HTC Vive is $799, ships early April 2016

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I'm sure both Vive and Rift will have plenty of software support. Only thing I'm worried about is room scale games if Rift and PSVR don't work, as I doubt many developers will satisfy themselves with just the Vive userbase.

But it will be the shit in gen 2 for sure.

Which is why Touch coming late and being optional and room tracking officially unsupported is potentially holding back the VR market as a whole. Hopefully enough Vives will be sold to keep the software going.
 
I've been sold on VR since demoing the pre-DK2 at Pax Prime. When the DK2 became available I purchased one immediately, and since then I've bought the innovator edition GearVR for my note 4 and the consumer GearVR for my Note 5.
There was never any doubt in my mind that I would order the Consumer Oculus Rift the second it was released, but that all changed when I started watching videos of people using the Vive Pre.
The experiences possible with the combination of room-scale and motion controls are completely new! It's not just a different take on gaming, it's something new and innovative.

My only real concern about the Vive is whether it sells well enough to support continued development of software that takes advantage of its capabilities, but that's just another reason to vote with my wallet and hope enough other folks follow suit.

Oculus will be around. People might be drawing battle lines because there are exclusives and different control schemes so they have to psychologically pad their personal purchasing decisions to make sure they're getting the best deal, but frankly Oculus will have a round 2 and at least a round 3. They have the next version of the rift which they will continue to iterate on.

They have the touch platform. Their use of Cameras and leap style technology in their touch controller gives them legs to move forward with each iteration. Since Oculus is eventually going to room scale and Valve has really put their money where their mouth is with SteamVR I don't think room scale compatible experiences for the Vive are going to suddenly stop being made.

Which is why Touch coming late and being optional and room tracking officially unsupported is potentially holding back the VR market as a whole. Hopefully enough Vives will be sold to keep the software going.

I'm getting a Vive because I want to push towards room scale and better VR interaction but Oculus will continue to iterate (I had a march ship date on my oculus pre-order but went ahead and cancelled it for my Vive pre-order). I don't need to be any more loyal to a PC VR headset manufacturer than I am to the brand of android phone I buy, and they're both roughly the same price (flagship phones vs PC VR HMDs).

We're all going to be winners with a competitive consumer VR market.

I still want a lighthouse aware pet collar to put on my cat. I guarantee I'm going to kick the poor thing at some point.

I expect to buy a headset a year for the next 3 years or so and probably longer.
 
I´m so tired of the regular videogames. Maybe I should cancel my Rift preorder and go full HTC Vive room scale.
I also preordered PSVR...so maybe this system can substitue the Rift.
I really don´t know if room scale is still fun after a few months.
And when you are really tired after work......do you really want to walk through your room?

Mhhhhh.......
 
I´m so tired of the regular videogames. Maybe I should cancel my Rift preorder an go full HTV Vive room scale.
I also preordered PSVR...so maybe this system can substitue the Rift.
I really don´t know if room scale is still fun after a few months.
And when you are really tired after work......do you really want to walk through your room?

Mhhhhh.......

Don't get the PSVR for room scale. The move controllers apparently aren't close to the level of interactivity you can get with the Vive VR controllers.

Gizmag said:
PlayStation VR's PS Move controllers are another matter altogether. We're baffled as to why Sony is recycling a pair of Wiimote-like controllers that first shipped in late 2010 – for a late 2016 virtual reality platform.

As its best-by date would suggest, PS Move's tracking accuracy is far below that of the Rift and Vive, to the point where its tech gets in the way of a high-quality experience. Trying to swing a sword in Golem was a laborious task: if you swing the Move controller too quickly, tracking goes completely to hell, and if you swing too slowly, you're now adapting your gameplay to the technology – ideally it's the other way around. And even when swinging slowly, they still track more like a Wiimote than the high-end Rift or Vive.

http://www.gizmag.com/best-vr-headset-gdc-2016/42377/
 
Somewhere on Gaf I read a good point about which to get. For 1.0 VR, I'm getting the Vive because, out the gate, it offers multiple new experiences with VR and room-scale. Tested's demos looks great and I want to try them all. Personally, it doesn't matter if room-scale isn't fully supported within the next 2 years because Gen 2 headsets will be out soon by then. The spec bumps will be appealing to anyone sold on VR to upgrade and I'll be debating Vive, Rift and any new competitors again. Which means, for now, 1.0 is Vive for me for room-scale.
 
I´m so tired of the regular videogames. Maybe I should cancel my Rift preorder and go full HTC Vive room scale.
I also preordered PSVR...so maybe this system can substitue the Rift.
I really don´t know if room scale is still fun after a few months.
And when you are really tired after work......do you really want to walk through your room?

Mhhhhh.......

Vive isn't only room scale. It's everything.
 
I´m so tired of the regular videogames. Maybe I should cancel my Rift preorder and go full HTC Vive room scale.
I also preordered PSVR...so maybe this system can substitue the Rift.
I really don´t know if room scale is still fun after a few months.
And when you are really tired after work......do you really want to walk through your room?

Mhhhhh.......

Vive can do sitting, standing and walking around experiences, too. It's capable of all of that plus motion controllers out of the box.

Having had the DK2 for a year+, the Vive was an easy choice. Sitting experiences get old; they're a half-measure for VR. The Rift is a non-starter until Touch hits.
 
Vive can do sitting, standing and walking around experiences, too. It's capable of all of that plus motion controllers out of the box.

Having had the DK2 for a year+, the Vive was an easy choice. Sitting experiences get old; they're a half-measure for VR. The Rift is a non-starter until Touch hits.

Thanks for your opinion.

I just tried Rift @ Gamescom and was pretty hyped.

So I didn´t experienced Vive. But so many people say that this is the true VR experience.
 
So did everyone on GAF abandon the Rift and decide to go with the Vive? That seems to be the case. So what are your reasons for doing so. I'm currently on the fence as to which company I should support.
I'm getting both. I was originally just going with the Rift since image quality is the most important feature to me, and the lack of screen door effect is a huge plus in my opinion, but there is just too much cool stuff coming out for the Vive for me to pass and I'm sure the SDE on the Vive is minimal compared to the DK2 I've been using.

I figure I'll use the Rift for my seated sim games with steering wheels and joysticks, and the Vive for the obvious room scale stuff. Once the touch controllers arrive for the rift and I get to try both complete systems thoroughly, then I'll probably keep whichever one I'm happiest with and give the other one to my dad.

Bottom line, I think both systems are gonna be awesome and by the end of the year will probably be very similar in what they can do. I don't think you can go wrong either way. Just sucks that we have to wait a few months for the motion controls for the rift. If I could only afford one, I would probably go Vive for the full room experience out of the box.
 
So did everyone on GAF abandon the Rift and decide to go with the Vive? That seems to be the case. So what are your reasons for doing so. I'm currently on the fence as to which company I should support.

I was considering getting a PSVR until I saw the user experience of using a vive by comparison. It just looks like a much better experience front to back. I've got the PC to run it and if I'm going to get into VR and can afford the best option, that's the route I'd go.
 
I went over to one of my friends house's for the first time and were showing me the place. They said "Here is the office, it's mostly empty right now" and my eyes lit RIGHT up.

I definitely wanna bring my PC and Vive over, straighten out the room a bit and set up a demo day where we invite a bunch of people over to try it out.
 
Basic laser optics question for Lighthouse - are the lasers being fanned out into a plane by a lens or a (much faster) spinning mirror within the rotating drum?
 
Basic laser optics question for Lighthouse - are the lasers being fanned out into a plane by a lens or a (much faster) spinning mirror within the rotating drum?

Err, it'd have to be a lens as far as I can see. A lens with the fan direction perpendicular to the axis of movement.
 
Related link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/40877n/vive_lighthouse_explained/
Includes a pretty neat gif:
1259287828241194666.gif


Also from the thread - the motors of the final version:
 
Err, it'd have to be a lens as far as I can see. A lens with the fan direction perpendicular to the axis of movement.

Yeah, that's what I thought at first too, but I haven't been able to find an example of a lens that would actually do that. Guess it could be a convex half-cylinder, but it would need to be tiny (matching the beam width, pretty much) and have a very smooth surface to get an even distribution without any blind spots.

Edit: guess it could be a prism along the length of that window in the drum above. Something like this:
22723-5188091.jpg



Aha, there we go. Thanks
Zmax-image-of-uniform-line-output-from-Powell-lens.jpg
 
Yeah, that's what I thought at first too, but I haven't been able to find an example of a lens that would actually do that. Guess it could be a convex half-cylinder, but it would need to be tiny (matching the beam width, pretty much) and have a very smooth surface to get an even distribution without any blind spots.

http://blog.prophotonix.com/structured-light-lasers/structured-light-laser-vs-laser-line-generator/

Having a point laser rotating in the opposite direction to emulate a line would mean only one sensor could ever be hit at exactly the same time. It'd also result in a diagonal cast. Neither would be good for the Vive.
 
Starting to not want the Rift. The press around it has been underwhelming and Oculus reps haven't been instilling my confidence.
 
Starting to not want the Rift. The press around it has been underwhelming and Oculus reps haven't been instilling my confidence.

The press is currently enraptured with the possibilities of room scale, so the Rift has taken a back seat for a bit. (Deservedly so IMO.) It will probably get more attention when the newness of room scale fades a bit.

As for confidence and Oculus... There's just too many unknowns with the Rift. When are they going to make good on being "open" and support the Vive instead of fracturing the market? When are the Touch controllers going to be out? Second half could be anywhere from summer to Christmas. How much are they going to cost? They're really not doing themselves any favors right now when stacked up against the Vive where everything is set in stone.

Edit:
The Highwire guys actually addressed this in the Giant Bomb Quick Look claiming that they want it to be slow because you are supposed to be a giant hulking Golem. Do you think this is bullshit to excuse the bad tracking or on the level?

I don't care what the reason or rational is. 1:1 movements where the on screen action is lagging way behind or missing your own actions is pointless. It entirely defeats the purpose, and will strip away any feeling of presence. You might as well use a standard controller at that point. At least that wont have the mental mismatch.
 
this is a good visualization of how the system works (as linked in that reddit thread)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54dotTt7k0

the lighthouses flash in sync, this tells the IR Diodes to start their stopwatch, then as the laser sweep hits diodes, it acts as stopping the timer... using the time on each diode and knowing the rotation speed it can figure out the angle and then position with the horizontal and vertical sweep.

It's pretty elegant to me, the nice thing is that adding more tracked objects doesn't require more processing to support it, like a camera tracking system might where it is depending on software.

What would be really cool is if HTC (or possibly another company through allowing licensing of the lighthouse tech), created small attachable lighthouse compatible trackers.... we could maybe have a slightly affordable way of doing skeletal motion capture and other interesting experiments.
 
So did everyone on GAF abandon the Rift and decide to go with the Vive? That seems to be the case. So what are your reasons for doing so. I'm currently on the fence as to which company I should support.

Personally, I think gen-1 headsets will depreciate in cost rapidly. Buying one is "pouring money down the drain"... So, my plan was to get the cheapest headset that gives 'the VR experience'.

At this point, it's pretty clear that the 'full experience' is room-scale, and the only guaranteed way to get that experience is with the Vive (someone posting on a forum that it "should work", "should release in 6 months", "room-scale might be supported" and that they "think it'll be $100" isn't something that I can use to get a refund if they are wrong). I've also got no idea how I'd ever connect up 2 opposing cameras in my room.

If the Rift was substantially cheaper, then I'd probably have gone that route, but now there's no guarantee it's actually any cheaper and no guarantees whatsoever about room-scale.
 
What would be really cool is if HTC (or possibly another company through allowing licensing of the lighthouse tech), created small attachable lighthouse compatible trackers.... we could maybe have a slightly affordable way of doing skeletal motion capture and other interesting experiments.
Something like this?

I agree that I'd love to get my hands on some of those.
 
I wonder how many lighthouse enabled devices can sync to the headset simultaneously. Granted you could always use the aux USB port on the Vive to jack in another receiver. (Seriously, having a USB port on the headset is going to be such a boon for the more experimental folk.)
 
I wonder how many lighthouse enabled devices can sync to the headset simultaneously. Granted you could always use the aux USB port on the Vive to jack in another receiver. (Seriously, having a USB port on the headset is going to be such a boon for the more experimental folk.)

I think there's quote that the headset is designed to work with "up to 16 parts of articulation", although I'm not sure whether that really makes any sense.
 
The Highwire guys actually addressed this in the Giant Bomb Quick Look claiming that they want it to be slow because you are supposed to be a giant hulking Golem. Do you think this is bullshit to excuse the bad tracking or on the level?

It just seems like poor game design to me. VR needs 1:1 control not waggle.
 
I don't think there's any PC+Vive sales yet in Europe at least.
You should build a PC if you can and pre-order the headset anyway.
I see. As far as I know I can only buy the Vive from Valve's website. If I order it now, when can I expect to receive it?
 
Nah, you want to start with something that makes use of the controllers.
Showmanship man, common

If you start with controllers, going back to TheBlu won't be as impressive

Start with TheBlu, and when their jaw is dropped mumbling "I felt like I could almost reach out and touch it...", you slip a controller in their hand and say "alright, then let's touch some stuff" and start up the games

Notice how The Lab starts off with photogrammetry as the first demo? They get it
 
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