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This should be a lesson: acts like this are poisonous. Nobody I know would even consider buying an oculus at this point because it seems like the ENTIRE VR com

• AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  The issue with the hardware isn't just the price. You factor in the good faith of the company and past knowledge. Look at Microsoft and the Kinect. After abandoning the hardware, people just stopped doing projects with Kinect, there was even a 3D scanner based off of it (which was cheaper than commercial model)
  • future1979 10y ago
    Don't remind me. I got the he Xbox one on "sale" last Black Friday. Really ticked off that they sold hw on sale just before the end. I say the end because I see almost no games supporting it these days.
• TwoBit 10y ago
  The entire VR community is not against them. Certainly some are. They have the best VR now (modulo large room scale experiences), which has helped them lately.
  • cookiecaper 10y ago
    I haven't used any VR besides my Oculus DK1, but I've recently heard that Vive is hands-down the best. Haven't heard anyone suggest that Oculus is competitive. I don't follow the VR community very closely. Would you say this sentiment is widely held?
    • twostorytower 10y ago
      Now that Touch shipped last week, yes, it has changed and I would say that opinion is widely held. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/oculus-touch-motion-controller-review,4841-5.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/oculus-touch-motion-cont... - "Until now, our recommendation was the HTC Vive, without much hesitation. But the situation just changed. From a hardware perspective, the Rift edges out HTC's Vive." https://www.wired.com/2016/12/review-oculus-touch/ https://www.wired.com/2016/12/review-oculus-touch/ - "this is the most natural and versatile VR control experience available." http://newatlas.com/oculus-rift-review-touch/46711/ http://newatlas.com/oculus-rift-review-touch/46711/ - "So Oculus Touch is a big ergonomic advantage for the Rift, and the additions of 360 tracking, room-scale and Guardian are effective as catch-up moves. But it's content that seals the deal for the Oculus Rift as our pick for best VR headset."
      • croon 10y ago
        > "The optional dual-sensor, 360° setup works well for these games also, just with a smaller tracked area. Officially Oculus doesn't yet support 360° and room-scale configurations beyond "experimental support," but we recommend spending the extra $79 on that third sensor for the full experience." From what I've heard it doesn't really work that well, even with a third camera, with intermittant tracking issues, and with much less space than the Vive. Your quotes are either misleading or shill.
        • sgift 10y ago
          > Your quotes are either misleading or shill. Or what you've heard is from Valve fanboys and these quotes are true. What I've heard suggests that it's this way, so .. we're stuck.
          • croon 10y ago
            Of the articles above, only Tomshardware even tested roomscale.
          • dkonofalski 10y ago
            I don't think it's that binary. The quotes are misleading because no one actually tested room-scale VR with the Rift except for Tom's and, of those that did, they tested it with the 3 camera setup that's not the standard config for it.
    • shadowmint 10y ago
      Go to PAX sometime. You may even see the stray oculus in the field of wild vive games. I dont think there's a significant technical difference at this point, honestly, but the vive has won the hearts of the developer community, hands down.
      • dkonofalski 10y ago
        Why does this seem to be the completely opposite reaction to what I see on Reddit? Over there, everyone seems to think that Oculus' funding of VR titles means that Oculus has won the hearts of the dev community. I don't really see that myself, but it seems like it's constantly repeated over there.
        • eropple 10y ago
          I have some dark thoughts about exactly who's still haunting Reddit these days, but that aside--how many of the people repeating that are developers? Every developer I know personally who's either developing or considering developing VR titles--sample size not large, but north of ten or so?--is considering, in order, PS VR, Vive, Rift. (PS VR is difficult unless you're an established developer, obviously.)
    • radiorental 10y ago
      Meanwhile, Sony is outselling them both.
      • moron4hire 10y ago
        I have to imagine Sony is over inflating their sales numbers somehow, because I don't know anyone with the Sony system, and I'm one of the organizers of our local VR meetup, so I would think that would get me in front of more VR consumers than average. In the past, I know Sony has counted console units that have left their warehouses as "sales", i.e. even the ones still sitting on retail shelves, having yet to be sold to a user.
        • dkonofalski 10y ago
          The only Sony system I've even seen out in the wild was at one of those video game bars that had it set up in a motion room with the Wii U and DDR where all the games were not seated. It was down for almost 50% of the time and, at least on the TV that was mirroring the view, there was stuttering every 2 or 3 seconds that someone was playing. I never got a chance to use it myself, so it might be awesome, but my initial cursory experience with it was not positive. I also do not know anyone that owns it personally and I am largely involved in my local VR community.
          • eropple 10y ago
            The social screen on PS VR is untethered from the headset display, so it's not really reflective of the performance of the headset itself. Also bear in mind that the baseline PS4 can barely hit 90FPS normally when it isn't rendering very much--this is why a lot of the early PS VR games are so visually simple. I think the PS VR stuff will heat up when more PS4 Pros hit the market.
        • radiorental 10y ago
          I don't know. They've been on intermittent backorder since launch and scalps selling them for $800 on ebay (MSRP is 400) I don't doubt they're channel stuffing (who doesn't) But it's pretty well accepted that it's been a runaway success. It's consumer grade tech, your VR club is a different PCMR audience.
  • moron4hire 10y ago
    I've spent significant time with both systems. Without a doubt, the Rift is the inferior system. The Rift is more comfortable to wear, but it comes at the cost of reduced Field of View. The Vive can really be strapped onto the face hard, giving a view that almost verges on providing peripheral vision. The Rift feels like looking through binoculars in comparison. The Touch controllers are much lighter and better balanced that the Vive wands. Personally, I found the grip gestures expected for the Touch to be very painful, but that will vary by person. I do think they are too clever by half. I got a better sense of "I'm holding a gun" out of gun-games on the Vive than on Touch. I also found the ability to aim at and hit targets easier on the Vive. Ultimately, I think the argument on which controller is better is missing the greater point though, as neither is an ideal design. A hand-tracking system would be much better (and no, not the Leap Motion, that thing is garbage, yes, even after the Orion update). Though Vive-centric games have always had both motion controllers and room-scale by default, whereas the Rift market is now fragmented between gamepads and Touch, and seated versus standing. Also, Touch is only just now out, whereas Vive has had developers working on content for over half a year. Indeed, Valve is already working on a new form factor for the controller. The two camera setup for the Rift is absolutely, hands-down awful. In a room dedicated to VR setup, I constantly lost tracking when turned to the left or right. The Vive's Lighthouse system is designed to be much, much more scalable. I've never had such pervasive problems maintaining tracking with the Vive. Yes, you're supposed to have three cameras for room-scale on the Rift. To me, that's another point against the Rift. It's a very complex system that is prone to failure. I can get the Vive to track a space about 20ft by 20ft on stock hardware, in default configuration, with no special finagling, just calibrate and go. I have to spend more money on an extra camera with the Rift, extra PCIe cards for all these USB3 cameras, and it's hit or miss whether or not I can get 10ft by 10ft working. The Rift's camera based system is limited by how high of a resolution they can pack into the camera, how sensitive they are to tiny IR LEDs across a room, and how many spare cycles they have to run the image processing algorithm on all those camera feeds. In comparison, the Vive's Lighthouse system is limited by how bright they can make the sync pulse, which basically amounts to an IR flash bulb. In general, I think this is indicative of a much larger problem in VR, consumer reactions, and journalistic reporting. These are all amazing pieces of technology. If you've never seen any VR system after 2015, then you're not prepared for the experience these things provide. It's really easy to get lost in the wow-factor and fail to evaluate the system as a whole. E.g. the Rift headset is more comfortable, but is comfort an important metric compared to FOV? Is it enough that the Touch controllers are theoretically "more ergonomic" than the Vive wands, or is application design built around the controller important, too? Or the MS Hololens: wave-guide displays and inside out tracking are craaaaazy! But they are also kind of janky, the FOV is unusably narrow, and Windows Holographic has terrible UI affordances. When I stop losing the forest for the trees and focus on a unified experience, the only system I have time for in my personal life right now is the Vive. We support "everything" in the projects we build, but if I'm just trying to relax and enjoy myself, I know the Rift and Gear VR and Hololens and Daydream are all staying on the shelf.
• gottam 10y ago
  Can you blame them? Oculus & Facebook started acting like an abusive monopoly before they even had the monopoly.
• robahall 10y ago
  I think this is far over exaggerated. I have been following Oculus since very early days and haven't been bothered in the slightest. What you're seeing is negative feedback from owners of competitive devices.
• qwtel 10y ago
  How poisonous is it really though? Not a rhetorical question. The people who pay attention to this type of thing are VR enthusiasts, who are a minority compared to the larger pool Facebook is aiming for. An interesting example would be Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare. Its trailer is one of the most downvoted videos on YouTube. As far as I understand, hardcore fans hated it and somehow managed to get downvoting the trailer to be some kind of viral thing (Otherwise, how did it get to those numbers? Nothing about the trailer per-se was that bad. There's even Jon Snow in it). I thought that this would have no effect on the game's success, since I don't think average consumers are particularly interested in the opinions of hardcore gaming snobs. However, the game has since been released and--as far as I know--bombed. Of course, that could also be due to the game being not that good. There's no doubt that "influencers" are important in driving sales, but I'm skeptical whether they can play a similar role in preventing sales--especially if average consumers see value in the underlying product.
  • croon 10y ago
    I've had the same thoughts for the last decade or so, and have swayed between both sides. Anything from iPhone adoption, to which social networks will prevail, to which competing technology will win. I've probably been more wrong than not, so the question why is increasingly interesting. One related theory I can't find any wikipedia information on stems from an old TED talk from 2010: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/first-follower-theory http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/first-follower-theor... Even if we traditionally consider ourselves (I've always been a "nerd"/"core"/"early adopter"/whatever) on the sidelines, when our industry and interests have taken center stage I think we have had a greater influence than we care to admit, or even want. Some people want to be first at something, but many people don't, either for lack of anyone else to use said thing with, or lack of support, or high cost of entry, or unproven quality, etc. I hate to get political, but I think it's increasingly clear that movements can begin with something as simple as a few memes from someones computer. But it's of course hard to tell if "our" audience is the right one at all times (eg Google Glass, Google+), when comparing to Facebook (select few colleges) and Snapchat spectacles ("celebrity" millenials).
  • wccrawford 10y ago
• dkonofalski 10y ago
  While I personally align with you on this, the "ENTIRE VR community" has not turned against them. It's definitely biased, but just check out the VR communities on reddit (including /r/oculus). They act like Oculus Touch has somehow magically saved the reputation of Oculus and has actually somehow moved VR forward in an unimaginable way. I think it's objectively obvious that the Vive is better both technologically and from a user-experience point of view (less sensors, better tracking, better end-to-end process. no lock-in), but that doesn't seem to be a common opinion in the greater VR community.