Is Oculus dead?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,359 words · ~6 min read
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in the past few months Oculus has more than fallen from Grace from attacks on
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their new launch video for the Oculus touch controllers like the nightmare
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fuel like versus dislike bar to the
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comment section with people saying things like Oculus is anti-consumer and
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anti-competitive that they're killing an exciting new area of Technology with
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terrible business practices that they're turning into the apple of VR that they
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are the cancer of VR people are are
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really mad and my Twitter polls showing a shift of our community's Outlook to
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the Vive compared to the rift obviously
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doesn't capture the entire picture it's not just that people seem to generally
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prefer the Vive these days it's more that they're enraged at
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Oculus let's explore why and while we're at it I'll give a 2 and 1 half months
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late review of The
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Rift
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cooler Masters masterc case maker 5 features the free form modular system
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allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link below
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putting aside the hatred for a moment ignoring room scale forgetting about the
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controllers and putting a pause on the accusations of bad business practices
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trust me we'll get back to those soon but taking just a moment to look at the
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headset alone the rift is actually rather remarkable the combination of the
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tension retraction mechanism and the velcro straps make it effortless to fit
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the rift onto your head the lightweight overall design and high quality
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materials make it quite comfortable to wear the ipd adjustment or like how far
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away the lenses are from each other is easy to find and simple to use even the
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on ear headphones are surprisingly quite
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good meaning that you won't have to worry about earbuds or headphones
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falling off or falling out when you whip your head around in VR everything about
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the headset even down to the cable breakout feels quality but unfortunately
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for Oculus immersion in VR is key and an
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important big step to immersion is getting your hands in the experience
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without some form of hand presence even something rudimentary the rift feels
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incomplete especially because we aren't examining it in a magic vacuum where
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other products like the HDC VI don't exist content especially exclusive
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content could be the answer to this but honestly I found the games pretty boring
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I see no benefit to luy's taale a platformer being in VR and as cool as a
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demo that it was to track the progress of the riffs development the multiplayer
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space dog fighter Eve Valkyrie got a little dull after a while even the climb
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a beautiful rock climbing simulator from krych was much less engaging than it
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should have felt thanks to the Xbox controller I mean sure for Passive
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experiences that don't require controller input like watching movies in
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a virtual reality theater or the throbbing Market of POV virtual reality
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experiences for adults the Oculus
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actually wins pretty handily the headset is lighter and more comfortable for
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long-term viewing and the foam face padding collects less you know
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perspiration to keep it at least the headset itself uh more hygienic ah which
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isn't to say that Oculus has no solution for hand presence in VR the Oculus touch
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controller is fantastic I've used it and in my opinion it's even just slightly
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better than the admittedly wonderful Vive controllers so great it wins but
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you can't win an award if you don't show up for it so where the hell is it well
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let's see there's a new video on the Oculus YouTube channel about the touch
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surely that will tell us when it's coming out how much it will cost Etc
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nope just a video of some Attractive people being super excited about
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watching each other play VR games which is pretty awkward and kind of boring for
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the most part by the way oh uh and it's coming this year so that's good news I
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guess so the headset is good the touch controllers are late but they're coming
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let's get back to the community anger I alluded to earlier why all the hate it's
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partly to do with the first part of the video title the over 30 full games part
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at first this sounds awesome the lack of full games has been a big problem for VR
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so far so to have a whopping 30 of them
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coming out is a great thing the problem with that is that a significant number
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of them are going to be exclusive or
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wait are they there's actually some misinformation floating around here
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Oculus doesn't actually seem to be after fullon exclusives what they are doing is
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giving developers straight up cash for them to release on their platform first
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in one case the most documented case in fact they didn't even suggest a timed
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exclusivity Clause the developer said it would take them 2 to three months to
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release on the Vive and they were cool with that Gabe Newell by contrast
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responded to a Fan's email stating that while they do financially support devs
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by essentially giving them an advance on their steam sales they never asked for
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any form of exclusivity time or not so
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you can decide to raise your Pitchfork or not you're entitled to that but
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personally until I have more hard facts
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mine has been stowed but the ultimate question remains should you buy one nope
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the Vive I was hesitant to recommend the glorified Tech demo game library and
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high price point are both difficult pills to swallow but as an Enthusiast
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who's been saving for quite some time I bit the bullet as far as the Riff goes
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at this point I would not suggest the purchase of a rift regardless of if you
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want a seated or standing experience and I'm even trying to cancel the order from
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my personal Rift which if unsuccessful
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will probably turn into just selling it on eBay shocker right well it's true
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there's a lot to like about the rift but ever since trying the newer version of
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the Vive at CES this year I've been simply uninterested in the Xbox
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controller Centric experience that the rift currently is for the consumer and
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I'll need to find out how much the controllers cost and when I can even get
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them before I'm willing to give it another chance at this point this is an
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incomplete experience and the Vive is a complete experience it seems like a
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generational Gap and I'm going with the Vive personally tunnel bear is a simple
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LT thanks for watching guys if it sucked you know what to do if it was awesome
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get subscribed hit the like button or even consider joining The Forum because
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it's cool over there and you can become a contributor if you want but you really
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don't get much to be completely honest so you can just bro out and be a member
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that's fun too check out this video which is a random one of the videos
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where I said that I was going to keep my pre-order for the
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rift you know whatever I was probably talking about the DK2 at that point in
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time but don't worry about it I'm going to go play five
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games