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Microsoft announces new VR headsets for Windows 10, starting at $299
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI was super excited to preorder an Oculus on the first day... until I saw the price. At a more reasonable price point, this is probably going to get me started on VR, finally. I know it won't be the "best" quality, but the market's too fluid to invest heavily in the high end immediately.
- trapperkeeper79 10y agoLikewise. I have phone-based VR and a beefy PC. The pricey headsets, limited content and exclusives for headsets have kept me out of the higher end. A friend (also a dev) and I were just chatting yesterday that we'd get hololens and attempt to write apps with it - were it not for the insane price (especially after I wasted almost 2K on Google's Glass debacle). A lower price point and wide availability across vendors might mean fewer exclusives and that is great for the whole industry. Incidently, I thought Google was doing a good job with the Google VR SDK. But I now am very skeptical since it appears (just my humble, personal opinion) they are more focused on their Daydream platform than they are on wide availability across vendor devices.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoYeah. For $299, I can buy a headset with the knowledge I'm gonna replace it soon. But if I buy an $800 headset, it has to do EVERYTHING. I did Glass too, and again, HoloLens outpriced my acceptable "stupid expense to be on the leading edge" budget. :D
- sammydavis 10y agoBuying nextstep on intel (I think it was os 3.3, it cost like $800) was the last big thing I invested in that turned out to be a big mistake, but I'm lucky :-) I happened to think google glass would never go anywhere but that was lucky too. Probably most developers never have been nextstep running (except on a mac ;-)).
- monk_e_boy 10y agoIf you are not developing for VR then wait. We all know that version 1 is always a bit rubbish. Version 2 is better, version 3 is better and hits the right price point.
- mxfh 10y agoUnless Lighthouses are super-seeded by inside-out tracking in all kinds of common household light settings at comparable precision, for the VIVE the thing that needs an upgrade the headset (with a flip up style option for casual use), which will also result in a new non-HDMI connector box, you could still keep the controllers plus the lighthouses. Also shipping the headset only, should be less pricey than it was on that comparably huge VIVE box set. I'm quite confident there will be room-scale enabled (foveated) 4k resolution class headsets in the next two years for $500 or less. Although the money saved will then still have to go towards a more capable GPU than something currently available in the $200 price range.
- fossuser 10y agoI bought a fancy PC, a Vive and the Rift to play with them and see how the tech is shaping up. The Rift may be better now given Zuckerberg's demo and the shipping touch controls, but I ended up selling it. Playing with an Xbox One controller was a pretty bad experience (with the one exception being the space game) and it was overall pretty disappointing compared to the Vive. The Vive with room scale is something different - it's really impressive. The touch controllers work well and the movement feels natural. The content right now though is pretty limited and Oculus has tied up a lot with software exclusives. Maybe Oculus will do well with the social stuff they're working on (demo was cool) and GearVR might save them, but the Vive is a much better product right now and worth playing with if you can.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 10y agoBUY TWO OF THESE TODAY You're talking about something you can't even name
- djsumdog 10y agoSame with the Google Glass. At the time I was living in a place where $1k USD was way more than I wanted to pay. Looks like it was a good thing I didn't either. MS is probably selling this at a development loss (probably not a raw materials loss; betting the parts are <=$100 at scale fabrication) just like consoles. They can afford it too, and even if it fails, it's not like it's a large amount of money consumers would lose like with the Glass. I have a hard time believing the augmentation is as clear as they portray it to be, and you can't really tell without the product either (like trying to show off how good UHD is on a 1080p screen). I think it'd be interesting if within 4 years, we see versions of this products that are the same size as the holobands from the Caprica tv series.
- Kroniker 10y agoJust to touch on the augmentation- I got to try one of these a few days ago, and you're totally right. The viewing angle can't be more than 1/2 a steradian, and everything has this washed-out and prototype-y feel. I would never buy one of these in their current state.
- helthanatos 10y agoInstead of having a headset, I'd rather have a room with projectors and sensors that can make it more immersive... Besides clothes - guess you'd have to physically change those unless you had some small glasses to augment certain real things.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 10y ago> MS is probably selling this at a development loss > this Can you define for the rest of us what "this" means in your sentence? Explain it, describe it, give us info on it. Thanks
- Keyframe 10y agoI bought IO-Glasses (back in 90's) for 1600 Deutsch Marks. Early adoption is not foreign to me. However, somehow I still don't see anything compelling about current VR/AR wave that would nudge me towards buying one. IO-Glasses were great for Dark Forces though. And a motion sickness after 20+ minutes or so.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 10y agoDid you preorder this already then? Thanks microsoft shill
- BatFastard 10y agoDoes anyone have a link to the demo video? This video refers to the first, but doesn't have much useful info in it.
- XzetaU8 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqXo7pKJGtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqXo7pKJGtU
- djsumdog 10y agoI was wondering this too. Thanks!
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoMan was that ever boring. I was expecting some Direct3D or XBox integration, like a Forza game or something. Between the stale demo, the lack of technical details, and no release date, I wouldn't be surprised if the headset doesn't actually work all that well yet.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 10y agoHow can you have a driving game in AR? The best you could have would be ghost-like, aliasing cars looking like they're swimming around the surface of your coffee table, glitching out and dropping to the floor 1% of people think
- BatFastard 10y agounfortunately that video just subjected me to a long boring talk which never covered the VR headset. Thank god for the browser plug in which lets you speed up videos!
- Tiktaalik 10y agoThis seems like a pretty big announcement and yet there's no real details. When is this shipping? What software is available? Weird.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 10y agoThis. Again. Jesus Christ. Literally every word in the story is a lie. Announce: No they didn't New: No. VR: No. headsets: No. They didn't announce anything, but every news media is getting paid a lot of money by Microsoft to spin whatever they want. Microsoft always announce vaporware without price, specs, info — it's always fake, it's always testing in a controlled environment by clueless idiots who are handled by the demo staff, it's always marketed by completely engineered and CGI lies. But they get away with it because the best response from the fucking people who are supposed to know is "Weird". Really, that's the most you feel you can read into it? That's why in 10 years we'll still have the same pesky bullshit.
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account for posting only uncivil comments.
- tofupup 10y agowonder if there is something similar for linux?
- randiantech 10y agommm, maybe the HTC Vive?
- erikpukinskis 10y agoSteamVR does not support Linux yet.
- corysama 10y agohttp://www.osvr.org/ http://www.osvr.org/