Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 and turned the Rift into a high-end device that competed with Valve and HTC’s Vive headset and Sony’s PlayStation VR. Kickstarter backers pledged nearly $2.5 million toward the original Oculus Rift prototype in 2012, launching a boom in consumer VR. Facebook recently discontinued its Oculus Go headset, and a Rift retirement isn’t necessarily surprising.

But the Rift S - a successor to the original 2016 Oculus Rift - came with compromises, including lenses with no focus adjustment. Oculus has maintained for years that the Rift line is a “gold standard” for playing high-end PC games. The Rift S will also continue to support logging in with a non-Facebook Oculus account until 2023, unlike the new Quest 2, which requires a Facebook login.įacebook promoted the Quest as its primary VR headset last year, leaving the Rift S out of upgrades like controller-free hand tracking. “The old Rift is something people continue to use and enjoy,” Parthasarathy acknowledges. That includes supporting the Rift for the near future. And Parthasarathy says Oculus will keep supporting PC-based VR as a distinct platform from the standalone Quest system. The Quest 2 will connect to PCs through the same Oculus app as the Rift.

Oculus rift s pc-powered headset