Vive or the Rift?

cHk4

cHk4

cHk4

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Well I wasn't going jump on the Gen 1 VR train as I did have a DK2 Rift and enjoyed it but obviously it wasn't quiet there yet. Any way the Rift pre orders came and went and I didn't jump on it however for some reason when I saw the Vive was coming up for pre order it interested me, part of that is due to the fact I have the money now and it's coming up for pre order soon and I can get it as early as April... So I have questions...
My room is small I'm mainly a seated gamer there isn't much room for me to move around would the Vive still be ok or the Rift be better? What is the resolution of the screens on both the Rift and the Vive? What exclusive games are coming to the Vive and the Rift? Will the Vive and Rift share the same games? Basically I want you to try and sell me the Vive over the Rift really what is better about it... £800 is a lot of money to drop on something so I want to make sure I back the right team so to speak. I can appreciate some of this I could Google myself however I'm at work and have limited access and really need to start thinking.
 
A guy I met at a tester conference said the htc was better. From his job (QA Games testing) so using both rift and vive daily, through to hosting player testing sessions. Everyone preferred the htc.

I'm still going to hold off as long as possible. I'm tired of jumping in and being a first adopter and then the second wave being far superior shortly after.
 
In terms of the HMD itself, there won't be much between the two. Anecdotally it seems that the Rift feels slightly more 'premium' in its build quality, and is slightly more comfortable but there isn't much in it. Image quality is said to be similar.

The two solutions use different tracking methods. Rift uses a system called 'Constellation', which requires you to plug a camera into your PC and that tracks infra-red LEDs (which flash a code so that the software can determine position and orientation). The headset can be tracked 360 degrees from a single camera and is said to have sub-millimetre precision. Vive uses a system called 'Lighthouse', which doesn't require you to plug anything into your PC. It comes with two lighthouse stations which are small boxes that effectively contain a laser and a motor and that continuously emit a pattern of light. This pattern is picked up by sensors on the HMD which uses it to determine position and orientation. This again gives sub-millimetre precision.

The lighthouse boxes communicate wirelessly (but require line-of-sight) or can be connected together via a wire. They only need to be powered, which means that they'll be easier to position than the Constellation cameras which need to be connected to your PC (and so may require USB extenders). Constellation processing is done on the PC rather than HMD so will use some CPU time, but it's said to only be a couple of percent per camera. In terms of tracking accuracy they're said to be similar.

Vive comes with motion controls at release. Its controllers are large wands with buttons on the front and side, a trigger on the back and a trackpad. They look a bit odd but their design is intended to reduce the potential for occlusion. Rift's motion controls (Touch) will come in the second half of the year and are a completely different design. They wrap around your hands, and have a capacitive element so the software knows when you've lifted your fingers, making it possible to point or do thumbs-up in VR. Touch will come with a second Constellation camera.

The big difference between the two systems is the type of experience that they're targeting. Rift is initially targeted at seated or standing experiences and comes with an Xbox One controller so that developers have a standard control method to target for their games. Vive can do seated and standing, but their differentiator is 'room-scale' where you're encouraged to get up and walk around in VR. Oculus don't officially support this configuration, but have said that there's nothing stopping you from doing it.

Vive has a camera built-in for their chaperone system. Chaperone has two components: the first is a simple boundary and when you get near that boundary it'll show up as an overlay on your display. This is to stop you from running into walls. SteamVR will support this level of chaperone on Rift as well as Vive. The second allows you to turn on an overlay of your surroundings, so you can see the outline of people and objects in your environment. This will allow you to see where your chair, desk, coffee, cat, etc. are. All the processing is done on the HMD so it's unlikely that there'll be a full passthrough mode but there are opportunities to use it for things like SLAM which would map your environment and project it into your game.

So... the real downsides of Rift are the lack of offical room-scale support, the number of USB ports required and unknown cost of the motion component. The real downsides of Vive are that there isn't currently a lot of content for its differentiating components, and that's something that Oculus have been very vocal about -- it doesn't matter how great a device is, if there's no content for it, it won't be a success. So with Oculus expect that when Touch *does* get released they'll do so alongside a bunch of quality content. HTC and Valve don't seem to be doing the same.

In conclusion, if you have the space and if room-scale is something that you feel you need from your VR setup, Vive would seem to be the one to get. If you're more interested in the seated / standing experience, there's likely to be more immediate content on the Rift, and Rift is (in the short term) cheaper.
 
As the man said *currently* if you think youll get value out of the two hand held controllers - basically enjoy the holodeck experience - get a Vive - theres some really interesting FPS type experiences out there already, lots of D&D RPG type games coming, plus of course the social possibilities. If youre into a seated experience (flight sims and racing), plus what is probably going to be a better initially supported experience as well as slightly better visually, go for the Rift - having said that Oculus say they will be able to do the holodeck type experience once their controller come out and you buy another base station.

Really, I personally have no fear for content on the Vive. There are so many innovative games and experiences out there already for both systems that I think both will be very well supported. Plus there are lots of really interesting headsets coming out in the next couple of years that promise a way better visual experience through advances like foveated rendering, so dont expect this to be a VHS or Betamax type situation - you will be buying updated much cheaper headsets in the near future.

Really exciting times, you really cant go wrong with either.
 
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Walking around is a nice idea, and even though I do have the space for a HTC Vive with the lighthouses (in the lounge, where my PC is already setup in the corner) I would still have two issues:

A) The dog would probably be jumping up at me randomly
B) My girlfriend would be a little distracted if she is trying to watch TV

At least with the Oculus Rift I can just sit at my PC in the corner and not worry about any of that stuff.
 
The only thing that puts me of the Vive is the lack of skeletal tracking, like the Kinect 2 of old. I suppose it can track arms and head position with the HMD and wands and where your body is in 3d space but what about the rest of the body?

If it's meant to be a room experience would it not be off putting/disorientating to not track your legs too? Or can it???
 
Vive looks better to me all round and I even have a room ready for it but I can possibly see myself buying the Oculus as well for the seated experience. not sure how much time I will really want to spend walking around with the Vive, we'll see.
 
Another question but with the DK2 I would feel sick after a while of using it, I eventually got used to it but how is the motion sickness in these has there been any reports? Thanks
 
hyperseven said:
The only thing that puts me of the Vive is the lack of skeletal tracking, like the Kinect 2 of old. I suppose it can track arms and head position with the HMD and wands and where your body is in 3d space but what about the rest of the body?

If it's meant to be a room experience would it not be off putting/disorientating to not track your legs too? Or can it???
Click to expand...

I didn't find it that noticeable on the Vive....generally you had a floating hand where your controllers, and no other body that you can see...I didn't get any yanking break in immersion from it.

The worst jarring immersion breaker I experience in VR was Elite Dangerous, using a HOTAS setup...it's incredibly immersive, everything is telling you yep, I am a pilot in a space ship.....and then the game plays a little canned animation where the pilot flexes his fingers and it all goes out the window. Really hope they remove that, or add the option!
 
cHk4 said:
Another question but with the DK2 I would feel sick after a while of using it, I eventually got used to it but how is the motion sickness in these has there been any reports? Thanks
Click to expand...
There are a number of reasons why you might get VR sick, one of which is the frame rate (75Hz on DK2, increased to 90Hz on CV1). If frame rates dip, that'll also do it as there'll be a discrepancy between what's being shown and your vestibular system's notion of what *should* be shown, so Oculus have implemented a technology called asynchronous timewarp which aims to present frames to the HMD even if the GPU isn't able to generate them on time. It takes into account changes in orientation between updates and tries to extrapolate an image to show you. These changes have been reported to give a much nicer experience overall, though it doesn't eliminate VR sickness altogether.

Another big reason is that certain types of locomotion in games (e.g. walking / running in an FPS) cause your brain to get confused. You're moving but without any of the associated vestibular inputs. Developers are really only just getting to grips with this so there are a lot of new locomotion concepts coming out. For instance, teleporting your character from one place to another instantly seems to work well as there's a complete break in what you're seeing and it seems to allow your brain to cope.

You should find that seated experiences where there's a constant frame of reference (e.g. sat in a car, or in the cockpit of a plane) are easier to cope with.
 
hyperseven said:
The only thing that puts me of the Vive is the lack of skeletal tracking, like the Kinect 2 of old. I suppose it can track arms and head position with the HMD and wands and where your body is in 3d space but what about the rest of the body?

If it's meant to be a room experience would it not be off putting/disorientating to not track your legs too? Or can it???
Click to expand...
The more your brain feels connected to the experience, the more likely you are to feel presence (the feeling that you're actually there, rather than in a game). So there'll obviously be a disjoint if you look down and you have no legs, or if you try moving them in real life and they don't move in the game.

We won't see full-body tracking in this generation of devices, but it's certainly something that will come with time. The Leap Motion device can track hand/finger movements (and has recently had a software update that improves it immensely) but that isn't yet incorporated into an HMD so it's something that probably won't be officially supported by Oculus or HTC.
 
VincentHanna said:
Walking around is a nice idea, and even though I do have the space for a HTC Vive with the lighthouses (in the lounge, where my PC is already setup in the corner) I would still have two issues:

A) The dog would probably be jumping up at me randomly
B) My girlfriend would be a little distracted if she is trying to watch TV

At least with the Oculus Rift I can just sit at my PC in the corner and not worry about any of that stuff.
Click to expand...
To be fair, you can just sit in the corner at your PC with Vive. It'll just be the more expensive solution if you don't plan on using the motion controllers.
 
One thing worth considering is that a lot of gamers will just use the HMD but kids will love using he controllers and being able to move around.
 
xyphic said:
In terms of the HMD itself, there won't be much between the two. Anecdotally it seems that the Rift feels slightly more 'premium' in its build quality, and is slightly more comfortable but there isn't much in it. Image quality is said to be similar.

The two solutions use different tracking methods. Rift uses a system called 'Constellation', which requires you to plug a camera into your PC and that tracks infra-red LEDs (which flash a code so that the software can determine position and orientation). The headset can be tracked 360 degrees from a single camera and is said to have sub-millimetre precision. Vive uses a system called 'Lighthouse', which doesn't require you to plug anything into your PC. It comes with two lighthouse stations which are small boxes that effectively contain a laser and a motor and that continuously emit a pattern of light. This pattern is picked up by sensors on the HMD which uses it to determine position and orientation. This again gives sub-millimetre precision.

The lighthouse boxes communicate wirelessly (but require line-of-sight) or can be connected together via a wire. They only need to be powered, which means that they'll be easier to position than the Constellation cameras which need to be connected to your PC (and so may require USB extenders). Constellation processing is done on the PC rather than HMD so will use some CPU time, but it's said to only be a couple of percent per camera. In terms of tracking accuracy they're said to be similar.

Vive comes with motion controls at release. Its controllers are large wands with buttons on the front and side, a trigger on the back and a trackpad. They look a bit odd but their design is intended to reduce the potential for occlusion. Rift's motion controls (Touch) will come in the second half of the year and are a completely different design. They wrap around your hands, and have a capacitive element so the software knows when you've lifted your fingers, making it possible to point or do thumbs-up in VR. Touch will come with a second Constellation camera.

The big difference between the two systems is the type of experience that they're targeting. Rift is initially targeted at seated or standing experiences and comes with an Xbox One controller so that developers have a standard control method to target for their games. Vive can do seated and standing, but their differentiator is 'room-scale' where you're encouraged to get up and walk around in VR. Oculus don't officially support this configuration, but have said that there's nothing stopping you from doing it.

Vive has a camera built-in for their chaperone system. Chaperone has two components: the first is a simple boundary and when you get near that boundary it'll show up as an overlay on your display. This is to stop you from running into walls. SteamVR will support this level of chaperone on Rift as well as Vive. The second allows you to turn on an overlay of your surroundings, so you can see the outline of people and objects in your environment. This will allow you to see where your chair, desk, coffee, cat, etc. are. All the processing is done on the HMD so it's unlikely that there'll be a full passthrough mode but there are opportunities to use it for things like SLAM which would map your environment and project it into your game.

So... the real downsides of Rift are the lack of offical room-scale support, the number of USB ports required and unknown cost of the motion component. The real downsides of Vive are that there isn't currently a lot of content for its differentiating components, and that's something that Oculus have been very vocal about -- it doesn't matter how great a device is, if there's no content for it, it won't be a success. So with Oculus expect that when Touch *does* get released they'll do so alongside a bunch of quality content. HTC and Valve don't seem to be doing the same.

In conclusion, if you have the space and if room-scale is something that you feel you need from your VR setup, Vive would seem to be the one to get. If you're more interested in the seated / standing experience, there's likely to be more immediate content on the Rift, and Rift is (in the short term) cheaper.
Click to expand...

That is an outstanding explanation of the two systems and their pros and cons. Impartial, factual, detailed, and not full of supposition or opinion like most forum posts. You should be a journalist!
 
I've gone for the rift because its a) cheaper and b)sooner

I mainly want to play driving/flying/space games and already have wheel and joystick, so I'm happy to wait on the controllers until theres some really excellent games to play (everything so far looks more like a tech demo than a properly fleshed out game)

I would absolutely love an omni-mill plus gun controller for FPS, but I think the hardware plus games for that are still a year or two away
 
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