Thinking of finally getting VR. Is there any point getting a vive right now, or is the rift vastly superior?

[Cmdr Kurnek]

Thinking of finally getting VR. Is there any point getting a vive right now, or is the rift vastly superior?

So I'm finally in a position to dip a toe in the sea of VR. unfortunately, my favoured option for that, the vive (wider FOV) seems to have some serious issues with Elite, framerate, AA problems etc, and many seem to be calling it unusable by comparison.

Honestly, if the Vive is that bad I think I'd rather wait 6 months than buy a rift, and hope the issues get fixed by then. I really don't want to buy into the version with a worse FOV, as that's a huge immersion killer for me :/

So is the Vive actually playable? what are your experiences/comparisons to the rift? framerate lows compared between the 2? is the text illegible with the AA problems? can it be fixed by supersampling/a more powerful rig?

For reference I currently have 2x 970s, and I'm thinking of upgrading to 2x 1070's or even 1080s after I get my headset.

 

[RobLocksley]

Allthough I am pretty happy and amazed by VR I still need some 25% more resolution and tighter pixels/subpixels; i am fine with the FOV in the Rift since bigger would mean less pixels per degree


I waited a bit before ordering my VR. I did have a look at Vive but it was more expensive and most reviewers who had both headsets often gave the Rift a note for a smidge better clarity. Still the Vive was considered by most to be the better choice because of: slightly better FOV, Rift had pronounced bleed becuase of the lens, punchier gamma and the controlls with the lighthouses.
I saw it differently, Rift was the clear winner; sligthly better image (but should not be noticable and more up to the implementation of the program one is using), a whole hell lot easier setup and comfort; weights less and is easier to take on and off.
Some do think Vive is more comfortable though; read a post that one guy thought it was pressing on the brow, but it turns out you can angle the headset, it is notched and the angle can be adjusted so maybe it still is the best ergonomical set.

And I read about the rendering problems with Elite.


Now having got my Rift I noticed I don't mind the bleed at all, and if you center the lenses right over your pupils it is allot less except the corners. For me it was 33% cheaper than the Vive! (6500 SEK instead of 10.000 SEK), sure the controllers costa a little less than 2000 SEK it looks like so the price gap closesup a somewhat.


i hope anyone I know get the Vive so I can compare (not in Elite since that would not be fair to the Vive).

Playing Elite the Rift is 'the' thing to get. I am very happy I did not get the Vive but understand why someone who is more interested in room VR experience 'right now' would buy that. And really, all I read with Elite is how bad Vive works with it - or all the hoops you have to do to make it a viable option to use instead of the Rift.

Cheers and happy VRing!

 

[PvtTUX]

Compared to the Rift in ED the Vive has issues as you say, it's still playable and legible with a few tweaks and will hopefully improve over time with what improvments Valve will bring (their version of ATW) and what FD will optimise.

I can't directly compare the two as the Vive is all I have but there is obviously a big difference within ED unfortunately.

As for SLI I'd say for now you'd be better off just getting one 1080 as I'm sure that tech is a way off for use in VR and not used in ED as far as I'm aware .

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Hmm, neither the Rift or the Vive could be called 'dipping a toe'! Are you in or not?

The Rift is the better choice for ED right now. Hopefully FD will make the necessary changes/bug fixes to bring the Vive up to the same quality that the Rift shows, but this is partially dependent on Valve as well, and their improvements to SteamVR. Vive owners can only hope right now. But the Vive is usable, just not optimal.

Having now tried both, the general visual quality is similar; the Vive has slightly more vibrant colours (but you'd really only notice if you had them side by side. The FOV difference is academic; yes Vive is technically slightly better, but again, unless you had both on the table you won't notice. And you just move your head a few degrees more just as you do in real life. Don't get hung up on FOV differences that small.

As PvtTUS said, VR doesn't do SLI yet; a single gpu is fine. A second GPU will sit essentially unused in ED. I don't know of any VR titles that make use of SLI yet.

And of course there the 'roomscale' issue. Vive ships with a second lighthouse and controllers and can do roomscale now. That's cool.
Oculus is taking pre-orders for Touch controllers now but it'll be shipping at Xmas. Right now you can move about a bit in the Rift, but its not roomscale. Getting Touch at Xmas with its second sensor will (probably) give an equivalent experience to the Vive. Noone knows for sure but I'd bet money on it.
The shape of the controllers was important to me; the Vive wands look cool but I felt they'd slip out of my hands easily. Touch looks like its a bit firmly planted in your palm. Dunno, have felt the Vive wands but not Touch yet.

Roomscale wil be a must for me, so long as my knees hold out lol. But I don't mind waiting so bought a Rift. I have Touch on order

Some say the Vive is more comfy; I say no, the Rift is better. The Rift is overwhelmingly better designed, and right now with ATW and ASW has better software support for any Rift-capable title, not just ED.

Jump in.

 

[Mike Kangaroo]

I spend hours playing Elite in the Vive, yeah I demand change and toss the snarky comment from time to time, but hey, they FD is moving slower than molasses in winter in regards to clearing it up. That said, its perfectly playable, it just isn't what it should be, Tweak the SS and it'll look great. Playing other stuff in VR, the Vive is a perfect device and never underestimate just how much fun Roomscale is. When I originally bought the Vive, it was only because the Rift refused to send me a unit to my area of Australia, HTC didn't mind at all, Plus I got the Vive before the Rift was due anyway and have had it from 1st of May. Originally I was just going to play stuff like Elite, but full scale games where you are moving around was a HUGE surprise and I am so so glad I couldn't actually purchase the Rift because the Vive has been a major success for us.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

The vive is indeed perfectly playable, and it has a few benefits, colour, gamma and contrast seem a bit better than the rift.

But the rift has a few horseheads above in performance, and is more suited, scale wise at least, compared to the vive.
As for price, if you get the touch controllers it's the same for either, but owning both there is no way rift is capable in matching the full room play experience (shorter cable, camera based tracking etc)

 

[Beavis Tingleball]

The vive is indeed perfectly playable, and it has a few benefits, colour, gamma and contrast seem a bit better than the rift.

But the rift has a few horseheads above in performance, and is more suited, scale wise at least, compared to the vive.
As for price, if you get the touch controllers it's the same for either, but owning both there is no way rift is capable in matching the full room play experience (shorter cable, camera based tracking etc)

just want to point out that a $10 hdmi and usb extention will give you longer cables that a vive. add them to a vive and they're even longer than they were..cables are great!

 

[TorTorden_VR]

just want to point out that a $10 hdmi and usb extention will give you longer cables that a vive. add them to a vive and they're even longer than they were..cables are great!

Considering the dodgy ness of these connections on the rift, adding extensions cables is more likely to make it useless than adding any range of motion.
Besides, oculus themselves are not in the business of making room play experiences.
Sitting, standing and with the focus on a 180 degree experience, that is their guideline for developers, granted the Devs are free to ignore it.

Rather than the vive and steamvr roomplay that is built for this.

What we have here is more like a sedan and a landcruiser, you don't try to drive the sedan off road up a mountain.

I own both so don't even bother saying otherwise.

 

[CMDR Muy Bien Gato]

Do you have enough room for the Vive, and if so, do you plan on playing anything other than Elite? If yes, Vive. If no, Rift.

Don't ever base such a large purchase on one title.

 

[Soda Popinski]

Besides the comfort issues, the Rift has the edge on performance. Since you're planning on getting a 1080, I don't think this will be an issue. I recently got a 1080, and can tell you, it's overkill with the Rift. That said, I've got both sets, and play all my cockpit sims in the Rift. The Vive is great for the more cardio room scale games, and is great, but I suspect when I get the Touch, I'd prefer going with the Rift.

 

[Kapow]

The vive is indeed perfectly playable, and it has a few benefits, colour, gamma and contrast seem a bit better than the rift.

But the rift has a few horseheads above in performance, and is more suited, scale wise at least, compared to the vive.
As for price, if you get the touch controllers it's the same for either, but owning both there is no way rift is capable in matching the full room play experience (shorter cable, camera based tracking etc)

+1. I have both at the moment and if I had to pick one to keep I would keep Vive. Studio decided to keep both, so I get to switch between each any time one improves, but if I had to choose I would go for Vive. ED has issues, but all the other roomscale experiences make up for it tenfold.

 

[dogbite]

Considering the dodgy ness of these connections on the rift, adding extensions cables is more likely to make it useless than adding any range of motion.
Besides, oculus themselves are not in the business of making room play experiences.
Sitting, standing and with the focus on a 180 degree experience, that is their guideline for developers, granted the Devs are free to ignore it.

Rather than the vive and steamvr roomplay that is built for this.

What we have here is more like a sedan and a landcruiser, you don't try to drive the sedan off road up a mountain.

I own both so don't even bother saying otherwise.

Supposition, not fact. Suggesting extension cables would "make it useless" means you have not tried this. I have connected TWO Xbox extensions to the Rift sensor. That is 2x2.5 feet and 2 extra connections on 1 line. I also did the same thing to the Rift usb connection and hdmi. This added 5 feet in length and I saw no degradation of tracking 360 degrees or video quality. So let's get real here. There is no reason to continue this roomscale myth. When Touch ships the differences between HMDs will be mostly moot. Oculus are even going to sell and now support extra IR cameras for greater fidelity when Touch ships.

Oculus didn't promote roomscale as Touch wasn't ready and because most users have less than 10 ft to dedicate. That is not saying their Touch games won't have you getting up and moving around some.
http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-rift-home-1-6-update-touch-four-sensors-roomscale/
http://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-touch-full-capable-roomscale-tracking-not-sure-absolutely-necessary/

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

As PvtTUS said, VR doesn't do SLI yet; a single gpu is fine. A second GPU will sit essentially unused in ED. I don't know of any VR titles that make use of SLI yet.

Can't test it atm as I'm on a single GPU currently, but ED did support SLI in VR during some stage in beta at the cost of increased latency. I did some benchmarks back then and noticed a rough 30% framerate increase when it was introduced using a DK2 and dual 680 GTX (the results are buried somewhere in the beta archives). it had to be forced on using Nvidia inspector and it wasn't SLI VR (one card per eye rendering), hence the increased latency.

The only benchmarks I did were >2 years back, so it's very well possible they might have shelved it in the meantime.

_______

In general I'd say ED is very well playable using the Vive. The Avatar looks way too small, but then again it also did in the DK2 for me. It's more pronounced in the Vive, but after getting used to it for 2000 hours in the DK2, I've probably grown somewhat tolerant towards it.

Personally, I'm not that hyped about room scale as there's so single game above demo stage supporting it and I play games to relax, not to have a workout.

Most Vive "games" are flat out terrible single-dev experiments made by people learning UE4/Unity. On the other hand, Oculus games are mostly optimised for console controllers which I hate to use in VR (I have 5 of them lying around for playing Fifa and beat 'em ups).

Last but not least, OR/facebooks business practices send me right into mouth-foaming mode, so I'll spare us that bit.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Can't test it atm as I'm on a single GPU currently, but ED did support SLI in VR during some stage in beta at the cost of increased latency. I did some benchmarks back then and noticed a rough 30% framerate increase when it was introduced using a DK2 and dual 680 GTX (the results are buried somewhere in the beta archives). it had to be forced on using Nvidia inspector and it wasn't SLI VR (one card per eye rendering), hence the increased latency.

The only benchmarks I did were >2 years back, so it's very well possible they might have shelved it in the meantime.

Cool, I didn't know that. Chances are good then that FD needed to re-code something everytime the driver changed... especially if you had to force it on each time. It'd get expensive just to keep supporting driver changes if its too rapid.
SLI wasn't designed with VR in mind, although it seems like its a match made in heaven.

But yeah, the logistics of getting data to two different cards and then re-combining the video adds a bit of latency. I wonder how much. Even if it was a millisecond or two, that's big chips in VR when you only have 11ms to play with.

 

[Kapow]

Can't test it atm as I'm on a single GPU currently, but ED did support SLI in VR during some stage in beta at the cost of increased latency. I did some benchmarks back then and noticed a rough 30% framerate increase when it was introduced using a DK2 and dual 680 GTX (the results are buried somewhere in the beta archives). it had to be forced on using Nvidia inspector and it wasn't SLI VR (one card per eye rendering), hence the increased latency.

The only benchmarks I did were >2 years back, so it's very well possible they might have shelved it in the meantime.

_______

In general I'd say ED is very well playable using the Vive. The Avatar looks way too small, but then again it also did in the DK2 for me. It's more pronounced in the Vive, but after getting used to it for 2000 hours in the DK2, I've probably grown somewhat tolerant towards it.

Personally, I'm not that hyped about room scale as there's so single game above demo stage supporting it and I play games to relax, not to have a workout.

Most Vive "games" are flat out terrible single-dev experiments made by people learning UE4/Unity. On the other hand, Oculus games are mostly optimised for console controllers which I hate to use in VR (I have 5 of them lying around for playing Fifa and beat 'em ups).

Last but not least, OR/facebooks business practices send me right into mouth-foaming mode, so I'll spare us that bit.

As far as I remember there was some sort of SLI support only when the VR was in Extended mode, but none in Direct one as far as I know.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

As far as I remember there was some sort of SLI support only when the VR was in Extended mode, but none in Direct one as far as I know.

Most likely correct - direct never really worked for me on the DK2.

Just wondering about chances of Nvidia VRWorks support in ED, but I guess they're pretty slim.

 

[Ralron]

unless you want to waste cash

wait a year or 2 for the next generations...

 

[dutchy2000]

unless you want to waste cash

wait a year or 2 for the next generations...

Spoken like someone that hasn't tried it. Keep on holding onto that cash and miss out.

 

[syngyne]

And of course there the 'roomscale' issue. Vive ships with a second lighthouse and controllers and can do roomscale now. That's cool.
Oculus is taking pre-orders for Touch controllers now but it'll be shipping at Xmas. Right now you can move about a bit in the Rift, but its not roomscale. Getting Touch at Xmas with its second sensor will (probably) give an equivalent experience to the Vive. Noone knows for sure but I'd bet money on it.

People have dev kits have been playing roomscale games with them, and it seems to work fine:

[video=youtube;dnN6ORLmExo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnN6ORLmExo[/video]

I think you just need to make sure your cameras are in good spots.