It felt like sitting really close to a TV with headphones on.
Oculus Rift and Second Life sounds like a winner to me.
Oculus released the price point for their consumer unit: $599
Pretty hefty. When this thread was originally started people were predicting $300.
Well, they SAID that was their target.
Not necessarily the same as “people predicting”
Price make sense to me. Custom high refresh, low persistence OLED screens. Two of them. Low latency, high accuracy positional tracking. And expensive optics to boot. I think Lucky compared them to DSLR lenses.
Not surprised of the price.
I always thought $300 was way too optimistic for a first generation device of its type. It’s high tech and revolutionary. Early adopters will pay.
Two years down the road, you’ll get the third edition for $300-400.
And it will be a lot better too.
One big upgrade the tech will get in the next few years is foveated rendering. Eye tracking, basically, combined with smart rendering that will increase scene complexity and detail on the focus point of your eyes, and reduce it elsewhere - even turning off pixels outside your current view.
In this way you could have crystal clear, high detail images from 4K, 6K, 8K panels, without having to have a device actually fully render those resolutions. So, super high resolution devices that won’t require 4 Titan X’s to run.
For those of you claiming that Oculus and others are the next big thing, have you tried them for more than, say, 30 minutes at a time? The biggest purchase regret of my life was a Sony 3d headset from a few years ago. I wanted to watch 3d cable programs and games without having to spring for a new TV, so it seemed like a no-brainer.
The problem is that the 3d “pop” effect wears out after about 5 minutes. And after 15 minutes you’ll start to get a headache from focusing on a screen an inch from your eyes. One time I had an hour long gaming session and by the time I took the goggles off I had a headache that lasted the rest of the day. (And I’m not one who’s prone to headaches or motion sickness at all.)
I know Oculus is more evolved, but I don’t see either of those problems going away. I would love to see a leap in immersion in gaming, and maybe my experience was just an outlier, but let it be a warning to those of you considering pre-ordering, you may want to try it for a longer length of time than a Best Buy demo before purchasing.
On an unrelated note, if anyone wants to make me an offer on a lightly used set of Sony 3d goggles… 
Weight is definitely a concern, but people are calling the release version of the Oculus, very comfortable compared to the last dev kit version. The other two headsets haven’t appeared in their “final” form factor, so who knows.
In terms of tech, yeah, these things are light years beyond Sony’s 3D goggles, most importantly, frame rate of the content is 90+ not 24/30 like in movies, which is likely to make a big difference in terms of headaches/eye strain.
I’m looking forward to future iterations of this type of hardware. Early adoption makes very little sense to me right now, but I’m glad people do it because these initial sales are important profit points.
I’m excited to see where this stuff goes in the next five years.
Yes, it’s impossible for me to say whether my issues with the old tech were due to resolution/FPS or just having a screen an inch from your eye. I’m still pessimistic, but I’ll be genuinely interested to hear from users once they’ve had a chance to use it for extended periods (good or bad).
I’m one of the people who preordered the Oculus Rift day one of the consumer release. I’m convinced that they’ve solved the VR problem. Palmer Luckey, the original creator, suffers from heavy motion sickness and said that if he could not wear the Oculus Rift for hours without getting tired or sick from it, it wouldn’t make it for consumers. Reports on the final consumer release have said that the Rift delivers: it’s now light enough with low enough latency that you can wear it for hours while whipping your head around without getting sick or tired. These two things were what they’ve been working on hardest ever since the first developer kit.
I’m completely convinced they’ve finally done it and from my experience with the simple Gear VR and the game Land’s End, the high-end stuff like the Rift is going to be amazing. Land’s End isn’t even a high-poly game, and the Gear VR is a poor experience compared to the Rift, but I still found myself wanting to just sit there at the beach, watching the seagulls and listening to the ocean and watching the horizon. Like, forget the game, I want to just be here. And this is, reportedly, only a fraction of the experience you get from the Rift itself. So, I’m hyped. I think the price point is worth it. When you think about it, the Gear VR is runs off high-end Samsung phones like the Galaxy S6, which are already priced at $600. And the Rift has better hardware (particularly the screens, the biggest price factor) than the S6 by a long shot. So it’s really no surprise that that’s where the price point came in at.
Anyway, I’ll gladly head the charge and take the price hit for the rest of you third-generation adopters.
Are you getting the release Rift for free then? And do you live in North Jersey by any chance? 
Only DK1 backers got a free upgrade to CV1. I didn’t gunk up the works by getting a developer kit when I wasn’t a developer. I think it’s great though that Oculus is “paying back” so to speak, the people that made this possible by being the first people to take a chance on the technology.
What *I *did was plunk down $630 within 5 minutes of consumer Rift launch to become one of the first consumer adopters. So I’m getting mine in March, at least 
Funny thing is, I’m willing to plonk down $630 on it but I’ve never actually worn any of the Rifts before. What I’m not willing to do is wait four hours in line at PAX East to try a developer kit for 20 minutes, apparently. Go figure.
So it looks like the Vive is going to come in at an even higher price point than the Rift. They’re doing a content showcase for Vive compatible games on January 26th. They partnered with IGN to stream the event and are doing a contest that nets you a pass to attend the show (not including lodging or travel expenses), meet and greet the devs, 10 VR games, AND a Vive.
The fine prints says the prize is worth an estimated $1,000.
They can do even better than that now. The latest technology for 3D video is a camera that shoots the entire 360 degree space around you all the time, and then when you play it, your head-tracking information can be used to recreate the view you are looking at from the full 360 degrees of data. Having all that data also means they can use active vibration and shake suppression, giving you a more stable view than the original photographer even had.
So for instance, you could put Nikon’s new 360 degree action cam on your helmet, ski down a hill, and then later you could replay the video at home and re-live the experience except this time looking backwards. But more importantly, you can create videos that anyone else can look at and experience the whole thing, including looking around in any direction while they watch. Hundreds of people could watch the same stream, with each one having full freedom to look anywhere they want at any time.
Put two of these cameras together, and you can record full 3D.
The commercial possibilities are incredible. This will open up revenue streams for unique experiences, such as putting a camera rig on mountain climbers, skydivers, race cars, etc. And with this technology you only need one video feed and every individual watching it can have their own unique experience by just looking where they want.
Imagine a real-time view of an Indy race from a camera streaming from the cockpit. You could then put on your VR headset and experience the race in real time as if you were the driver. That means not even knowing if the race will result in a crash that you’ll experience in real time, which will drive the excitement factor way up.
I can imagine ‘extreme camera’ businesses where people take such cameras into caves, skydive with them, bungee jump, or whatever, and sell the video experience. And of course, selling pay-per-view rights to watch the Superbowl in a way that makes you feel like you’re sitting right on the 50 yard line in the best seats in the stadium.
I can also imagine 360 degree cameras being commonplace on space probes, rovers, etc. Imagine being able to virtually sit on top of a Mars rover and look around as if you were there. I believe the ISS already has such a camera installed on it.
Very interesting times coming.
I pre-ordered a Rift, but being stupid I waited a couple of days before pulling the trigger. My delivery date has been moved from March 31 to July 1 just because of that. And now I think they’re quoting Sept 1. Initial demand is off the charts. So now I’m going to try to pre-order the HTC Vive as quick as I can when it goes up for pre-order, in hopes of getting a quicker delivery. The Vive looks better than the Rift right now anyway, but I’ll take the first one I can get.
I pre-ordered an HTC Vive at the moment the pre-orders opened, having learned from my four month delay for waiting a day before ordering an Oculus Rift.
I just read that HTC processed 15,000 pre-orders in the first ten minutes, at $799 per unit. They are now quoting May deliveries for new pre-orders, which are still available.
VR is going to be a gigantic industry. I wish I knew of a smart way to invest in it, but it’s really hard to tell who the players are going to be at this point. The Vive now looks superior to the Rift, and HTC seems better able to meet the high demand, having lots of experience in high volume manufacturing. But the barrier to entry for the hardware is pretty low, as it’s mostly a matter of packaging off-the-shelf components. So that should make for a very competitive, fast growing industry.
The Vive seems obviously the better choice. Originally it was projected that the Rift would be the $400 headset and the Vive the $800 one, making it a tougher choice for the average consumer, but now that it’s $600 vs $800, and the Vive comes with a more complete package like hand controllers, there’s no reason to go with the rift. That’s ignoring the fact that one is run by facebook, and the other is run by the best gaming company on the planet.
I wonder at what price point Sony is going to come in. It looks like demand is pretty strong for VR even at the $800 price point… but then again they are targeting a different market.
Yeah, pretty much. AlthoughI think it’s possible that the Rift will be better for sit-down games like flight sims and race games, while the Vive will be the more complete experience with room tracking and the controllers.
After I get the Vive I may just cancel the Rift order, or I may get it for the family for multi-player VR. But my computer is the only one inthe house powerful enough for VR, so that might get expensive.
I agree that Oculus seems to be behind right now. For $200 more you get a lot more with the Vive - the motion controllere and the room controllers, plus a front-facing camera. I imagine that Oculus’s Touch controlleres will probably be close to $200 for the pair, ultimately making it just as expensive as the Vive but with no room tracking capability. That’s a lot to give up.
As For Sony, I believe they are going to announce pricing soon, but rumor has it that it will be significantly cheaper - in the $350 range.