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My review - latest VR (HTC Vive Oculus Rift Samsung Gear VR)
#352374 - 04/03/16 11:40 AM
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Yesterday I was lucky enough to try out the consumer models (or near as dammit of Vive) of HTC Vive, Oculus Rift & Samsung Gear VR at UK's Gadget Show live.
There did not seem to be any noticeable difference in quality between either of them, but what was surprising is how low the image quality is. The Samsung demo appeared to be an animation, where as the other systems we tried were both real-time experiences.
Considering you need a top of the range PC to experience the best, you expect to see something really good out of either the Vive or Rift (you may have read about specs in the past, such as 720p or 1080p per eye etc).
When trying out the Rift, I felt as if I was playing games from the late 90's era in VR (it does not help that you see chunky squares like dots all over the image, imagine looking at pixels through a magnifying glass).
The game that demonstrated Rift the best at the show was where your in a wheel chair moving around a haunted house, it really felt like your inside the PS2 version of Alone in the Dark, with the image made up of large blurry square blocks on screen.
Overall we both came to the same conclusion, that it's a very enjoyable experience using VR, but it just is not there yet. Thus your better off investing in 4K tech than this. However, it would be great for parties etc, but would the interest in low quality visuals last?
I was thinking of purchasing one of these for 6DoF games such as Descent Underground. However quality vs overall cost doesn't make it justifiable for us, at least yet.
pro(s):
- you really feel your there inside the game
- the wow factor of above
- has huge potential for gaming
con(s):
- low res type image considering "overall cost" (blurry square blocks / limitation of tech vs cost)
- potential motion sickness
- requires top of the range PC for best VR experience
Something I saw posted on a forum:
"Its the equivalent of reducing your HDTV's horizontal resolution from 1920 to 320 so yeah its going to be pixelly, the Rift would need 6 times the resolution 36 times the megapixels to appear as sharp as
an FHD TV."
Would this potentially set you back the same cost as a reasonably priced car if produced with current tech?
Edited by zambr (04/03/16 03:52 PM)
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| CTOJAH |
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Now, all we need is VR Pr0n
[Re: zambr]
#352392 - 04/03/16 05:24 PM
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| Tomu Breidah |
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No Problems, Only Solutions
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Reged: 08/14/04
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Re: Now, all we need is VR Pr0n
[Re: CTOJAH]
#352403 - 04/03/16 09:33 PM
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Motion Sickness
[Re: Tomu Breidah]
#352525 - 04/05/16 11:40 AM
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Been reading that motion sickness is mostly due to looking around an environment without moving your head at the same time (meaning you should keep eyes forward only and move head).
That would explain why I felt sick after the Samsung demo, looking around at all the marvel characters with my eyes moving a lot. That demo was only 5 mins, doh!
I guess on the Vive and Rift I was not moving my eyes much.
Edited by zambr (04/05/16 11:46 AM)
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Re: Motion Sickness
[Re: zambr]
#352542 - 04/05/16 06:32 PM
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> Been reading that motion sickness is mostly due to looking around an environment
> without moving your head at the same time (meaning you should keep eyes forward only
> and move head).
>
> That would explain why I felt sick after the Samsung demo, looking around at all the
> marvel characters with my eyes moving a lot. That demo was only 5 mins, doh!
>
> I guess on the Vive and Rift I was not moving my eyes much.
If by "Samsung demo" you mean you demoed the Gear VR headset, I wouldn't be that surprised, as it's still just a phone on a frame. I would be surprised if the average phone had enough power to drive good enough visuals for a compelling VR experience and have an IMU with a fast enough update rate to not cause motion sickness.
This is part of the reason why I'm pretty stoked to see what the tech that GameFace Labs has been touting: It's a completely un-tethered experience like the Gear VR, but the latest version has the screaming-fast Nvidia Tegra X1, which gives you more power than you'd get with a phone-caddie headset, not to mention an actual, fast IMU to minimize motion sickness. I spent about an hour playing with one of their headsets a few months ago, and didn't get sick in the slightest.
Regarding motion sickness, though, another large component isn't so much moving your eyes, it's about your view angle changing gradually without your control, which throws off your vestibular system because what you're seeing is essentially desyncing from the angular momentum that you're feeling. Oddly enough, this issue doesn't happen with large, instantaneous changes in view angle. In the case of a first-person shooter, being able to change your view angle with the game pad *and* by moving your head tends to cause massive motion sickness - but if you modify the controls so that you can only look left/right with the pad, not up/down, and also make it so that each push of the stick to the left or right "snaps" your viewpoint around in 45-degree increments, there's next to no motion sickness at all.
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