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Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

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Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#71

Post by duaneb »

Retric wrote: post #22
vernie wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The operative word here is "mainstream"

Is ~50 million people "mainstream"? Considering he complained about downloading drivers this must be very easy to setup. Gaming PC's used to be ~2,000$, this is 600 + 950PC = 1550$. https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/ Which is not free but hardly going to break most people. Don't forget this is just a mid-range gaming PC which many people are going to get anyway which drops this down to the cost of a high…

> Is ~50 million people "mainstream"?

Where is this number coming from? Even the people I know interested in VR aren't exactly leaping to buy this first generation, and that's exactly what the review should (and does) reveal—you should continue waiting unless you want to deal with typical early adopter issues.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#72

Post by duaneb »

Retric wrote: post #50
minimaxir wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the number of Steam accounts to WoW accounts is comparing apples to oranges. (And also makes an implicit assumption that everyone who has a Steam account has a gaming PC, which is not a good assumption.) In 2004, Steam had no noteworthy buzz and its only purpose was Half-Life 2 DRM.

Steam survey actually provides good hardware numbers. The important thing is with the number of Steam Users each 1% is more than 1 million people. Thus PS: Active Steam account = bought something from steam AND logged on in the last 2 weeks. Which IMO is a much higher hurdle than most website tracking. And clearly not all gaming PC's are on Steam.

Steam often logs in on boot. I don't see this as a very interesting metric and certainly not related to the popularity of the first generation of a VR device.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#73

Post by MBCook »

Retric wrote: post #64
MBCook wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any go mainstream it will be the PS VR. Sony has 30m consoles out there, and it only costs $500 to get setup with PS VR. Total price is about $800-900. Plug and play, games work great because they're designed for the system. On the other hand with the Rift and the Vive you need a PC which has to be up to spec, the hardware is more expensive, etc.

I was looking though the Steam Survey and on the nVidia side ~7.5 million people have a nVidia GPU fast enough for the Rift. Add ATI and people upgrading this year and I think the market may be similar sized. The real question IMO, is if you own both which do you add VR to?

For me the answer is easy. I don't have a good PC (just a 5 year old laptop that I don't use much) so going with a Rift or a Vive is a huge investment and requires me getting back into keeping a PC setup just for VR.

The PS VR is cheaper and I already keep that equipment setup. I don't need to worry about specs/etc. Plug and play. Plus the PS VR is cheaper.

For me I'd go with PS VR and see how that goes. If I really liked it then I might buy a Vive for my (we'll pretend I own a) gaming PC. I could sell the PS VR to offset the cost.

Don't own a console? Already hard-core into PC? Then just going straight to Vive/Rift makes plenty of sense if you're willing to buy in.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#74

Post by astrodust »

Pfhreak wrote: post #52
Xero wrote: post #14

"Another big-picture VR problem: It’s boring to be around people who are using it." This sentence is pretty emblematic of the product the author of this article was expecting vs the Rift that Oculus pitched in their kickstarter video.

Not to mention that mirroring the VR experience to a TV or monitor is absolutely delightful to watch. I've had people come over to play Alien Isolation, Dreadhalls, or Volo Airsport, and watching them play was a huge delight for everyone. The responses you get from someone who is trapped in a room with an alien are much more visceral.

You may as well lock people in an isolation pod. This is the problem, isn't it?

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#75

Post by ZoF »

jqgatsby wrote: post #27
Sir_Substance wrote: post #13

>There’s already another VR rig that doesn’t have a tether—and it costs a fraction of the Rift. Samsung’s $100 Gear VR, made in partnership with Oculus, is powered by a smartphone that you physically insert in front of two lenses. The extra costs of the Rift (monetary and otherwise) would be justified if its image quality were dramatically better than the Gear’s, but it isn’t. I already got the sense that the author…

Comparison to Gear VR seems inappropriate, given the huge amount of effort Oculus the company has put into the partnership with Samsung.

How does that make comparison inappropriate?

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#76

Post by atonse »

keypusher wrote: post #67

It's strange to have a non-gamer do the review for this, as he seems to know very little about the field, or computer gaming. I guess they are aiming for a mainstream opinion, but Occulus is not a mainstream device. It's a high-end gaming peripheral. For instance that the author mentions incredulously multiple times that his high-end PC requires two power cables, which I just don't understand. I found his colleague's…

Is that how the Oculus team has marketed it? That it's a peripheral only for hardcore gamers, and not at all mainstream? I doubt it.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#77

Post by M4v3R »

radicalman wrote: post #23

This has been my suspicion. The new kids on the block are actually really fucking great. In fact, they have so much hardware expertise and ready audience to launch it mainstream, for example, ps vr

I've tried PS VR. Nice gimmick, but the low-resolution and problems with controller tracking didn't make a good impression to be honest.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#78

Post by Retric »

duaneb wrote: post #72
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam survey actually provides good hardware numbers. The important thing is with the number of Steam Users each 1% is more than 1 million people. Thus PS: Active Steam account = bought something from steam AND logged on in the last 2 weeks. Which IMO is a much higher hurdle than most website tracking. And clearly not all gaming PC's are on Steam.

Steam often logs in on boot. I don't see this as a very interesting metric and certainly not related to the popularity of the first generation of a VR device.

How else are you going to estimate the number of PC's used for games that don't need to upgrade? Or even the number of PC gamers?

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#79

Post by wlesieutre »

MBCook wrote: post #62
Sir_Substance wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$2200 in a PC and a Rift, or $100 that clips on your phone (assuming you're on Samsung)? Your figures are a little off. A rift is (all following figures in USD) $599, and a computer that will support it is generally quoted at $950, making it's package price $1550. You can buy bundles that include a Rift and an Oculus ready PC for $1499[1]. The gear VR only works with very recent phones, and only works on all games w…

I was under the impression you needed a $1500 PC. So I'll give you that. I'm assuming you're not buying the phone but that you already have one. People still get them with subsidies too. The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. If you have a PS4 (or even if you don't) then the PS VR is cheaper too. For people who aren't already committed…

> The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. If you have a PS4 (or even if you don't) then the PS VR is cheaper too.

And on the other end of that, I have a GTX 970 but my phone is from Sony and I don't own a console. If I want to get into VR, the Rift is my cheapest option.

Different target markets - the Gear is aimed at the general public with Samsung phones, the Rift is aimed at PC gamers with gaming PCs. Sure, some people will buy a slightly better rig or upgrade sooner than they would have otherwise, but fundamentally it's targeting people who are going to own a gaming computer anyway.

I'd guess that the people buying a Rift + PC bundle as their first PC gaming setup will be doing it after trying one on in person to evaluate it. It'll happen, but it'll be a slower push driven by word of mouth.

Re: Oculus Rift Review: VR’s Rising Star Isn’t Ready for the Mainstream

#80

Post by VikingCoder »

SquareWheel wrote: post #66
VikingCoder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS the iPhone of VR. The first iPhone didn't have over-the-air updates, over-the-air app installs, over-the-air music downloads. The screen was crap (compared to today).

More than that, the first iPhone had no third-party apps period and still ran on the EDGE network. Even with all those limitations, it was still groundbreaking. The iPhone made everyone wake up and rethink what we were doing. The comparison to VR is apt. It really is a game-changing technology.

"Game-changing" is a good way to think about it, too.

This ISN'T the future - but it's changed the game - we now how a different vision for what the future will be.

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