My Vive has arrived...finally!

If you get the chance @Nick Moxley see if you can try out a Rift and Vive back to back at some time, as there are technical and personal factors that can influence what may suit you.

That said there are also extraneous factors like what games and communities are available on what platform, both now and into the future. That flows through to some of the technical issues. For example the Oculus SDK is highly optimised, but I have no intention of buying Pcars again on the Oculus platform, which means I will use SteamVR to play it with the Rift, which negates the SDK optimisation.

For me it is not just a case of having to buy the same game again, it is also that I won't buy into the console style approach to PC games, particularly as it restricts competition. With the Oculus version of Pcars you can only race against others on the Oculus servers, and if I was serious about competition that is not likely where you will find the best of the best sim racers now, or in the future. Personally I would want to compete against sim racer who don't use VR, those that use the Vive and those who use the Rift, all at the same time.

Review wise I consider Norm from Tested is a professional @BondeX, while UKRifter is a Youtube blogger who has had to reflect on his own past bias and ill considered comments, for which he has publicly apologised: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4e0uhq/i_am_ukrifter_i_apologise_to_the_vr_community/

I do agree with UKrifter that any current review is not comparing apples with apples. The Rift can't currently do roomscale out of the box, and even with Touch needs something like chaperone, but even then does not scale as well over large areas. My Lighthouse stations are 9M apart and are flawless with the sync cable. They do have optical sync issues at that sort of distance, but they were fine with optic sync to nearly 7M. Personally I think UKrifter had some sync issues in his Vive setup, I don't think it was a performance issue with dropped frames. However, I do think Oculus asynchronous timewarp is going to perform slightly better than the Vive's reprojection approach.

It is simple to plug a Rift camera in if you are only doing seated or standing VR. Setting up the Vive is more complex and I would agree the VR aspect of the SteamVR software is somewhat buggy and lacks some polish. But if you talk about Oculus home compared to Steam plus SteamVR, as they are competing services, then Oculus home has a very long way to go to match user features and refinement.

The Rift is highly optimised for the Oculus SDK and technically while it gives up slight FOV it gains some crispness. The hybrid Rift lenses and associated larger sweet spot is at the expense of god rays and likely it depends on how you personally experience those as to how you feel about the display, particularly if you are in environments with dark backgrounds and bright white or colored contrasts.

Even hardware aside in VR personal circumstances and factors come into play, like the condition and spacing of your eyes, the shape of your head and face. For example I suffer from astigmatism and it is the worst type in my right eye. I don't wear glasses in VR as the FOV has been pretty narrow and I have done settings to suit, plus don't want to risk scratching a lens. Nor do I find glasses comfortable with any HMD, though the Vive has more room than most. One of the real issues with astigmatism, which was not a factor in the DK1 and 2, is that it exacerbates the negative effects of god rays. So I find the god rays of white text on a black background pretty bad on the Vive, and I anticipate that may well be a significant factor for me with the Rift, when it finally turns up.

The shape of your head and face greatly influence comfort, so too does how you adjust the straps on the Vive, ideally it needs to sit on your cheekbones not the bridge of your nose as UKrifter said. One thing Ukrifter did not mention in the comfort stakes is the very stiff and somewhat inflexible 3 strand Vive cable. It tugs at the back of your head and can tangle pretty easily. I used a large keyring and a hook from some conference lanyard to hack this simple easily adjustable cable pants clip for my Vive, which stops the cable pulling at the back of your head and helps a bit with tangle, as the cable is easier to step around.



I am not coming down in favor of one VR HMD or the other. I will have both as VR is my passion. I will say that this first gen is still an enthusiast device, regardless of which you choose, and each will do some things better and some things worse that the other simply because they are actually meeting different design and use objectives.

If you are not sure which VR HMD suits then wait and if at all possible try both back to back, then factor in the extraneous external things like game access and competition and any personal factors. The longer you wait the cheaper the relative VR cost and the more refined the experience will become.

Both the Vive and Rift will be a significant step up for those who have already taken the DK2 plunge, but the Oculus 1.3 software refinements also greatly enhance the DK2 experience, so you too may want to consider when you upgrade, particularly given the high cost of entry and factors such as the unknown cost, availability and capability of Oculus Touch.

He deleted the offending video and posted a retraction video in its place, but I have to say it was really bad and I unsubscribed from his Youtube channel as a result. Up until then I enjoyed his hands on VR game reviews but felt he took a sudden turn into being deliberately divisive and put out factually incorrect information.

I have repositioned the lower part of the foam, it is attached with Velcro, that puts your eyes closer for increased FOV and I find it more comfortable. I do plan on making a thin replacement foam padding out of these: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1pc-3D-s...hash=item3cfeac1a42:m:mBa3ec0Mof-z36QRkpqZZFQ

SteamVR acts as a wrapper for the Oculus SDK, so there is always going to be a performance hit.

In terms of Vive comfort the most important thing is to move the cable so you properly adjust the straps. It should be the back of your head that takes the weight, not the bridge of your nose, and you put it on like a baseball cap, which it sort of feels like when properly adjusted:

VR feels as close to a real race car or flight experience as you can get outside of the real thing, particularly with quality motion, haptics, sound and peripherals.

The resolution and visual refinements of gen1 VR has improved, but is not and will not be 4K for some years yet. So if you are looking for 4K resolution stick with triples.