of the controls on the quest v.s. the rift-s
Hopefully that has improved, as I bought a quest and it arrives tomorrow! CV1 owner.
Also... Is Carmack still working on Oculus stuff? That's awesome. I got really sad when I heard he was leaving Oculus to work on general AI.
Perhaps the onboard hardware is capable of controller tracking as sold, but not powerful enough to enable Quest-style hand tracking. What if in addition to that, the camera data for one reason or another can't be piped over USB to the computer, either because it's missing the hardware that would do the encoding, or because there isn't enough bandwidth on the cable?
As I recall, the original Rift's outside-in tracking was extremely picky about having separate USB 3 ports for each of its tracking cameras, to the point where if you had a three-camera setup it didn't even want them on ports handled by the same USB controller on the motherboard.
Now we're saying "The Rift-S has five cameras and it's connected to the computer, surely it can just let the computer process that data." I doubt it's that easy.