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News Oculus VR drops Rift and Touch bundle to £399

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 10 Jul 2017.

  1. bit-tech

    bit-tech Supreme Overlord Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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  2. davido_labido

    davido_labido Your Alphacool Contact.

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    If this was a HTC Vive I would be all over it.
     
  3. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    That's a big drop. So either Zuckerberg is being generous and selling these at a loss to boost take-up, or was making an (even bigger) fortune selling them at the original price.

    Still, I maintain that VR will die just like 3D and eyefinity did.
     
  4. Kernel

    Kernel Likes cheese

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    And I bought mine 4 weeks ago. FFS
     
  5. Edwards

    Edwards Minimodder

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    Whilst I've not got any VR gear (barrier for entry is still too high/tech is still pretty immature) It'd be a shame if this did die out. It's nice to see an opportunity for variation in the games we play, and I think that if VR became more mainstream, we'd see an influx of small developers coming up with interesting ideas and ways to use it outside of the obvious.
     
  6. Wakka

    Wakka Yo, eat this, ya?

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    I'm all for that, but I think there's still plenty more scope for innovation in games with traditional control schemes too. And that's before you even get into the problem of developers struggling to come up with decent story lines, believable and likeable characters, stable game engines and games that aren't launched with cut "features" to be later sold off as DLC...
     
  7. Omnislip

    Omnislip Minimodder

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    The actual difference between the two is pretty marginal now, and Oculus has better controllers to boot. I don't buy the Facebook are evil and Valve are good line - skimming 30% off practically all PC game sales is a pretty dodgy basis for praise.

    On the headsets though, I just wish they managed higher res screens. Given that they don't plan to launch upgrades for quite a while (2019, I read), it's a shame that the immersion will remain so compromised.
     
  8. davido_labido

    davido_labido Your Alphacool Contact.

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    I just much prefer the HTC vive everytime I have used them both. I couldn't care less who owns what :D
     
  9. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Valve has more influence in the gaming industry than facebook, so they have an inherent advantage in the VR format war.

    30% is not an excessive margin for a shop, nothing dodgy in that and it isn't the fault of Valve that other PC game shops are rubbish.
    But yeah, running a successful shop doesn't justify the whole Cult of Gabe thing the internet has.
     
  10. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    What's the difference between the two? I'm tempted to pick up the rift.
     
  11. davido_labido

    davido_labido Your Alphacool Contact.

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    I just prefer the way it works and generally the games that I have played on it. I have played on both at events and spent a lot of time at OcUK and EK HQ on the Vive. I loved them, I then used the Rift for a few hours and just didn't feel the same way about it at all.

    if I was you, I would try and check them both out, I think there is a Vive in the office!
     
  12. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    In terms of hardware, not all that much. The Rift is more comfortable being lighter and with a better headband design (a better headband is now available for the Vive, but costs an extra hundred quid or so above base price), same with audio (built in headphones for the Rift, Vive comes stock with dangly crappy earbuds, the new headband has integrated audio). Vive has a very (very) marginally higher FoV, but also has a lower panel utilisation so effective angular resolution is higher on the Rift, along with increased fill-factor (reduced 'screen door effect'). Conversely, while both use a fresnel layer in their lenses, the finer pitch on the Rift means the glare artefacts show as 'rays' while on the Vive the glare shows as a large-but-dimmer 'blotch' over the scene. Glare is only really visible on either when you have a bright object on a large dark background. Pupil exit box on the Rifft is higher so requires less shift-around-your-face to get in focus than the Vive, but the Vive has built in adjustment for lens-to-face distance to accommodate glasses more easily at the expense of FoV (both have physical lens separation adjustment).
    For controllers, the Touch is currently both smaller, lighter and more capable (capactive finger tracking, grip trigger vs. the Vive grip buttons that no developer uses because they suck, actually useful joystick vs. redundant zero-order touchpad) but most of these will be fixed with Valve's upcoming controllers. Price for those is unknown, and there is about to be a tracking compatibility break with Lighthouse so they may not ever be bundled with Vives.
    On that tracking compatibility issue: the current basestations, Vive HMD and controllers are Gen 1, and Gen 2 will arrive with the new controllers and new single-rotor basestations. The Gen 1 equipment will not be able to track using the new basestations, and Gen 2 equipment will operate in fallback mode with Gen 1 basestations (limited to two basestations). On the Rift side of things, you can currently use up to 4 cameras at a time, though that's a software limit and more could be supported without algorithmic changes. One is included with the HMD, a second with Touch (so the Rift & Touch bundle includes two) and you can buy extras easily (e.g. directly from Oculus, Amazon, etc).

    On the software side the short version is: with the Rift you get official support for stuff using the Oculus SDK, and Valve support the Rift though SteamVR (may sometimes be buggy, fixes usually take a a day to two whenever Valve break something). With the Vive, you get official support for stuff using SteamVR, and can use Oculus SDK stuff with the third party ReVive software. It's unofficial, so again things may not work perfectly, and you're limited by the physical capabilities in some cases (e.g. no capacitive finger tracking). Both APIs are closed-source and proprietary, and both will likely be replaced by OpenXR in a year or two once that is ratified (both Valve and Oculus are members of the working group), so long-term compatibility for both is in the same situation; it's not worth worrying about "but what if I want to play some tech demo from today in 5 years?" (both SteamVR and OVR have broken back-compat in the past, so the answer for both is likely "no"). For today, you'll broadly have a larger range of don't-need-to-fiddle compatibility with the Rift. A few poorly informed types will still attempt to gabber on about "but walled garden!!" for the Rift, but this is not the case: you can run software from anywhere that uses the OVR SDK, not just stuff from the Oculus Store.

    For the UK in particular we get support for the Rift from Oculus themselves, and the for Vive via Digital River. If you've ever dealt with Lenovo UK support, you know what a dumpster fire Digital River can be. People have had some luck contacting HTC US support and then getting them to push resolutions down from their side, but that's not idea. Early hardware issues for both HMDs have been ironed out now though, so you're unlikely to need to contact support.


    tl;dr Some differences between the two but broadly the same. Test both, see which fits you better. Budget more for the Vive, a lot more if you intend to swap out the headband with the superior version, and the new controllers once released.
     
    adidan likes this.
  13. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    No idea where that went. I saw it on the floor somewhere a month ago but has since vanished. I'll see if DR will let me have a go on it.

    Thanks for that I'll full digest it when i get home and have time to properly read it. Based on skimming it i guess you're recommending the oculus.
     
  14. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    At the current price it's an easy choice unless you have a particular application that would require the Vive (e.g. needing the tracking pucks right now), or can wait ~1/2 a year and see what the upcoming LG HMD turns out to be like in practice (e.g. pricing, if it includes the newer Lighthouse basestations and controllers or not, whether the single-panel design prevents proper IPD compensation, etc).
     
  15. SighMoan

    SighMoan What's a Dremel?

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    I owned a DK2 and flogged it when the CV1 was announced. Then the price came out and I held off. I was mainly interested in getting a Vive but £400 for a Rift with Touch is too good to pass up, especially as I was going to buy a Xbox one controller soon anyway.
     
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