I haven't been around lately..(I've been enjoying VR!) so if this is a really dead horse, please feel free to ignore. I just thought I'd share my thoughts after a couple weeks with the Rift and a few days with the Vive. This is all just my opinion, so take with a grain of salt as always. For the record, I don't wear glasses.
Purely on a HMD hardware level, I personally don't think it's much of a contest. The Rift is the easy winner for me. It has a better feeling construction, better materials, built in headphones (which I love) and a brilliant ergonomic design. The whole thing is built on a hinge or swivel. Weeks after owning it. I'm finding new things that they've implemented to make it customizable to each user so that maximum comfort is achievable for any shape or size head. The firm straps and hard back cradle design are fantastic and finally being able to get the straps off my ears is a real improvement. Vive still uses the soft straps and my ears are hurting a good bit after a long session. I was starting to get a little bothered by the Rift headphones, but then realized that they too are on a hinge and can be turned and swiveled to rest on your ears any way you want. I'm referring to the round speaker part. The arm has a joint and the speaker also swivels around. The Rift is a work of genius IMO.
It also beats the Vive in the optics department. A lot has been said about the "god rays" and they are definitely a thing, but that's the only negative I can find. They have a sweet spot that is basically the entire lens. Once, you're in the zone and got it on right, you can look from edge to edge without seeing much if any blurring. You can't see the rings like you sometimes can with the Vive and the lack of a sweet spot makes finding a comfortable position that much easier.
I also like that the Rift has one very easy to manage cable. The Vive has a big cable of three connected cords and it's fairly stiff and heavy. I had to leave it on the floor flattened by heavy books for a day to get it to relax and not coil up and get tangled. It's ok now, but it doesn't seem to be of the same quality as what Oculus used.
Oculus of course wins in the set up and ease of use department. It takes a little while to get the Vive set up properly and I still find myself needing to make small adjustments and trying to make slight improvements. It will vary from person to person, but the Rift is a plug and play set up that took me 5 minutes and the Vive took about an hour total with some troubleshooting. Not a big deal ultimately but I figured I'd mention it.
That's about it for hardware. It might seem like I'm beating up on the Vive, but that's only because the Rift is that good. The Vive is a great piece of hardware, but you can tell that a ton of time and money was spent on ergonomics and user convenience by Oculus and it really shows. Especially when you can do a side by side comparison. I can't compare controller of course. I love the Vive controllers and think they do a great job of being a very versatile input solution and adding some nice immersion with the haptics and awesome touch pads. We'll probably be seeing creative uses for these controllers by developers for a good while. They can do so much.
That brings me to the experience. At launch, these two offer very different experiences and in this, I have to go with the Vive. Even with all of it's issues, once I'm in the game and the motion control and room scale kicks in, I'm all smiles. I've had more wow moments in the few days of my Vive than in the two and a half years of dks and now the Rift cv1. Playing Audioshield or Space Pirate Trainer is almost magical. Even the simplistic "Longbow" demo in the Lab is incredible. Notching that arrow and feeling the little bumps as you pull the string back is a satisfying sensation that I can't even explain. It's so good. As much as I enjoy playing Lucky's Tale or Chronos, they can't quite give me that "THIS is why I love VR!" feeling that I get when I use my Vive. I'll be demoing VR to people very soon and TBH, I'll be showing them the Vive. I want to share the Rift with them as well and let them see the brilliance of it's design, but I know if I want to give people the full VR experience right now, it's gotta be done with the Vive. This all comes with the obvious caveat that we all know...Oculus isn't done yet and the Touch system is coming. That could very well change things entirely for me, because right now, I'd love to be able to throw my Rift on and use the Vive controllers to play those games. Until I try the Touch controllers, I won't know which I prefer of course, but given the amazing quality of the Rift itself, I'm expecting them to be amazing.
My verdict is....they're both great at what they do and you can't go wrong with either. Not very decisive I know, but that's my honest opinion. I'm very luck to have both and would hate to have to part with either one. The real test comes when the Touch is released and complete systems can be compared. Until then, I'll be having a ton of fun doing everything I can with both. Rest easy with whatever choice you've made. You can't lose.
Anyways, if you stuck in there and read the whole thing, thanks. I hope it wasn't too boring.
TL;DR Rift wins the hardware battle hands down, but the overall VR experience of the Vive overshadows the game pad experience of the Rift at the moment.
Thanks for posting a well thought out and fair comparison. Re Vive setup this varies so much but to me it just feels more complicated than it actually is when you first open the box.
System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
Preciate the compliment. I haven't read anyone else's comparisons, so I may just be repeating everyone else or have a totally different take on them.
The Vive set up is pretty easy if you know what you're doing, but there's one or two things that weren't explained that well for me..a firmware update for the controllers wasn't mentioned and I had to get a controller paired through a little trial and error..I also had the "floor calibration" missing button problem which confused the hell out of me until I heard a solution online. I knew the floor wasn't suppose to be in the ceiling LOL.
Sorry I could not put my two cents in this since,the only one that showed up for the party is the HTC VIVE,really don't mind it took so long to set up I only had to do it once I knew the unit wasn't a portable thing with all the wires and the computer you have to carry around.The Oculus still has its own spot and laptop just hoping the spiders don't take over.
