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The High-end VR Discussion Thread (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR)

YuShtink

Member
Stop making me sad I'm getting the Rift guys... I can't afford the vive and need VR now lol

Don't be sad. It's still the best HMD in itself. And even with one Rift camera you'll have a much wider range of tracking than DK2, you'll be able to get up and take a couple steps if you feel so inclined. Hell, 1 or two steps was already possible with the DK2.

It also has a much more substantial software line-up.

Most impressions so far say Touch controllers are the best out there, even if they aren't standard or coming out until the end of the year.

Fantastic Contraption is already going to support 360 room scale with Rift. If room scale takes off other devs will follow suit and so will Oculus. You aren't going wrong with either.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
I would pay ungoldly amounts of money to play on real golf courses in VR. I assume I would need Vive for that (were the experience to exist)?

Golf alone could change my mind on Room scale as long as it was 1 to 1 for swing tracking (hence the need for vive right?). Yes Cloudlands looks incredible.


I am getting a PSVR to try and see if I can hack it (and not get sick). I figure if I am ok with that then I will spend more money on a second gen VR device and an Omni.

ya my dream is a golf game that models real courses and you use a golf cart to drive between shots thru the course then when you exit the cart your in your Room Scale mode walk around your ball crouch check your lines then swing..track the shot hop back in the cart and drive to the shot along the cart path.
You could just teleport between shots but cart mode would be so awesome.
 

Dodecagon

works for a research lab making 6 figures
Stop making me sad I'm getting the Rift guys... I can't afford the vive and need VR now lol

Just think that your getting the more polished piece of kit. Prudently waiting for the best tech. Rift will get a tracked controller solution eventually and if it's as refined as the HMD, it'll do most of what the vive does with gesture features vive doesn't have in a nicer overall package.
 
That moment when you're playing Dreadhalls and your cat jumps up on the desk next to you and meows really loudly in your face.

Good god that seriously scared me.

I will say this again, but if you have heart conditions, or your family has a history of heart attacks, do not play VR horror. Don't do it.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
That moment when you're playing Dreadhalls and your cat jumps up on the desk next to you and meows really loudly in your face.

Good god that seriously scared me.

I will say this again, but if you have heart conditions, or your family has a history of heart attacks, do not play VR horror. Don't do it.

I played Alien Isolation in VR, and there was this moment I was hiding under a bed or something like that, and I was looking backwards IRL, when my dog chose that moment to stretch by my feet and his nails hit the top of my foot. I fucking lost my shit and had to quit the game.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Re: Vive vs Rift

I think in terms of "VR Displays" they're actually pretty much going to be neck and neck. In fact, I'd bet the rift itself will be a more comfortable, and ultimately superior VR headset. The main reason I'd ever consider using the vive over the rift purely as a headset is because the vive has a pass through camera. IMO a pass through camera is really a must for VR, and oculus really screwed up what would likely otherwise be a wholly better headset by not including the cameras they had on their prototypes.

However, the vive's tracking method and because it comes with positional tracking wands out of the box (and thus every vive-first game can assume the player has a method of tracking their hands) coupled with encouragement towards room scale tracking makes me think of the Vive less as a VR headset, and more like the first ever consumer version of a Holodeck. Honestly, the times I've tried the vive have been the closest I've ever felt to being literally in another world. I've done cockpit games, I've spent lots of money building vibrating seats and perfectly tuned flightstick and racing wheel holders. Those get very close to feeling like "wow, I'm really there." But the Vive? The vive is a holodeck, straight up. It's clunky and imprecise like you'd expect the first ever holodeck to be like, but it's an impressive start.

Both rift and vive are going to be top quality VR headsets. But the Vive includes next gen motion controls, and that helps the experience tremendously.
 

UnrealEck

Member
Does HTC charge your card when you pre-order or is it when it's shipped? I have a feeling new pre-orders will be at the tail end of May at best.
I should have pre-ordered on Feb 29th.
 

Durante

Member
Some of the conversations about Room Scale have me extremely excited I Just feel like there are those who aren't really seeing the potential limitations of real world situations. That's not a knock on the tech, that's just reality.
There are also lots of potential limitations to PC gaming in general in "real world situations". There are even more potential limitations to keyboard and mouse PC gaming. And even more on top of that to e.g. old-school cRPG gaming.

The thing is, discussing what is popular is supremely boring and somewhat useless to me compared to discussing what is possible and of interest to me personally. The fact that room-scale isn't mass market is self-evident, and there isn't really much to discuss about that.
 

Frozone

Member
Rift has potentially a better headset (optics, comfort, audio etc.) and day one software, but Vive has far better controls and room scale tracking out of the box.

I wouldn't go that far. It can't have "far better controls" when the Rift doesn't come with controls. In every single preview I've read about the Rift Touch, it appears to be superior to the Vive's controls.
 
I wouldn't go that far. It can't have "far better controls" when the Rift doesn't come with controls. In every single preview I've read about the Rift Touch, it appears to be superior to the Vive's controls.

In almost every way but *motion tracking* sure, but that's a fairly key aspect.
 
I wouldn't go that far. It can't have "far better controls" when the Rift doesn't come with controls. In every single preview I've read about the Rift Touch, it appears to be superior to the Vive's controls.

I assume Mr Wrestlemania means out of the gate. If you want immersive interaction with VR right now you would consider the Vive over the Rift.

I am waiting for those Oculus Touch controls though.
 

Onemic

Member
I wouldn't go that far. It can't have "far better controls" when the Rift doesn't come with controls. In every single preview I've read about the Rift Touch, it appears to be superior to the Vive's controls.

He said, 'out of the box' so he's not wrong. Out of the box the rift comes with an xbone controller.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I wouldn't go that far. It can't have "far better controls" when the Rift doesn't come with controls. In every single preview I've read about the Rift Touch, it appears to be superior to the Vive's controls.

From my time with a steam controller, I know that haptic touch pads offer much more utility than an analog stick does.

From what I know about inside-out vs outside-in positional tracking, I fully expect Vive's wands to track better, too.

I don't think finger gesturing will honestly be that significant, and anything you could do with the states of the thumb or index finger on the rift controller, you could probably assign to a button or even a touchpad.

I do think the oculus touch will likely be shaped better. i think the shape of the vive controllers is bleh, they are way too fat and don't feel very comfortable. But I think they will have more utility than touch.
 

Durante

Member
I still don't know why they are putting analog sticks on Touch. I hope it's not out of some misguided attempt to bridge it to legacy controls.
 

Frozone

Member
The types of motion tracking in each controller is not in their infancies and are well understood by now.

The Touch isn't released yet.. in fact, it doesn't even have government approval to be released. So who's to say what the motion tracking will be like in the final build.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
If we're being real here, I'm also pretty hyped about my Sixense STEMs which should be here in a few weeks. I think I might like their shape best of all, and their tracking system is occlusion free. I'm dying to see how accurate and how interference-sensitive they are. But ergonomically? I really want some controllers that feel like pistols, and those look like they'll provide the goods.

I just hope they're easily compatible with SteamVR.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
The Touch isn't released yet.. in fact, it doesn't even have government approval to be released. So who's to say what the motion tracking will be like in the final build.

It's outside-in positional tracking. We know how it works. It's not doing anything special or new beyond finger gesture recognition.

All products, regardless of how understood their tech is, go through FCC cert.
 

Onemic

Member
If we're being real here, I'm also pretty hyped about my Sixense STEMs which should be here in a few weeks. I think I might like their shape best of all, and their tracking system is occlusion free. I'm dying to see how accurate and how interference-sensitive they are. But ergonomically? I really want some controllers that feel like pistols, and those look like they'll provide the goods.

I just hope they're easily compatible with SteamVR.

Those look....bulky
 

viveks86

Member
So is everyone on board with saying the Vive is the best? Or does the Rift (or even PSVR) do any things that the Vive cannot do?

I'll be grabbing a PSVR (just due to not having a gaming PC), but I'm just intellectually curious about this.

From a technical standpoint, there is nothing the Rift or PSVR does that the Vive can't do. But the converse isn't true at launch (and probably throughout the first gen). So the Vive wins there hands down.

But as a consumer, it's never that simple for anyone who needs to choose only one headset. Like in your case, Vive and Rift aren't even options. Others may have no interest in room scale and would prioritize comfort and optics over "features".

And then there's the issue with exclusive content. Ugh, I hate that it's an issue early on, but it could easily be the tipping factor over room scale tracking.

So if people care about room-scale, Vive is a no-brainer. If not, the answer isn't as straight forward.

So Vive is technically "the best", but how many people care beyond intellectual curiosity? We won't know until we get sales figures.

The good news is that, as long as you know all the facts behind all 3 headsets, none of them are bad options. It's a fantastic start to a brand new generation.
 

Onemic

Member
From a technical standpoint, there is nothing the Rift or PSVR does that the Vive can't do. But the converse isn't true at launch (and probably throughout the first gen). So the Vive wins there hands down.

But as a consumer, it's never that simple for anyone who needs to choose only one headset. Like in your case, Vive and Rift aren't even options. Others may have no interest in room scale and would prioritize comfort and optics over "features".

And then there's the issue with exclusive content. Ugh, I hate that it's an issue early on, but it could easily be the tipping factor over room scale tracking.

So if people care about room-scale, Vive is a no-brainer. If not, the answer isn't as straight forward.

So Vive is technically "the best", but how many people care beyond intellectual curiosity? We won't know until we get sales figures.

The good news is that, as long as you know all the facts behind all 3 headsets, none of them are bad options. It's a fantastic start to a brand new generation.

This still pisses me off honestly. Exclusives on PC need to go die in a fire.
 

UnrealEck

Member
I pre-ordered a Vive.
Someone who ordered on March 19th is getting theirs shipped to them on 5th of April.

I can't afford both, so if Oculus charges me before Vive, I'll just need to cancel the Vive or vice versa.
 

Malygos

Member
The main reason I'd ever consider using the vive over the rift purely as a headset is because the vive has a pass through camera. IMO a pass through camera is really a must for VR
I can see why a pass through camera is a big deal for room scale. But why is it a 'must' for a seated experience?
 

viveks86

Member
I still don't know why they are putting analog sticks on Touch. I hope it's not out of some misguided attempt to bridge it to legacy controls.

Yeah it makes zero sense to me, especially when they are bundling in xbox one controllers. For all legacy support and theater mode games, the user base is guaranteed to have a legacy controller anyway.

It seems like they don't have enough real estate for a trackpad, so they went with an analog stick, because users find it familiar. And then they realized they can't have the users rest their fingers on it while moving their arms, since that could trigger off false inputs, so they came up with a useless textured surface for resting the thumbs. All this may be ergonomic, but it isn't the most well thought out design when you have to come up with what are clearly work arounds done as an afterthought.

This still pisses me off honestly. Exclusives on PC need to go die in a fire.

Hopefully Durante will hack them and release a cross platform solution 20 minutes into launch.
 

Bunta

Fujiwara Tofu Shop
I'll probably stick with PSVR for now and if I like it enough, down the line get either Rift or Vive for my PC.
 
I wonder how key having obviously placed inputs is when playing in VR. Sticks are probably easier to find than track pads but I doubt that's going to be a key difference.

And yeah I don't think you'll be accidentally moving the sticks about as you move your arms around. I'd say that's about as likely as accidentally touching the touch pads on the Vive controller.

Ie not at all.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I can see why a pass through camera is a big deal for room scale. But why is it a 'must' for a seated experience?

for the hundreds of small moments when you need to peak into the real world that occurs every time I use any of the current VR headsets.
 
Yeah it makes zero sense to me, especially when they are bundling in xbox one controllers. For all legacy support and theater mode games, the user base is guaranteed to have a legacy controller anyway.

It seems like they don't have enough real estate for a trackpad, so they went with an analog stick, because users find it familiar. And then they realized they can't have the users rest their fingers on it while moving their arms, since that could trigger off false inputs, so they came up with a useless textured surface for resting the thumbs. All this may be ergonomic, but it isn't the most well thought out design when you have to come up with what are clearly work arounds done as an afterthought.

These controllers have a pretty great design team behind them, and have been in the works for a while. Almost all people that have used both say they are more comfortable.

Do you honestly think they just threw stuff on there as an afterthought? Have you seen Oculus Connect 2 where they talk about building the headset then you want me to believe they are just "hacking together" a controller?
 
I still don't know why they are putting analog sticks on Touch. I hope it's not out of some misguided attempt to bridge it to legacy controls.
It allows for more game functionality, I'm fine with them being there. It's similar to how Vive's countrollers have the Steam Controller pads - apps for Vive use those pads for things like weapon selection. Also, it'd be faster to move through game menus using those analogue sticks than using some hand-motion-controlled system (after using Kinect for menus, I definitely would prefer using analogue sticks for menus).
 

viveks86

Member
These controllers have a pretty great design team behind them, and have been in the works for a while. Almost all people that have used both say they are more comfortable.

Do you honestly think they just threw stuff on there as an afterthought? Have you seen Oculus Connect 2 where they talk about building the headset then you want me to believe they are just "hacking together" a controller?

Every big product out there has a big design team and a lot of thought out into it. You are basically saying "Don't criticize them because they know better than you do", which can be applied to all consumer criticism on all products ever. It's just my opinion based on what we have seen so far. If I ever see a demo where the analog stick makes sense within VR on top of motion controls, I'll take back what I said.

This has nothing to do with comfort. The presence of 2 analog sticks on a system that is already tracking motion and head movement is redundant and could be used for better, alternative forms of input IMO
 
Every big product out there has a big design team and a lot of thought out into it. You are basically saying "Don't criticize them because they know better than you do", which can be applied to all consumer criticism on all products ever. It's just my opinion based on what we have seen so far. If I ever see a demo where the analog stick makes sense within VR on top of motion controls, I'll take back what I said.

This has nothing to do with comfort. The presence of 2 analog sticks on a system that is already tracking motion and head movement is redundant and could be used for better, alternative forms of input IMO

It certainly effectively counters the claim that they're an after thought or that the controller is hacked together.
 

viveks86

Member
Holy shit! Just got an email from HTC (US)

Thank you very much for reaching the HTC Online Store email team, I hope you are having a great day, Vivek.

First of all I apologize for the late response, my name is Juan and I am here to help you. I checked your pre-order information and here is what I found. You are in the first wave of customers whose VIVE will ship in April. This process will start on April 5th. The VIVE will be delivered after 2 business days from the day of shipment and it will require your signature to be delivered. At this time we do not have the exact date it will ship, however, as soon as we send you the product we will notify you and provide a tracking number that will indicate the FedEx delivery date.

I hope this information is of assistance to you. If you have additional concerns or inquiries, feel free to reply to this email or call to the 888-216-4736 from 9 AM to 10 PM EST.

Your opinion is very valuable to us so I encourage you to fill a short survey to help us improve even more. Just by hitting on the “click here” link at the end of this email, way you will be redirected to the survey. Please keep in mind that my service is question number 2 and the highest score is 5, which is independent to the rest of the survey; your feedback is highly appreciated.

Thank you for your interest in HTC, have a great week!


Let me know if I have successfully answered your question, please click here to complete this.

To send a reply to this message, please click here.

Sincerely,

Arias

HTC

Thanks Juan... Or Arias. Whoever you are, you made my day!
 
Every big product out there has a big design team and a lot of thought out into it. You are basically saying "Don't criticize them because they know better than you do", which can be applied to all consumer criticism on all products ever. It's just my opinion based on what we have seen so far. If I ever see a demo where the analog stick makes sense within VR on top of motion controls, I'll take back what I said.

This has nothing to do with comfort. The presence of 2 analog sticks on a system that is already tracking motion and head movement is redundant and could be used for better, alternative forms of input IMO

When I say that I mean they absorbed a very well known design team a while ago. And I will just disagree with the touchpad, as mentioned I have 100+ hours with the Steam controller and will probably go back to the XB1 controller when my Rift arrives for most of the games I play on a 2D screen.

I am personally not sold on Touchpad > Analog. It feels like a trackball mouse.
 

Onemic

Member
I pre-ordered a Vive.
Someone who ordered on March 19th is getting theirs shipped to them on 5th of April.

I can't afford both, so if Oculus charges me before Vive, I'll just need to cancel the Vive or vice versa.

You preordered a vive today but you're part of the first batch of shipments?

Hopefully Durante will hack them and release a cross platform solution 20 minutes into launch.

Hopefully. I wanna support Carmack, but I cant get down with shit like that.
 
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