Oculus Rift versus HTC Vive this is a
battle that I have been following very closely and up until recently the whole
scene has felt rather dominated by the Oculus Rift then Oculus launched
pre-orders at a few hundred More Than People expected right around the same
time that HTC decided to show off their HTC pre their newest prototype which was
a tremendous improvement over their previously shown off headset so where do
both teams stand now well if you asked a month ago I swear the public opinion
would have been with oculus but I ran a Twitter poll very recently that received
over 3,000 votes and left them at
5050 so the battle's close let's take a
deeper
look the simitar RGB from Corsair features 17 programmable buttons a
12,000 DPI Optical sensor and a shape designed for comfort in MMO and mobile
gaming more in the video description down below now like I said things have
changed relatively recently for both teams mainly on the HTC Vive side so
let's start with a refresher this is going to be a long video hold tight the
consumer version of the Oculus Rift will be running a resolution of 2160 by 1200
split between two OLED displays running at 90 htz which are oriented in portrait
not landscape which is an interesting decision these screens and their new
lenses that make things look a little bit more clear when looking at them
directly and a little bit more distorted when looking near the edges will be able
to move independent of the headset which will allow them to accommodate ipd
ranges of anyone between the 5ifth and 95th percentile your fov will be above
100° but will depend on how close the screen is to your face the fit and
finish of the new Rift has been very impressively improved not only is it
very surprisingly light but it feels like quality when you hold it which is
uncommon in a light device a lot more fabric was added to the design which
first sounds kind of horrible because absorbing oils and sweat from your skin
but Palmer has said that while you won't be able to throw the fabric in a washing
machine it will be washable the foam part that touches your face can be
completely taken off of the headset and replaced if you so wish the side straps
now have Springs built into them which pulls the triangle like plate for the
back of your head in so that it's nice and snug while you're trying to fit it
on it also comes with a pair of on ear headphones these are mounted on the
headset and have been the source of a ton of controversy audio files are
complaining that they're paying for junk on your headphones when they already have awesome cans and average consumers
are complaining that they don't really see the point or the value the benefits
that these do have is that they naturally won't fall off the headset so
if you're whipping your head around in something like EV Valkyrie you're safe
and it's also been claimed that it's a benefit to the developer to know exactly
the performance capabilities of what headset you will be using they know the
volume they can push out they know the quality of the sound Etc ET profiles for
these included headphones are set within the SDK and whether or not anyone will
notice these benefits is yet to be seen but I'm not writing them off quite yet
the sensors have also had a significant Improvement you can really tell when
trying out the device because the bounds are much wider and you don't hit them
nearly as much the LED layout on the headset should make it so that you can
be facing any direction and still be tracked by the sensor which you can tilt
just in case you want to stand if you're playing a game like bullet train which
by the way is super freaking fun an improvement to the overall accuracy of
the sensor design will come later on down the line when you add the Oculus
touch this will happen not because the sensor will get better but because
you'll add an additional sensor the touch is Oculus is approach to VR input
and it's two independent controllers one per hand which is meant to make it feel
like your VR hands are well your real hands not like you're just holding a
tool punching things throwing things flicking things all of this should feel
natural they even have a grip button so when you're holding something you'll
naturally be holding the controller more tightly they even have you covered if
you want to make obscene hand gestures or just give a thumbs up because the
thumb stick and the trigger buttons both have capacitive tops and can feel if
you've lifted off of them or not next up the Vive HTC has been a lot more tight
lipped in regards to their headsets but I'll cover everything I can Hardware
spec-wise when looking at the inside of the headset may seem a little bit like
deja vu 21x 60x 1200 split across two
screens OLED panel 90 HZ refresh rate and over 100° of fov depending on how
you wear it easily one of the biggest improvements that HTC brought to the
table at CES was improvements to the linen or dirty window feel that their
previous panels had it was pretty rough with their earlier prototypes much like
it was with the rift but I'm happy to say that it's almost entirely gone now
and looks great the fit and finish has improved dramatically for the Vive and
while they're claiming that it actually isn't any lighter than their previous prototypes it definitely feels lighter
due to their improved weight distribution by optimizing their head
straps no news on the interchangeability of the foam or how easy it will be to
clean however HTC has now mounted a camera on the front because someone
forgot to tell them it was a phone which actually adds some pretty major
improvements to be honest their shapon system which previously just displayed
the wall boundaries that you set within the program is now able to make a cool
blue outlined grid model of any objects that are in the room so you don't have
to worry so much about moving around and bumping something or breaking it or
falling over yourself one of the most notable improvements with this is what's
being called the cat detection system there isn't actually a specific system
for this but it does allow you to not worry so much about stepping on
something like your cat or other small animal or really anything while in VR
which is admittedly been a pretty huge issue the addition of the camera was a
serious step in the right direction previous prototypes also had big issues
with occlusion or essentially the blocking of various uh sensors their
Lighthouse system sensors either with your own body or something else in the
room or say one of the controllers could be overlapping the other one which would
totally screw things up resulting in controllers teleporting all over the
place and major disconnects in terms of player positioning HTC has made their
photo diode sensors more sensitive than before changed their layout on the
headset itself and done a massive overhaul to the controller both in terms
of how you hold it and the layout and design of the sensors the controller now
sits in a more consistent position in your hand which is better for developers
so they have a more accurate idea of the exact position and orientation of your
hand these weote like wands also feature
a ring at the end which seems to be solely there for tracking reasons as the
ring has no specific function other than holding a large amount of those photo
diodes distributed all around the ring this in combination with the improved
lighthouse sensors made a significant and very noticeable Improvement to the
tracking of the controllers now finally
how do they compare this is not an easy thing to quantify even if they were
released they're both very similar yet completely fundamentally different at
the same time their screens sound very similar on paper yet they're
implementing them differently their first-party controllers are wildly
different and controller alone has been enough of a reason for gamers to decide
differently between consoles in the past past their sensing and motion technology
are very different implementations as well making the experience totally
different on each version well you can stand and walk around with an Oculus
Rift and you can sit in one place with an HTC Vive they're both targeting
different experiences I have personally never gone through a Vive demo that was
stationary in any way and I have personally never gone through an Oculus
demo that had me move around a space that was any bigger than two yoga mats
in games like bullet train Rift users can tell a short distance then fight
from a pivot point instead of walking around which in theory allows you to
travel through levels relatively naturally Vive has a leg up here however
by having a larger walking area which would support the idea of teleporting
and I haven't seen this at all implemented yet but considering they're
partnered with a valve would allow you to do things like walking through a
portal to get to your next area speaking of larger walking area both have issues
with constantly tethered cables but it is much more of an issue with the Vive
being mobile and having a cable near neck height isn't great the rift demos
no one really worries about the cable because it's never really an issue in
Vive demos it is very common for a dedicated person to be walking around
just managing the cable that's crazy and not going to be an option for many
people watching someone play a game is one thing being someone's cable boy is
another there are people actively working on this like Gigabyte orus with
their backpack which we checked out here or even Intel who's working with
Partners like orus to deliver these types of backpacks which are great and
Intel has some Amazing Ideas coming down the pipe which should make them even
better which I can't talk about yet but
this still requires you to have a super powerful laptop or super light computer
capable of running games at 90 FPS minimums that's an expensive pill to
swallow last but not least is the controller and this quite honestly is in
your hands pun intended I'm sorry let's move on this like most controllers will
come down to personal pref once all is said and done in my personal opinion
which may not matter too much here I prefer the touch controllers the way you
grip things the fact that they wrap around your hand and just how incredibly
natural they felt within a minute or two of using them was a thing to behold no
one needed to tell me what buttons did what I just naturally knew without ever
using controllers like these before that's pretty freaking cool they didn't
feel like a magical virtual reality enabling wand and honestly I quickly
forgot they were even really there they became an extension of my movement a
part of my body this potential level of immersion is very important for VR as a
whole looking at the VR landscape altogether there are still many
challenges that need to be overcome the uncanny valley of reproduced movement
and reverse kinematics of your own bodies when looking at ourselves in a
virtual mirror or just looking down at our virtual bodies will continue to be
an issue for a while there are major differences between the controllers and
while this is a good thing in terms of innovation competition and just in
general pushing the limits of the platform there may need to be
standardization at some point and at that point we will probably see a higher
adoption of VR speaking of higher adoption VR hasn't had its Android
butter moment yet virtual reality still lacks the Polish you find in most widely
adopted products it will come but I don't think it's there yet then there's
the price the rift announced at $600 an understandable price but still
considerably higher than we were led to believe the Vive has been positioned as
a premium VR headset this whole time so I don't expect it to be cheaper my guess
is under 1,000 bucks probably closer to $899 or
$9.99 although there's been some Rumor Mill sites that have said 1,500 I don't
really know if that's going to happen I don't really think so while that may sound expensive on its own another thing
to realize is that it's actually only part of the associated cost people
haven't honestly had a good reason to build crazy badass computers for quite
some time now other than just wanting a crazy badass computer which is totally
fair but the lack of games that really push Gamers to upgrade their PC has left
the PC market mostly saturated with slow
old machines happily chugging along in World of Warcraft Counterstrike go and
League of Legends that leaves the overall cost of the platform incredibly
High because people are going to have to upgrade a whole bunch of stuff to get there and this will hurt the average
consumer's ability to adopt early on which is probably fine actually I'd
rather us hardcores tried it while the other people just waited because I'd
rather that we fought with the rough edges now then have a massive amount of
people trying it assuming it's not ready and dooming the platform but it does
suck for the hardcores that can't afford it I've been waiting for this for a long
time so I've been saving but some people haven't or are not able to and that
really sucks Ting is the mobile carrier that's
focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first first don't speak to
a robot they put you directly through to a person and you only use or you only
pay for what you use the average Ting bill is only $24 a month per device
which is pretty sweet pretty sweet if
you're stuck in a contract they'll help you switch over to Ting by covering 25%
of your cancellation fee up to $75 so head over to lon.com and try out their
savings calculator when you sign up on our link you'll also get $25 in service
credit or $25 towards new device thanks for watching guys I know
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you're probably wondering what to watch next so click the little button in the
top right hand corner to check out this video where I with a hor horrible
sunburn get all the members of lonus Media Group and Lou from unbox therapy
to try some demos from my development kit too and make some interesting
predictions about the future of VR which are fun to kind of go back and look at
now if you're still watching at this point please don't forget to like the
thing took me a long time to make this video and I want to make more of them so
I need to show lus some pretty cool like numbers anyways guys I'll see you next
time