Opinions: VR - Are We There Yet?

Calibos

savemejebus wrote: »

Do you mean that hardware/technology wise, or software or support wise? I guess i'm asking, as someone not invested in this but curious, what are the ways that matter?

(least important) It looks better and more like a finished product rather than a Clunky Dev kit.

Its half the size of the Vive.

It weighs a lot less and is better balanced on the head. This is important if you want to wear a VR HMD for longer than 5 minutes.

Compromises have to be made between resolution and screendoor effect., Field of View, optical sweetspot, clarity etc. In some cases Oculus made different compromises to Valve/HTC. Oculus users happen to think Oculus made the correct compromises. Sacrificed a little bit of FOV over the Vive that isn't really noticeable unless you measure it, in order to reduce the screendoor effect compared to the Vive which is very much noticeable. Both chose to use Fresnel lenses to reduce weight, reduce SDE and maximise sweetspot, however Oculus with their Hybrid Fresnel optics seem to have an implementation that works better than the Vives. The Rift HMD is lighter for one. The fresnel ridges are much finer on the Rift, This means the unfortunate God Rays experienced by both HMD's because of the necessity of fresnels for this generation on the Rift look more like camera flare of a JJ Abrams movie or like an optical effect already seen by a large proportion of the population when they look at a bright light/street light at night. Its easier for the brain to ignore and tune out because its already used to seeing similar in real life. The Vives God Rays however are in the form of parallel arcs of light. Much more artificial looking and more distracting because theirs no optical analogue in their real world experience. Finally the sweetspot on the Rift is huge. Basically when one puts on the HMD one can adjust the Rift very quickly to get perfect focus whereas it takes more fiddling and longer to get the Vive right. Then when one looks around the FOV with ones eyes (as opposed to turning ones head) everything almost to the edge of the FOV is in perfect focus whereas on the Vive when you look away from the centre of the lens things get blurry. ie. On Rift much more of the FOV is in focus whereas on Vive only the centre of the FOV is in perfect focus and theres a greater area of blurriness.

Oculus' integrated headphones remove another annoying cable and are very high quality that only the most golden eared audiophiles reject.

Oculus put more effort into the HMD cable. Using Spectra 7's cable tech the Rifts USB3 and HMDI cables are integrated into a single light cable in contrast to the Vives chunky cable with 3 cores in this OOO formfactor. Its much more unwieldy and pulls on the HMD a lot more.

Software wise, Oculus Home while not without fault is a lot more user friendly than Steam VR.

Rift much easier to setup than Vive

Support was a $hitshow for both companies but they are both getting on track now although moreso on the Oculus side from what I've read. First version of both HMDS were bound to have issues which meant lots of pressure on the respective support teams regardless but because its all new to all users, support was also bogged down with tickets for problems unrelated to the Rift or Vive at all.

Oculus' SDK has a feature called Asynchronous timewarp which was carmacks primary contribution to the Rift before he shifted focus to his Oculus/Samsung Gear VR work. Basically it keeps the game running judder and sickness inducing free even if the frame rate drops below the target 90 FPS. Vive does something different when FPS is below 90 FPS so while its un-noticeable to a Rift user that he's below 90 FPS unless hes consistently way below 90, on the Vive you are constantly reminded you've dipped below 90 FPS.

So for example in a game like Elite Dangerous which is a AAA game with high hardware requirements its a much less smooth experience on the Vive and the SDE is quite a bit worse which also means all the text is much harder to read on the Vive.

Vive had no competition for tracked controllers for 6 months but still only indie tech demo's available. Oculus chose to wait till Devs had time to work on games before launching and will have 30+ Touch titles for launch.
Vive wands have been described as trying to interact with the virtual world with salad tongs wheres the formfactor of Touch means a much greater sense of hand presence and a more naturalistic interaction with the virtual word.

Despite what the FUD merchants would have people believe, Rift and Touch can do everything Vive and the Wands can do. Better in most cases.

Now that Touch is nearly here, there is literally no reason to go with the Vive gen 1 over Rift CV1 unless you are a rabid facebook hater or r/PCMR anti exclusivity zealot who can't seem to get his head around the difference between Timed Store Exclusives and Perpetual Platform exclusives.

Let me be clear. I don't care which HMD anyone gets. I don't normally have the patience to argue about it or type this much Every now and again though I am reminded about the amount of misinformation out there about Oculus and the Rift and simply want to counter the misinformation and make sure prospective purchasers now whats fact and whats BS before they decide which VR system is best for them.

The Facebook hating elements of the Vive community and the rabid PCMR crowd certainly get an A+ for anti Oculus PR and Oculus get a D-. Bad PR reaction whenever they tried to explain anything and bad PR when they said nothing. They couldn't win.

BloodBath

I have a feeling Valve are keeping something big pretty close to their chest.

As unlikely as it seems at this stage I still think we will see a Half Life 3, Portal 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 on a new engine with full Vive support.

That alone will bury Oculus but they still need to work on getting the gear down to the sub 500 price bracket.

Regardless, I still wouldn't buy either headset. By the time a decent game library is available there will be better headsets that cost less out there. Don't waste your cash on either.

Calibos

If its on Steam VR the Rift can play it.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Calibos, bit of a fanboy rant there across three replies . As you are keen to point out in the corollary, if its a rift exclusive you can play it on the vive with revive, however if you need the vive hand controller your out of luck at the moment and I havent heard it the touch controller is backwards compatable with vive controller?

Valve dont believe in exclusives supposedly, and Facebook sharp practice in this area has been widely criticized. I know from previous threads where your confirmation bias is evident that you dont buy into that.

Look if a better system comes out tomorrow, I will get it cause... you know....I want the best whatever that is , but at the moment everyone says the vive is the winner, and no evidence has been presented except speculation, my own experience would support that too. As for optical clarity both leave a lot to be desired. That may change, but OR is playing catch-up ATM. Things change like ATI and Nvidia, at the end of the day, gamers win. Competition pushes technology forward. This is not religion, we dont have to believe, we wait until the new software/hardware is released, tested and reviewed and then we confirm or alter our perceptions to match the new evidence.

I have to say I would not put off getting VR, its awesome if you have the machine for it. I am an early adopter (but not a DEV kit type early adopter). I have spent more time in these so called "tech demos" like raw data, space pirate trainer, project cars, the brookhaven experiment etc than most AAA games of late. Its impossible really with the exertion and immersion to play VR games for hours on end, so these arcade type games suit it well that you can dip in and out of.

I am glad there is finally something that pushes all this expensive hardware, it is like when crysis came out. Suddenly there was a new performance standard that nobody could reach. Maybe its time to resurrect the VR thread. Its going to be the major reason people are upgrading machines from here on out. Although VR uptake has slowed according to recent numbers http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/steam-users-vr-virtual-reality-headsets-htc-vive-oculus-rift-psvr

Icyseanfitz

how bad/noticable is the resolution on the vive?

btkm8unsl0w5r4

its grand for play, but its not like looking at a monitor, its like looking at a monitor from 2 inches away, some screen door effect, some aliasing of textures viewed at an angle. Your eyes are not tracked so some games place things not directly in front in blur which looks odd. Screen captures look terrible, but in reality it looks great. As games with more polish come on it will improve, project cars is awesome.

Solitaire

Posts moved. Please try to avoid falling into the trap of "not being a fanboi but" so hard you end up becoming a hateboi instead, they're just as annoying

Calibos

Correcting misinformation does not a fanboy or hateboy make.

SterlingArcher

Calibos wrote: »

Correcting misinformation does not a fanboy or hateboy make.

Talking like that does not a jedi make.

Perhaps you were being over zealous. Even if the information is valid it still makes it harder to digest. Worse still when it's so early in the game it's basically a pissing contest. Makes the dick soft. It's no different to ps4 guys going off on xbone guys. It's like "hey guys chill. yous are both console peasants"

I'm sure down the line the tech will be more evolved so making silly alliances to either this early for me is pointless. I want to see those must have games. then vr will blast off.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

I think once the touch controllers are out I will order a Rift and see what its like. I think the things that will make VR take off are

1. Wireless headsets - dont know when, but if the wire can be got rid of that would be great.

2. Eye tracking

3. Feet tracking.

4. That Killer game.

The teleportation mechanic is fine, but I think some mechanic where you can move further than your room allows would be great.

Give the hardware involved I dont think an immersive experiance is possible on cheap hardware at the moment or for the foreseeable future.

Calibos

I think Shakespeare sometimes talked like that before Yoda did.


Who's making silly alliances? If the Vive is the better system next gen I'd buy that as my next gen VR system in a heartbeat.

Dyr

Braylen Cool Statistic wrote: »

I think once the touch controllers are out I will order a Rift and see what its like. I think the things that will make VR take off are

1. Wireless headsets - dont know when, but if the wire can be got rid of that would be great.

2. Eye tracking

3. Feet tracking.

4. That Killer game.
.

1. Apparently some Bulgarian company are launching wi fi for the Vive before the end of the year. I believe it when I see it but it's a biggy alright. As some one had pointed out, this doesn't need to penetrate walls so there's a lot of potential free frequency for it once, you don't use wifi

4. Onward

2 and 3 will be very nice to have

TerrorFirmer

I have the Rift, I do believe it's the better headset but equally until now the Vive has been the superior product due to the bigger range of tech demo's and interactivity functions. For the majority of people, it's entirely a novelty tech at the moment so the Vive has dominated in that regard.

I think it will swing back Oculus' way with the release of touch and their strong line-up. How the overall market will react and develop over the next year though, hard to say.

Vox Machinae is one I am most looking forward to as a title I'll happily pay good money for - I think that was the most impressive title on the DK1, that sense of actually being suspended in and piloting a giant, 20 ft mech was overwhelming and one of the best early showcases of the tech.

The horror genre is another stellar area to showcase the tech so games like Killing Floor Incursion will be incredible experiences - but you need nerves of steel, I have no problem playing these games on a normal monitor, but with the Rift it's a whole different story.

Forget the name of it, but the game where you're exploring the abandoned hospital on the DK2, I could never get past the first one or two stairwells without getting sweaty and being on the verge of pissing my pants.

Fian

I had planned to buy a VR HMD for PC and was looking forward to it. I would need to upgrade PC but i need to do that anyway, VR or not.

I have kind of swung the other way now, I have a ps4 at home and am planning to get the playstation VR in October. I have 4 kids who will probably get more use out of it than I will, but I am looking forward to experiencing VR on it too. I suppose it will either persuade me to take teh plunge on pc VR, or will be enough for me to put off investing in PC VR until the "first adapter" costs have reduced.

anyone who has experienced both Playstation VR and Vive/OR in a position to give me any insight on this? I fully expect that playstation vr will be less immersive, and less visually impressive. The question is whether it is immersive/visually impressive enough?

Xenoronin

Early reports of the PSVR were mostly positive. Sony aren't exactly new to the HMD field so they had a lot of "lessons learned" to work off of. They also have two major aspects already in place, the controllers and the camera. In terms of bringing VR to the mainstream, I can see this being the first major step.

deejer

I was in Harvey Norman over the weekend and got a go on the Rift. Great to finally experience it and have to say it was impressive. Took a few minutes to get used to but its unbelievably immersive. Got a great laugh when I put it on my 3 year old - he really didn't know what to make of it!

Great that a place finally has one to try out. Oculus should really be making more of an effort to get shops to do this.

It was also interesting that I was in there 2 days - Saturday and Monday and there was no one using it when I went in. If that was a playstation or xbox there would be a group of kids all over it. I think it shows that the Rift really is a niche product that hasn't been marketed that well to the general public. Granted the price takes it out of reach of most of the general public but I think the reason why no one was using it was that most people didn't even know what it was.

And even though it was almost everything I was hoping it would be based on my few minutes of trying it out, I am still not going to part with Eur900 (at a minimum since I am also going to have to upgrade my pc) and there in lies the problem with the Rift.

Now to find some excuse to get back to Harvey Norman!

Serephucus

Great to finally know at place I can try one. Which Harvey Norman was this?

deejer

Serephucus wrote: »

Great to finally know at place I can try one. Which Harvey Norman was this?

It was in Limerick. Not sure if they have them in all their stores.

Xenoronin

In Galway, a little shop called Click was offering demos of the PSVR. It's on the bottom floor of the Eyre Square Shopping Centre, beside New Look and whatever that sports store is called nowadays.

Interesting in that they don't sell games or games related stuff. Just laptops, fixing and PC tidbits, so it's more of a way to get people in the door than anything.
Was available on Saturday anyway. No idea if they are still doing it.