VR developer gives thoughts

[the-pi-guy]

Blair Renaud previously from Rockstar says this.

Let me pick on the Vive a little bit. This thing is pretty neat. I can walk around and use motion controllers with pretty solid tracking, resolution of the HMD, lenses and HMD are all comparable to the Rift. That being said, in it's current state, I really can't see a lot of people buying it. For a number of reasons.

Lighthouse is pretty cool, BUT, what a pain in the butt. Moving parts, lasers, mounted to the walls cables everywhere. I can't see someone going on a website, clicking "Buy awesome VR" and having the box that showed up at my place show up at theirs. Setup of the hardware is ok for trade shows, but it more that rivals ikea furnature in the butt pain catagory.

Batteries are another issue. You get about 20mins of good use out of each of the Vive controllers before the battery stats to give out on you and you lose tracking. They take about 4 hours to charge and aren't of a standard type you can buy at the corner store. Again.. this is in it's current state, and I'm sure much will be imporved for the consumer version. The rift on the other hand is light, elegant and only takes up 1 display port and 2 USB ports including tracking.

The volume and accuracy of the tracking is pretty comparable to the Vive, and I'll explain why that doesn't matter as much as you would think in a moment. Though the Rift doesn't have motion controllers in the development kit, I beleive the controllers are much better suited for VR in general. I don't currently have Touch controllers, but was very impressed with the demos I tried at Occulus Connect 2. Overall, everything in the Rift CV1 is of higher quality, from stability in woftware to overall build quality. We'll see if that changes for the Vive before launch.


Playstation VR on the other hand is in a league of its own and not really in competition with the other VR hardware companies. Huge install base to start, solid consumer experience, single target for developers. I think they'll do really well. Not as sure about the move controllers, but am quite happy that the Dual Shock 4 controller is also tracked.

link

Sounds like faulty controllers.  

(Also awful spelling)

[Legend]

Gear VR has a huge advantage with being cordless and easy to set up. OR and PSVR will do great on their systems, but Gear VR is what's going to light the industry on fire.