One, had to go......

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Unfortunately it was the Vive,

Apart from the fact that the Vive ships with the hand held controllers, that let you interact with the virtual world, I see very little point in purchasing the Vive.

To my eyes, the optics are better on the rift, also love the built in headphones, and the sound quality is very decent.

The headset is lighter and more comfortable to wear, and easier to put on & off.

Another plus for the rift, is that there is no massive wiring loom coming out of the back of your head. On the Rift, it is one cable, which splits into 2 (1 X Hdmi \ 1 x USB) no silly breakout extender box.

Another negative for the Vive, is the situation with the lighthouse's. You either have to hardmount them to a wall, or you have to buy extra poles & brackets. With the Rift, all you have is a sensor which has its own stand, which you can put anywhere.

The above are all my own personal observations, but I thought I would share them with others on here, who want to try and make a more informed descision, of which one too buy.
 
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Apart from the fact that the Vive ships with the hand held controllers, that let you interact with the virtual world, I see very little point in purchasing the Vive.

This is the reason I would ONLY (and did) buy the Vive. VR is nothing to me unless you can walk around and interact with motion controllers. I've no interest in seated experiences.

That will change later this year with Touch, but I based my decision on what came out in April. I'm also still to be convinced about the practicalities of positioning 2 USB cameras for room tracking with the Rift.

No argument though that as a piece of hardware, the Rift HMD is better.
 
I really find the whole "lighthouse mounting" and "breakout box" arguments without much merit to be honest.

Personally, the Vive link box gives me flexibility to mount the headset tether sockets on my desk where I want it. Without it, I'd have the tether going directly to the back of my PC which is a far worse solution as that uses up valuable tether length and I'd have to somehow make sure the tether doesn't interfere with anything on my desk itself while I move around, or worse, pull over my PC case. So no, the Rift is not better here in my situation, it's actually worse (unless you splashed out on a specialised HDMI front panel on your PC case - not exactly the plug-and-play solution that Rift owners enjoy lauding over their Vive counterparts).

Lighthouse mounting. Yes, initial setup can be a little more work than simply plugging in a USB cable. But (and here's the crucial bit..) they don't connect back to the PC. They just need power, and you only ever need two of them - that's it. Compare this with the Rift: each camera added to cover a segment of your room will need an additional USB 3.x socket and cable (and an extended active USB 3 cable if you have any plans to do anything remotely close to room scale). So now you have how many cables octopussing from your PC with the Rift? At least 3 x USB 3.0 and the HDMI for a Touch experience, more if you want to cover your room properly? (and this is before you run into USB bandwidth issues...) Oh, and the additional USB for the obligatory XBox controller. You can now see why Oculus are playing down room-scale experiences with the Rift: it's going to be more hassle and cabling to set up than the Vive, and might not even work as well in the end given the limitations of the IR tracking.

As for the tether itself - yes, it's unnecessarily thick on the Vive and it irritates the poop out of me. But HTC have started shipping out a replacement cable that's a thinner, lighter, single-wire design which should improve matters. It still pokes and pulls into the back of your head which I do actually find an annoyance for seated experiences (those that I don't want to throw up in!). Score one for the Rift design there.

And then we come to the inevitable controller argument. Regardless of how great the Touch controllers might feel in the hand compared to the Vive wands, the problem is that not every Rift owner will have them. Oculus fragmented their controller support by not including them as a standard included feature (and that's before the whole where-do-we-put-the-cameras argument). If I were a VR developer, the Vive would get support first - I'd know that every Vive has two motion controllers and the majority have been set up for room scale as standard (with some limitations on space). I wouldn't be able to say the same for the Rift.

Just my 2p. I'm sure Rift fans will attempt to dismiss the logic, but that's how I see it...
 
I just mean form a hardware point of view, that I think the Rift is better.

When they release the the Touch controllers for the Rift, hopefully it will be as good as an experience, as I had with the Vive.
 
Headset optics and aesthetics, the Oculus does have a subjective edge. But in terms of the tracking solution and technical aspects, I'm filled with doubt: the Vive solution just appears more elegant and scalable.

Hopefully Oculus will hit it out the park since that would benefit VR as a whole.
 
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