Oculus Rift w/touch - £350 - Is now the time to buy?

I pulled the trigger on one at £349 in the end. Found the bundle elsewhere, must have been one of the last ones for that price :)
 
Its very likely it will go to that price again in the boxing day sales. no doubt. its very tempted at that price but do they have a new version in the works ?
 
I think so, but rumors are it will be a lot more expensive and is still a couple of years away.

The problem is they need to get the products out there so that developers start using them. Otherwise it's just going to die off like 3D vision did.
 
Nasher said:
I think so, but rumors are it will be a lot more expensive and is still a couple of years away.

The problem is they need to get the products out there so that developers start using them. Otherwise it's just going to die off like 3D vision did.
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When you try on your rift you are going to feel embarrassed for comparing it to 3D vision.
 
jasonsony735 said:
Its very likely it will go to that price again in the boxing day sales. no doubt. its very tempted at that price but do they have a new version in the works ?
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The next consumer model is a few years away. £349 is literally half the cost of the Vive at this stage. It's a steal at that price!
 
Having become part of the VR Borg I can see things from both sides now. I was ultra-cynical about VR even though I knew there had to be something in it... both intellectually and listening to early adopters I trust. I still think this could go the same way as 3D for a whole variety of reasons, BUT now I've experienced the world beyond the silly headset I believe anyone who considers themselves in the least bit interested in technology and gaming needs to jump in as soon as they can justify it. Even if CV2 comes out a lot sooner, and a lot cheaper, than most of us expect, I don't believe you'll regret even £400. The CV1 really is good enough to take you to places you haven't been before.

It's not perfect though. :) I downloaded DCS (combat flight sim) overnight and tested it earlier. My mind was blown, yet again, when it started up, paused in flight. I think being sat on the wing facing backwards had something to do with it! The ground was a long way down and it was a good job I was sat on my bed, because my brain wasn't happy with the viewpoint at all.

I couldn't reset the view with all the usual methods and had trouble getting the sim unpaused, but when I did I'm still sat on the wing facing backwards, looking over my shoulder to see where I was going. It never occured to me to stand up and turn round... I mean, I'm sat on the wing (reinforced by the fact I'm sat on the edge of my bed), that would be suicidal! The motion immediately sent my head haywire, but it was a horribly good haywire and I insisted on flying around for a minute or so feeling worse and worse while I got cramp in my neck and dizzy in my brain.

It is impossible to describe how impressive this stuff is. You can only experience it, preferably when nobody's watching to see you act like a giddy schoolchild. When DCS first fired up in headset mode I was in a hangar next to an Su-27, and the sense of scale, of this being a real object with real presence and substance, is something I have never had with a 2D screen. Nowhere even close. I thought I had. I thought a big monitor or three screens was a good substitute for the hype from the VR evangelists. But it really isn't. And my 7950 continues to throw pixels around plenty fast enough. The minimum requirements can be taken with a pinch of salt, though obviously more is better to keep the nausea away.

I imagine this giddy phase will pass. I will stop this TLDR gushing and get used to the scale and presence and 'reality' of it all... even that stupid little fox in Lucky's Tale which makes me grin for no readily apparent reason. And that will be sad. But even if this is it and I never feel the same again, I already think it's been worth the £350 as a 'virtual holiday' and tech demo. If my circumstances were different I'd say it was even worth the original asking price, but I have to at least try and be rational! It's still 'just' a virtual experience, no matter how real it feels, and money doesn't grow on trees unless you work at the Bank of England and can magic it out of thin air with the numpad. We all have to find a price point which works for us.

A final piece of VR foolishness: when I fired up Dirt Rally last night I was so engrossed in the driving that when I crashed my Mini and looked left towards where the car was rolling I noticed the co-driver for the first time and swore out loud. "Where the **** did you come from!" I'd completely forgotten I wasn't in the car alone. I know he's only pixels, but in the moment where I lost control and was running on pure instinct, he was as real as it gets. Crazy stuff.
 
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I'm very interested in VR. But i'm going to wait until the tech matures a little where wireless headsets will be the norm and there is more content to justify the cost.

Valve are apparently working on 3 VR titles (with one of them being set in the Half-Life/Portal universe), knowing Valve they won't put anything out just for the sake of it as Half-Life set the bar for storytelling in games, Half-Life 2 did the same for physics. I also read an article where Gabe Newell stated one of the main designers (not the ones that have left recently) wouldn't want to work on a Half-Life game that would just get a GOTY award. In other words, the game would need to bring something that's never been done before and will blow people away. Set the bar, if you will. VR is the perfect platform to achieve this.

It's just a matter of time before i get a VR set, if the content is there. Others are probably playing the waiting game too.
 
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Andrew_McP said:
Half an hour ago I discovered that my controller was working in Project Cars. So I started a short race and was pleasantly surprised. After the first corner, into which I felt distinctly weird, I found I was too busy racing to feel anything except excited! The only problem I had was remembering to breath. :)

I managed a couple of two lap sprints at Watkins Glen, then two laps of the Nordschleife! The elevation changes make these tracks a whole new experience even though I know them like the back of my hand, but although there were a few moments where bumpy sections unsettled me, I seem to have escaped unscathed.

Race starts are the worst bit; probably because of the transition between being stationary and on the move. But maybe years of sim racing have given me a head start, or perhaps my duff left eye helps? And maybe I'll get cocky, spend too long in Assetto Corsa next and spend the night regretting it. Or maybe I'll just go rip a few robots apart instead. Robo Recall is as good as advertised.

Edit: Ok, so Dirt Rally is seriously impressive... and a serious source of motion discomfort. Hardly surprising really, given the nature of the tracks. I got almost as uneasy as when playing Bejewelled in Hugeovision using Bigscreen.

Edit2: Gordon Bennett! Lucky's Tale made me feel worst of all! Impressive to see it running (all these things have to be seen to be believed whether they're short term novelties or not) but I think my head's not ready for this.
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Yeah Dirt Rally is definitely a bit much for me. I can go a few minutes before I have to have a lie down! In most games I will still get that "woah I nearly fell over" feeling, but it doesn't come with the nausea anymore (except in some games with rotation. I'm looking at you balloon chair battles!)
 
had a go on a spitfire simulator up here in Newcastle, was good fun but for me the screen res is nowhere good enough for long-range stuff likfe flight sims - the wings etc of the plane were good but it just didn't handle detail on the ground at all. the lass said it was the latest gen headset [this was back in Sep], but i wouldn't consider forking out for the stuff i'd play. my mate does a lot of Asseto Corsa and thinks the Rift is awesome, which i assume it will be at the closer distances
 
Tested mine out today. It's a lot clearer than the PSVR helmet I tried a few months ago, but a lot of that might be down to PC rendering just being better. Obviously no where near as sharp as a monitor, still pretty good for the money though. The sense of scale comes close to real life :)
 
Nasher said:
Tested mine out today. It's a lot clearer than the PSVR helmet I tried a few months ago, but a lot of that might be down to PC rendering just being better. Obviously no where near as sharp as a monitor, still pretty good for the money though. The sense of scale comes close to real life :)
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Are you applying any SuperSampling, makes a huge difference to image quality, if your rig can support a decent SS its worth doing ;)
 
wolfie138 said:
had a go on a spitfire simulator up here in Newcastle, was good fun but for me the screen res is nowhere good enough for long-range stuff likfe flight sims - the wings etc of the plane were good but it just didn't handle detail on the ground at all. the lass said it was the latest gen headset [this was back in Sep], but i wouldn't consider forking out for the stuff i'd play. my mate does a lot of Asseto Corsa and thinks the Rift is awesome, which i assume it will be at the closer distances
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Tbh I’ve played a bit of asseto on my rift and I still don’t think its quite good enough tech yet for that sort of thing. Immersion wise yes its great being able to turn your head towards an apex etc, but looking into the distance at an upcoming corner just isn’t quite sharp enough yet for me. It’s by no means bad but it makes it feel a bit awkward to judge the corner properly in my opinion.

Things like Robo Recall on the other hand which are made specifically for VR are great visually.
 
Clarkson said:
Tbh I’ve played a bit of asseto on my rift and I still don’t think its quite good enough tech yet for that sort of thing. Immersion wise yes its great being able to turn your head towards an apex etc, but looking into the distance at an upcoming corner just isn’t quite sharp enough yet for me. It’s by no means bad but it makes it feel a bit awkward to judge the corner properly in my opinion.

Things like Robo Recall on the other hand which are made specifically for VR are great visually.
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People rave about Dirt Rally though? Have you got that at all? Wonder why the difference is or maybe it's not quite as good as "they" say maybe :p
 
I’ve only played Asseto in terms of driving games so can’t comment on Dirt Rally or others.

As for supersampling I did try it at 1.6 and don’t recall noticing any difference. Also AA on. Maybe I did something wrong (entirely possible), I’ll have to go back to it when I have chance and play around with it.
 
You should easily see a difference with SS enabled, how was you applying it, I use the Oculus Debug Tool and I restart Oculus Home after applying and then run Debug Tool again to check its worked, then leave it running for launching any Apps.
 
Nasher said:
Obviously no where near as sharp as a monitor, still pretty good for the money though. The sense of scale comes close to real life :)
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When thinking about the view earlier I described it as like sitting a bit too close to a CRT monitor. But it's easy (for me anyway) to look through that 'olde worlde filter' into the world beyond. And it is, as you say that sense of scale which is most seductive.

Clarkson said:
Tbh I’ve played a bit of asseto on my rift and I still don’t think its quite good enough tech yet for that sort of thing.
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I agree that looking ahead to apexes is very, er, foggy shall we say. But as someone who's been trying to race on a 2D screen since IndyCar Racing and Geoff Crammond's early effort (by which I mean Revs on a BBC Micro), when we were racing in Minecraft-o-vision I may be a bit more tolerant. I definitely want it to look better than that, no shadow of a doubt. But here and now I am gobsmacked at how impressive it is to see tracks as they are in real life... the contours of the track are revealed in a way which I've never seen or felt via any 2D representation. I don't see how I'm going to find monitor racing satisfying ever again.

I absolutely understand why people can easily reach the opposite conclusion though.

Nate75 said:
People rave about Dirt Rally though? Have you got that at all? Wonder why the difference is or maybe it's not quite as good as "they" say maybe :p
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The thing about Dirt Rally is that you tend to be on narrow tracks, with plenty of foliage etc around, on twisty courses, with plenty of elevation changes. So you're looking into the distance a lot less than on your average racing track, where the next turn might be half a lifetime away.
 
SupraWez said:
You should easily see a difference with SS enabled, how was you applying it, I use the Oculus Debug Tool and I restart Oculus Home after applying and then run Debug Tool again to check its worked, then leave it running for launching any Apps.
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I’ll have to try it that way. :)
 
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