Rift and Vive compared

Lionhart27

Lionhart27

Lionhart27

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This is my view so don't take it too seriously. I have just purchased a Oculus Rift from John Lewis in London. And I can say it is truly amazing, words can not describe the experience of VR. Looking forward to the Rift hand controllers. I have had 2 demos of the HTC Vive. Both the Rift and Vive are the same as far as video quality VR experience. What I DID notice was comfort. The Rift is by far MORE comfortable to wear than the Vive. I could wear the Rift for hours, but the Vive, I was glad to remove it after the 20 minute demos! It is too heavy and uncomfortable to wear, very fiddly to adjust, and it feels as if it will fall off, and on top of that is the headphones. The Rift comes with very light built in headphones, and the headset is very easy to adjust. The setup was a breeze. I know the HTC Vive is more supported, and with room-scale and hand controllers. But in my strongest view, the Oculus Rift is my choice of VR headsets.
 
I completely agree.

I sold my Vive, and kept the Rift, for the reasons that you stated above, and more.

I am also looking forward to getting the Touch controllers, when they are available.
 
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It just depends what experience you're wanting and what you're willing to put up with to get it. If you're not wanting full roomscale support, then the rift may be the way to go, BUT if you are wanting full roomscale support, the Rift is going to need 3 sensors, which puts the cost above the Vive and also would mean you'd need to be using 4 USB Ports and lots more cables all over the place. So there's definitely positives and negatives to consider depending on the experience you want.
 
Exactly that. I was weighing up options for a screen for flight simulation (P3D, X-Plane etc.). It was a choice between 3 x 30" Screens, a short throw projector, or some form of VR.

Based purely on economics, the VR was the clear winner over the others, especially once you take into account not having to dedicate a separate PC to flying. So then it was a case of Rift or Vive. Obviously there's a fairly fundamental price difference right out the stable but the simple fact is that I really, really don't want a room scale wave your arms about type experience. I had a gut full of that when the world went mad on the Wii.

So the Rift CV1 it was. And how awesome it is too! Only downside is that I now want a 1080 card. My 970 cuts the mustard in the normal VR type games but for the flight simulation the extra horsepower will let me crank up the beauty while still maintaining frame rate.

That does knock my first initial price evaluations out, but the VR option is still cheapest since I can share the PC with my normal gaming.
 
Hmmmmmm

Nice review. I've just purchased the Vive and I understand your points. I wanted it mainly for ED but also room scale stuff. But the games are also lacking right now for the Vive and they're expensive due to their nature

Also no SLI support, image quality is ok

I regret buying the Vive now. But I am sure it will become great
 
I bought both on pre-order day. Both were delivered the same week and I sold the Vive shortly afterwards.
I think that if I had had a large room (2x the minimum required) completely free of furniture then I might have kept the Vive. Unfortunately I live in the UK where we only have small houses so although I had enough for the minimum space, I was constantly fighting with the guide walls. So, that left me with seated or standing VR only and tbh for this use case the Rift is just better. It's more comfortable, has better headphones (that are just there rather than having to faff with earbuds), and - to my eyes - has better screens.
 
So what's the 'killer app' for VR right now? I have budget for a Rift but haven't seen anything to make me drop my pennies right now I have to say - maybe because I've not actually used one. However if they produced an F1 game with Rift support I'd sell the kids tomorrow to get it. :)
 
Depends on your usage as to which one is 'best', they both have positives and negatives.

I'm eager to see how the touch controllers perform on the Rift but at the moment there is no competition without those IMO.

If you only want seated experiences or those with a normal PS4/xbox controller then I can see how you would prefer the Rift though :)
 
I have to say that I just played Eve: Valkyrie for the first time and so far I'd say that was the best I've seen. Such a shame that I'm so rubbish with space fighters :)

It's obviously very similar to the fighting aspect in Elite Dangerous but the problem with ED is that there are too many buttons and controls which when you can't see your hands is a bit of a problem. Eve plays very nicely with the Xbox controller which is quite manageable.

For me, flying a Cessna 172 over the Bristol channel and being able to lean out the window and look down at the scenery going by clinches it so far. But I'm well aware that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. It's also not desperately cheap but then flight simulators in general are an expensive hobby.
 
Have to wait to use them of course, but from what we've seen I think the touch controllers are a significantly better proposition than the vive wands. Smaller, lighter, 20-30 hour battery life and more interaction options available.

I think the extra development time they put into them definitely shows, and while it was a bold move to launch without them when the vive came out swinging I do think it was a worthwhile one.

Personally I feel that oculus is moving ahead - to me it has a better pipeline of decent content, a more polished and refined design both of headset and even more so of motion controllers, and is pushing the boundaries harder with things like ASW. Thank goodness for healthy competition though, it drives everyone forwards.
 
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I would not want my Vive controllers smaller or lighter but the extra battery life would be nice as long as it was not at the expense of vibration.

If someone offered me £200 less than I paid for my Vive 3 months ago I would not take it!
 
Having not tried the Vive but having the rift, for flight sims I'd recommend it.

I know thats probably unfair on the vive, but IMO for a seated experience why pay £200 more for the hand controllers and lighthouse if you purely want to flight sim.

IF however you want to do the whole wavy hand walky about thing, then vive wins unless youre prepared to wait till december for oculus touch.

Being a flight simmer, yes I am happy with Rift and do not need wavy hands but I can see why the people who have the vive love it, horses for courses.
 
Elite is my fave experience so far. Upgrading to an X52-Pro has meant no more keyboard which makes a huge difference.

Although Lucky's Tale is also very cute and nicely done.
 
No, I know of it but my gaming PC is in the living room so I can't really talk to it while the wife is trying to watch TV and stuff :)
 
I've had the Vive for 5 days now and would not recommend it for Elite. Nor in general. It's a pain to configure and SLI is not supported. The resolution sucks and the FOV also sucks. I went back to my 3400x monitor.

Rift apparently does a better job

www.starvr.com looks amazing for Elite but it'll be circa $1400 on release. But 210 deg FOV sounds awesome
 
BaDBoY_uK said:
www.starvr.com looks amazing for Elite but it'll be circa $1400 on release. But 210 deg FOV sounds awesome
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That does indeed look awesome but I dread to think what hardware will be needed to drive that. I doubt even top end 1080's would cope. Definitely one for the future and I hope for their sake that they're not too ahead of their time. I think where we are at the moment is a nice sweet spot. If we move too quickly on the hardware then you'll have insanely impressive but equally expensive hardware and the software won't keep up and then you run the risk of things dying off again.
 
chef-borjan said:
The Vive headset can actually be fairly comfortable, its just most people don't realise that you have to adjust the top strap first properly then do the rest.
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Something I've found with the Rift is that the picture quality has become MUCH better over the course of the 3 weeks I've owned it. I have no idea if the display tech needs to have some kind of burn in, if my eyes are getting more used to it or if it's just a comfort / fit thing, but I think it certainly shows that you need to persevere with these headsets and not make rash judgements straight away.

Last night I was playing and it was like day one all over again :)
 
I'd argue that you are more likely to be experiencing the benefits of properly fitting the headset to maintain the sweet spot and your brain getting more used to the image. Don't think there is any burn in going on in here haha.

Supersampling makes the number one difference though. Glad I bought a 1070 for extra grunt.
 
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