VR is here

sherbz said:

True, but if you have people pay £15 per month to play WOW then im pretty sure you could get people to join a VR club and pay like £30 - £40 per month, which grants them use of the headsets, use of the software, and use of the facilities. Think of it a bit like a video game club.

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Ok, I didn't consider a subscription model. That could definitely work with the right price.

sherbz said:

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

I must say that looking at people use the wands makes it look a bit on the clumsy side. But after what you have said it seems as though this isnt the case.

I still dont have enough room for a vive, so cannot get one. Guess i will have to hope one of my friends who has more space can get one. otherwise i would be restricted to playing flight sims and driving games.

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Sitting experiences are reason enough to get a hmd IMO. Once you play a sim in VR you can hardly return to flat screens. People are saying rift image quality is slightly better than vive's though so i would go with the rift for sims only and if you dont wear prescription glases (rift is apparently too small)

Standing up experiences dont need any space either (only enough to wave the wands around without hitting anything) and are nice too and similar to room scale since even having space for roomscale you always will be restricted to few steps in any direction. However those few steps are very important since will allow you, for instance to examine an object from any angle simply walking around it and that alone is pretty impressive.

So even having not enough space for roomscale, there are good reasons to get a Rift or even a VIVE.

Thorgalaeg said:

Lots of stuff

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Hot DAMN, I was strongly leaning towards getting one of these and you just pushed me over the line. Going to start saving to get one immediately. Every part of what you posted sounds awesome.

You wont regret it. However, have in mind that if you preorder now you will have to wait till may-june for VIVE and even longer for Rift. There is a stock problem it seems. And i wouldnt try to buy it second hand in E-bay, scalpers are selling both at almost twice the original price right now.

Right I probably won't get one until fall at least, I don't have $800 to just drop at a moment's notice like that, I'll have to save up for it a bit.

Just watched a demo at which you start on the bottom of the sea at a shipwreck, you see fish and some rays swimming around, then a huge blue whale comes and look at you. Best demo yet...The sensation is indescriptible. You feel small and weak next to the whale. And graphics are so good. I wont post any youtube video because it would be of not use to describe the sensation in VR.

It is curious as image quality is much better and sharper in demos especifically made for VR than in normal games adapted to VR.

Yes, I pre-ordered a Rift on Jan 21. Expected ship date: July 22. FML.


Link to video.

Looks like Rift wins by a slim margin for me. Better optics, better comfort, hypothetically better controllers*, and better content (it's been around longer, so it has more support, and also oculus-funded exclusives in Oculus Home). Vive has a lot of tech demos and wii-like arcade shallow stuff.

*I like the controller concept better, we'll see if they can fix occlusion issues of prototypes. Hands > wands. Hand presence > Tool presence.

Touch design looks nicer than Vive wands, agree on that. Problem i see with the rift is tracking. I have a trackIR which works on the same principle and it works fine while you are close enough to the cam and dont move too much but it is not in the same league as lighthouse which seems magic. Add to that you need USB cables from your PC to all your cams. IMO the rift never was thought for roomscale and is not going to achieve it satisfactorily ever, unless they change his tracking system to something like lighthouse.

Actual demos --- Rift (HMD only of course) has better tracking as long as you're in range and view of the cameras, perfect tracking up to 13 feet or so, the cable length. Vive actually has a fair amount of tracking interruptions and problems according to owners. I think it's because Steam/HTC rushed it so they could be there before Touch controllers came out. Room scale isn't that big as long as we have wired headsets it's going to be a PITA. Touch will be able to work front-facing room scale just fine, which makes sense according to level design and stuff anyway. 360* isn't worth all that much when we have wires to trip on. Convention demos with Touch don't show any problems with occlusion, it's just the (sensible) rumor that it's why it's taking so long to release them.

TrackIR has 3 points on the head, Rift has like a dozen.

cardgame said:

Actual demos --- Rift (HMD only of course) has better tracking as long as you're in range and view of the cameras, perfect tracking up to 13 feet or so, the cable length. Vive actually has a fair amount of tracking interruptions and problems according to owners. I think it's because Steam/HTC rushed it so they could be there before Touch controllers came out. Room scale isn't that big as long as we have wired headsets it's going to be a PITA. Touch will be able to work front-facing room scale just fine, which makes sense according to level design and stuff anyway. 360* isn't worth all that much when we have wires to trip on. Convention demos with Touch don't show any problems with occlusion, it's just the (sensible) rumor that it's why it's taking so long to release them.

TrackIR has 3 points on the head, Rift has like a dozen.

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I am a Vive owner and not a single tracking issues so far. In fact it is not less than perfect both headset and wands. You must do a real concient effort to hide a wand from the lighthouse bases to lose tracking like hidding it under your clothes or close your arms around it. Some people are reporting some light tremor maybe due to laser reflecting on mirrors and such, not my case.

And roomscale IS the thing, believe me. (btw what is front facing roomscale?) About wires, it is the same for standing up experiences as for roomscale ones. If you can turn around yourself that is it. But it ceases to be an issue at all once you learn to manage the wire which will happen after 15 minutes using the headset.

About optics and image quality only difference being reported is rift being slighty sharper, however it comes at the expensive price of having a smaller field of view. In fact both have the same screens so any difference is due to a trade-off beetwen both characteristics.

About comfort, Rift is lighter but also much smaller, which implies you cant use it comfortably or not at all if you wear glasses, an important point to have in mind.

In any case I will see it all by myself next month when i get my Rift. Will post my perceptions here again. Hope i have not found an Oculus fanboy so far away from his natural habitat at r/oculus...

Hopefully I can try both next weekend. FOV is irrelevant as no reviewer can tell a difference. Same screens but one uses LG or Samsung panels while the other is an unknown source.

Front-facing roomscale is 180-270* where all the content is in front or to the side, so you don't entangle yourself in wires or other stupidity.

The Tested™ video addresses the glasses issue. Both have their disadvantage: the Vive rests heavy on nosepiece, Rift presses against temple. I figure I can cut out the Vive-style grooves into the Rift or get a third party cover thing if I need glasses to use it.

And /r/oculus isn't fanboi zone, not like /r/vive is. Jesus, they're nasty over there.

edit: from the end of the Tested video: "Having played both of these for a long period of time over the past couple weeks, every time I play a Vive game, ten minutes in, I think to myself, I wish I was playing the same game, with the tracked controllers, but wearing an Oculus Rift." This, from the guy with the glasses.

I honestly would be leaning toward the Vive with all the screw-ups Oculus has made recently, especially since I could get it faster, but the comfort is more compelling than Wii-like fad of shallow games. I'm a depth gamer. Will be using this with several sim games.

There are fanboys everywhere i'll concede on that.

But... roomscale is about being in a virtual place in which you can behave as in a real place. 1:1, That is that produces "presence". Roomscale looking always to the same direction is not roomscale at all! It kills the very concept. And btw FOV is one of the main things in rv, saying otherwise is well... negation of realty. You want the most natural feeling, you dont want to look through a periscope.

edit: yep, seen that video long time ago. There are about 1000 reviews not so condescendient to the Rift too. The likes the comfort of the Rift more, yes. But otoh he is saying basically that he wants a VIVE as comfy as the Rift, but a VIVE after all. And BTW Rift is reported to leave red marks on your face quite easily. I myself find the Vive bulky but comfortable enough to wear it for hours.

So comfort is a subjetive thing and i wouldnt chose one or other headset because of it. I would go for the Rift if i want sims only, becasuse it is chaper (without hypothetical the touch), less clumsy, and requires less work to install (VIVE requires some work, including making some holes in your roof for the lighouses). For anything more ambitious i would go with the VIVE.

You know you can do that in a Rift too yeah? Actually 360 it has trackers on the back strap of the HMD. I was specifically talking about Touch for front-facing.

Me too. Roomscale is about doing anything in the virtual volume you have, that include using your hands.r

BTW Using VIVE and virtual desktop to write this beetwen some vr musical videos. I suddenly remembered a reason to have the Rift in consideration above the VIVE: headphones. Not having integrated headphones is a pain in the ass. I wonder why HTC didnt add them.

^Probably since it was already coming in at $800, and adding headphones would push that even higher.

I'm definitely reading the updates, and looking forward to when you have the Rift and more people have tried both. And it's definitely contributing to me wanting to try current VR sooner than I would have otherwise.

I'll get the Vive over the Rift for one reason and one reason alone: I refuse to financially support the Rift's closed platform shenanigans. I do NOT want VR to go the way of home consoles with exclusives all over the place, I want the Vive's open platform philosophy to win. For that reason I'll be buying a Vive instead of a Rift regardless of technical considerations.

Yeah, all fears after facebook bought it are becoming true. They are doing everything possible to make it a closed system with his games only playable in the Rift. Fortunattelly they are failling miserably too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4k8krc/oculus_home_14_update_breaks_revive_adds_specific/

Too much. Finally cancelled my so called Rift "preorder"

Anyone who wasn't expecting exactly this kind of crap the day they announced that they were acquired from Facebook was absolutely fooling themselves. They are tone-deaf to the community, don't expect it to ever get better. RIP the Occulus Rift. Welcome to the Facebook Market Rift.

Still a better headset than the Vive and supports more games, so I'm staying locked in for now. Hopefully Vive/others have better market share and game support (and I do mean broad game support, not just exclusives) and I'll jump ship away from Oculus as soon as they're not the best choice for me.