VR is having a moment right now, as people look for new experiences due to the isolation wrought by the pandemic over the past few months, observed Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City.

Quest can run AAA games — like the groundbreaking Half Life: Alyx from Valve — while plugged into a computer, but not in wireless mode for the simple reason that the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside the headset is far less powerful than modern computer GPUs. Jason Rubin, Facebook's vice president for special gaming initiatives, said that standalone VR headsets are fundamentally constrained — but new technologies like game-streaming could allow PC-quality graphics without wires in the future.

It is a grueling, massively expensive, and time-consuming process, and we’re doing massive games but they’re not super massive, like six years [of development].Rubin: Yeah, you know, next year, game streaming isn’t going to be a major thing.

But just as important is that the Rift S sits alongside the recently announced Oculus Quest, the company’s all-in-one, mobile-chipset driven device, with both sharing the same controllers and Oculus boasting of the ease with which titles can be ported across, creating a single, mature platform for VR for the first time.

But Oculus is also approaching Quest with a stricter content curation policy than on Rift. Rubin, meanwhile, says that Rift will still be home to initiatives like Early Access games. Tagged with: curation , jason rubin , oculus , Oculus Quest.

It was suggested that the company could have opted to offer a ‘Rift Pro’ for that latter group at the same time as the Rift S, but Facebook’s Jason Rubin explained in a recent interview why they didn’t think that was the right call.

Rubin sat down with Road to VR for a wide-ranging interview at GDC 2019 last month , during which he spoke to the fact that Oculus opted to work with Lenovo in the design and manufacture of the Rift S.

In comparison, Rift S has the same functionality as the original Rift, it just removes some of the clutter. “If we added things like that it would radically change the ecosystem,” Rubin said.

“I think if we did something we honestly called a 2 and felt comfortable with that name, it would need to include radical new tech,” Rubin told Variety in an interview published this week. “If we added things like that it would radically change the ecosystem,” Rubin said.

While the result is an across the board improvement in the system and ease with which one can use it, it’s still not enough to call it an Oculus Rift 2, Rubin said.

In a wide-ranging interview with Rubin at GDC 2019 last week, we got to learn more about why the company believes that the Rift S is the right choice to push its VR ecosystem to reach a critical point of sustainability.

"Acting as an aggregator may be a way for Apple to hedge against its original content not doing well," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm in New York City. Apple also announced a new credit card and a subscription game offering at its event on Monday.

Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry's go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine".

The timing of the Samsung and Apple announcement is also interesting, coming less than a week after Apple aired some bad news about its expected first quarter revenues, suggested Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research , a consumer technology advisory firm.

Beyond travel, Amir Rubin, the CEO of Sixense, predicts that brick-and-mortar stores from clothing to furniture will be able to leverage virtual and augmented reality solutions to allow customers to have the experience of shopping in person without ever having to leave home.

Other features of the conference were digital designer Joe Gabrielson on the philosophy of virtual reality; journalist Peter Rubin’s experience with VR; neuroscientist David Eagleman on biological creatures’ ability to do behaviors typically not thought of; Heller’s report on relatively major worldview changes; art vice president Berkley Frei taking risks; writer Charles Radclyffe presenting on “virtual insanity”; and artist Lucas Rizzotto speaking on “where thoughts go.” VR vendors also offered experiences with the technology.