Ask Slashdot: Best Virtual Reality Headsets? 141
Quantus347 writes: Straightforward question: I held off for a year to let the various manufacturers shake out the bugs, but now it's down to either a virtual-reality system or a new generation console. So I ask you, the Slashdot community, what are your personal experiences with any of the various VR systems out there? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What little things annoy you the most? What features make a given product the best (or worst) option? "Sprinkle us with wisdom from your mighty brain!" For reference, the HTC Vive costs $799.00, while the Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch motion controllers costs $598 (which is the price after the recent markdown from $799). These prices do not include the necessary hardware required to power each headset. The PlayStation VR ($399.99), Samsung Gear VR ($99.99), and Google Daydream View ($79.00) are also available for less moolah.
Which ones? (Score:1)
Which ones don't rape your privacy?
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That rules out at least the Oculus, which is owned by Facebook. Most likely some or all of the others too. Data on what you use VR for is commercially valuable, and you are sheep who will buy the device no matter how much data it phones home with.
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It depends on how much you value your privacy. It's a reward versus risk thing and most people don't really value their privacy, at least not to a great extent. I look at all the info people voluntarily put on Facebook and realize that almost no one really obsessed about privacy like advocates try to make it seem.
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pls do a write up on getting this setup rigth!
Depends what you want (Score:2)
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For having hand presence in VR I agree Touch is superior. However, when wielding a gun or sword type object the wands field more real/natural. Touch is exciting though because it lets you naturally do gestures which will add whole new levels to multiplayer communication.
HTC has the tracker coming out so 3rd parties can make all kinds of cool controllers and Vive has demoed their "touch" prototype. I think having multiple controllers will give you the best overall experience.
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So, perhaps you could begin to solve the problem and explain why you think the Vive is better?
Re:Depends what you want (Score:5, Informative)
I personally believe the visuals are close enough to not care but...
Rift has reduced screen door effect making it better than Vive
Rift has slight smaller field of view making it worse than Vive
Rift has a slightly darker screen and often people prefer the brighter more vibrant colors of the Vive.
Rift has worse lens flair issues than the Vive
Rift and Vive have different focal planes. One requires you to focus a few feet in front of you while the other at infinity. Some people find one more comfortable than the other.
Rift's head strap is simply better engineered to stay in place and balance the weight of the device so you can play longer. It also has integrated headphones which makes it faster/easier to put on/take off. However, if you don't have a head shaped for it the Vive's elastic bands can be more comfortable. Vive offers more flexibility for people who wear glasses as you can adjust the distance between your eye and the lens independent of how it's mounted on your head. HTC is releasing a deluxe strap that is similar to the Rift in the next couple months.
The Vive strap is annoying enough to many where you'll find plenty of people (myself included) elected to fix the problem using off the shelf parts like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"you can play longer", would you mind clarifying that. What are the limits of comfort and does it vary to game type. How short is play longer, that you mention it at all, is pretty indicative that it is a whole lot less than a monitor and keyboard.
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The Vive strap isn't the most ideal way to distribute it's weight across your face and head. There are a decent number of reports where in the middle of longer sessions (hour+) people find it gets quite uncomfortable. I've never experienced that much discomfort but I did replace the strap as it had a tendency to allow the headset to slip a bit. However, after replacing it with the welding mask mod ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ) I realized just how much more comfortable it can be with a better strap.
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I am an unbashed gamer long gaming sessions normally start at the eight hour mark ie like a work day. Think about it, if a work day is deemed as appropriate for extended behaviour, considering for me the bulk of those hours were in front of a computer. A reasonable long gaming session should be at least equal to a working day, else that working day could be considered abusive and indicative of mental harm, just saying. So long gaming session as in, is it at all possible to get past the eight hour mark, allo
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Stand back people, we have a rabid Vive fanatic here. The fact that he's provably wrong should validate that.
Vive has better large scale tracking than Rift.
Vive has very slightly better FoV than Rift (a couple degrees).
Rift has better screen door effect. This is well known.
Rift has better audio.
Rift has better microphone. This is well known.
Rift has a sharper screen to the edges. This is a provable fact.
Rift has better ergonomics.
Rift has better software, hands down. Some people blame this on exclusives, bu
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This won't explain why he thought Vive was better but as this is Slashdot here is a pretty in depth comparison of optics and displays.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculu... [reddit.com]
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Yep.Both are close enough that I'd probably make the choice on principle of not giving facebook any money. Still, if you seriously want one now, I'd try both first to see the ergonomics and image quality for yourself.
I was really hyped about the Rift and then the Vive, exactly until the point they announced the EU prices. I might've been willing to jump in as an early adopter but not at almost a grand. If you can, I'd suggest to wait and see what happens.
Nobody knows when the Rift/Vive mk2 will come out, bu
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One person out of a 200 person company is a Trump fan and you associate that with the entire product? Grow up.
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Looks like this snowflake needs a hug.
oh heaven forbid the guy have an opinion on something. Real men don't have opinions.. or ethics... or integrity to stand by their opinions. Nope real men just buy anything without regard for any contradictory aspects.
Re: Depends what you want (Score:1)
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There is no disconnect if there's no artificial acceleration. Anything where the brain doesn't expect to feel movement doesn't trigger simulation sickness (not motion sickness, which is the opposite). Teleportation doesn't cause any sickness at all and other systems like "zooming" have short enough travel times that our perception systems don't seem to register the movement quick enough to cause any sickness.
Typical stick movement causes problems, though there are also more novel systems being created that
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>AR and VR are the same thing, really.
In terms of technology, they can be, if they just do the camera thing. Things like Hololens go a different route though, with digital imagery overlayed on actual vision.
In terms of functionality, AR is a strict superset - as you say, put blinders over it and it becomes VR. Heck, just have the digital overlay completely cover your field of view and you don't need the blinders. But, take the blinders away, and you've opened a whole world of additional applications.
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I forgot to mention that the special snowflakes here of course are not affected by motion sickness. Just non-Slashdot people of course. So don't get mad at me.
So long as we're clear, then, this affliction doesn't correlate to the audience with which you have shared....
Tillerson might as well tout climate science at the next Oval Office gathering?
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Have you considered that maybe your brain and eyes are damaged or inferior? I put it in that way because you seem to have anger at people who don't get motion sickness from VR and went out of your way to preemptively belittle and insult.
I've had a dozen or so people over to play with my Rift ad Sony VR systems, and only one person indicated discomfort, and that was at the teleport mechanic in a couple of games.
Mostly I find games are substantially more immersive, and the only issue I have is when I run into
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That's odd If the vast majority of people get motion sick with VR then all of the sever dozen people I have shared my rift with must be outliers, as none have mentioned any motion sickness when playing. It's nice to know that my friends are are as exceptional as I am, I have never experienced motion sickness either. I do mostly play sim racing games but I play on average 30 or so hours a week with my rift.
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Well, I'm not well-experienced in the field, but 6-axis motion/attitude sensors are very small and very cheap - almost every smartphone has one. And outfits like Oculus have reportedly spent a lot of effort into learning psychological tricks to ensure that your perception of the image appears to track what the sensor detects.
So I'll defer my sneering until I actually have a chance to try some out. I'm definitely not in the snowflake category. Can't even sit in the front rows of a movie theatre without getti
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Well, that's the point of the 6-axis sensors. They are the exact electronic equivalent of the semi-circular canals of the inner ear. In fact even if you're magneto-sensitive, the current sensors can track that as well.
It's really a psycho-physiological problem. We are able to watch the flickering pictures in movies and scan-line television because the perception of the eyes isn't as important as the perception of the brain. One of the tricks that I have heard of in tracking head/body motion is to take advan
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Buddy, you are the special snowflake here. They guy so sensitive he can't handle VR without hurling. Maybe the headset should come with a trigger warning for you.
I'm very sensitive to motion sickness from games. Most FPS games make me feel unwell after 10 minutes. Been that way since Doom. But i tried a Rift and it was fine.
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*An* SJW. Jeez, a fuckwit and a retard.
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An social justice warrior?
I think he meant An Ess-Jay-Double-You?
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Right...I mentioned that in my follow up reply. You and your friends are special snowflakes of course. My comment doesn't apply to people like you.
Right...I mentioned that in my follow up reply. You and your friends are special snowflakes of course. My comment doesn't apply to people like you.
Right, so, by definition anyone who can disagree with you cannot because they are in the only group of people you have excluded from your blanket claim. Fucking genius debate technique...
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Re: The best one... (Score:1)
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I've only dabbled, and not yet tried any "fake motion" games, but from what I've heard the "problem" lies in our brains, not the rendering - your body is fine tuned to get sick if your eyes and inner ear disagree on how you're moving, since that's normally caused because you ate something poisonous and should throw it up as soon as possible.
There are various tricks that can help a lot though - cockpit games for instance offer a reference space that's moving consistent with your inner ear, and reduce nausea
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Yup, there are all kinds of strategies that are being developed to reduce motion sickness. I own a Vive and there are a few games with artificial locomotion that get me sick and some that don't. Developers are still trying figure out exactly why it works in some situations and not others but they already have plenty of best practices like you described.
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It really comes down to rate. Switchbacky race courses (Assetto Corsa-Hill Climb) are a lot more pukey than high speed sweepers (old Monza), everything else being equal.
Which is the killer for most 3d shooters, the spin, run, spin and shoot is fundamental. Will have to be rethought, levels changed.
The worst game I ever played in VR was Descent 2. No cockpit, no artificial horizon. Granting that was on a whole previous generation of VR hardware. There were games back then that were less puke inducing th
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Just wondering, have you tried Minecraft, or any game where you have to "walk" using a controller or keyboard? I don't mean teleporting. Games that make you straffe or move forward/backward without actually moving are the only thing that make me feel queezy. Most games avoid that though since they figured it out in testing. If you have tried those games and don't get sick, mind telling me what graphic card you have? I use a 980 and was thinking that the motion sickness effect could be refresh rate related
Everyone is busy royally fucking up locomotion. Strafing motions are fine. I've played overload alphas (DESCENT) for hours in VR with no problems. Strafe only controls are awesome.
What is getting everyone sick is move to where you are looking schemes which intentionally create disconnects in change of direction/rotation without the user actually doing it. I would argue in many cases without actually wanting to do it either. These mechanics actively penalize players for daring to look around.
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I so wanted Alien isolation to work OK in VR. The head motion tracking kills it.
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Well one, it *can* be solved, and in fact for experiences that do not move the user at all, almost no one gets sick.
Those that place the user in a cockpit, and move the player around relative to the outside, but not the cockpit, sickness correlates closely with rate of motion sickness in cars and boats and such.
Even those that move around like crazy, sure more people get sick, but in my personal experience, I'm not even sure it's a majority.
The short of it is, if you are interested *demo* it for yourself.
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The thing that frustrates those of us who can do VR without issue is people loudly shouting that it makes everyone sick and no one should even try it and scare off people from at least trying it themselves. The chilling effect on the market lessens the chance of the market having good content.
AR without motion sickness would preclude a great deal of experiences (vehicle simulators, any scenario requiring exploring an area bigger than you physically have to explore). If you enable any of these experiences,
Re: The best one... (Score:1)
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Just curious, have you tried the latest gen of VR? Because I've tried the Rift and the Vive on tons of people (basically large swaths of my neighborhood), almost none of which are tech geeks, and not a single person has had any bit of motion sickness. From young kids to people in their 70s, all of them were blown away by the experience, and nobody got sick.
The main reason IMHO, besides the much improved tech, is that very few VR experiences are creating the situation you describe, where there is a disconnec
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Pro-tip: to be a really effective troll, and to gain the most enjoyment from trolling, you need to draw out the conversation a bit more, and to do that you can't just completely ignore all the points in a person's reply, otherwise the other person will interpret that as you having no reading comprehension ability (and so they'll walk away because any attempt at conversation is pointless) or they'll know right away that you're a troll (same outcome).
You gotta lead them along, feigning that you're considering
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"Human flight will never work."
"Submarines will never work."
You're just another in a long line of closed-minded fools.
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But....but....3DTV, self-driving cars, men on Mars, flying cars, Hyperloops, solar highways...IT'S THE FUTURE PEOPLE!
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...is none. Virtual reality will never work. The disconnect between what your eye sees and your inner ear senses will cause motion sickness in the vast majority of people.
This is not a problem if what your are showing matches what your inner ear senses. For example, if all you are showing is a static scene, there is no problem.
With proper direction, I thing it will appear what kind of scene are tolerable and what kind shall be avoided. For example, it appears that moving the camera against the user's will is a big no while teleportation is surprisingly well tolerated.
Anyways 'the vast majority" of people are not subject to motion sickness. Most people don't suffer motion si
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I think while Vive has better tracking for large rooms, it's no better in the "just works out of the box" category. While the SteamVR store is more mature than the Oculus one, the actual runtime software is much better on the Rift. It has ASW and ATW and Vive has only partial ATW support, only for NVidia. As a result, software on Oculus runs smoother for any given machine. This is well known.
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I haven't tried it, because I game in Windows, but Valve has released its SteamVR for Linux. https://github.com/ValveSoftwa... [github.com]
None, except possibly PSVR (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, it's too early. You're looking at first generation hardware across the board and not enough software support for any of the platforms to make it a long term compelling experience. If VR is truly getting established this time, a big 'if', then within three years you will have a worthless gadget that can't keep up. Everyone else will be on 3rd or 4th generation hardware with 2x - 4x the resolution and the software won't be compatible with your 1st gen stuff.
If you absolutely want to drop the cash on this stuff now I'd say get a PS4 and a PSVR headset. It's the lowest cost of entry, is the easiest to set up, and you can be certain a game you buy will worth with your hardware. Neither of the PC based solutions are anywhere close to being that turnkey currently.
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I have a PSVR, and, with the exception of Resident Evil 7 (which was amazing), it's largely been collecting dust. This isn't the PSVR's fault, because as a piece of hardware it's rock-solid. The real problem, like you said, is there's not enough software support.
That's why I'd advise against the PSVR over a PC solution- assuming the buyer can afford it and doesn't want to wait. While the PSVR is unquestionably the most comfortable headset, and resolution matters a lot less than people might think, the PS4
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Go away, shit somewhere else. I bought the second generation hardware, in 1998. As it was dying, knowing there were 20 games that worked. I got it at half price, it was still seven bucks.
Well made VR pron works, doesn't make you sick (unless you get a female POV one). Games will work or not on their own strengths.
The end.
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....Maybe. I don't entirely disagree, despite the fact that I'm a Vive owner. One thing I'll say is that HTC have no reported plans or a "Vive2" any time soon, and seem to be building and releasing things in a fairly modular way. Wireless is on the way this year, as is a new, supposedly more comfortable headstrap with headphones built in. There's talk of upgraded versions (ie easier to manufacture, I believe - no real technical advantage) of the lighthouses, but nothing announced as far as I know. A higher
Re: None, except possibly PSVR (Score:2)
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You do realize that you're making assumptions about my knowledge without any basis whatsoever? I've been making video games professionally since 1995. I'm curious as to your logical leap of "My friend says so-and-so" to "This guy has no idea what he is saying." What gives your friend any more basis to say something regarding gaming technology than anyone else? I've stated the reason why I feel I can offer advice. Please do the same.
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To sum up your comment, "No, I won't answer your question about my 'friend' because he has no basis to make the comments I'm vaguely quoting second hand while trying to diminish your contribution to this discussion".
Re: None, except possibly PSVR (Score:1)
Vive (Score:1)
Beware of Walled Gardens (Score:2)
I bought a Rift and although it is a great VR headset, my biggest disappointment is that for the money I paid, I expected to be able to see all the newest VR content out there. This cannot be any further from the truth. I can't even experience Google Earth (without hacking) on the Rift and there are countless Gear VR experiences I would love to try, but I cannot do so. So PC headsets are a good buy if you are a gamer with specific games in mind, but for experiencing general and free VR content, the Gear VR
Vive owner's thoughts on Rift vs Vive (Score:4, Interesting)
Technically speaking the Rift and Vive headsets are very close. The Rift has a slightly lower FOV resulting a higher pixel density which ends up producing slightly less screen door effect. However, people also complain the Rift has more lens flair issues than the Vive does. So when it comes to which one objectively looks better you can make solid arguments for both headsets and it comes down to which specific flaws stand out more to you.
The Rift (out of the box) is absolutely better when it comes to ergonomics but having integrated headphones is debatable... I personally decided to get rid of the Vive strap and did a variation of the welding mask mod ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ) and feel that closed the gap in terms of comfort. There is an official HTC strap coming in the next few months that will resolve Vive comfort issues. It won't be included and sold for another $100 but I suspect with the Rift price cut they're going to rethink that strategy.
Touch vs Vive wands is tricky... It really depends on what game you are playing as both have their advantages and disadvantages. Touch is absolutely better for gesturing and feels closer to actually having your hands in VR. However, when it comes to holding objects like a sword or a gun the Vive wand feels more natural/realistic. HTC has a tracker module coming out in the next few months that will allow all sorts of 3rd party peripherals and Valve has demoed new controller prototypes so any advantages Touch has probably won't be long lived.
When it comes to tracking the lighthouse technology is superior. If you are just playing seated games then Rift is faster/easier to setup but as soon as you're standing and want to move around there is no contest. You can get a good room scale experience with a Rift but it is more complicated to setup and is still officially considered "experimental" by Oculus.
Openness/Compatibility is another obvious win for HTC/Valve over Oculus/Facebook. Oculus wants you to use its store and only with its hardware and has DRM to prevent other hardware from using their software. Revive is software that less you bypass the DRM and play Rift games with the Vive but Oculus could break it anytime they want (they stated they won't anymore...) and have done so in the past. HTC's new tracker module offers tons of flexibility. Valve's lighthouse technology is being used with LG's upcoming ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ) VR headset. Even though I don't agree with Oculus business practices I admit i still think it's debatable which is better for VR in the long run as they are throwing tons of money into software development.
I'm a Vive owner since June and would still recommend Vive over Rift in spite of the $200 price difference. However, I still absolutely recommend you check out both in person and see for yourself.
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I tried a rift at work last week (think it was DR2). The low quality shocked me, horrific lens distortion and chunky grating pixelation. People seem to have different tolerances for resolution, but I would say that it needs to double to be comfortable to use. At current resolutions it feels horrific.
Relative levels of quality between the rift and the vive are interesting: but the absolute level seems too low on this first generation (personal opinion obviously, YMMV). I'm still looking forward to trying Pro
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DK2? I never tried one so I don't know how different they are to the consumer versions but...
The resolution on the DK2 is 960 x 1080 per eye where the CV1 (Rift you buy at the store) is 1080 x 1200 as is the Vive. There is definitely room to improve on the optics but if you look with your head instead of your eyes you generally stay in the sweet spot and won't have distortion issues.
Aliasing issues from low resolution can be mitigated quite a bit by supersampling too.
LG demoed their HMD at GDC and they are
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The aliasing that I saw was kind of weird, could have been the earlier hardware or the software demo that was running on it. The "pixels" that were visible was not a regular grid of squares. They looked like a tessalating pattern, where each pixel in the image had a shape that looked like several smaller rectangles glued together. The overall effect was like looking at a textile "mesh" or a screendoor close up.
The other unit that I played with was a newer chinese unit (I forget the brand name). It had integ
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I haven't used the PSVR but from what I've heard despite being lower resolution it doesn't have the noticeable screen door effect that the Rift/Vive does. I believe it's because the display panel using a RGB layout instead of a Pentile one for the subpixel arrangement. The aliasing absolutely is a resolution issue but supersampling really helps reduce it. Rumor has it that LG is developing a VR specific display for their upcoming headset that will significantly reduce these issues.
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This sounds pretty cool. In a race the driving controls are superb, but camera control is difficult to map onto something that is easy to use while concentrating on driving. Being able to look at wing mirrors or over the shoulder while driving sounds awesome.
None (Score:2)
If I was throwing away money I'd get the PSVR because of RE7 and other big budget VR games including racing franchises (and with some extra software like Trinus it can be used with Steam on PC), but these are first generation devices. If I were to be smart with my money I would wait for a new generation of devices that have perfected tracking, have higher definition displays, and are overall less expensive. By then a lot more games would be out as well, it's still slim pickings.
Both work well - here are the pros and cons. (Score:1)
My friends and I own both systems, honestly as first generation systems they work damn well.
The Vive was launched with motion tracked controllers from the start, and I feel a lot of the enthusiasts went towards that product. The /Vive Reddit group is particularly vocal about the product and reminds me of console wars played out decades ago.
The Oculus Rift is similar in many ways to an Apple product in terms of higher level of refinement and ease of use. Facebook/Oculus are funding developers to develop qual
Informed opinion (Score:5, Informative)
We have a product that runs now on Rift, Vive, and PSVR and will soon on Daydream and upcoming mobile and Windows VR. Take my opinion for what it's worth.
Comfortable VR requires low-latency motion sensing, screen displays with pixels on/off for precise periods to avoid blur or flickering, simulation and rendering that is at least 60 fps, and asynchronous reprojection of that output to 90 or 120 hz. All of the above VR systems are capable of comfortable VR running applications that meet that framerate requirement. Many would additionally argue that head-position tracking is a requirement for comfortable VR, because otherwise the world "moves" with your head. We say it's definitely better to have than not, as long as it has the same low-latency as rotation sensing and is reliable.
Applications also need to minimize the difference between acceleration you see with your eyes and feel with your balance. Our research shows people have different trigger thresholds for simulation sickness, and different sensitivities to different types of acceleration (for instance most people can handle differences in forward acceleration than vertical, and both better than turning). Different applications have many ways to address this: low detail backgrounds or background occlusion when turning, "cockpits" that turn with you, shuttering of FOV to reduce peripheral detail when turning, teleporting, acceleration limits, head-synced turning, level design that encourages more or less accelerations and vertigo, room-scale only movement, etc. You will have to jump in yourself and find what you are capable of and what applications do the trick for you.
The rest comes down to features and ecosystem of each VR system. Hardware systems have been evolving very rapidly but here's a brief rundown.
Vive & Rift are very similar from sensing and screen and computing requirements,wide fields of view, high application framerates, They both now require a tether to your PC with I5-4590 & GTX 970 or better performance. Vive came out with full room-scale position sensing and two hand-controllers, which has led to a lot of great room-scale applications. Rift came out with built-in headphones which are key to enjoying the full VR experience, as sounds can be "binaurally" mixed to sound like they are coming from precise locations, and is lighter than Vive. There are a lot of Vive add-ons available now or soon that include face covers, wireless transmission, tracking pucks and alternate head mounts with headphones.
PSVR actually has a higher screen refresh (120 hz) than Vive & Rift (90 hz) which makes looking around (with async reprojection) feel more crisp. But most PSVR applications run at 60 fps rather than 90 fps like most Vive & Rift apps, which makes object animations and positional travel less crisp. PS4 Pro apps can hit 90 fps at about the same level of detail but that depends on the developer. The PSVR's screen might be the brighest and uses a different pixel technology, less little dots and more solid squares, that is a matter of taste. It's a little heavier than Vive but is balanced between front and back so the weight rests on your forehead--in fact its screen guard doesn't even touch your face like Vive & Rift, and can move out and in for easier use by glasses wearers. PSVR's position tracking relies on visible light which is a bit less robust than the other two, though all of them have problems in direct sunlight.
Microsoft VR is further out but looks to be aiming for PSVR level performance on PCs with less than Rift/Vive specs. A notable feature is "inside-out" position tracking, coming from their Hololens research, which doesn't require external cameras like Vive/Rift/PSVR.
Daydream on a Pixel phone (Snapdragon 821) is surprisingly good for mobile. In our tests it has about twice the power of S7 running on GearVR, which our application can't yet run on with sufficient detail. Its applications require 60 fps but it has asynchronous reprojection to what feels like a 90 hz screen refre
That's easy: HTC Vive (Score:1)
Buddies of mine are bulding a business in Germany offering multiplayer experiences in VR. They tested all and Vive beat them all. Which is no real surprise, since it is the most sophisticsted system. The others are at least two generations behind.
too many questions (Score:2)
It all depends on what you want out of VR.
The only computer I have at home these days is a Surface Pro 4, so Rift & Vive don't interest me at this point.
After following posts by/about John Carmack for years I figured if he plays Minecraft on the GearVR weekly, the experience must be pretty good. A refurbished Galaxy S7 ($300), a X-box One Bluetooth controller ($60), and a GearVR ($99) later and I am a happy camper.
GearVR is admittedly VR-Lite since it does not have positional tracking (only rotational)
I Have a Vive (Score:2)
The most fun thing to do with it, though, is to have guests over and introduce them to VR. The most played games in my library are The Lab's archery demo, fruit ninja VR and the s
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I'm considering Vive for a flight sim. Other than the motion sickness, how does it work? Does the forward facing camera help? I've heard about smudged text on the instrument panels and some people would recommend TrackIR over VR. Also considered it for Elite Dangerous, which is possible to play without looking at your keyboard but X-Plane not so much.
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I tried Elite Dangerous VR briefly, but found it to be entirely disorienting. A large part of that was n
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Elite: Dangerous, with a proper HOTAS setup, is an excellent example of how a flight sim game in VR should work. Because of the nature of the game, they were able to virtually position all the HUD elements quite ideally for VR play. (However, once in a while, you still may need to attempt to touch-type on a keyboard for searching for star systems... Not frequently, though.)
More realistic flight sims are severely harmed by the limited resolution, and lack of comfortable close-focus, because its hard to vis
VR naysaying (Score:2)
HTC vive is artificially tied to steam. You must have steam to even use Vive.
Rift is tied to Facebook. Rift maintains 24x7 persistent connections to Facebook from a service running with full administrative access to your system. It routinely uploads logs with data including every application you used with Rift and imposes mandatory software updates. There are no configuration settings of any kind to disable or prevent any of this from occurring.
Oculus has piss poor QA internally. Their automated updates
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Actually the vive is not tied to steam at all. You can use it with OpenVR, never even install Steam. Don't let facts get in the way of your bullshit though.
This is incorrect. OpenVR is just an interface shim. You need a hardware stack to drive it and that stack for Vive can only be installed via steam.
Samsung Gear? Google Cardboard is a better IMO (Score:2)
FWIW (Score:2)
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
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Wait, if possible (Score:2)
I have a Rift and, while it seems to work just fine, VR is almost there but not quite.
The first issue is the resolution. It's not the high resolution, crisp displays we're used to with current gen monitors.
The Vive is glasses friendly, sort of. You'll need narrow frames if you want to comfortably wear them.
Some folks don't care for the weight, but it doesn't bother me much. Is similar to a set of heavy headphones like the Astro A50's.
The cable connection is a pita and I find myself unwinding from it quit
Re: Wait, if possible (Score:2)
Correction: I have a Vive, not a Rift.
VR observations from an older guy (Score:1)
I have all the Oculus devices since dev kit 1 for work. Over the last year my (nearly grown up) kids and I all chipped in and bought VR headsets and rigs just for kicks.; so now we also jointly own current versions of the Vive and a PS VR.
We use the PS VR only for gaming; while we use the Oculus and Vive for both gaming and non-gaming applications. Non-gaming applications include data visualization, 360 degree video experiences, watching 3D movies. We also did some initial experiments in alternate reality e
Ignore the doom prophets and go Rift or Vive (Score:1)
I run a museum with a public VR setup, introduced last July. After looking at HTC Vive and Oculus Rift I decided the Rift was better for our situation because it's more comfortable and the visuals scored better with my test audiences. IMO the resolution and overall visual experience is close enough that it's not a big deal but I do give the edge to the Rift. I also love the Touch controllers but I haven't tried the Vive controller so I can't compare.
You can safely ignore the people who claim VR is dead or d
Depends on your space (Score:2)
For some background:
I lead an Augmented and Virtual Reality community of practice. As such, I've developed for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Microsoft Hololens, and Google Cardboard (I haven't gotten to Daydream yet). I've used OSVR and PSVR, though I haven't developed for them. Here's my current breakdown:
HTC Vive is likely best-of-breed VR tech at this moment (more on this later). If you have a fairly large space (15+ square feet), it has a better tracking system, though it does at time have foibles. The cor
Opinion (Score:2)
Weaknesses ... they're ugly (Score:2)
The biggest weakness is they are all the technological style equivalent of the brick-sized cellphones of 1980, and are going to look primitive in three years compared to the ones they will then be selling for $34.95 at Wall-Mart.
Rift has better software, which is what matters. (Score:1)
There are a number of hardware debates here, but for most people what matters is the software that exists and how well it runs, given that the general VR display and tracking is roughly the same between Rift and Vive. But the Rift software is much better than the Vive software. Blame it on exclusives, but the fact remains. And the Oculus engine is better than Vive and runs smoother and with better detail on any given hardware. This is largely because the Rift has "ASW" and "ATW" and the Vive only has partia
Virtual Reality Headsets (Score:1)
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Smartphone VR is a vastly different experience than using Rift/Vive. It's like watching a big action movie on your phone vs an IMAX theater. Eventually it'll catch up to where it's as good as a decent home theater experience in a few years though.