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The games
Winner: HTC Vive
Both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive have some good games for them. The former has Chronos, Radial G and The Climb among others, while the latter has TiltBrush, Hover Junkers and The Lab, but if we were to look at the quality and quantity of the libraries, the Vive wins hands down.
While Oculus might talk up having 30 Touch enabled games by the end of the year, the Vive already has around 200 experiences for it, a large number of which utilise motion controllers. It's got open world sandboxes like ModBox, shooting galleries, story-centric exploration titles, action heavy sword and shield swinging experiences and artistic painting applications.
There is already something for everyone and the Vive has only been out for a couple of months. Not all of the titles are gold mind you, but the same can be said for Oculus' much more limited library, which is fleshed out with old games that weren't designed for VR from the ground up and it shows.
Oculus Home's interface is nice, but its library falls far short of the Vive's
For a little context in my own personal preferences, I've spent tens of hours in Vive titles outside of working hours and after I finished testing it for reviews. I only did that for a couple of hours at most with a few Rift games.
To top it all off, I'm not a fan of the exclusivity that Oculus is trying to buy by offering developers more money than they can afford to turn down. That is denying developers sales by limiting their exposure and it's trying to shoehorn people into using Home by holding their most expectant titles hostage.
That's not a practice that any of us should really support.
Final Thoughts
If you've read the rest of this break down of the two major headsets, I think it's clear at this point which VR headset I'd recommend buying:
The HTC Vive
Although it might not technically be the best headset around in terms of its weighting and comfort, the mixture of motion controllers, roomscale tracking and an expanded game library just make it a much more worthwhile purchase at this time.
The key reason for that, is that it offers something new. If you buy yourself an Oculus Rift you will get an excellent VR experience, but it will be very much like the one you could have had if you owned a DK2. The tracking isn't that much different and although the games are more polished, there isn't anything to really grab you.
The HTC Vive however offers truly unique experiences. Painting in VR is something you cannot do on the Rift. Shooting guns with motion controllers is not something you can do with the Rift. That may be possible when Touch is released later this year, but right now the HTC Vive offers a better virtual reality experience, a more innovative experience and one that really expands your horizons beyond gamepad gaming.
The only big hurdle really is the price. The HTC Vive at £700+ is around £200 more than the Oculus Rift. Forgetting that the Vive's availability is much better and you are likely to get it sooner if you ordered both today, neither headset is cheap. If you can afford £500, at a stretch you can probably afford £700 and if you're on the fence, I'd urge you to consider the additional expense.
While that £200 might seem like a lot, the difference is night and day. The Oculus Rift is an amazing piece of kit. It is the final version of the headset we were promised back in 2012.
The HTC Vive though, is the VR headset nobody knew they wanted until they tried it. It is the future of virtual reality and it offers something that is well worth the high price tag. The Oculus Rift just cannot compete with that.
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No. I do not accept 110 degree field of view. You have to try harder Valve to impress me – I need EQUAL or better specs to StarVR on the Vive 2 or id better go and get a StarVR as soon as it’s out. StarVR + Star Citizen = gaming dream of Ultra Wide Quad HD (5120×1440) at 120Hz and 210 degree FOV.
Forget StarVR. I want HappyPonyVR, which is coming out with 280 degree field of view and 9260×3840 resolution at 120 Hz.
What’s that you say? HappyPonyVR doesn’t exist and can’t be bought yet and so is not even remotely a valid comparison against existing in-the-store VR headsets?
Yeah, same for StarVR.
Actually the correct answer is C- *if you are poor like me* wait until these only cost 199$ in 5 years or so, have tons of games, GOOD GAMES, and all the kinks worked out.
If you are rich then who cares. Buy Vive for now, then StarVR later. Can’t afford to do that? Then you probably shouldn’t be buying VR right now anyways. Pay your bills! RENT IS DUE and your landlord is pissed, and here you are playing with toys that cost a fortune! Have a nice day!
Almost nobody living in a modern economy can’t afford a Vive if they want one. It’s just a matter of choosing how you distribute your disposable income. You can use the same old cellphone for another 2 years instead of upgrading now, and you’ll have the money you need for a Vive. Or maybe use that 47 inch TV for a while longer, holding off on that 60 inch TV purchase. Or you could forego custom designer coffee for a couple months. Etc.
I’ve learned from reading many posts from Vive owners on Reddit over the last several months that it’s a big mistake to claim any head-mounted display fits “you” well or badly when you really mean that it fits “me” well or badly. Everyone’s head is different and so far, there’s no “one size fits all.”
To bad the Vive is so much more expensive though. And I really don’t care about the room tracking. I’ll stay in my chair tyvm.
are you a 20 something with no kids?
And what kind of video card are you going to be using without it running like total dogshit?
Room tracking is where its at. Im playing a few sitdown games like Project Cars and Total War, but they dont compare to the excitement of room scale games. they are incredible.
No, and I fail to see the relevance of your question.
I am aiming for a Vega 11, but who knows, i might go for a 1080Ti and wait for StarVR to launch, then get another for SLI when StarVR launches. It depends – If I find a video card that would do me a 120FPS minimum on a 2560x1440p monitor then im set to get another one and do 5120x1440p at 120FPS. Though unfortunately, no card can reach this high frame rate even at 1440p, which is a shame, Nvidia and AMD should make bigger chips and put more CUs in there, then STOP caring about TDP and go for 300-500W cards. Electricity is cheap enough nowadays…
$900 is a lot to spend on a luxury item when you have a family. Even if you can “afford it,” The money can go elsewhere to more important things — especially if you have kids. Your assumption is broad, and not accurate for a lot of people. It really sounds like the opinion of a 20 something who has yet to face a lot of life challenges. I say that not to offend you, but rather point out that you are generalizing and have formed some misconceptions about wealth and money management.
I’m fairly certain that every family I know spends thousands of dollars per year on entertainment and electronics already. Of course not every family would put the purchase of a Vive before other discretionary spending, because they value other things (big screen TVs, new cell phones, etc) more. But if they want to prioritize the Vive, I think most families could do so by cutting out other discretionary spending.
$800 is $67 per month over the course of a year. I would suspect that the vast majority of families could afford that by minorly rebudgeting some other discretionary spending.
My point is not to dispute the “if you’re poor like me” part of the original poster’s comment … if you are truly poor, and as a result have no cell phone, no TV, no car, no form of discretionary spending that you can rebudget for a Vive, then certainly you can’t get a Vive.
My point was simply to dispute the second half of the post, which was the “if you’re rich then who cares” part. You don’t HAVE to be rich to afford a Vive.
There is a wide range of income levels between “rich” and “poor” and most of those would find a Vive a perfectly acceptable level of expense if they are willing to buy it instead of spending discretionary money elsewhere.
That’s really the only point I’m trying to make.
My question with ALL VR headsets is, how do they handle peripheral vision?
I think that you, by thinking Bryan has failed to see the bigger picture and that families have more expenditures typically than singles, have actually failed to understand that your familial experience is a sample size of 1, and says nothing about other families.
The range of incomes for single people is just as broad as the range of incomes for families. There are families who couldn’t dream of buying a VR headset right now, just like there are single people who don’t make enough to even think about the purchase. Then there are both who could afford it with some rebudgeting. Finally, there are both single people and families for whom the purchase of a VR headset would be a drop in the bucket.
For instance, me. I have a couple of girls and a wife. We both make a decent salary. She lets me game a couple hours in the evening as long as I either cook dinner and clean up, or watch and play with the girls while she cooks dinner. I purchased a Vive a little bit ago. It was no big deal. It’s a hobby of mine, among others. She has hobbies, and she spends what she wants to on them as well. Yet I have friends with no kids, no mortgage, no car payment (driving older cars which are paid off), who couldn’t even afford to purchase a computer capable of running VR, let alone the VR headset. All of this is to say, your comment missed the point a lot more than the comment you were replying to.
That’s an assumption. I professionally analyze demographic data for the media industry. I’m not a parent. I’m basing my response on very real, measured science of what people spend money on.