So it's looking like 2015 will be the year that VR goes mainstream. It's been a year since
Facebook bought Oculus Rift, annoying a lot of kickstater funders, but also putting billions of dollars of backing and incentive into VR development. For a long time it was looking like facebook would be the leader in VR, followed next by
Sony's Project Morpheus. The primary difference being that the RIft was primarily intended for PC, wheres Morpheus would be for consoles.
But then a few weeks ago HTC and Valve
announced the Vive headset. Which is interesting because it makes a fundamentally different assumption that the Rift and Project Morpheus. Rather than assuming that a user will be sitting in a chair with a standard gaming controler, Vive assumes that you have an up to
15x15 foot empty room, and comes with wall-mountable cameras to track your location in the room and a pair of
motion detecting handsets. While Morpheus and Rift attempt to be VR headsets, Valve's Vive headset attempts to be a Star Trek holodeck. Complete with the promise that a 15x15 foot space is large enough to trick you into thinking it's much larger through clever use of turns. And the ability to have multiple people in the same room all participate in the same simulation because the tracking cameras can track multiple headsets. And incidentally, also solves the infamous
motion sickness problem. Why? Because when you push a controller forward and see youreslf move forward but your body doesn't actually move, the fluids in your inner ear and feeding you sensory data that disagrees with what the headset is feeding your eyes. But creating a visual experience, but allowing actual real of your body to match, that problem is solved.
But Valve's design does come with a few quirks. How many people have 15x15 empty rooms to game in? Sure, the cameras work perfectly well if confined to a smaller space, but what about pets and coffee tables? Vive's software apparently puts up a visible effect to warn you of objects, but probably more than a few people will be banging their shins into things while gaming. And how many gamers are going to want to spend hours of gaming time walking around? Meanwhile the Rift seems to intended for more specific types of simulations.A cockpit or driving simulator for example, where it's expected that you would be seated. Like
Eve Valkyrie, for example. While Vive can do that too, it also does things Rift can't: create a more fully immersive experience. Sitting in a chair and pushing a controller forward is not going to be as immersive as actually walking forwards. But then, can Valev's controllers compete with the
Nimble Sense hardware acquireed by facebook, that allows you to interact with your hands directly without a controller at all? And while room wide positional tracking is something the Vive is built for, the
Rift can do that too, though not particularly well.
And then with have
Microsoft Hololens, supported by default with the upcoming release of Windows 10, complete with yoru own personal
virtual assistant, Cortana. Microsoft's
hololens demos seem impressive, but they're not exactly the same as the other hardware up for discussion. While Rift, Morpheus and Vive are intending to create
virtual reality simulations, Hololense is intending to create an
augmented reality experience, where the virtual aspects sit on top of the background rather than replace it. While interesting, it's been my observation that Microsoft never does anything right on day one. Their usual model seems to be to release terrible products and then refine them over years until they gradually dominate. Their choice to have
minecraft be a flagship AR game, for example, seems especially suspect. But Microsoft is good with the long game, and their domination of the operating market is likely to give them an advantage.
And finally, worthy of mention for those who won't be spending several hundred dollars on a headset and who happen to already have cellphones or tablets with motion tracking, is
google cardboard. Build it at home, pop in your device, and voila! Instant VR.
Personally? Morpheus doesn't interest me. I'm a PC gamer. Rift seems great, but I dislike facebook, and the immersion of being able to walk around with the Vive appeals to me. At the same time, the Nimble Sense hardware seems superior to Valve's handsets which remind me of wii controllers. And Hololense? I think Microsoft doesn't get it. But in a few years they might have caught on and overtaken everyone. We'll see.
So when will all these devices be available? Google cardboard is available right now, if you have a cardboard box handy. Oculus Rift
developer's kits have been available for a while, and a commerical release of the Rift is
anticipated by Winter of 2015. Vive? By
the end of 2015. Morpheus?
Not until 2016. But if you're exclusively a console gamer, it might be worth the wait. Hololens? No official release date yet, but
developer versions are anticipated in July 2015, and with a promised
2015 release of windows 10 so it would come as no surprise if the hardware were released this year as well. If we're fortunate, we'll have a lot of choices by Christmas 2015.
And 2016 is going to be a very interesting year in VR.
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Topic: The upcoming virtual reality hardware war - Orders now live, $600 Rift (Read 13654 times)