Got my Rift yesterday. Only had a few hours to play with it, but I thought I'd post my impressions for anyone still sitting on the fence about getting one.
Initial setup was fairly easy, but not painless. Windows 10 stubbornly insisted it didn't have a driver for the included XBox wireless receiver, so I had to do some googling to find a driver which worked. The filmy plastic battery block tab on the Oculus remote that needs to be removed proved to be so stubborn I had to use pliers to pull it out.
Getting the headset on and snuggly fitted is a major faff if you wear glasses. It's like putting on a gas mask that manages to be both far too big and too tight at the same time. I have to push my face and glasses into the headset and then pull it over my head, rather than the more normal baseball-cap like back to front procedure. Once it's on the glasses don't pose any kind of problem, although I do have an issue with the headset pushing down the skin below my eyes, which causes my eyes to dry out quite quickly. Hopefully more with more fiddling I'll find a way to eliminate this.
The actual VR experience is just like everyone raves about - completely astonishing. The demos that play after setup are very, very good at showing off VR's strengths. There's one where you are standing on the edge of a tall building in a steampunk-type city. I'm not afraid of heights, but when I looked down I took an involuntary step back. Yes, it's that real. The T-Rex demo is also amazing, you can feel the scale and weight of the dinosaur as it stomps toward you. VR really is incredibly impressive. I was giggling like a school girl, and for someone who's been using computers for nearly 35 years and has become rather jaded and cynical about technology, that's a huge feat.
That said, the Rift is VR v1.0 hardware and it shows. There is noticeable screen-door effect (like looking through a very fine, black insect net) and the effective resolution of the screen is mediocre; it's similar to watching a DVD quality stream of a game, rather than the real thing. I don't personally find the screen door an issue, but the low resolution takes some getting used to. The Rift's lenses also cause 'god rays' which are quite distracting in certain scenes, but for me are not a deal breaker. And it just cries out for a camera so you can see the keyboard when neccessary. The first developer to write and app that can superimpose a camera view on the VR space will make a fortune.
VR is immature; the Rift is crude, limited and sometimes a bit annoying. It feels so much like a prototype of something from the future. Is it worth buying? Yes, absolutely. Most of us here would spend £400 on a new graphics card or CPU or monitor, but none of those will make you laugh with delighted amazement.
