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HTC Vive VR headset gets $200 price cut
- Thread starter Enzom21
- Start date
Wrestlemania
Banned
Hope you have a big suitcase or are happy to ditch the packaging - the box is ridiculously big.
Aztechnology
Member
Well for me Robo Recall, Lone Echo and Superhot VR have been insanely cool. Just starting to get into the robo Recall mods. There's so much potential there. Playing with the lightsaber mod makes me realize just how badly I was a full Star Wars VR game. It would be so insanely cool.
Neither of these are the case, thats good to know though, thanks
Tbh its probably for the best to know that too lol, don't need to spend more money on frivolous tech atm :lol
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Out of Ammo Death Drive, The SoulKeeper VR, ChainMan, Rez Infinite, Operation Warcade, Killing Floor Incursion, Lone Echo, Echo Arena etc.
Ban Puncher
Member
LiLSnorpSnorp
Member
How difficult is it to play Oculus exclusives on the vive?
Glasses generally work better with the Vive, because it has more space and adjustable eye relief.
(I have both)
Not at all.
(Well, once you get over the ethical difficulty of buying a game on PC which is API-locked to one specific brand of hardware, which I have a rough time with but most people don't seem to mind)
Wowfunhappy
Member
Your point notwithstanding, the current box is a lot smaller than the human-sized one the originals shipped with.
LiLSnorpSnorp
Member
Edit: @durante, do you recommend the give for someone who has been on the fence for awhile?
kiunchbb
www.dictionary.com
I wear glasses and been playing on rift without problem; however, your view won't be as wide since your eyes are further away from the lens.
That depends on how comfortable you are with spending the money on something which will be superseded technologically within a year, give or take a few months.
I'm a huge proponent of VR, particularly 360°/room-scale VR, and the Vive does that amazingly well. It's also on the right side of history by supporting OpenVR, so it's unlikely that it will be left behind immediately when new hardware is out, and your game purchases will migrate to future systems.
However, VR tech is still improving rather significantly, and when you buy anything at this point you need to be aware that something better at the same (or a lower) price might be around relatively soon.
LiLSnorpSnorp
Member
I think I can live with that part of it (tech being superceded). I'm also a fan of room scale VR (and is the reason I stayed away from Oculus, among other things). I think I'm going to pull the trigger
Jangowuzhere
Banned
This just makes Facebook look stupid with their temporary sale for Oculus + Touch.
The Oculus headset is still well worth getting at $200 less than the Vive. However, when the sale ends, the new price will sit at $500. At that point, everyone should just stick with picking up the Vive. It comes with roomscale by default and doesn't cost anything extra to get that 360 experience.
The Oculus headset is still well worth getting at $200 less than the Vive. However, when the sale ends, the new price will sit at $500. At that point, everyone should just stick with picking up the Vive. It comes with roomscale by default and doesn't cost anything extra to get that 360 experience.
brain_stew
Member
A $100 saving, superior controllers, far better pack in software and better native software is still a pretty compelling alternative.
It's not an instant decision in favour of Rift like it is at $400, but I still feel Rift is the better value for most consumers at $500 vs. $600 for the Vive.
I can't see that $500 price lasting very long either, I fully expect it to be back down to $400 permanently ready for the Holiday season.
Not everyone wants or can even accommodate room scale VR. The out of the box Rift package offers a very compelling standing forward facing VR experience.
I'm running a 3 sensor Rift setup and am fully onboard with room scale VR but the vast majority of the better software still works well in a 2 camera forward facing setup.
Having the best room scale tracking available at $600 is a great breakthrough, but the Rift still feels like the better value option for most consumers that don't have large room scale environments available.
If you don't mind that (that is, the quick pace of technological advancement), then I can fully recommend the system.
Room-scale VR is still magical for me over a year after buying it (especially so in co-op action games that make good use of it like Raw Data).
Reallink
Member
You had to have gotten out really early and prior to Touch to break even, which means you pretty much missed out on everything worthwhile. Unsurprisingly it turns out VR is not sitting on a couch with an Xbox pad. Having real 1:1 head and hand presence (and what that affords developers/designers) is a much bigger deal than anything else. I legitimately don't think its possible to play Echo Arena/Lone Echo and have any other reaction than it's the coolest thing you've ever seen.
Zalusithix
Member
BackBackPunch
Member
The current estimates for "optimal" VR image quality is 16K resolution PER EYE (at 144 hz). Might as well enjoy it as-is in the meantime, because there is a LOOONGG way to go.
Even if you get a headset that doubles current resolution in a year, your PC is going to have some serious problems keeping up.
Zalusithix
Member
Technically we're already rendering far above the panel resolution and then downsampling that for the current generation panels. Rendering double the current native resolution and dumping that directly to higher resolution displays instead of downsampling isn't outside of the realm of possibility with current high end hardware. That said, the key to super high resolution displays is foveated rendering. Used along with eye tracking (something we really want in VR regardless), the rendering burden from higher panel resolution will be largely offset by only rendering a small fraction of it at full fidelity. We won't need GPUs capable of rendering natively to 16K displays in the future. Not even close.
BackBackPunch
Member
I always forget about the foveated technique. I feel like getting that to a perfectly functioning form is still a ways off though. Could be wrong.
RedlineRonin
Member
Piecing together the context clues of your statement, is foveated rendering effectively only rendering at resolution that high "where the eye is looking" and the periphery of your vision is way lower (where you presumably can't see the difference anyway)?
You should be able to get the TPCast outside of China very soon.
(I just hope they fix the microphone issue)
BackBackPunch
Member
And a far more comfortable headset as well (which includes built in headphones, unlike the Vive)!
At this point, the playing field has become pretty even between the Vive and Rift. It wasn't this way a year ago, but things have changed.
Sidenote: For those who still think the Vive blows the rift out of the water, the roomscale argument is probably a moot point for the average user. Vive works reliably up to a 15x15 foot room size out of the box, and the Rift easily handles a 12x12 foot room with an additional sensor purchase.
GuitarAtomik
Member
Correct. Will go a long way towards keeping the GPU cost down.
That really depends on what your space looks like. For my VR room, even with 3 sensors it would be impossible to cover as large an area as well as 2 lighthouses do. (due to the limited FoV, and my play space extending right up to the wall on all 4 sides)
And of course, routing 3 cameras put all over a larger room back to a PC without it looking like crap is a bit of an issue too.
But yeah, at this point my largest issue by far with Oculus is ethical, not technical.
Zalusithix
Member
Yes, foveated rendering takes advantage of the natural properties of the eye where visual acuity falls off greatly from looking dead center at something:
Rendering at the highest resolution possible throughout the entire panel is a massive waste of rendering resources if you know where the eye is actually looking. We want eye tracking in VR anyhow for other things like contextual interaction and social purposes. That said, it's a toss up whether we'll see eye tracking in the next generation of HMDs, and whether it will have high enough accuracy/speed for foveated rendering even if we do have it. I fully expect it by the time gen 3 rolls out though.
This is fantastic news, but c'mon... $500 is the price I'm hoping, with that $200 delta I'd still get an Oculus first, but I want a Vive.
When are second gen headsets expected? Or else, when is the next big VR convention where we can expect announcements regarding the future? I'm not sure if it's safe to invest in one right now, with foveated rendering coming.
When are second gen headsets expected? Or else, when is the next big VR convention where we can expect announcements regarding the future? I'm not sure if it's safe to invest in one right now, with foveated rendering coming.
GuitarAtomik
Member
I think expecting Gen 2 headsets in a year to year and a half is an optimistic but possible estimate.
Wowfunhappy
Member
But just about everyone can accommodate standing 360. And (unfortunately, imo), that's what most games seem to be getting designed for anyway.
It reaaaaly sucks that to do standing 360 on the Rift, you need to run a USB cable behind you.
Separate note, people need to stop conflating standing 360 and room-scale.
I really hope so, VR feels so close yet so far to really make an impact, price, wireless and rendering power are the biggest obstacles. I guess I'll get one in the meantime.
RedlineRonin
Member
Yes, foveated rendering takes advantage of the natural properties of the eye where visual acuity falls off greatly from looking dead center at something:
Rendering at the highest resolution possible throughout the entire panel is a massive waste of rendering resources if you know where the eye is actually looking. We want eye tracking in VR anyhow for other things like contextual interaction and social purposes. That said, it's a toss up whether we'll see eye tracking in the next generation of HMDs, and whether it will have high enough accuracy/speed for foveated rendering even if we do have it. I fully expect it by the time gen 3 rolls out though.
Cool. Thanks for the explanation (and image). Makes a lot of sense. I suppose this would be more exclusive to VR, than to something like 4K TVs, where you're further away and view is more broad and therefore more likely to need full rendering of the image?
family_guy
Member
Where are the Vive games though? Oculus games seemed like they are way more polished. I also would prefer not to use some third party hack to get access to more games.
Zalusithix
Member
Foveated rendering is certainly geared more for VR. The total FoV in VR is extremely large, and there's only ever one person looking at the screen. The same concept could theoretically be employed for traditional screens, but you'd get much less out of it. At average seating distances, a typical screen takes up a much smaller chunk of your FoV (less than half that of current gen VR). As such, you'd be looking at a 4x reduction in potential performance gains in the very least. It'd also completely break down with more than one viewer.
RedlineRonin
Member
Excellent point. Had not thought of that.
Aztechnology
Member
Sorry I have to avoid talking about Foveated rendering. It's hazardous to my health given my extreme zealotry on the subject.
Spooky Scary Skeleton
Member
You can play Oculus games using Revive software. But the thing is that it's a third party app and not everything is compatible with Oculus exclulsive mechanics and sometimes it suffers from janky graphic bugs. Couple of examples are Lone Echo, Edge of Nowhere, and Climb.
thepenguin55
Member
So a MicroCenter near me has an open one (it's mostly complete as it's only missing the dry wall screws) for $450. They also have a prebuilt PC (http://www.microcenter.com/product/479097/G428_Desktop_Computer) which looks about as good as anything I was planning to build (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FkkkM8) and it's cheaper than what I was planning to build (especially since I can get complete working open one from MicroCenter for $1530)... so I am really thinking of taking the plunge. I want to very badly. My PC is absolutely ancient at this point and my laptop is starting to show it's age so it's just about time to upgrade.