Hand control doesn't make sense without being able to see it in your hand and conversely VR is pretty much a gimmick until they added high fidelity hand tracking (Talking Vive/Rift level).
Room scale support came to the Rift via addition of a third camera to your setup. It’s not quite as good as the Vive’s tracking but the difference is pretty small now, small enough that it largely doesn’t matter.
The tracked hand controllers the Rift now has are arguably a little better than the more basic “baton” style controllers on the Vive, although I believe HTC do have a “Knuckle” controller on the way that adds more advanced hand tracking.
The Rift is also significantly lighter and less sweaty on the head, its built in headphones are good enough you can avoid the additional weight of decent headphones, something the Vive pretty much requires.
I do strongly think both systems are _way_ too early for anyone other than insane early adopter types. Given this, I think the Rift makes most sense for no other reason than it’s the cheapest. Both of them will make many people sick even after relatively short play sessions. Neither of them are “good” in my opinion, merely the best it seems the market has managed so far.
If you try both the vive and the rift you'll see that the default for the rift is fake hands that mimic yours. It's cool but I personnally couldnt get fooled. I prefer the vive controllers.
> VR without tracked controllers is almost a different category
This is an important and under-appreciated point. Presence is a combination of many factors, and "hand presence," as Oculus is calling it, is a huge one. I still remember the first time I tried a Vive: I was already familiar with VR from the DK2, but interacting in 3D space gave the whole experience a wholly unfamiliar, almost dream-like sensation.
At this price point, tracked controller support seems unlikely, but perhaps a future Bluetooth lighthouse could enable it. Honestly, I think that should be a priority: if it comes down to more detailed graphics versus tracked controllers, I'll take the controllers every time.
Oh man they aren't even comparable. The tracking on the Vive is for all intents and purposes, perfect. It is truly room-scale and the headset and controllers have sub-millimeter tracking resolution in a space up to 15x15'.
The Oculus on the other hand uses image sensors with a limited field of view, so it is much easier to lose tracking on your hands when you move quickly, bend over, or turn around. They will sell you a third sensor to expand tracking to 360 degrees, but at that point you are basically buying a shitty Vive.
It's standard for gaming with a regular screen. Not having VR controllers is a huge detriment for VR gaming. Yes there are some games which can work just using hands, but most existing VR titles will not work, and any titles developed for it will lack input complexity of ones which do support it.
To be fair, the Oculus experience is pretty bad. Mine only has three eye-width settings, none of which match my face, so my vision is always blurry. And whenever I use hand tracking, it only picks up my “clicks” about 20% of the time. It’s not surprising to me that no one wants to use it.
The Vive's entire ecosystem is set up for moving around, using your hands, and really being 'VR' like we've all imagined. The oculus is your head as a camera in comparison.
I'm not the OP, but I have both the Oculus and the Vive and, to me, the Vive is a much better experience. For me, the big issue is that, while the Rift is a bit easier to set up (but not by much), the tracking is just not good enough to get that immersive experience. As soon as you lose tracking once, it throws the whole thing out the window. The Vive's tracking is pretty flawless. The Rift, on the other hand, is finicky and, if you even attempt the room scale setup with touch, you'll feel like someone trying to mess with an analog TV antenna.
With the Rift, I'm initially impressed with it (resolution is better, headset is lighter, etc) but then constantly reminded that this is new tech. With the Vive, it's clunkier and more pixelated (not by much) but I forget completely about all of it when I'm deeply immersed in a game.
The Vive is an infinitely better experience currently. Hand controls and sub-millimeter tracking precision in a room up to 12x12 makes all the difference.
Can't overstate enough how important 6DOF headset and hands are to VR. When I got my Rift setup the 3D depth effect is cool but really what makes VR is being able to pick up and hold an object and directly interact with objects using your hands.
For anyone interested check out videos of people using Oculus Medium, something as insanely complicated and fiddly as 3D sculpting becomes instantly natural when you interact with both hands in 3D instead of a mouse or pen in 2D.
Lost on the technical front? It may not have hand tracked controllers yet but everyone I know who's used both prefers the rift as an HMD because of slightly higher perceived quality of image and greater comfort. While I acknowledge myself that it's pretty much a line call, saying the Vive destroys it on the technical front is disingenuous at the very least.
Both the Vive and the Rift have head tracking. Positional head tracking has been around since 2014.
The Vive has "room-scale" tracking that lets you walk around a large room-sized space, and includes hand controllers that are also tracked in the world.
The Rift should support "room-scale" with more cameras, but is not a main focus/supported use case yet for Oculus. The Oculus Touch is like the Vive's tracked hand controllers.
They are far more similar to each other than most people realize.
It is unlikely to be obsolete in 1 year. The update/release cycle for VR headsets (at least for Oculus) is expected to be somewhere between consoles (6-8 years) and smartphones (1 year).
Pricing will be announced on Jan 6 morning and should help you decide.
Note: I work full-time developing VR software and own every VR headset.
Different games will do things differently. Some will display hands, others will display the controllers. You can do either.
After some time, you forget you are even holding controllers (on the Rift, I'm not sure about those clunky Vive controllers, and I haven't tried the Index).
I'm going to re-iterate the OPs opinion that this isn't VR.
If it is we need to a new name where Daydream / Oculus GO = glorified viewmaster and Rift / Vive (and windows mr?) = I touched the future.
They are vastly different experiences. The feeling of presence in Vive and Rift that come from (a) having your head movement fully tracked (b) being able to walk around things (c) having your actual hands in the simulation, make it an entirely different experience IMO.
I showed my non-tech family cardboard a couple of years ago. They were mildly impressed. I showed them Rift last Christmas and my non-tech mom wanted one immediately. I advised her not to get one yet but she was blown away.
Sure it would be better not to have a PC attached but without full 6dof and hands it's basically just a viewmaster toy for 360 videos.
I haven't used a vive no. My guess is that the "magical" feel does indeed rely on your hands showing up in the game ("tracked controllers" as you put it).
Without that hand tracking, it's difficult to feel truly immersed in the world.
In this particular case, it didn't have full tracking, you could only rotate your head (the 3dof mentioned in another comment). So even at launch it was behind the times. Full tracking is so much better, even required for VR to work.
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