My Oculus Rift Review:
A little bit about me first: I have been into the concept of VR since I was a child watching old B sci-fi films and tv shows with my dad. I dreamed about the day we would have a device that would deliver a "holodeck" like feel. This was a massive passion of mine and I even own the domain:
http://www.nintendoon.com/ which played host to a fictional Nintendo themed virtual reality console.
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Last Monday I received my Oculus Rift. The first thing I noticed was the elegant packaging. This definitely has a "quality" feel to it and I really like the reusable storage casing.
The Oculus Rift is a sexy product. Very well designed headset that is surprisingly light and sleek looking for what amounts to a huge face hugger.
ok well not that huge.
The setup process for the Rift was really polished and easy to follow. I ran into no issues at all with my hardware and I had the Rift up and running in about 15 minutes.
It was when I put my Rift on my head when my dream began to slowly crumble before my very eyes...
My facial expression resembled that looks on the faces from the three characters in Day of the Tentacle when they were in the time machine porta potties when they learned that...well they might not survive the trip.
All joking aside I went in not really knowing what to expect and I was absolutely shocked to discover just how poor the image resolution/clarity and field of view was on this thing. Way worse then I imagined.
It's not that I expect 4K visuals in the Rift or a 100% field of view. I just wasn't prepared for just how poor these things really would be. It's hard to compare them to visuals on a computer monitor but at times I felt like VHS quality. More so with the 360 degree videos rather then the games which seemed to look a little better. I want to say that the field of view felt like it may have been covering about 60-70% of my actual vision with the rest of my vision being the blackness from the Rift itself.
Text is super blurry (though readable) and I feel like I have the vision of a 90 year old wearing really think old styled glasses.
Because of the limitations of the resolution and field of view I get this claustrophobic feel from using the device which often times makes me not even want to play it.
I found that the 360 degree videos ranged from absolutely unwatchable to barely watchable. Some were so poor that I could barely make out what was even happening in the scene. The better looking ones had the imagine quality of a poor quality DVD.
Before anyone asks, yes I properly adjusted the lenses and played around with the positioning of the Rift on my head and various adjustments that could be made. I just found the picture quality very poor. I honestly have no interest in watching 360 degree videos in this thing at all.
The Oculus Cinema app surprisingly fared better. Playing your own video files in the theater mode was a really cool experience. The 2D video looked a lot better then the 360 degree ones and being able to move around, stand up, etc in the theater made it feel very lifelike and I was pretty damn impressed with that. Still the low fov and resolution overall takes away from the experience even here. Just not as much.
Gaming I feel fared better then the videos. Games mostly felt playable and I found that Lucky's Tale is believe it or not one of the coolest experiences available on the Rift. It feels like you are this giant in a huge come-to-life toy set. It's a very neat experience for sure and it does make what would be an average game a rather neat and immersive experience.
First person shooters are an absolutely no go. Vanishing of Ethan Carter made me sick in about 2-3 minutes. There is the ability to teleport your positioning throughout a level but I found this to be rather pointless and really takes you out of the immersion. As of now I feel like first person games just don't really work well in VR outside of maybe stationary shooting range games and maybe extremely slow first person adventure games. Adr1ft made me a little ill as well a few minutes in despite being a slower paced game.
Motion sickness is a real thing here and will affect everyone differently. So far I have only experienced it in the first person games I've played but I have not tried every single game available.
Eve Valkyrie was neat. I'm not a huge online gamer but there is something truly awesome being able to look around a cockpit of a spacecraft before launching out of the side of a hangar into space. Really neat stuff. Would have been more interested if this was a full single player experience.
Final Thoughts:
Everyone's experiences with VR are going to be very different. I know some people who play VR every day and others who were done and had their fill a few days after getting a headset.
Personally I feel that the low resolution and poor field of view really kills what would be an otherwise revolutionary product. Make no mistake, what Oculus, Valve, Sony, etc has done is completely revolutionary and completely awesome. I do feel like VR is going to become a huge thing eventually. I think this is just the beginning of something incredible.
That being said we simply aren't there yet. I don't think VR will be truly ready until we get a near full field of view, a much higher (4k or higher) internal display, better games and hopefully some issues solved with motion sickness.
Even after dropping a ton of cash on the Oculus Rift, I don't see myself using it that often. I'll likely get Touch and a few games to see if I can warm up to it more but ultimately it becomes super uncomfortable for me to wear. I don't think it's because of having to wear a visor but because the low resolution and field of view really closes off your vision and after a little while I am excited to take the thing off and be able to see with my full vision again.
Someday VR will get get there. Hopefully within the next 5 years but for now, it's like cooking a tasty meal and realizing that it's quite under cooked. I definitely say give VR a try because I feel like this is something everyone should experience but makes sure you get some playtime in before deciding to drop a large amount of cash on it because honestly? I kind of regret it!
Oculus Rift: 7/10
+Revolutionary tech, Super Mario 64 like experience at first. Truly immersive.
+Fantastic sound quality for 80s looking headphones.
+Overall fantastic build quality and packaging quality.
-Low field of view and terrible resolution really hinders the experience and gives the wearer a claustrophobic. You're not likely going to want to wear this thing for long periods of time until this improves.
-Software lineup is rather weak. Lots of overpriced games. Very few worthwhile titles.
-Motion sickness can be quite common and it sucks. Lots of fast paced games just isn't going to work.
Verdict: Wait until the technology improves and the software lineup grows.
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If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Obviously the above is essentially my opinion and impressions so I really hope nobody here is offended. I am definitely excited to see where the technology goes in the future once it has time to mature and blossom into a more fully realized product.
