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

Confessions of a VR evangelist: I can't remember the last time I turned on my desktop machine for VR.

Ok, I can; it was last Saturday when my brother and his wife came round. Both are very rational and successful 50+ year olds, and both were intrigued by the headset when I decided to mention it. Both tried it and both said "Wow!" as soon as they put it on and saw Google Earth VR in action. I think they may have added a PSVR to the Christmas list for their teenagers now.

VR is so weird. So wonderful and so... well, so much "effort". I can sit here with half an eye on Twitter or forums, half an eye on my laptop, and another eye on Netflix while waiting for Mum to kick off over her latest dementia-based delusion, or I could get up, go into the bedroom, fire up the PC, and go explore the new seamless Streetview mode which I read about last night. I could even download Doom3 BFG edition, which I just bought in the Steam sale (£3.74) purely so I can discover that I like scary games even less in VR than I do in 2D.

I suppose it's similar to the bike on its trainer in the garage. I know I'll feel better for going out and spending a bit of time getting breathless, but the path of least resistance is so comfortable. Which means I'm more likely to spend ten minutes in Far Cry 3 on this laptop, marmalising another camp, than putting on the headset... which feels curiously heavier and tighter the longer I own it. Maybe all those happy 'novelty' hormones make your head numb? Or maybe I'm turning into one of those Wall-E lardbutts and my head's fatter? Sounds more likely, what with the VR and mince pies.

But I stick by what I said before... VR is totally awesome, and I don't regret the purchase at all. I just regret I'm too lazy to use it much! :-) I guess what I really ought to do is spend £500 on a GPU (or £250 soon if current bitcoin wobbles continue!) so I feel even more guilty and fire up VR routinely for at least another week. That sounds like an entirely rational plan.
 
Well, Doom3 BFG was rather impressive, in a way, until the PC crashed hard. Could be anything. Google Earth with proper streetview intergration was stable but a bit depressing. Turns out the Streetview for round here must be 4 or 5 years old, maybe more based on my mother's front garden. Mum's outside her back door, looking towards the Google car, no doubt wondering what the weird vehicle was. Hardly surprising really, she used to spend most of the decent months outside, planning her next gardening move.

Now she sits inside and dismantles artificial flowers until there's nothing recognisable left. There's not much recognisable left of her either.

VR can take you to some strange place. In this case, the past... back when Mum was still in control of her garden and her life. I'd looked at this area briefly before in Streetview, but never 'been' there the way VR takes you. It is... more moving than I anticipated.

I should stick to marmalising FarCry 3 camps on my laptop. Or have gone to bed 2 hours ago before I got tired and gloomy. ;-)
 
Is it worth getting an older headset off of the auction websites? Can see oculus headsets for 50 notes on there.

I really want to try VR, but not at 350 quid if it's just a fad.
 
Hellsmk2 said:
Can see oculus headsets for 50 notes on there.
Click to expand...
I just had a quick look but only saw some DK1s in the sub-£100 range. Having got a CV1, which is tolerably fuzzy IMO, I'm not sure I'd want to pay much at all for a DK1 or even 2, and the cheaper stuff seems to be mainly broken.

Hellsmk2 said:
I really want to try VR, but not at 350 quid if it's just a fad.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's a fad, because nobody can deny the potential for VR, even if it's 'only' as a headset for folk working on complex equipment, or for training. But it's definitely a faff... the hardware itself, the wires, configuring of titles to work with it 'properly'. All this may mean that this form of kit never makes it to mainstream and a lot of developers will give up. Something like Google Glass is what's really needed, and that's going to need quantum computing or something to give us an order of magnitude step up in mobile performance.

But all the gushy stuff I wrote earlier in the thread is still true. I'd probably be less impressed if this wasn't the only desktop upgrade I'd 'needed' in 4 years. Compared to what I might have spent chasing minor incremental upgrades in that period, £350 to step -- quite literally -- into something entirely new is hard to complain about.

However if it wasn't for my interest in cockpit based sims I probably woudn't have spent the money. Which is a shame, because it's probably worth it just to have access to Google Earth VR. It's the killer app for me.
 
Andrew_McP said:
Confessions of a VR evangelist: I can't remember the last time I turned on my desktop machine for VR.

Ok, I can; it was last Saturday when my brother and his wife came round. Both are very rational and successful 50+ year olds, and both were intrigued by the headset when I decided to mention it. Both tried it and both said "Wow!" as soon as they put it on and saw Google Earth VR in action. I think they may have added a PSVR to the Christmas list for their teenagers now.

VR is so weird. So wonderful and so... well, so much "effort". I can sit here with half an eye on Twitter or forums, half an eye on my laptop, and another eye on Netflix while waiting for Mum to kick off over her latest dementia-based delusion, or I could get up, go into the bedroom, fire up the PC, and go explore the new seamless Streetview mode which I read about last night. I could even download Doom3 BFG edition, which I just bought in the Steam sale (£3.74) purely so I can discover that I like scary games even less in VR than I do in 2D.

I suppose it's similar to the bike on its trainer in the garage. I know I'll feel better for going out and spending a bit of time getting breathless, but the path of least resistance is so comfortable. Which means I'm more likely to spend ten minutes in Far Cry 3 on this laptop, marmalising another camp, than putting on the headset... which feels curiously heavier and tighter the longer I own it. Maybe all those happy 'novelty' hormones make your head numb? Or maybe I'm turning into one of those Wall-E lardbutts and my head's fatter? Sounds more likely, what with the VR and mince pies.

But I stick by what I said before... VR is totally awesome, and I don't regret the purchase at all. I just regret I'm too lazy to use it much! :) I guess what I really ought to do is spend £500 on a GPU (or £250 soon if current bitcoin wobbles continue!) so I feel even more guilty and fire up VR routinely for at least another week. That sounds like an entirely rational plan.
Click to expand...

This is why i have changed my recommendations to friends. It dawned on me the other day. Over the past 6 months about 10 of my friends have bought the Rift. All think it is awesome whilst we are playing. Nothing but wows and this is the future quotes. I was happy, my wish come true. Vr with my friends, it really is that good. Jumbotron quest with 3 other friends, one of my all time gaming highlights. But unfortunately, i have found only a couple are regularly playing. The others, after a coupe of weeks have virtually abandoned it. Maybe 2-3hrs per 40hrs gaming. When we do play, the same quotes. It can't be lack of content, because we are far from completing things that get nothing but praise during the rare gaming session.
Anyways, what dawned on me is the few who regularly play. They are active in real life. They play football, do activity. The others are gamers, they get home watch TV and play at the monitor. Nothing wrong with that. But i don't think many of the VR games are suited to this. As you say, there is the "effort" involved. Sitting, ducking, using twitch fibres not used before. It can be very tiring at times, or at the least a more physical activity. VR is more like real life than traditional gaming. So maybe in the future, the VR enthusiasts will not be the traditional gamers as majority, but people who didn't really game on computers but went out and played games in real life with friends.

Sort of like: Elevens: table tennis. Great because it is so life like. Traditional gamer plays, falls in love. The initial wow of the realism wears off, now the effort becomes apparent. Starts to play back on the monitor. Friend who keeps active. Keeps playing, as he likes it and the effort is no more if not a lot less than what he could otherwise be doing leisure wise.
For my lifestyle and gaming habits. The major drawback now is my age :D. For the first time i realised that i couldnt play a pvp 1st person shooter VR game and be competitive at the highest level. That will be for the under 30's. Fitness is such a big part of it.

It'll really kick off when it can replicate the desktop experience with the fidelity of 4k monitors today. Then there wont be a need to change to a headset/monitor depending on PC need. Play more traditional games in vr with great fidelity, play with your monitors setting up your music, discord, youtube, browsers etc. The roomscale will be there for the more rare times you want to play a roomscale game. The rest of the time is still spent in vr for the desktop.
 
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