You can pick it up cheap on Steam sale too, and there’s a native Oculus version that supports Touch.
I picked up the Gear VR for my wife for Christmas. It’s mainly a lens delivery system, but it also has a touchpad and navigation buttons built in to it that allow you to interface a bit easier. The touchpad is used for scrolling through menus, selecting apps, movement in games, etc. It’s no Vive or Oculus, that’s for sure. My wife is having a blast with it though. She bought some interactive haunted house app and something called “Face Your Fears”. She had me run through the fear of heights chapter (since that is my big one). Holy crap, never again.
after falling in love with VR at e3, and finding myself with a few hundred bucks after Christmas I threw caution into the wind and took the plunge. Bought psvr because it looks like the Pc drivers are coming together nicely and because it is the least likely to get a revision in the coming years. Haven’t plugged it in the Pc yet but it really is as amazing as I remember from e3.
Anyone with psvr pc experience?
For those folks upthread who advised me that moving a Vive between two rooms wouldn’t really work, you were right.
Just keeping it working in one room is as fiddly as hell for some reason.
Example: Yesterday I unplugged the cables from the connector box to do some untangling. When I restarted SteamVR, the base stations would cycle constantly between green (ready) and gray (fuck off). I checked the cable connections. Restarted SteamVR a few times. Rebooted the machine. Switched to another USB port. Looked into a mirror and said Bloody Mary three times. Nothing worked.
20 Minutes later, some combination of all of the above finally got the damn things working.
And this is a relatively regular feature of using the Vive. I’ve had the controllers refuse to sync. The controllers will sometimes go all janky in game even though it’s been fine without tracking issues for hours.
In short, maybe it’s just me and my technology-nullifying aura, but the occasional pain-in-the-butt factor is almost making me want to return it. Almost.
That said, if things smooth out I might consider picking up a single base station and connector box at some point for seated play in the office, but right now I wish I was having a less frustrating experience with the gear. The experience, when all is working, is amazing.
I’ve had some occasional issues as well, but in general it is reasonably reliable so long as you keep everything plugged in and reboot when SteamVR starts acting wonky. For sure don’t move around, unplug, change ports on the regular. The last one causes trouble for sure,
The price of bleeding edge.
Diego
Yeah, having spent a bunch of time with both, I really think the Oculus setup is better, now that they have the Touch controllers out. Better controller design, more comfortable goggles, more reliable software (at least, when I compare using Oculus SDK stuff with Steam VR stuff on my Rift), etc.
The one downside is that tracking with two cameras doesn’t work as well for larger-room type experiences as the three lighthouses with the Vive. Until you get some intuition for where your body is likely to block things, you get out of camera view way more often with the two-camera Rift setup. I broke down and ordered a third camera, which makes the Oculus setup cost $79 more than the HTC Vive, but should solve this. Of course, right after I did that, Oculus posted an “experimental” setup where sensor #2 is moved across the room to prevent blockages. But I didn’t bother trying it since sensor #3 is in the mail…
The Vive also fits better with glasses & the room scale is superior. If only we could combine the best parts of both…
Diego
Oh cool I’ll have to try that! Though the standard two sensor system seems quite fussy about distances and angles so I’m not sure how successful it will be.
Buying a 3rd sensor did cross my mind recently… :)
So am I wrong, or has Sony already shit the bed with PlayStation VR?
When it first came out I didn’t buy it since I wanted to wait for reviews. Reviews were positive, so I went over to Amazon - the launch bundle wasn’t available. I could buy it standalone, but I wanted the games it came with and I don’t have a camera or Move controllers. Buying them individually would have been a lot.
So, I waited. A bunch of people started reporting major tracking issues with the camera, especially after coming out of standby - I was pretty happy after all that I didn’t buy it.
Still today though, regardless of whether the issues are fixed, am I insane or is the launch bundle still impossible to buy anywhere? It’s not on Amazon, Gamestop, Target, WalMart, or anywhere else.
WTF??
Here’s the details on the “experimental” 2 and 3 sensor setups:
As the name suggests that bundle was made for launch. Not likely you’ll see any retailers getting more in stock. With the camera going on sale for $40 regularly you can piece together the bundle for roughly the same price.
Ah I see, the experimental two camera setup is still meant for a 1.5m2 area (which is close to what I have) while the three cameras allow for a larger 2.5m2 play area.
I realize I didn’t directly say it, but even the standalone headset has been next to impossible to find. Not just the launch bundle.
But on the bundles - I’m not expecting Sony to continue selling something called a “launch bundle”, but it’s completely irresponsible and incomprehensible if Sony doesn’t have some bundle available which actually comes with all the peripherals necessary to use the damned thing.
I’ve worked with VR for a few years, in certain specialized training simulation environments, and I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of its broad appeal. I’m perhaps hyper-aware of its limitations, and the novelty of it has worn off long ago.
But this christmas, my mom got everyone cheap little goggles that you could put your phone into and play around with… essentially plastic Google cardboard, with a crappy bluetooth controller.
What was interesting to me though, was the reaction that I saw from my sister and her boyfriend, who I guess had never really had much interaction with VR at all, and as a result were kind of amazed by it. This changed my level of skepticism of the tech overall, as things that can create that kind of response have a shot at being successful.
I still feel like my eyes are gonna get permanently screwed up by it though, as after using a headset for a while, it feels weird when you take it off.
I’ll be really sad if the crappy phone VR ends up dominating the market. I liked Gear VR for what it was, but even that, which was the very top end of the phone VR market with a reasonable amount of dev/publisher/platform holder support behind it, had nothing remotely as deep or engaging as you can achieve with desktop VR, even before you bring touch into the equation. If those experiences get crowded out by F2P, rotation only phone experiences a la the app store, it would be very depressing. My guess is that it’s going to be a one or two year fad though, before people move on to the next toy-like hardware. Hopefully “real” VR will still be viable at that point.
Well, it may be that the new snapdragon 835 will result in some improvements in phone VR… the chip seems specifically designed for it.
Honestly, I’m more interested in augmented reality, than VR.
No matter the processor, phone VR is going to be limited by the lack of positional tracking and touch controllers.
Well, there’s not really anything which inherently prohibits those things for a phone based solution.
No, and Google claims inside out positional tracking with phones is three years away. But it’s not here now, there’s not even a hint of standardised or hegemonic touch controllers for phones, and three years is a long time in entertainment tech. The Wii had burned out as a mass market phenomenon within two. Judging by the displays at shops this Christmas, the clock is already ticking.
The new headset strap for the Vive (being shown at CES) looks to be an order of magnitute better than the current one. It’ll apparently be available on new kits and will be sold as an accessory for current owners.
I will buy one, no matter the price. Damn it.
They’ve also got the puck thing which will be attatched to third party accessories, which interests me not at all (and, you know, swinging a bat in VR seems like a generally terrible idea).