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

wsj.com

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

#101

Post by iainmerrick »

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…

To give useful feedback, it's less important for a critic to "know" those things in advance than to actually try out the device (and its competitors) and tell us how it works out in practice.

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

#102

Post by agildehaus »

lisper wrote: post #60

Let me see if I have this straight: the advantage of the Rift over the Gear VR is that the Rift lets you move around and the Gear doesn't. But the Rift has a (fairly short) cable, and the Gear doesn't. Is that right? Because the problem seems so obvious that I almost feel a little foolish pointing it out: cables and movement don't play well together, particularly when, by design, you can't see the cable.

The GearVR doesn't do positional tracking at all, just basic head tracking. It also has to use your smartphone GPU, which means games are severely limited in comparison to a Rift connected to a GTX 970 or 980.

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

#103

Post by Sir_Substance »

nawitus wrote: post #58
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…

What game causes heat problems on the S6?

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/27568/consume...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/comments/3vlsad/is_the_overh...

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

#104

Post by Animats »

atonse wrote: post #76
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.

Read what Zuckerberg had to say when Facebook bought Oculus.[1]: "This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." He's talking about VR as a social medium, like Facebook.

Sort of like Second Life. Second Life has supported the Oculus Rift since late 2014. Nobody cares.[2]

I can see using one for FPS games, but beyond that, it's not that compelling. There's still no killer VR app.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971 [2] http://www.roadtovr.com/second-life-now-official-oculus-rift...

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

#105

Post by Sir_Substance »

iainmerrick wrote: post #101
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…

To give useful feedback, it's less important for a critic to "know" those things in advance than to actually try out the device (and its competitors) and tell us how it works out in practice.

I disagree. If that's what I'm after, I could just ask two or three people who own one to render an opinion. It would take me less then a minute to have that thread up on reddit.

The whole argument behind why websites like wsj are allegedly valuable and thus worth un-adblocking or paying 10c an article for or whatever is the trendy solution now is that they're supposed to be offering a higher standard of information than whatever reddit thinks.

If the guy writing the article knows so little about the topic he cannot even make factually correct comparisons between similar but distinct products, I might as well stick to reddits opinion, no?

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

#106

Post by wolfgke »

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.

On the other hand, for those that have a recent gaming PC an Oculus Rift is both cheaper and technologically better. So what?

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

#107

Post by pen2l »

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.

Why even compare with Gear VR if you're trying to illustrate how cheap this solution is? Why not simply talk about Cardboard -- which you can get literally for $1/free if you know the tricks, or the rest of the cheapo plastic VR sets you can buy for around $10-$20?

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

#108

Post by angersock »

soylentcola wrote: post #30
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…

The difference between something like the Rift or the Vive and mobile-based stuff like Gear are huge when you get down to actually using it. Even discounting the differences between Rift and Vive regarding how they track motion, the Gear doesn't even have positional head tracking, just orientation. In use, this makes a huge difference if you're looking to put someone in a virtual environment. It's not even restricted…

Speaking as somebody who is frustrated with the current dev story for AR and VR...

...maybe the specs wouldn't be so goddamn high if they actually let us do dev work against a lower-level interface. Forcing us to deal with massive frameworks like Unity and Unreal might well be the cause of spec creep. :(

EDIT:

And Meta can go eat a bag of rocks--no public docs on their API, and they seem to be wed to Unity...which can really screw up certain types of AR work they'd otherwise be perfect for.

Oculus, at least, offered a native SDK for the brave and foolish.

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

#109

Post by MBCook »

wolfgke wrote: post #106
MBCook wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. On the other hand, for those that have a recent gaming PC an Oculus Rift is both cheaper and technologically better. So what?

It's a WSJ article, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of their readership doesn't have a recent gaming PC, or at least the number is significantly less than those with a recent Samsung phone.

All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$. Not the 'I have hundreds of dollars and a good computer' case (we all know the Vive and Rift and even PS VR will do better than the Gear).

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

#110

Post by wolfgke »

MBCook wrote: post #109
wolfgke wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is that for someone who wants to dip their toes and had a recent Samsung phone the Gear is DRASTICALLY cheaper. On the other hand, for those that have a recent gaming PC an Oculus Rift is both cheaper and technologically better. So what?

It's a WSJ article, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of their readership doesn't have a recent gaming PC, or at least the number is significantly less than those with a recent Samsung phone. All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$. Not the 'I have hundreds of dollars and a good computer' case…

> All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$.

Perhaps even then is not a good idea after all. Consider the option that some Joe Average will try out Gear VR on his Samsung mobile phone and is dissatisfied with the quality (say, because it causes nausea on him). So he will avoid trying out VR again in the expected future. If from beginning on he had tried a product of satisfactory quality he would perhaps have liked VR.

TLDR: Trying out a cheaper, but inferior product can be worse than trying no product.

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