6 ms·

Now the real question- go with Facebook and buy an Oculus Rift or go with Valve/HTC and buy a Vive? The Vive has more features (like head tracking) but maybe i

Now the real question- go with Facebook and buy an Oculus Rift or go with Valve/HTC and buy a Vive? The Vive has more features (like head tracking) but maybe it will be more expensive? There's been nothing but silence in terms of pricing of either of them... I do have a hard time justifying $500+ for a screen I'll strap to my head that will probably be obsolete in a year or two. I will say though, I recently bought a Steam Link and a Steam Controller and I am pretty impressed with the quality of Valve's hardware.

spike021 11y ago
Or go with Sony and buy a PSVR (Project Morpheus).
Zikes 11y ago
The only way to answer this question properly is to wait and see. No reasonable comparisons can be made until the final hardware and their respective prices are available and have been reviewed thoroughly. For now all we can do is speculate, which is fun but likely won't be terribly useful.
yathern 11y ago
The Rift most certainly has head tracking - perhaps you're getting confused with Gear VR, which lacks positional tracking.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I'm waiting for the Vive, or at least a bunch of a reviews of both platforms. I trust Valve a lot more than Facebook to deliver a gaming device that won't be caught up in strange legal requirements, social media promotion, lock-in, platform exclusives, and potential privacy exploitation. I also feel that the Valve team has been working on the non-sexy issues like controls, motion sickness, advanced eye tracking (rumor?), and head tracking as opposed to the narrative that comes out of the Rift which seems to be centered on "OMG RESOLUTION AND FPS!" Obviously, gamers will lean towards the latter but I suspect work on the former will be more important. I'm also concerned that this stuff will look great, but will require a $2,500 gaming machine to make it all work right. I just upgraded to a Nvidia 950 and from what I've read that's really too weak to do 1080p per eye at 60fps on anything coming close to AAA graphics. I really don't want to be forced to deal with PS3-like polygons and textures for the 3D effect to work correctly. I guess I'll wait and see. I'm certainly not doing any preorders. I'll let the early adopter crowd figure this stuff out. I'm also waiting for magic leap to produce an AR product, but don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I am somewhat concerned that AR could strangle VR in the cradle.
- evgen 11y ago
  Some of those arguments would have held more water before the complete security clusterfuck that Valve visited upon the users of Steam over the holidays.
  - pussinboots 11y ago
    from how i understood it, valve was not the one at fault for the caching bug, it was whoever they use for hosting :^)
- dshankar 11y ago
  FYI, it doesn't require a $2,500 gaming machine. The recommended specifications require a PC that costs roughly $1,000. "Oculus Ready" certified PCs start at $950. Not sure where you'd get the idea that Oculus isn't working on non-sexy problems, considering how many people Oculus has working on controls (Oculus Touch), motion sickness, and yes eye tracking too. Obviously Oculus is working on "head tracking" - that's been around since 2012. Either way, you are correct: waiting to hear about the Vive is a good idea. VR in general (Vive, Rift, etc.) is very much an early adopter technology for the next couple years. Minor note: AR is far from maturity. The FoV and resolution pales in comparison to VR. 30-degrees (like looking through a pinhole) versus 110-degrees is a massive difference that's hard to explain. AR and VR are like sister technologies that will one day converge. AR approaching VR by improving FoV and resolution over the next decade, and VR approaching AR by improving real-world capture & scene reconstruction.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    >The recommended specifications require a PC that costs roughly $1,000. The recommended card for this is a 970 which chimes in at around $350 today. Another $450 (more?) for the Rift, well, you're pushing $1,000 with tax and shipping right there without a PC, CPU, OS, etc. This stuff is fairly pricey and downplaying the cost is being a little disingenuous. I think if you want to remotely future-proof your rig, yes, you are much closer to the $2,500 mark than $1,000. My point stands; this stuff is really, really expensive. Especially when the real competitors in the PC VR gaming space are going to be consoles. I suspect Sony's offering with come in at a cheaper cost and work with the existing PS4. That's going to be a value proposition that's going to be tough to beat. >motion sickness This is unsolved in the VR space. Oculus struggles with it and HTC/Valve claim their "lighthouse" technology can greatly limit it, but there's been no public demonstration or study here proving any of these claims. Hand wavey readings of PR bullet points from vendors isn't convincing.
dshankar 11y ago
Both the Vive and the Rift have head tracking. Positional head tracking has been around since 2014. The Vive has "room-scale" tracking that lets you walk around a large room-sized space, and includes hand controllers that are also tracked in the world. The Rift should support "room-scale" with more cameras, but is not a main focus/supported use case yet for Oculus. The Oculus Touch is like the Vive's tracked hand controllers. They are far more similar to each other than most people realize. It is unlikely to be obsolete in 1 year. The update/release cycle for VR headsets (at least for Oculus) is expected to be somewhere between consoles (6-8 years) and smartphones (1 year). Pricing will be announced on Jan 6 morning and should help you decide. Note: I work full-time developing VR software and own every VR headset.
- strictnein 11y ago
  Is the Vive wireless? Room-scale tracking + wires seems suboptimal.
  - HillRat 11y ago
    Wireless solutions would introduce too much latency, so you're always tethered to a box. It takes some getting used to, and I definitely wouldn't recommend a lot of running and jumping, but it's not a major complicating factor in my experience (though that's in an office environment that was set aside for VR testing, so a home installation may differ significantly). Personally, even though the movement area is limited and the wires are relatively cumbersome, I've found the Vive experience much more immersive.
  - dshankar 11y ago
    No desktop VR headset is wireless today, and won't be for the foreseeable future due to latency and bandwidth requirements. Wires are suboptimal but tracked wires (just like the headset is tracked. i.e. you'll see the wire in VR) should alleviate this problem until wireless technologies mature. Mobile VR will provide room-scale tracking without wires in 2016. Watch this space.
    - 11y ago
Alupis 11y ago
It's kind of funny to think about -- Oculus, first to "invent", (almost) last to market. Given all the hype and big names that joined the Oculus team, and even the sudden sell-out to Facebook (leaving most of their Kickstarter backers feeling used), Oculus has yet to produce a consumer product. At this pace, they're on track to be 3rd to market (well, "tied" if we count pre-orders being taken at CES), even though they were "leading the way" just a short time ago. In addition, from a consumer perspective, their "finished" product looks almost identical to the "developer" previews they shipped years back...
- dshankar 11y ago
  "3rd to market"? The first consumer VR hardware on the market was the GearVR, made by Samsung AND Oculus. The second consumer VR hardware on the market is likely to be the Oculus Rift (Q1 Jan-Mar shipping) and the Vive is likely to be the third to market (est. April shipping) This is nothing like the developer previews from years ago. You should read up on the major differences from the DK1->DK2->CV1. Each was a massive leap forward in capability. Note: I've been developing VR for 1+ years and own every VR headset.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "own every VR headset" Even a Virtuality? ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28gaming%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28gaming%29
  - shpx 11y ago
    As much as VR purists love to hate it, Google Cardboard was the first to market.
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      Durovis Dive was out before Google Cardboard (consumer version of Dive released in November 2013, Google Cardboard was announced in June 2014). Furthermore, there were VR headsets before the Oculus Kickstarter, VR is not a new field, it's just never truly been mainstream before (though it looks likely that it'll breakthrough to the mainstream in 2016).
ZenoArrow 11y ago
I would wait until after CES 2016 to make a decision, HTC is meant to have a big announcement: http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/major-htc-vive-breakthrough-to-be-unveiled-at-ces-2016-1311518 http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/major-htc-vive-break...
pera 11y ago
Linux support is a must-have for me at least.
baby 11y ago
I tried both and the HTC Vive was just years ahead. I haven't tried the new oculus touch but the simple fact that they won't ship it included tells me it's nowhere near HTC Vive.
- endergen 11y ago
  You tried the Crescent Bay version of the Rift? I found the difference to not be that noticeable. Crescent was room scale mostly with no issues, a slight higher chance of losing site, but not much due to sensors on all sides of the headset. The hand tracking option of Vive is rad though. Honestly both are rad. Everyone here is a professional programmer, if you care about VR and all it's potential I don't see why people wouldn't buy multiple if new ones are better than previous version. Ha, well except I know my wife is definitely giving me a budget, cause I want to buy every peripheral.
  - baby 11y ago
    Don't really know, but it was pretty recent: the RSA booth at blackhat US 2015
- haydenlee 11y ago
  I've tried both (and own a Vive) and the Touch definitely has better ergonomics and is more analogous to having your hand in the world whereas the Vive 'wands' feel like you are holding a stick. It's not a clear cut decision. Personally I prefer Touch.
  - purplelobster 11y ago
    The Vive controllers are literally a steam controller cut in half, i.e. prototype material. I think they already said that the released controllers would be updated.
- Arelius 11y ago
  I agree, the new oculus touch controllers have very nice ergonomics in comparison. But otherwise won't be coming with. I didn't notice a huge difference in visual fidelity. And the Lighthouse tracking system is just so much better. Not only can it do room scale trivially, but it has a very wide field of view so works better in tight spaces. And is much, much better about loosing tracking.
haydenlee 11y ago
As opposed to a screen that you keep in your pocket that will be obsolete in a year or two? When you boil down a product to simple terms its really easy to make it sound pointless.
- TranquilMarmot 11y ago
  That's a pretty good point; same price as a smartphone, and I upgrade that pretty frequently (although, less and less frequently as time goes on and no compelling new features are being added)
falcolas 11y ago
Oculus VR games are likely restricted to the Oculus platform, so figure that in as well.

spike021 11y ago

Or go with Sony and buy a PSVR (Project Morpheus).

Zikes 11y ago

The only way to answer this question properly is to wait and see. No reasonable comparisons can be made until the final hardware and their respective prices are available and have been reviewed thoroughly. For now all we can do is speculate, which is fun but likely won't be terribly useful.

yathern 11y ago

The Rift most certainly has head tracking - perhaps you're getting confused with Gear VR, which lacks positional tracking.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I'm waiting for the Vive, or at least a bunch of a reviews of both platforms. I trust Valve a lot more than Facebook to deliver a gaming device that won't be caught up in strange legal requirements, social media promotion, lock-in, platform exclusives, and potential privacy exploitation. I also feel that the Valve team has been working on the non-sexy issues like controls, motion sickness, advanced eye tracking (rumor?), and head tracking as opposed to the narrative that comes out of the Rift which seems to be centered on "OMG RESOLUTION AND FPS!" Obviously, gamers will lean towards the latter but I suspect work on the former will be more important. I'm also concerned that this stuff will look great, but will require a $2,500 gaming machine to make it all work right. I just upgraded to a Nvidia 950 and from what I've read that's really too weak to do 1080p per eye at 60fps on anything coming close to AAA graphics. I really don't want to be forced to deal with PS3-like polygons and textures for the 3D effect to work correctly. I guess I'll wait and see. I'm certainly not doing any preorders. I'll let the early adopter crowd figure this stuff out. I'm also waiting for magic leap to produce an AR product, but don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I am somewhat concerned that AR could strangle VR in the cradle.

evgen 11y ago
Some of those arguments would have held more water before the complete security clusterfuck that Valve visited upon the users of Steam over the holidays.
- pussinboots 11y ago
  from how i understood it, valve was not the one at fault for the caching bug, it was whoever they use for hosting :^)
dshankar 11y ago
FYI, it doesn't require a $2,500 gaming machine. The recommended specifications require a PC that costs roughly $1,000. "Oculus Ready" certified PCs start at $950. Not sure where you'd get the idea that Oculus isn't working on non-sexy problems, considering how many people Oculus has working on controls (Oculus Touch), motion sickness, and yes eye tracking too. Obviously Oculus is working on "head tracking" - that's been around since 2012. Either way, you are correct: waiting to hear about the Vive is a good idea. VR in general (Vive, Rift, etc.) is very much an early adopter technology for the next couple years. Minor note: AR is far from maturity. The FoV and resolution pales in comparison to VR. 30-degrees (like looking through a pinhole) versus 110-degrees is a massive difference that's hard to explain. AR and VR are like sister technologies that will one day converge. AR approaching VR by improving FoV and resolution over the next decade, and VR approaching AR by improving real-world capture & scene reconstruction.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >The recommended specifications require a PC that costs roughly $1,000. The recommended card for this is a 970 which chimes in at around $350 today. Another $450 (more?) for the Rift, well, you're pushing $1,000 with tax and shipping right there without a PC, CPU, OS, etc. This stuff is fairly pricey and downplaying the cost is being a little disingenuous. I think if you want to remotely future-proof your rig, yes, you are much closer to the $2,500 mark than $1,000. My point stands; this stuff is really, really expensive. Especially when the real competitors in the PC VR gaming space are going to be consoles. I suspect Sony's offering with come in at a cheaper cost and work with the existing PS4. That's going to be a value proposition that's going to be tough to beat. >motion sickness This is unsolved in the VR space. Oculus struggles with it and HTC/Valve claim their "lighthouse" technology can greatly limit it, but there's been no public demonstration or study here proving any of these claims. Hand wavey readings of PR bullet points from vendors isn't convincing.

dshankar 11y ago

Both the Vive and the Rift have head tracking. Positional head tracking has been around since 2014. The Vive has "room-scale" tracking that lets you walk around a large room-sized space, and includes hand controllers that are also tracked in the world. The Rift should support "room-scale" with more cameras, but is not a main focus/supported use case yet for Oculus. The Oculus Touch is like the Vive's tracked hand controllers. They are far more similar to each other than most people realize. It is unlikely to be obsolete in 1 year. The update/release cycle for VR headsets (at least for Oculus) is expected to be somewhere between consoles (6-8 years) and smartphones (1 year). Pricing will be announced on Jan 6 morning and should help you decide. Note: I work full-time developing VR software and own every VR headset.

strictnein 11y ago
Is the Vive wireless? Room-scale tracking + wires seems suboptimal.
- HillRat 11y ago
  Wireless solutions would introduce too much latency, so you're always tethered to a box. It takes some getting used to, and I definitely wouldn't recommend a lot of running and jumping, but it's not a major complicating factor in my experience (though that's in an office environment that was set aside for VR testing, so a home installation may differ significantly). Personally, even though the movement area is limited and the wires are relatively cumbersome, I've found the Vive experience much more immersive.
- dshankar 11y ago
  No desktop VR headset is wireless today, and won't be for the foreseeable future due to latency and bandwidth requirements. Wires are suboptimal but tracked wires (just like the headset is tracked. i.e. you'll see the wire in VR) should alleviate this problem until wireless technologies mature. Mobile VR will provide room-scale tracking without wires in 2016. Watch this space.
  - 11y ago

Alupis 11y ago

It's kind of funny to think about -- Oculus, first to "invent", (almost) last to market. Given all the hype and big names that joined the Oculus team, and even the sudden sell-out to Facebook (leaving most of their Kickstarter backers feeling used), Oculus has yet to produce a consumer product. At this pace, they're on track to be 3rd to market (well, "tied" if we count pre-orders being taken at CES), even though they were "leading the way" just a short time ago. In addition, from a consumer perspective, their "finished" product looks almost identical to the "developer" previews they shipped years back...

dshankar 11y ago
"3rd to market"? The first consumer VR hardware on the market was the GearVR, made by Samsung AND Oculus. The second consumer VR hardware on the market is likely to be the Oculus Rift (Q1 Jan-Mar shipping) and the Vive is likely to be the third to market (est. April shipping) This is nothing like the developer previews from years ago. You should read up on the major differences from the DK1->DK2->CV1. Each was a massive leap forward in capability. Note: I've been developing VR for 1+ years and own every VR headset.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "own every VR headset" Even a Virtuality? ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28gaming%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28gaming%29
- shpx 11y ago
  As much as VR purists love to hate it, Google Cardboard was the first to market.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    Durovis Dive was out before Google Cardboard (consumer version of Dive released in November 2013, Google Cardboard was announced in June 2014). Furthermore, there were VR headsets before the Oculus Kickstarter, VR is not a new field, it's just never truly been mainstream before (though it looks likely that it'll breakthrough to the mainstream in 2016).

ZenoArrow 11y ago

I would wait until after CES 2016 to make a decision, HTC is meant to have a big announcement: http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/major-htc-vive-breakthrough-to-be-unveiled-at-ces-2016-1311518 http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/major-htc-vive-break...

pera 11y ago

Linux support is a must-have for me at least.

baby 11y ago

I tried both and the HTC Vive was just years ahead. I haven't tried the new oculus touch but the simple fact that they won't ship it included tells me it's nowhere near HTC Vive.

endergen 11y ago
You tried the Crescent Bay version of the Rift? I found the difference to not be that noticeable. Crescent was room scale mostly with no issues, a slight higher chance of losing site, but not much due to sensors on all sides of the headset. The hand tracking option of Vive is rad though. Honestly both are rad. Everyone here is a professional programmer, if you care about VR and all it's potential I don't see why people wouldn't buy multiple if new ones are better than previous version. Ha, well except I know my wife is definitely giving me a budget, cause I want to buy every peripheral.
- baby 11y ago
  Don't really know, but it was pretty recent: the RSA booth at blackhat US 2015
haydenlee 11y ago
I've tried both (and own a Vive) and the Touch definitely has better ergonomics and is more analogous to having your hand in the world whereas the Vive 'wands' feel like you are holding a stick. It's not a clear cut decision. Personally I prefer Touch.
- purplelobster 11y ago
  The Vive controllers are literally a steam controller cut in half, i.e. prototype material. I think they already said that the released controllers would be updated.
Arelius 11y ago
I agree, the new oculus touch controllers have very nice ergonomics in comparison. But otherwise won't be coming with. I didn't notice a huge difference in visual fidelity. And the Lighthouse tracking system is just so much better. Not only can it do room scale trivially, but it has a very wide field of view so works better in tight spaces. And is much, much better about loosing tracking.

haydenlee 11y ago

As opposed to a screen that you keep in your pocket that will be obsolete in a year or two? When you boil down a product to simple terms its really easy to make it sound pointless.

TranquilMarmot 11y ago
That's a pretty good point; same price as a smartphone, and I upgrade that pretty frequently (although, less and less frequently as time goes on and no compelling new features are being added)

falcolas 11y ago

Oculus VR games are likely restricted to the Oculus platform, so figure that in as well.