Vive now or wait for Oculus + Touch? "does" v "can do"

[sam53sam]

Mid life crisis big birthday coming so need a toy to reassure me there's still youth in me.

I tried an Oculus Rift. Blew me away but not enough to spend a lot of money on or believe it'd replace my 3 monitor eyefinity setup.

Tried HTC Vive recently and OH MY GOD COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY almost certainly because of the hand controllers and ability to turn around etc

About to buy it. only to read that Oculus is coming out with Touch controllers that makes it similar so now I'm very torn.

I've read TONNES of forums but inevitably there are fanboys and strong biases either way and it always descends into a war. I have zero bias at the moment (except perhaps a slight bias toward Vive only because it's available *now* and I don't know how long I'm willing to wait for Touch) so hopefully I can see things fairly as I don't want an inferior product just because of impatience.

Trying to separate all the fanboy love and hate, from what I've read (and tried)

- the headsets themselves are fairly similar with slight pros and cons for each in various parameters.

- Vive is obviously a relative ballache to setup but that's fine with me

- the total game changer *at the moment* is the Vive's hand controllers in 360degree space ("roomspace") but that's going to change hence this post

- Rift may have more content at the mo but chances are with Steam backing Vive that may end up with more titles who knows

- Rift's touch is definitely (reportedly) a bit more ergonomic with more buttons etc and hands "melt away" (but perhaps the Vive's wands are better if you're actually holding a gun for example as you feel like you're holding something - that's the impression I got with the wands trial anyway)

- The biggie, and my take on it: Oculus will be able to to Roomspace like the Vive despite what Vivers say, *BUT* from what I can glean from reading 100s of posts, the Oculus is not optimising itself for that setup so whilst it "is possible" and "can do" the Vive "is built for it" and simply "does" it no questions asked. What will this mean in terms of development- will developers think "well Oculus don't rule out roomspace but would seemingly rather we concentrated on forward facing so that's what we're more likely to do as that's how Oculus users will be using it mainly" or will they think "well, it is technically possible to emulate Vive's roomspace so we'll just code for a full 360 degree game and hope that users will put their 2 cameras in a clever way to emulate the Vive..."

On that last point I'm veering towards Vive because there is a colossal difference between "can do" and "is built specifically to do".

But that could just be my bias of wanting to buy VR *now*. Maybe The Touch will come out and be exactly as good as Vive in terms of full roomspace and devs will be making games galore for this exact purpose... who knows.

Thoughts?

 

[Titillating]

Having tried both, I will concede that yes, the Touch controllers are more ergonomic. They are better at serving as extensions of your hands, and once acclimated, feel really good to use. A lot of it just comes down to the shape; it's difficult to forget that you're holding a wand-thing with the Vive controllers. Rift also has the added perk of the headphones/mics being built into the headset, which is very convenient.

That said, I'd recommend the Vive, as I'm sure most others would as well. "Can do" does not mean it "will do", or even that it will do it well, as you've pointed out. Oculus hasn't exactly been winning a lot of support among devs or its customers. Outside of having Facebook money that they can throw at devs to buy content exclusivity, they haven't done much right, starting with the bungled launch to the delayed controllers (which, by the way, are reported to cost $200-$250).

Go with what you know will work right now. It sounds like you want the full VR experience, and that's what the Vive gives you and you already know that it will work well. Ultimately, the content offerings between the two will not be very different at the premium end of the spectrum so that won't be a concern. Keep in mind, too, that this is essentially a first-generation early adopter tech. It will evolve quickly and new hardware will come out as the tech matures. You'll likely be replacing it within a year or two if you're planning to keep up with the trends, so don't worry about what each "can do" in the future and focus on what each does right now—and right now, the Vive is the superior product.

 

[Tri23]

Totally agree with the last response.

For me it was, Oculus didn't keep it's promises on the controllers, and Vive did. Show me the pudding before I get my spoon, ya know?