Virtual Reality

$399 would have been ideal obviously but I think the gloom and doom of setting back VR a decade is a bit too much. CV2 will almost certainly cost $399 in Q3 2017, so this launch basically just is another year of devs dinking around with SDKs and shit while a few nerds play around with CV1 as toys. and in 2018 CV3 will be $199 probably, its just the nature of this kind of high end tech manufacturing. An apple iphone 6s costs a bit under $170 and sells for $699+, an apple iphone 2 cost over $350 to make but also sold for about $599 a few years ago.

I would be extremely surprised if Vive doesn't launch at $899 or more, and while Morpheus (Sony) is gonna be good its not gonna be nearly as good as Rift in image quality. The demos I tried yesterday at CES were very noticeable in the quality of that shimmer, screen door thing.



longer rift vs vive comparison from this week at CES

Hands-On with New HTC Vive vs. Oculus Rift at CES 2016 | Gamers Nexus - Gaming PC Builds Hardware Benchmarks

no, its not obviously 25x better. I thought the samsung was blurry and it didn't feel immersive at all, it felt like I was in a tiny dark theater watching a screen thats really, really far away. You "feel" two screens (well split screen) all the time as well, whereas with Rift/Vive you forget about it after a while and it just feels like part of your eyes. I'd put the morpheus at 2-4x better than Samsung and Oculus at 8x better and Vive at 10x better.

Yeah, I thought the Vive was better than the Oculus but mostly because you moved around in space whereas Rift you just sat down, but end of the day I think I'd prefer a sit down environment to the Vive system. The rift display seemed a tiny, tiny, tiny bit better than the Vive but that might have just been the room lighting for all I know. The vive is also better because of the touch controllers that let you run apps like the paint program, letting you use arm and hand movement to do stuff whereas Rift is just controller (for now) and GearVR is nothing.

more detailed writeup from a guy who has owned all the VR kits and compared the latest versions this week at CES, probably interesting for those of you who own DK2 as he compares CV1 to that extensively
CES CV1 Impressions vs Vive : oculus

I would expect someone with refined tastes to understand how much more awesome OLED is than any peasant monitor, i am disappointed keg

what next, johnny walker red is as good as blue or a lagavulin

kegkilla_sl said:

isn't there also an issue with current OLED tech where different color pixels (specifically blue) dull over time much faster than others resulting in a considerably color distorted image relatively early in the products life cycle?

Click to expand...

That was a pretty big problem two years ago, as the blue layer of OLEDs tended to fail faster and more often than the other layers. Manufacturing them has gotten much better though, and its much less a problem for the size of screens in Rift vs TV sized screens. The big downside still is that OLED will decay in brightness over time, roughly 2-3% every 1000 hours of usage is what I hear for the size of screens that are used in Rift.

Rift/Vive is definitely way more immersive than GearVR. I saw pixelation and blur slightly in DK2 last year and Morpheus this year, but I saw absolutely none on Rift and Vive. On vive you see a little more light bleed, like a lens flare effect, but that might be just software still updating.

Rift/Vive do not feel like you are in the Matrix or any shit like that. BUT within a few minutes you forget you are using the VR glasses and it feels like whatever game you are in is the entire world, whether its Minecraft level visuals or Adr1ft (space station game).

When you guys say "blur" I assume you are taking about the screen door / blur effect, as shown in this image
http://horobox.co.uk/u/orkel_1406685575.jpg

The jump to CV1 from DK2 is as good at reducing those kind of things as the jump from DK1 to DK2, imo. Also the FOV of way, way better in Rift - in DK2 demos you always felt like you had on a snorkel mask, like the edges of your sight didn't quite feel right. It felt right in Rift, I assume due to the FOV changes and more. It really is amazingly immersive, I never once felt immersed in GearVR but totally felt immersed inside Rift and Vive.

Morpheus from Sony was disappointing, I got to play the new Until Dawn DLC or whatever that is VR only I think (?). The visuals looked pretty awful, since I guess they need to do 1080p 60 fps they had to cut AA and shit way down, everything is jaggy inside the display and you definitely notice screen door effect like the DK1 image on the left above. I'm sure it'll improve, but my guess is we'll see PS3-level visuals on Morpheus.