My Comparison Experience: Rift vs Vive Demos

[Anonymous]

So yesterday I did the in-store demos for both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive VR headsets, about an hour apart...



First off, neither demo really let you pick what you experienced,
both were very much a controlled demo, so you couldn't really choose
what you wanted to try out.



Rift Demo @ Best Buy - The guy doing the demos was pretty laid back
and cool. Chatted a bit about my gaming preferences and such (I'm a 43 yr old guy who has been almost exclusively a PC gamer for decades, current stuff I play is largely iRacing, Prepar3D, Battlefield 4...) He then
helped me put the headset on. Feel was pretty nice, although they added a
little adhesive ring around where the face contact is on the unit
(sanitary purposes) and that ring caused it to pinch down on my nose a
bit, bothering my sinuses. He said that at home you wouldn't have that
and it wouldn't be a problem.



The demo had you standing in place - you could take about 1 step in
any direction but that was it. I don't know if it was because of
concern that you'd fall and get hurt or the limited space they had for
the demo, or just the way they had the tracking camera set up only
allowing for a limited envelope.



He ran me through the Oculus home demos - the little town was neat
(made me wonder how awesome a full SimCity type game could be!) and the
T-Rex was pretty wild. He let me play "The Climb" and that was
interesting, with good visuals, but you're playing with the Xbox
controller which made it sort of boring - you look at the hand hold you
want to grab and then release the trigger button and reapply for the
hand you want to move to that hold...



All in all, not bad - I didn't get to do much to adjust the IPD so
the sweet spot seemed a bit small, but otherwise the unit was
comfortable, and I didn't really notice the screen door effect inside
any of the experiences (although I could when in the "home" area). The
sound out of the built in headphones was really good IMO.



BTW, I didn't notice any of the so-called "God Rays" but that could
be due to the careful selection of demos they let you go through.





Vive Demo @ MS Store - ok, this one was ALL about showing off "room
scale" and the wands. They had about an 8x10 space walled off for you
to move around in. They had a person dedicated to handling the tether
wires. The salesperson was much more of a chatty pushy dick - he had a
whole schtick that he wanted to go through and when I mentioned that I
had just tried the Rift Demo and was comparison shopping he tried to
play all "Oh boy, here we go, you're not gonna want the Rift after you
try this..." Uh....


The headset made a good seal on my face... And that was actually a
negative - by the end of the demo my whole face was sweating profusely -
I didn't experience that with the Rift where there was some space open
around your nose... Also, I immediately noticed the Screen Door Effect
throughout the Vive experience. It wasn't horrible, but certainly
noticeable. It made it look like there was less resolution on the Vive.



Being able to walk around and explore was interesting for a few of
the demos (like the deep sea one - The whale was neat!) The wands are
definitely what makes the Vive compelling though. I will say though that
I was MUCH more aware of the tether wire with the Vive than I was with
the Rift, and I think it would have been even worse if they hadn't had a
person managing the cables for you (which I wouldn't have at home).



Also, while the Chaperone system was nice and gave you an idea when
you were getting near the barriers of your playspace, it was USELESS
when backing up (I accidentally backed up so far that they had to grab
me!)



Verdict:



Each system has it's plusses and minuses right now. Since I wasn't
able to try the Rift's hand controllers and room-size tracking using the
2nd camera it's hard to know how well that will compare, but if I was
to assume that they are similar to the Vive's capabilities in that
regard, then I'd have to give my vote to the Rift. The headset was more
comfortable and cooler on my face to wear, the screen seemed a bit
better (less SDE).



Right now, I'm going to stay with my Rift preorder, and then plan
to get the hand controllers when they come out. Vive was decent but the
face sweating issue would get really annoying when trying to do racing
or flying games for more than 15 minutes at a time... And particularly
with the racing games, that clearer picture will make a bit of a
difference.



But I will also say, these are both first generation consumer
products, and they're only going to get better in a TON of ways over the
next 2-5 years. Everyone's just figuring out this VR stuff - what
works, what doesn't, what makes for a compelling interface, and so on.
It's going to be exciting!