Palmer Luckey: ‘I Can’t Use Oculus Rift S’ Due To IPD Changes, by Jamie Feltham

In a blog posted this weekend, Palmer Luckey, who left Oculus in 2017, spoke out about the new device. He reasoned that a lot of the new features being put into the kit were good ones. Rift S switches out the original Rift’s external sensor-based tracking system for an inside-out solution, for example. But, ultimately, Luckey’s post is concerned with one major change: the loss of mechanical IPD adjustment.

IPD adjust allows users to tweak the position of a headset’s optics to better suit their eyes. IPD specifically refers to the distance between a user’s eyes, and different sizes have different requirements for comfortable VR. In Rift S, Oculus is switching out the slider on the bottom of the original Rift for a software-based solution. When we spoke to Oculus about the change at GDC last week the company admitted this solution wouldn’t be perfect for everyone. It appears Luckey is one of those people.

The Rift inventor says that his IPD is just under 70mm and “slightly skewed to the right side”. On the original Rift, which was designed to be compatible with the “5th to 95th percentile” of people, this wasn’t a problem. But Luckey says it will be on the Oculus Rift S, which features the same optics and IPD solution as Oculus Go. Luckey also says he can’t use that headset.

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