MORRISVILLE – Oculus is rolling out a new version of its virtual reality and augmented realty headset with the help of PC giant Lenovo.

The new Rift S was introduced at the annual Game Developers Conference.

Lenovo, the world’s top PC seller, offers a lineup of high-powered machines for gamers branded as Legion. The company, which operates headquarters in Morrisville and Beijing, also has its own extensive VR and AR experience with PCs and smartphones. Microsoft and Google also have worked with Lenovo on VR and AR projects.

“We partnered with Lenov to design Rift S, drawing on their experience in the VR and AR space and feedback from the Lenovo Legio gaming community,” Oculus said in the announcement.

“Lenovo co-designed the Rift S for increased comfort, better weight distribution, and improved light blocking, as well as a simple, single-cable system for a clutter-free experience. Rift S features the same integrated audio system as [other models] Oculus Quest and Oculus Go, with a headphone jack that lets you use your own favorite headphones.”

In an interview with Upload, Oculus Vice President of Product Nate Mitchel explained why the company chose to work with Lenovo.

“In the case of Rift S, we saw the opportunity to build through this evolutionary version of Rift,”  Mitchell said. “And we decided to ourselves, ‘Hey it would be great if we could partner [with someone] who can speed to market, who can help us take off some of the heavy lifting from our team and ideally bring some of their own expertise.’”

Lenovo has “just done a lot of products in AR and VR so they’re very knowledgeable, actually, about what works and what doesn’t,” he added.

The new headset is set to launch this spring for $399.

Oculus says Rift S offers:

  • Higher resolution
  • Increased comfort and integrated audio
  • Oculus Insight for precise room-scale tracking
  • Introducing Passthrough+ which Oculus says is designed “to produce a comfortable experience with minimal depth disparity or performance impact. It’s especially helpful any time you need to step or see outside of your play space.”
  • A Shared Platform with other Rift platform devices