R.I.P. PC VR

[RonsonPL]

740 Euros for the crappy 95-100 FOV 1080p VR in 2016, with no support from AAA core-gaming crators, no support for VR controller, and overpriced hardware both in terms of HMD and PC parts.
I sustain what I've said: Even 899$ price would be good if the VR was the best VR PC could handle in 2016/17. It's far from it.


Well...


It was obvious since just a little after FB bought Oculus, but we all had hopes despite the continuous stream of bad news pointing towards the worst scenario.


Seems like EVERY single big company thinks nowadays that core gaming is not existing and not worth putting any effort.
The industry we have now:
Ubisoft creates Tetris which struggles to maintain 30fps, and wants a pay subscription for Tetris DLC. Games with $300M for marketing are given to some crappy dev studios in third world countries, ending up with non-fixable, broken PC ports (Batman, AC:Unity). Gaming CPUs are so good that I can sell my CPU for 110% of what I payed for it... 3 years ago. New CPUs are overpriced and build with crappy cooling solutions (lesser OC, damage from cooler mounting issues in Skylakes), AMD doing anti-progress in terms of gaming performance (Bulldozer actually performed worse than the old architecture), recent news about GDDR5x instead of HBM, 120Hz monitors for 500% of the normal price, not even 3D standard in new HD Blu-Ray specifications, etc. etc. etc..

Let me explain what just happened.
Oculus just killed the last pieces of hope that wasn't killed yet. The hope that core gaming/PC/PC VR will be in good shape in this decade.

I was really worried when I heard that Oculus will give free CV1s to backers. Seemed obvious to me that this could be a move to prevent bad PR flood that could happen when people realize the difference between what Palmer promised and what came out of this promises.
Now every time a person like me writes anything bad about Oculus, tons of fanboys and ignorant people will say "hey! Shut up! They're great! They gave the backers free CV1s! We should love them!".

Well. How about no.

Let's summarize:
1. Oculus abandoned PC VR totally. They'll releae "something" so people won't scream at them, but at this price, at this date, at this specs, at this shape, at this shape of VR industry (99% focused on low-end hardware and mostly non-core-gaming content), it's pretty obvious PC VR for core gamers will not achieve even 10% of the potential it could achieve in 2016/17 if not for typical big corpo thinking.

2. Bundling a useless controller at THIS price is even more stupid than I though. No core gamer needs an additional joypad, and if anyone does, there's not a single one that don't know how to buy it. Or what to buy. There are much cheaper and 100% sufficient joypads if someone didn't have one (or many) already

3. Oculus ignored PC VR as soon as Facebook realized they can do easier money on mobile. No controller needed, no expensive PC needed, lots of casuals with much smaller expectations. Talks with big companies in PC industry started much too late, and were much too small. Specs are laughable. The same FOV as mobile VR justified by "PC is not powerful enough for more". Crappy resolution, just 90Hz, not even 95Hz that Abrash presented as bare minimum. Even PSVR has 120Hz. No controller. No big move towards AAA core-gaming content sooner than later.


It's basically "well, we'll just do something, and that's it". Half assed Rift. That's what world gets after almost half a decade of waiting.




Intel and AMD are NOT focusing on single-thread performance and low latency. Quite the opposite. They simply think there are no gamers that would like better physics, view distance, less latency etc. There was no Oculus or any other company that explained to them that they're wrong. Oculus had a HUGE chance to do that. But instead of saving the gaming industry, Oculus added another knife stabbed at it's back.
Nvidia had plans for low-latency-friendly HMC based GPUs, but delayed them. Now there are not even plans to use HMC for gaming. Instead of HBM revolution (latency is still crappy, but at least bandwidth is great) we'll get some shitty GDDR5X.
No hardware company thinks high quality core gaming exists.
No game publisher does.
No VR company does.

All that could've changed thanx to the huge success of Oculus kickstarter.



There's no other way to put this:


Palmer. You f.. this up.

[RonsonPL]

@andyring

Because the price set this high will influence the shape of VR gaming, PC VR and PC gaming. I explained it well in a post above, just a few minutes ago. I explained it well, but the text is written horribly, and needlessly long, sorry for that.

[nosys70]

oculus made a clever move.
they know that CV1 is not so good to make people forget DK2.
And still a lot of people who kept their DK2 will be happy to have a VR headset that is "almost" a CV1 that was paid half the price. So , if you already got a DK2, you are happy.
The only people that could be unhappy are the purchaser of the DK1 that were waiting for affordable CV1.
But lots of DK1 user and developpers will receive it for free.
So another group happy.
So they priced high the CV1 to make it a luxury toy.
Those who would have purchased anyway will still do.
That's a third group happy.
The other wil just dream of doing it at some time or wait or jump to GEAR.
That is the fourth group happy.
So anyway they will make sales, and they won't be flooded with order they cannot fulfill anyway.
And they will not create a huge base of frustrated owner of expensive CV1 with no content to play.
Another thing is they will set a standard "A la Apple"
you can buy a any smartphone, but if it not an "iPhone" it is just a smartphone.
Thanks to GEAR, now you can get an expensive smartphone that is not an iphone but still got a personality.
Happy Samsung.
Happy devs who can program cheap crap and make money.
So if Vives make a cheaper model, it will be "cheap", if they do it is the same price, it will be just "another expensive VR headset".

[Hiro_Protag0nist]

"RonsonPL" wrote:
@andyring

Because the price set this high will influence the shape of VR gaming, PC VR and PC gaming. I explained it well in a post above, just a few minutes ago. I explained it well, but the text is written horribly, and needlessly long, sorry for that.

OK fair enough, we're all entitled to our views.

But, i don't think this price alone will influence it - there will be many others coming along and there will definitely, definitely be a CV2 within 5 years.

There will also be price reductions.

But then again, you've also said the product itself is crappy which negates your views on price - surely a crappy product will influence the above more than price point?

[Calanar]

If they had done what you have in the past advocated Ronson they would have a 999$ price point. Most people are mad at the price at 599$ but you have said you thought 999$ wasn't too much for great VR. And it couldn't be done. Once again because no one on earth is doing it. There is no super premium VR experience for 1K (HMD only.) I am not going to go into all that again but if you look at the outrage today, almost every bit of it is around price point. Had they listened to you (if that was even possible to achieve today) they would be in even worse shape.

Many, many products and even whole tech markets have started at this price point. So go ahead, keep ranting. Talk like this is the day VR died while the rest move on into actual VR. A year from now, most of us won't even come here to read these rants anymore. We will be too busy being in VR.

I appreciate the discussions we have had in the past. I hope, given time, you will come to realize that what they did today was no more, or less, than launching a new market. Just as apple did with the 600$ iPhone 1.

Regards,

- Michael Tenery

[RonsonPL]

"andyring" wrote:

"RonsonPL" wrote:
@andyring

Because the price set this high will influence the shape of VR gaming, PC VR and PC gaming. I explained it well in a post above, just a few minutes ago. I explained it well, but the text is written horribly, and needlessly long, sorry for that.

OK fair enough, we're all entitled to our views.

But, i don't think this price alone will influence it - there will be many others coming along and there will definitely, definitely be a CV2 within 5 years.

There will also be price reductions.

But then again, you've also said the product itself is crappy which negates your views on price - surely a crappy product will influence the above more than price point?

You second time in a row ask questions I already answered just a few posts above. Of course crappy hardware and content will affect the sales much more than this price. That's why I've said 1100$ is not too high price for awesome PC VR HMD. For what people will get from PC VR in 2016, the price is waaay too high for a real PC VR revolution. I still think it will succeed, and I still think Valve will disapoint many people and won't be the "PC VR savior".
I still predict VR won't die off like it did in 90's.
But you can say PC gaming is alive now. And I would say it's almost dead, because what happens in the industry is really bad. There are no AAA PC oriented FPS games even despite the fact PCs are able to get 120Hz, mouses etc. There are no true PC versions, even CD Projekt RED canned the PC version because of the deal with MS, who surely told them to downgrade the PC version so gullible people won't realize how crappy hardware they've put into Xone.
We have AAA games with 30fps cap or no mouse control in menus. We have GTA V delayed for 3 years despite the fact GTA started as a PC game. We have MS who thinks PC gaming means web-browser games and Minecraft. + all I've wrote above and a few times earlier. PC gaming is alive and is not. Depends on who you ask.
PC VR in 2015-2017 is dead from my point of view and it's not that rare point of view.

[RonsonPL]

"Calanar" wrote:
If they had done what you have in the past advocated Ronson they would have a 999$ price point. Most people are mad at the price at 599$ but you have said you thought 999$ wasn't too much for great VR. And it couldn't be done. Once again because no one on earth is doing it. There is no super premium VR experience for 1K (HMD only.) I am not going to go into all that again but if you look at the outrage today, almost every bit of it is around price point. Had they listened to you (if that was even possible to achieve today) they would be in even worse shape.

No. I never said 900-1100$ price could be accepted when it was done the way Oculus did it.
Such price would be acceptable only if they did it properly. It would probably mean this would have to be CV2, or it would have be to after they release the hardware as arcade-room's hardware, not a home product - actually I'm too tired to come up with a decent example here, so basically - anything that would prepare people for it. Imagine phones for example. If lots of people already knew the potential of VR, already fell in love with VR, the higher priced HMD would be reasonable and would have a real chance for success. And of course - the content.

PS. You still think there was nothing better achievable, even if in reality CV1 debuts in summer 2016, when PSVR has 120Hz display and RGB on top of that, and Sony already presented better games lineup than Oculus, despite the fact that Oculus had a huge head start from DK1 and DK2 devs? What Sony showed is nowhere near to "good quality core gaming in good quantity", but it's less bad than Oculus, and that's huge IMHO.
Great PC VR would make me consider taking a loan for the HMD if I had to.
1080p, 95° FOV (for me, glasses-only user) with laughable games lineup besides what already was lucky to be VR compatible (racing, flight sims, etc.) is not the PC VR revolution that could've happen more than 4 years after I've watched Carmack at E3 presenting his duct-tape thingy.

[Anonymous]

PC VR isn't quite dead yet. HTC have been handed a GREAT opportunity here. If they can release Vive the same price as the Oculus Rift, or even just 50 more then they should considerably outsell the Rift. Anyone spending $599 on a Rift will probably need to spend another $100 or so for the Touch controllers. The Vive will quite rightly be seen as much better value.

What's this about GDDR5 instead of HBM memory..? Have I missed something..? :shock:

[Christiaan]

I can appreciate the frustration of many folks here at the price of the hardware. I too was taken aback by the $700ish OTD price, even for domestic buyers.

That said, VR as a market space is a freight train with no throttle control that will barrel through anything in it's way. It's not the applications that are currently available that will compel people to buy an HMD - it's what is yet to come.

We will be sitting courtside at Wimbledon and racing in the car with Dale Jr. Soon.

This ver.1 hardware is very cool IMO - with all audio processing and amplification offloaded to the HMD and Physical IPD adjustment, etc. It is VR done right.

I'm going to take the slightly bitter pill of a $700ish charge on my card for it to get on the VR train that is going to change how we use computers sooner than we expect.

Again, i understand everyone's frustration and I feel it as well, but R.I.P. VR?

NO F'ING WAY. It's coming, like it or not.

[Gigantoad]

"snowdog" wrote:
will probably need to spend another $100 or so for the Touch controllers. The Vive will quite rightly be seen as much better value

More like $300 apparently.

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=28655

[AlexiGVS]

As I said earlier. I don't need this crappy xbox controller, headphones, luxury case and bundle games! I do NOT want to pay extra money for all this stuff.
Just give freaking Rift and Tracking camera for $350!!
Or else, Vive is the choice..