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Oculus Rift Launch Thread: Ballpark 2016

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Cleve

Member
5/23/2016 - 6/2/2016 I ordrered as soon as the site would submit on the first day. At this point I'm just going to cancel and wait. I'll probably get a vive
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
I think the next few days will determine how exaggerated these date windows are. Like I mentioned last night, people who saw their Rifts ship last night had seen their window as April 18th to 28th before receiving their tracking number.

I am hoping for the best.

I'm an eternal optimist, I'm hoping they gave us dates with the worst case scenario and will ship much sooner LOL.

In the grand scheme of things once we're all enjoying VR the delays will be forgotten. I remember not being able to get a Wii for months, shit happens.

It's severely disappointing, especially since I'm at 06:06 and it seems like they were so close to hitting that range and now it's 2 more weeks? Ah well, I'll just try to forget about it and be happy when it arrives.
 
I probably sound like a total asshole saying this right now - but when you guys get your Rifts I think you'll change your mind. It really is a fantastic product. Just played 40 minutes of Lucky's Tale and I'm more and more astounded by how comfortable the headset is. The headphones are so awesome. I'm starting to forget they are even there. I was bitter until last Friday that I didn't have either of my VR kits and no signs of shipping, and was still feeling kind of deflated with my hype even when picking up my Rift from UPS this morning.

But damn now that I'm actually using this thing and I'm jumping from app to app seemlessly, it's what I was waiting for all this time. Real, polished game experiences. A sleek and comfortable headset that I can wear for extended periods without any issue. Even without Touch it's awesome. There's no way people will be unhappy when it arrives - unless you are super prone to motion sickness or it just straight doesn't fit your head or something like that. Don't give up now!

Nah, you don't sound like an asshole, I do. I realize that and it's venting. But I now don't view Oculus as a company I would go out of my way to support. I don't think this is how you should treat customers (the silence, not the delay, thats out of their hands and I understand that).

You're right, they may make it up to us somehow and some goodwill will go a long way, but damn ... Palmer's "give a mouse a cookie" comment coupled with zero info and last second announcements aren't traits of a company I want to support right now.

Maybe it's growing pains or whatever, I'm irritated, and can forgive this debacle, but I've seen no transparency from them and that's not very promising in the long run if I plan to invest in their eco system like I do Steam (who also had a rocky start where I didn't invest a lot of money).
 

WGMBY

Member
Nah, you don't sound like an asshole, I do. I realize that and it's venting. But I now don't view Oculus as a company I would go out of my way to support. I don't think this is how you should treat customers (the silence, not the delay, thats out of their hands and I understand that).

You're right, they may make it up to us somehow and some goodwill will go a long way, but damn ... Palmer's "give a mouse a cookie" comment coupled with zero info and last second announcements aren't traits of a company I want to support right now.

I agree. I don't hate Palmer or the company or anything, I'm sure if Oculus could get this to us right now they would, but I also don't see how I can trust Oculus with any launches down the line. I don't think I'll cancel my preorder necessarily, I just won't be pre-ordering from Oculus ever again.
 
First, I get a email from HTC on Easter Sunday that my Vive is being processed and my card charged, only for the charge to disappear and no shipping email. I have received zero updates from HTC regarding what is going on.

Then my rift order gets pushed to the middle of May though at least they told me to expect a delay.

What an awful launch. I don't get why anyone is saying "I will cancel the rift and buy the Vive because it will get here sooner!" Really? Based on what?
 
First, I get a email from HTC on Easter Sunday that my Vive is being processed and my card charged, only for the charge to disappear and no shipping email. I have received zero updates from HTC regarding what is going on.

Then my rift order gets pushed to the middle of May though at least they told me to expect a delay.

What an awful launch. I don't get why anyone is saying "I will cancel the rift and buy the Vive because it will get here sooner!" Really? Based on what?

Yup.

If the only reason your switching is because you think you will get one earlier than the other it's best to still hold on to your Rift order until you have more concrete details. You can order a Vive and cancel later if your Rift ships earlier than expected.
 

Phatcorns

Member
Here's my info:

Got my Rift order email at Jan 6 at 11:06am.
My estimated ship date is now: 4/18/2016 - 4/28/2016

Got my Vive order email at Feb 29 at 9:23am.
My estimated ship date is: Thank you for your HTCVIVE.com order – We will start shipping April 2016. Your pre-order's estimated arrival will be based from the date you receive your shipping notification.

Hahaha, well, I guess I'll be playing one day!
 

Sir TapTap

Member
First, I get a email from HTC on Easter Sunday that my Vive is being processed and my card charged, only for the charge to disappear and no shipping email. I have received zero updates from HTC regarding what is going on.

Then my rift order gets pushed to the middle of May though at least they told me to expect a delay.

What an awful launch. I don't get why anyone is saying "I will cancel the rift and buy the Vive because it will get here sooner!" Really? Based on what?

Current estimates for new orders are June for Vive and August for Oculus. Unless HTC is also crazy wrong it seems their supply is much better. And it seems best-case current-preorder dates for Oculus (that haven't been delivered) match Vive's "order now" date. That's...yeah I can totally see jumping at that point.

And anyone who bought Oculus only because they wanted VR as fast as possible has no reason to get it over the Vive either.
 

rickyson1

Member
my estimated ship date is July instead of the June it originally was now :(

I guess that makes it a lot more likely pascal will be out by then and i'll have something better than my 780 at least
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
Current estimates for new orders are June for Vive and August for Oculus. Unless HTC is also crazy wrong it seems their supply is much better. And it seems best-case current-preorder dates for Oculus (that haven't been delivered) match Vive's "order now" date. That's...yeah I can totally see jumping at that point.

And anyone who bought Oculus only because they wanted VR as fast as possible has no reason to get it over the Vive either.

We have no idea how many orders of each there are.
 

WarpathDC

Junior Member
April 18-28th. My vive preorder is may but vague. I have a very crucial decision to make in the next few days. Do I wait a bit longer at this point? I had a March ship date originally from oculus fwiw and very jaded by this process to date. I didn't preorder a vive right away because I was confident I'd get my rift at or at least within a few days of launch..

I will probably keep the rift and if I am truly missing the ability to interact with the environment I will sell it when my vive ships. I'm not as excited about oculus after all this bullshit though and the fact when I open the oculus store on my pc it says my pc is not oculus ready (which is hillarious based on my specs and the fact the steam vr performance test I max out).
 
Current estimates for new orders are June for Vive and August for Oculus. Unless HTC is also crazy wrong it seems their supply is much better. And it seems best-case current-preorder dates for Oculus (that haven't been delivered) match Vive's "order now" date. That's...yeah I can totally see jumping at that point.
But why have faith that HTC's estimates are correct? HTC's launch has not been any better. I am not seeing orders being fulfilled timely by either company. My own experience with both have been terrible.

I guess I just don't understand why anyone would cancel one and order the other one just because of a delay. Just order both and keep the one that comes first.
 

iceatcs

Junior Member
I don't see what's 'embarrassing' or '90s' about mail order. If anything, a retail release is the more dated concept. They simply wanted to offer them as soon as possible. They could have launched in retailers, but you'd be waiting the same amount of time, if not longer. And they're all coming to retailers eventually anyway.

In the old day, some products are mail order only with slow high shipping cost. Kind like a TV shopping channel.
 

mr stroke

Member
New Estimated Ship Date: 5/23/2016 - 6/2/2016

Go fuck your self Oculus, I ordered with in the first 10 minutes of open pre orders.

Rift pre-ordered canceled!

(lets hope HTC pulls through with my pre order this month)
 
As someone incredibly passionate about VR to the point of immediately pre-ordering every headset that's currently announced and any future headsets I'm pretty disappointed with how poorly everything is being handled by both companies.

These are large purchases and the lack of communication throughout has made everything alot more frustrating than it needed to be.

I was ready to place my order 30 mins before the orders opened up. I actually set an alarm and set aside time in the day so that I could sit there and be there when they opened. I then spent the next 30-40 minutes re-trying all of my credit cards with none of them actually going through and I didn't want to refresh the page out of fear of losing my spot. In doing so I actually ended up wasting over a half hour and by the time I finally refreshed it worked meaning I could have gotten my order in sooner if they hadn't screwed up their ordering system. So even though I should have gotten one of the first headsets, I'm now scheduled to get mine 6/6/2016-6/16/2016.

It's pretty shitty that they couldn't have thrown a bone to the people throwing down hundreds of dollars day 0 for this new tech by at least making sure that they got their stuff in a timely manner. I can't believe that the people making the headsets underestimated the demand so badly when every VR enthusiast knew it would be more popular than the non-existent stock that they built up for launch.
 

Bsigg12

Member
Wonder if this ultimately ends up destroying Oculus?(considering HTC can get units out ASAP)

Not in the slightest. There are much larger plans for what Oculus wants to do and they have they money to do it because of Facebook. This is just a bit of a disaster of a launch.

HTC on the other hand is still a company that is struggling. There stocks have fallen $44 again from $125 per share to $81 per share between March 14th and today. They also can't get units out ASAP (see this thread).
 

mnannola

Member
Are they making three Rifts a day or something? I don't understand how they could not have known about this months ago. I am no shipping expert, but to fulfill all of the orders when they said they would initially, wouldn't they have to have a huge stockpile of ready to go rifts on day one?

If so, then on release day, one of these two options would be true:

A. Enough Rifts have already been produced and we can meet the orders in the timeframe specified.

or

B. Not enough Rifts have been produced. Some component shortage means there is a massive gap between what Oculus said would be shipping, and what they actually have on hand.

If B is right, then Oculus should have pushed back the launch date and explained why. "Releasing" it like they did just looks amateurish.
 
I got my email this morning - delayed until end of May, early June (I only ordered at 40 minutes because the website refused to accept my card for quite some time). This is a UK order.

Meanwhile my Vive order was placed pretty quickly, and they have been shipping to everyone except the UK...which is quite irritating. My card was authorised on like the 2nd of April but literally nothing has happened since then. I think I would have my Vive now if I lived in the U.S. or Europe.

This may seem like a drive by OT comment but one of the most traumatizing parts of the oculus news has been re-ordering dates back into the proper format...i.e. day/month/year.

I don't know why anyone would choose the month/day ordering as a way to present information?
 

Zalusithix

Member
This may seem like a drive by OT comment but one of the most traumatizing parts of the oculus news has been re-ordering dates back into the proper format...i.e. day/month/year.

I don't know why anyone would choose the month/day ordering as a way to present information?

The proper date format is year/month/day. Everything else is just preference.
 
I don't accept any date that doesn't start with "The year of our lord..."

Also, what is the name that shows up on credit card charges? Might call my bank just to be safe.
 
Wonder if this ultimately ends up destroying Oculus?(considering HTC can get units out ASAP)

Not in the slightest. It probably won't even hurt them, beyond a brief and very temporary loss of public image. This kind of thing happens all the time, but people forget almost immediately after they get their hands on the product.

Remember the PS4 launch? Remember how impossible it was to get your hands on a PS4 for almost half a year after launch? How you had to pre-order almost half a year in advance to even have a chance of getting one on release date? Do you remember how upset people were here on NeoGAF and other places? Guess which company came out the winner of that particular console generation launch.

Odds are you've already experienced a bunch of problematic product launches, but you've forgotten most of them.
 

mr stroke

Member
Are they making three Rifts a day or something? I don't understand how they could not have known about this months ago. I am no shipping expert, but to fulfill all of the orders when they said they would initially, wouldn't they have to have a huge stockpile of ready to go rifts on day one?

If so, then on release day, one of these two options would be true:

A. Enough Rifts have already been produced and we can meet the orders in the timeframe specified.

or

B. Not enough Rifts have been produced. Some component shortage means there is a massive gap between what Oculus said would be shipping, and what they actually have on hand.

If B is right, then Oculus should have pushed back the launch date and explained why. "Releasing" it like they did just looks amateurish.

They should have delayed the official launch until summer 2016 and only shipped Kickstarter orders first. This would have aloud them to ship with touch, keep out customer heat+bad press, and still "officially" get their product out before HTC.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
Not in the slightest. It probably won't even hurt them, beyond a brief and very temporary loss of public image. This kind of thing happens all the time, but people forget almost immediately after they get their hands on the product.

Remember the PS4 launch? Remember how impossible it was to get your hands on a PS4 for almost half a year after launch? How you had to pre-order almost half a year in advance to even have a chance of getting one on release date? Do you remember how upset people were here on NeoGAF and other places? Guess which company came out the winner of that particular console generation launch.

Odds are you've already experienced a bunch of problematic product launches, but you've forgotten most of them.

Pretty big difference between this and the PS4, for obvious reasons. For one, VR is a completely new platform. Second Rift doesn't have the years and years of goodwill built up that the PlayStation brand had. No one has any feelings of loyalty to Rift/Oculus. Third, there is a viable alternative, Vive, and right now is a critical time for them both to establish beachheads with the market. It's probably pretty likely that a person's first VR will be their main VR platform for years to come. People tend to be loyal like that. I think it's a pretty big deal that they are falling so flat on their faces, tbh. Time will tell the overall impact. Perhaps, in the long run, it won't matter at all.
 
Pretty big difference between this and the PS4, for obvious reasons. For one, VR is a completely new platform. Second Rift doesn't have the years and years of goodwill built up that the PlayStation brand had. No one has any feelings of loyalty to Rift/Oculus. Third, there is a viable alternative, Vive, and right now is a critical time for them both to establish beachheads with the market. It's probably pretty likely that a person's first VR will be their main VR platform for years to come. People tend to be loyal like that. I think it's a pretty big deal that they are falling so flat on their faces, tbh. Time will tell the overall impact. Perhaps, in the long run, it won't matter at all.

I agree that there are significant differences between the two launches, but my point stands.
 
I think if the Oculus launch was a mass market event like the PS4 the impact of their failure would be a lot more damaging. Currently, they're still catering to a niche enthusiast market, it's still not good to piss them off, but I don't think the masses are even hearing that noise right now. They're content to sit down and watch hilarious youtube vids of people freaking out with an Oculus headset on while waiting for prices to come down, or just buying into something like Gear VR.
 
My new date range is May 9th - 19th. Bummer. I'll be patient. I sure hope this estimate holds, though. They're lucky the competition isn't available any faster, or I'd jump ship for sure.

This is the poorest "launch" I've ever seen. I picture a dozen people opening up packaged Rifts, disassembling them, replacing some component, reassembling them and shipping them out - 1 per person per day. They ought to make a Rift game someday along these lines. "How fast can you ship Rifts?" :)
 

pj

Banned
The headphones are probably a major contributing factor to this. The Vive doesn't have to worry about that, but it also doesn't benefit from what is a considerable advantage the Rift currently has.

Why wouldn't rift send audio over HDMI?

You don't need 7 USB ports just to get it running, what are you talking about? Oculus Rift needs one USB 3.0 port for the headset, one USB 3.0 port for the camera, one USB 2.0 port for the gamepad. Then in the future when Oculus Touch comes out, if you get that it'll require one more USB 3.0 port for the second camera. Now compare that to Vive, which has *6* cables going into a box, and two lighthouses that need to be mounted higher than all the players, in opposite corners of a room, and plugged into power outlets. No, it's not extremely difficult to install, but it's a hell of a lot more work than the Rift, especially for people who can't mount things to their walls (most apartment renters).

Vive is a hassle to set up but emphasizing 6 cables for the link box is laughable and your wording is misleading. It's 3 in, 3 out, equivalent to a cable extender. It adds no complexity to the setup and adds safety (pull out in case of cable snag) and convenience (easy to add longer cables from PC to link box, can use HDMI or DP).

As for games, let's count the games Valve has announced for the Vive. Zero...um...I guess you could count the collection of test tech demos they shipped with it as half a game. Oculus on the other hand has paid for the development of 20 high quality games to make sure VR wouldn't die due to a lack of real games. They didn't want there to just be a bunch of 10 minute demos, they wanted real meaty games and they paid up for it. They didn't even require that all the games they helped come into being be exclusive - games like Eve Valkyrie and Adr1ft will eventually make it to other platforms, the only true exclusives are ones that Oculus paid a significant amount of the game's development costs, like Lucky's Tale or Edge of Nowhere. They've also said they would be fine with users hacking those games to run on other headsets.

You are really drinking the Oculus Koolaid here. Just because HTC/Valve aren't tooting their own horn about it constantly doesn't mean it's not happening.

"We’re [Valve] funding development as well, I know HTC is as well. You couldn’t guess who we are as we don’t think they should be exclusive to our hardware."

Luckey's tale is the exact kind of VR game I don't want. A bog standard platformer that appears "meaty", but in reality is more like this
41cXDEAiiwL._SX425_.jpg


"The 14 levels would’ve only taken me about an hour and a half to complete, except every few levels Lucky’s Tale forces you to go back and replay the same levels over again in an alternate mode to progress. That’s some blatantly repetitive padding."

MMM lookit all that meat!

"Lucky’s Tale is a VR platformer, but VR doesn’t add much. Looking up at a vertical stretch of platforming or physically moving my head to see around corners adds a little novelty to an otherwise familiar experience, but that didn’t translate into actual gameplay I hadn’t seen before — just a new camera angle. "

When IGN says that you know something is wrong.

Not in the slightest. There are much larger plans for what Oculus wants to do and they have they money to do it because of Facebook. This is just a bit of a disaster of a launch.

HTC on the other hand is still a company that is struggling. There stocks have fallen $44 again from $125 per share to $81 per share between March 14th and today. They also can't get units out ASAP (see this thread).

They seem to have spent a lot of time on fundamentally uninteresting things (360 video, 'social' stuff)

Also the latest word from HTC is that "April" pre-orders will be shipped in April, and "May" preorders will ship in May. HTC is struggling but VR is not a make or break thing for them, and their existence is not vital to the survival of SteamVR/OpenVR. Valve is not struggling and I guarantee they also have plans for the future of VR, and they have the money to do it because of hats.
 

mr stroke

Member
I agree that there are significant differences between the two launches, but my point stands.

Your point is invalid

PS4 and Wii launches didn't have these issues

People that pre ordered those units on day 1 of got them with in the first several weeks. It's people that wanted walk in units that waited months and months(plus those launches were around holiday season)

This is completely different, plus there is a direct competitor this time. If HTC can produce units fast enough it's bad news for Rift
 
Finally got my rift!

I've set it up in both SteamVR and Oculus home, but I can't seem to get it to work in SteamVR as when ever I put it on, Oculus home just takes priority.
 

jax

Banned
I feel the worst for the 5:52-6:50 timers. They got up to 5:51ish yesterday. To be so close and then tell those guys that the 1-3 week email they sent is bullshit. When they were already expecting a March date. And then to get a new email that they have to wait from late April to early May.

Oh man! Burn! I feel for you guys. The way Oculus has played it was not cool. Before you cancel I would consider one thing. Comfort. It is a big deal. I love my Vive but I can only use it for 30 minutes at a time before it gets too hot and heavy on my face. If I soldier through it I can last at max an hour.
I'm sorry but this sounds like Oculus fanboy hyperbole. It can't be that much more uncomfortable than the Oculus.
 
I'm sorry but this sounds like Oculus fanboy hyperbole. It can't be that much more uncomfortable than the Oculus.

There are a lot of reviews/comparisons that have favoured the comfort of the Oculus over the Vive. In those same reviews Vive has been praised for including touch controls out of the box. This has nothing to do with fanboyism.
 
Your point is invalid

PS4 and Wii launches didn't have these issues

People that pre ordered those units on day 1 of got them with in the first several weeks. It's people that wanted walk in units that waited months and months(plus those launches were around holiday season)

This is completely different, plus there is a direct competitor this time. If HTC can produce units fast enough it's bad news for Rift

You're actually proving my point now because of the fact that you seem to have forgotten certain important details about the PS4 launch, details that were considered disasters at the time. Why don't you remember them? Well, see my post above and you'll have your answer.

A couple of examples:

- Scandinavian countries got a mere fraction of their promised shipments, leaving the vast majority of pre-orders unfulfilled for a long time. No information was provided for a long time.
- There was no information about when someone could expect to get a new PS4.
- There was no indication that those who had pre-ordered might not get a PS4 during the first few months until close to launch.
- Stores could not inform their customers of when they'd get stock back in. They kept guessing. Sometimes stock would appear briefly, and then be sold out or delivered to pre-orders. People were enormously frustrated.

So no, the PS4 launch wasn't as smooth and predictable as you remember it. It was pretty damn shitty, and it generated a huge amount of negativity at the time, here on NeoGAF included. But we don't remember it, because that's how people work. Figures.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
I'm sorry but this sounds like Oculus fanboy hyperbole. It can't be that much more uncomfortable than the Oculus.

I've actually read as much from user impressions. I've ordered them both (not sure which to go forward with), so I'm not quite the fanboy, and I will reserve judgment until I've tried them both myself. But it's a pretty common complaint, even if 30 minutes is a bit exaggerated.
 

jax

Banned
There are a lot of reviews/comparisons that have favoured the comfort of the Oculus over the Vive. In those same reviews Vive has been praised for including touch controls out of the box. This has nothing to do with fanboyism.
But they're saying the Vive gets too hot to use after 30 minutes? That seems like complete hyperbole. Literally no one else has had the same complaint. Sure reviews mention Oculus is more comfortable, but to say the Vive is unusable after 30 minutes is straight up fanboyism. Valve wouldn't ship a broken product.
 

pj

Banned
I've actually read as much from user impressions. I've ordered them both (not sure which to go forward with), so I'm not quite the fanboy, and I will reserve judgment until I've tried them both myself. But it's a pretty common complaint, even if 30 minutes is a bit exaggerated.

I wonder how much of the heat thing is due to physical activity.

How is rift going to be heat wise when you're flailing around in Audioshield with Touch in 6 months?
 
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