VR - Is it really going to be a success? Or, thanks Time for starting a discussion!

I was pleasantly surprised with the Google Pixel and Daydream VR (includes a little bluetooth puck wii type controller).

I gotta say, using a mobile phone makes VR a hell of a lot easier to test and experiment and play with. Less wires, less fuss, more … “it just works”.

Still wildly underpowered and super low-res compared to where it needs to be, but I think the Pixel/Daydream combo more accurately reperesents what VR needs to become in the future, 10 years from now. And it’s easier to have fun playing with it when things are kept simple.

Here’s a fairly comprehensive review that includes a video of some of the game’s launching tomorrow alongside the Touch.

Supposedly there are 50 games releasing tomorrow that support the Touch but I haven’t seen a list. However here are a few games that I think are going to be worthwhile:

http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/

(Demo only)

Of course any title that has previously on worked on the Vive (Job Simulator, Fantastic Contraption, etc) should work on the Rift + Touch, although the one i’m most excited for is Google Earth VR.

It’s important to understand that the Touch Controller’s only ship with one extra camera which enables the hand-tracking and movement within a small area but in order to get the full “room-scale” VR that the Vive can do you will need to spend another $80 on an extra camera that you will have to wire to the back of your play space. I’m not too worried about this requirement as all of the previews I’ve read indicate that the games play just fine without the 3rd camera and aren’t really designed for that anyway.

I’ll post impressions tomorrow or Wednesday of the controllers themselves although with all the damage on Black Friday sales I will probably only pick up one game tomorrow if anything at all.

Wow! Thanks! I really appreciate the response! Very kind of you!

Mine have shipped, but I don’t know about getting them tomorrow. :(

Fedex tracking says seven days, which is odd since the headset itself arrived far quicker.

Did you order through Oculus? I got mine on amazon and it says end of the day tomorrow for me.

Well, I am in Australia… but yeah, I pre-ordered via Oculus with my place ‘reserved’ thanks to pre-ordering Rift from them as well.

PlayStation is already dominating the virtual reality market despite being a late entrant compared to pioneering PC and mobile-based providers.

Research carried out by 01consulting, reported by VentureBeat, claims Sony accounts for 30% of the VR space, well ahead of Facebook-owned Oculus at 11% and HTC at 6%. The latter’s Vive partner Valve ranks even lower at 2%. Google and Samsung account for 8% and 7% respectively.

The report is based on “evaluated and estimated product sales for over 30 companies and 40 products globally through revenues and units sold/used for each of the vendors”. Sony’s market leading position is attributed to the comparatively low price and entry point of PlayStation VR, as well as the multi-million installed base of PS4 consoles that can reach potential virtual reality consumers.

Despite the prominence of Oculus Rift as the pioneer for the current wave of VR and the low-end offering of Cardboard, Facebook and Google rank lower due to their lower userbases and, in the case of Oculus, high entry price. However, the report notes that both companies as still generating hundreds of millions of dollars around the VR devices.

Wired also has a positive review of the Oculus Touch controllers:

They also have a positive review of I Expect You To Die

Tomorrow the X-wing mission is out for Battlefront. Can’t wait to try it out.

Yeah I’m happy to see any report of VR doing well. I would love to see PSVR do really well as that can only help VR as a medium grow and develop. Also no surprise that PSVR would outperform both Oculus and the Vive. If it didn’t sell better than the other two that’s when I would start to get really concerned.

Sorry for the lazy post… but if I wanted to order VR today, is there any consensus on which is the best set?

Check this out:

Bottom line:
PSVR gives you the most bang for your buck, especially if you already own a PS4, although the PS4 Pro does make a noticeable difference in image quality. This is also the most comfortable headset by far (so I’ve heard, haven’t actually been able to try it myself). It also has the gaming pedigree of Sony behind it so I would expect it to have the highest quantity of quality titles at least in the short term.

Oculus Rift (full disclosure this is the headset i own): with the Touch controllers that release tomorrow the Rift and the Vive do essentially the same thing, although the Vive can still give you true room-scale (i.e. seamless 360 degrees of movement) VR whereas the Rift (with the Touch controllers and second camera) is mostly designed to be played facing the cameras and moving around in a smaller space. Having never tried the Vive I can only rely on reports that the Rift’s headset is more comfortable, although the on-headset earphones are a much better solution than having to use separate headphones on the Vive.

Oculus has its own Steam-like store that sells all its proprietary games and it’s not as user-friendly as Steam but it gets the job done. You can also play SteamVR games (which the Vive uses) on the Rift fairly easily. Oculus is adding 50+ games to its store tomorrow to coincide with the release of the Touch controllers and some of those games are Oculus exclusives at least in the short term.

Last but not least if you’re ordering the Rift or the Vive be prepared to have a fairly beefy PC (which lets be honest if you’re posting here you probably do). I had a 970 initially and that worked but it struggled noticeably with some games. I upgraded to a 1070 and that is a much smoother experience.

I would say the opposite. I still prefer to buy on Steam (because Steam) but I greatly prefer the experience of putting on the Rift and always ending up in the Oculus VR interface (it auto launches if not already open). In contrast I find the Steam VR launch process clunky in comparison. It works… except when it doesn’t randomly.

There is unfortunately no clear cut best. They have weakness and strengths, with the Vive being the winner before for me if I could only have one. Now that the touch is out and arriving tomororw I will have to see how it handles the many games being ported from Vive->Touch. Room scale is awesome, but I found I rarely moved around much, even when out in my empty double car garage with room to go nuts (because of the cable).

So they are saying their previous made-up numbers were wrong. What a surprise.

If that analysis is correct, interesting. I had no idea Oculus Rift was doing better than Vive. Having spent a lot of time with both, now that Touch is available I’d have to give the edge to Rift due to the more comfortable headset design.

Well, I was persuaded enough by the universally glowing reviews and the fact that apparently most Vive games work with Touch without needing updates to throw down the absurd amount of money the controllers cost. I feel a bit of a chump but this is why I bought the Rift in the first place, Elite and ATS aside, so why back out now?

My nephew is bringing over his Vive for me to play with during our Christmas get together. Yipee! It’ll be my first taste of VR.

And, if I like the experience, I may dive in and pick up some kit in the new year. My choice will be Vive or Rift (mostly a PC gamer, and don’t have a PS4).

I’ve got a hearty computer in my office that would be good-to-go, but it’s not a space for room-scale. Just sit or stand. Good for the Oculus.

I’ve got a fairly robust media PC downstairs that would require a video card upgrade, but would enable room scale and would make it a bit more social (family members watching or joining in). Good for the Vive.

But, the Rift is supposedly more comfortable, better with glasses, and the touch controllers are apparently better. Also I’ve heard that room-scale isn’t really paying off because so few games really make use of it.

How much of a pain would it be if I bought the rift and occasionally moved it between rooms (Office when I’m playing alone and family room when I’m being a bit more social or playing games with a guest)? If I configure it on both machines is it a minor pain or still a big pain?

It’s not better with glasses, I would rate it slightly worse for most people with glasses than the Vive. I wear daily contacts 99% of the time though and the Rift is just much more comfortable than the Vive. So much easier to adjust and get a nice fit that feels solid.

You would have to move and position two cameras with USB plus plus the headset with another usb and hdmi connection. You could leave a 3rd camera in the family room for room scale I guess. Plus you would have to run through the setup each time. The vive room software setup is pretty quick, the Rift touch setup looked like more of a pain but I haven’t tried it myself yet.

Lots of games make use of it, I found the problem was I didn’t take advantage of it because of the cable. I move around, but not much. Some games, like Space Pirates & The Gallery I moved around more. I just found it easier to teleport than keep trying to orient myself and worry about pulling the cable out of the breakout box.

The Vive wireless thingy that was announced a while ago should, if it works well, really help with usability. VR won’t be really useful period until it’s entirely wireless IMO. Actually, it’ll take wireless and easier/less intrusive setup of the transmitter thingies as well.

On campus, we have a VR working group that is just starting up. One of our tasks is to provide info, and rein in some of the more extravagant expectations of some of the interested parties, who have not had any real exposure to the VR world (including AR, mixed reality, etc.). Another is to work on getting a VR lab for faculty and staff to experience a sampling of the different hardware setups and the available applications, so the college can keep abreast of developments. We also want to have the capability for interested faculty with the right skill sets to prototype their own apps, which if they make sense for the school we can then apply to fund via grants.

One of the challenges though is that the neither the tech nor the existing VR apps are terribly well suited to classroom use. I get emails from colleagues who ask if they can check out VR headsets so students can “do VR” for their presentations, as if you were checking out an overhead projector. When I explain to them what “doing VR” means–that is, full-on game development in effect–they are pretty deflated. Existing apps have some potential, like Google Earth VR, but it’s prohibitively expensive to have 20+ systems in a classroom, even if we had that kind of space and expertise in the general faculty. Existing copresence apps, for simultaneous experiences by multiple people, are even fewer and far between, outside of a limited number of game type virtual spaces. AR promises slightly more possibilities right now but is still a long-term thing for us.

Eventually we need the cost of gear to come down, in the case of Vive and Oculus type systems, and the capabilitiees to go up, in the case of smartphone based systems. We also need more robust copresence capabilities. But realistically, despite how appealing the technology is to a lot of educators, VR is just like creating any other computer application: something most faculty cannot do and don’t want to do. I do think eventually someone will create toolsets that non-engineers and non-artists can use to create apps in a modular fashion from curated blocks of pedagogically sound “stuff,” but that’s a long way off.

We have all three at work. The Vive gets the most use. The Rift never gets plugged in. I tried the PSVR only once and thought it was pretty good but would need to spend more time with it before making a recommendation. Of course, that may change with the Touch controllers. Newcomers seem to be able to learn the Vive controllers very quickly, including my 3-yr old daughter.

Yeah, when we put the Vive on people it doesn’t take long to grasp the principles at all. Even for non-gamers, usually.