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.

[Midnight]

I'm really bummed about this....not because of the price.....although yes I agree it is too high with too much stuff that noone actually wants.....but it was meant to be an 'out of the box' solution. Already even on preorder, there is the compatibility checker app. That has confused some things terrible....multiple USB 3.0 controllers are now said to be 'incompatible' so it's luck of the draw to if your modern pc even works despite having USB 3.0...sure....some can resolve it by buying PCI controllers, if case space etc allows...you could even buy a new motherboard (and therefore need a new Windows license probably) but thats hardly user friendly that they were aiming for

[LKostyra]

Before joining the thread I had to go drive around and vent off my frustration when I saw the price.

I still don't know what to say and it is very hard to admit it, but VR dies as of now. Even though I placed the pre-order, I think I will cancel it after I sleep through this.

Seriously, 700 EUR plus shipping to Poland is 742 EUR. For a headset. This converts to almost 3.5k in our Polish currency, PLN. I feel like this is some kind of a bad joke after months of wait for the device. Palmer mentioned that the Rift is subsidized. And that it costs "in the likes of $350 but higher". "Affordable VR for the masses" was a good one as well...

@RonsonPL, just let me say that I did not want to believe you when I saw your earlier posts. Now I do and I agree 100%. Since FB bought Oculus, everything went downhill. Now all the greediness shown in how FB works reveals itself in their very first consumer product. As I should say, in our mother language (if I translated the "PL" correctly from your nick 😉 ) - "przepraszam" for not believing your posts and "dzięki" for putting the truth out there.

In the meantime, I am going to sleep. I have lots to think about after today's "announcements".

[Twitchmonkey]

This does kind of put the nail in the coffin for the argument that Oculus was just looking to appeal to casual gamers though doesn't it? No one but the most hardcore is going to be picking one up now.

[TheArcadeGeek]

I am surprised by the amount of people who are surprised at the retail price. All you had to do was look at eBay leading up to the holidays. A new DK2 was selling for $800+ most of the year. OR saw this and rightfully assumed that they had a lot of room to adjust their pricing on the new one. The demand is there...

I expected it to be $600 and ordered as soon as I saw the article today.

[thealgorithm]

I was ready to order as well, but then I looked at the specs... Is there any significant change over the DK2? (FOV is similar, resolution is only slightly higher and frame rate from 75 to 90). Also I don't need a controller or headphones.

[Anonymous]

"RonsonPL" wrote:
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.

Wow, you're ungrateful. Maybe you should reconsider. I don't think Palmer F'd anything up, he's actually responsible for the birth of consumer VR. That's pretty amazing and we should all be thankful.

[clonazepamPLZ]

I'm just doubtful that the HMD supplier, in this case, Oculus, will be able to handle full support to provide a decent experience.

They have multiple operating systems, USB controllers, different GPU architectures, directx, openGL, vulkan... Game developers! (Particularly the ones I might be interested in)

Maybe having FB behind them, they might able to tell any one of these entities that such and such needs an update or whatever, and someone will actually listen to them, but I don't know.

We're talking about such a tiny sliver of the market.

People want VR hardware and software to make use of it. Will people buy the VR hardware and hope software follows? Will people wait for software to appear before buying the hardware?

At any rate, I think the best course of action is to first actually fall in love with a game that can be enhanced with VR, then get VR.

The last thing I'm going to do is give someone $100 or $600 and then sit around and wait to see if it was worth it.

[RonsonPL]

"directrespect" wrote:
When I was 25 I was making 600 a day. I feel sorry for you whiney bums but not really.

Judging from this, you recently were 2 years old, not 25.
If someone was less lucky to be born in a country where you earn far less money, he's immediately a whining bum? Great logic. If it's your typical logic, then you either lied or your employer was your dad or some criminal gang's boss. Noone else would pay that much to a person who struggles with logic.


@ LKostyra
Yeah, PL stands for Poland. Check your PM box.

"Twitchmonkey" wrote:
This does kind of put the nail in the coffin for the argument that Oculus was just looking to appeal to casual gamers though doesn't it? No one but the most hardcore is going to be picking one up now.

No, it's not like that.
Quite the opposite. It reinforces the arguments that Oculus doesn't see core gamers as important part of the market.

Oculus is:
- hardware: 90% focused on mobile. Recent buy-outs, all mostly or completely to help MOBILE VR. Carmack saying to PC devs that they should do for mobile and then port to VR, etc. etc.
- content: 60fps, or even 30fps is NOT core-gamer friendly. Content for VR withou posistional tracking, for no low-latency, high precision controller - is all casual, 0% core gaming. Bundling the stupid Xone controller is another sign of "we only care for casual masses".

Now they release VERY expensive Rift. What it says? It doesn't say "it's for core gamers". No. I can't afford 860Euro VR right now, but I was (and I still maintain that) the guy who said even 1100$ VR HMD is nothing bad if only it blows people's minds with its quality AND content. IF the Rift released in 2016 was 130+ FOV (no less for glasses users), if the display with 50% more pixels than the actual CV1 (assuming CV1 is RGB, not PenTile), if it was bundled with a VR controller and there was a serious effort to provide serious core games stream within a year from the Rift premiere - I would defend the price, I would say it was a better idea, since people after initially being put off by the price, would change their minds after testing the device.

The CV1 Oculus releases, will be a device that has the price appropriate for core gamers, while NOT having the required hardware quality and content. Even more so. It won't have it before 2018 thanx to "great" strategy from Oculus to focus on Xone controller and not investing tons of money into AAA games. Imagine Playstation 2 releasing in 2000 as it did, but with just Fantavision-like games during 2000-2002. No Devil May Cry, no GT3, no Jak&Daxter, no Burnout 2, etc. Would it succeed as it did or not? Of course not.

Oculus killed PC VR. It won't disappear. It will become crippled and twisted just as PC gaming looks like now, with almost zero big games designed with PC in mind, just ports, and with gaming hardware ridiculously overpriced (monitors, GPUs, CPUs)

So no. High price doesn't mean Oculus believes in core gaming. It means the people at Oculus were convinced by those corporate idiots, that core PC gaming = only those people who will spend any amount of money. They're just a few people, not enough to actually do anything for them, but enough to milk them.
Those are the suckers who'll buy GPUs for 400% price (Titan X), monitors for 500% (120Hz, 4K, etc.) or stupid G29 steering wheel made from the G27 scraps for just 200% of the price it could have. Or 300% for Intel gaming CPU.

It REINFORCES our argument that Oculus have no idea about core gaming world, and doesn't care nor plan to start giving a shit about us gamers.

PC VR could be so awesome that it would be consider rational to spend 10000$ on this, because it is SO amazing. Now Oculus will help stupid people say "you CANNOT offer anything to people at higher price than 499$ or it will fail". That's only one of thousand of negative long-term consequences of Oculus doing since FB acquisition.

[Hiro_Protag0nist]

"RonsonPL" wrote:
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.

Ronson, if it's crappy, why are you even bothered about the price? Why are you still posting here, surely you should be searching for a good VR HMD?

[Anonymous]

"foulplay" wrote:
Wow, so much hyperbole from the OP, how about some cheese to go with all that whine?

You probably charge too much for your gas station bottle of wine and cheese.

"directrespect" wrote:
When I was 25 I was making 600 a day. I feel sorry for you whiney bums but not really.

Not all of us are comfortable selling drugs on a street corner.