I just want them all to come out and be tested so I can make a decision. I’m willing to pay the Vive price if it’s materially better than Oculus, especially if it has some amazing Valve game with it, but I’m not willing to put £500 plus down on a system blind even if I’ll get it earlier.
I’m pretty curious if the Vive really offers a more interesting gameplay experience than Occulus. I live and breath cockpit games, but so far the room-walking feature of Vive seems oriented for Wii-like party games. Maybe tennis or ping pong. Maybe a duck and cover shooter like the old terminator arcades, but mostly things where the novelty dies out. Happy to be wrong though, who doesn’t want a holodeck!
It depends, do they malfunction as often as the Star Trek variety?
The Oculus is cheaper because it doesn’t include the VR controllers, whereas Vive does.
Vive also includes a front facing camera which can be used for all kinds of fun things for room scale, plus additional sensors for room scale capability.
Just from reading people’s impressions the Rift is slightly better at what it does than the Vive - more comfortable, less screendoor, but slightly less FOV.
Everybody seems to prefer the Rift controller over the Vive but we won’t see Rift’s touch for months at best.
So on paper the Vive looks like the best, most future proof thing to buy but I am going with the Rift for now. The big reason is room scale - it sounds awesome but I don’t have the room unless I get rid of my treadmill and it also has to be specifically developed for. Just developing for different resolutions sends game developers into a tizzy - it’s much more complicated than it appears at first or that even experienced developers end up expecting so I foresee a similar situation with room scale. I could be wrong, it’s certainly jaw dropping stuff.
Plus HTC - having bought a couple of their phones they are masters at nailing the specs on paper, not so much at executing.
That’s the thing. I’m not comfortable going for one or the other “for now”. At these prices, I’m waiting until final versions of both systems are in consumers’, or at least reviewers’, hands and I can hear some proper comparisons rather than impressions based on development hardware.
Well if you want to be smart about it, sure.
Some of us however just can’t wait to eat that marshmallow.
Personally, I’m most interested in these for cockpit games – flight and space simulators – so that makes the Oculus the clear winner since I’m using a HOTAS controller anyway.
I’m in the same boat as of right now, but then I think if some wundergame comes out that utilizes the Vive and I’ll be kicking myself for not spending the extra $200.
Good news for me is that I’ll likely want a new GPU first (I have a 970 which seems as though it’s the bare minimum) so I’ll have some time to decide.
Isn’t HTC literally betting what’s left of its company behind this? $800??? They’re doomed.
Valve released a Steam VR test today. Hooray, my system is “VR READY” even with my aging i7-2600k.
$800 is crazy expensive, but I do like that the Vive comes with controllers and can do positional tracking.
Welp, I tried to spend the nearly $900 (after tax and shipping) on the Vive just now, but they’re out of stock!
EDIT: No they weren’t! Bought!
Well, I’m…
A) A poorer man.
B) Sure to experience buyers remorse over choosing Vive instead of Rift. (Same as if I’d ordered rift instead)
C) Figuring to wish I’d waited for 2nd Gen
D) Heading for dire straits at home w/ the wife and kids when they see me strap a VR helmet to my face
E) Excited anyway. Woo!
The bundling of controllers and the convenience perks (external webcam view and bluetooth connectivity for your phone) were the deciding factors, also I’m holding out some misguided hope that Valve will come through w/ some title that takes advantage of VR even if it ain’t HL3 or the like.
So… now I have both the Rift and the Vive preordered. I am not planning on keeping both but I completely can’t pick one over the other right now.
I wasn’t going to go with the Vive because room scale just isn’t practical in my office but then I realised I have the perfect space already. My computer is actually in the garage and I run cables into the office for display, sound and usb. So I can use the rift sitting down inside and I can use the Vive in an empty two car garage.
Wait, did I just convince myself to keep both? I need to stop that.
Oh and here is a 5+ hour Vive unboxing that made me laugh and the complexity of it all:
I can’t believe HTC/Valve are using Digital River as their merchant.
EU prices for Vive are EUR 899 and GBP 689.
Went to preorder thinking I might try both and keep the best one and resell the other. But the Vive with tax and shipping came to $900.29. Ouch.
Given that I want VR almost exclusively for sim use (DCS, Prepar3D, Elite), the controllers have little value to me. I’ll be using my Logitech G940 HOTAS stick/throttle.
So, closed the HTC preorder window without buying. Just too big a price delta.
Microsoft HoloLens Developer Edition is up for pre-order applications. https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us/development-edition
$3,000.00 and you have to supply a business case for how your project will benefit HoloLens.
I’m of similar mind. Already preordered the Rift, I’m not that big on moving around, and the price here is $300 more. I’m prepared to wait a bit longer on Vive.
Better to wait for actual reviews and to see what exclusive stuff Oculus has lined up, but I’m way more excited about the Vive because I think the touch controllers are at least 50% of the VR experience. The first thing you do when you try a headset is try and reach out at something in front of you.
So if I were going to pre-order something to get it earlier rather than later, no way I could resist getting the headset with the touch controllers ready to go.
The full room stuff is a cool bonus but practically speaking I wouldn’t do that very much.
Stop trying to cost me $1000 more dollars Quaro. ;)
oooh ooh oooh! Its almost like they have absolutely no fucking clue how to get developers excited about their product.
Valve sent me a free Vive. Microsoft wont even sell me a hololens. Guess which VR tech I tell all my buddies is a must-have?
dumbness.