After a lot of development kits and a few delays it seems that 2016 is finally the year of VR. By the end of the year, not one, not two, but three consumer headsets should be strapped firmly to heads around the world - taking their lucky owners out-of-this-world! The timing is uncanny, and obviously any sane person is only going to be buying one, so we have ourselves a fight.
Our contenders for virtual supremacy are the trailblazing Oculus Rift, the space-detecting HTC Vive, and the PS4-compatible PlayStation VR. The technical differences mean they all have their ups and downs but which is the one for you? I’ll be updating this article as hardware is announced, prices and dates made available and software is launched and tested.
I’ve tried the latest versions of all three headsets, at time of initial writing at least, and I’ll endeavour to take every opportunity to keep testing the hardware and keep you up to date. So let’s get it on.
Oculus Rift
It makes sense to start with the Oculus Rift, as without Palmer Luckey’s initially makeshift VR efforts we probably wouldn’t be where we are today with VR. Oculus Rift has been the poster boy for VR, with a name that sounds cool and hardware that has gone through numerous development kit versions to whet our appetites.
The result is that the current Rift is technically excellent, with strong support from developers and a dedicated fanbase. Of course, the company has now been bought by Facebook but, to date, we haven’t see any significant change in strategy or direction as a result.
All that makes it the leading VR headset designed to work with PC hardware. It does require quite a powerful PC though - with a good processor, plenty of RAM and a £250 graphics card as a baseline (details below). No problem if you already have the hardware but many will still require a graphics card upgrade. Add that to the £500 asking price for the headset and you end up with a hefty £750 bill - though arguably the card is a worthwhile investment for any gamer anyway.
The headset itself has impressive specifications. A high-resolution OLED panel, with a 110 degree viewing angle, running at 90Hz is at the core. Then there’s all the sensors you’d expect to track head motion, plus an IR-based USB sensor that sits in front of the player to track motion. There’s also the snazzy looking Touch controllers, each of which tracks hand motions plus has an analogue stick, trigger and face buttons, though these aren’t available at launch.
Instead, the first version comes bundled with an Xbox One controller and it looks like Oculus will largely concentrate on sitting and stationary/standing experiences at first. Like all the headsets here, you have a cable running to your PC or console, so gambolling about isn’t really possible. For all its technical excellence, and lightweight design, the Rift still straps to your head via some pretty simplistic stretchy straps.
With its many iterations in development, Oculus has had a lot of time to build tools to allow developers to get the most out of the headset and there’s lot of VR experiences already out there. The full launch lineup hasn’t been announced, but will include space flight sim Eve Valkyrie, platformer Lucky’s Tale, plus we should see an RPG called Chronos plus Insomniac Games’ Edge of Nowhere, an arctic survival game.
By utilising the PC platform Oculus is tapping into a potentially huge market of PC owners. However the kind of gaming hardware required is a tiny subset of that. The biggest PC hits are often those that allow play on even modest hardware, often with little upfront cost - you can’t get much further from free-to-play than a £500 headset. PC gamers often spend months or years playing the same competitive games ad infinitum, totting up huge numbers of hours, and nothing on Rift yet will tap into that kind of compulsive, community play.
And then there’s the big players in the market. Steam has its huge customer base, many of whom don’t go elsewhere to buy games and might find Oculus’s own software store a big mental leap. Then there’s the likes of Blizzard, who has yet to show any inclination to move to VR, but without which any PC-based platform will have to compete for time.
The Oculus is currently riding high. However I’m a little concerned by the handling of its so-called consumer launch. Limited stock meant hardware for the initial launch in March sold out in minutes, order today you’ll have to wait until at least June for your headset. A limited supply of hardware could spook developers, who then wait for a larger installed userbase before launching their games.
A victim of its own initial success isn’t the worst downside to have, admittedly, but Oculus needs to get its product on shelves in stores if it’s ever to break out of the enthusiast niche.
HTC Vive
HTC’s entrance into the world of virtual reality came as something of a surprise. With no gaming pedigree, the company’s headset could easily have been dismissed as a ‘me too’ project. However its slick hardware, impressive location tracking and partnership with gaming behemoth Valve immediately propelled it into the limelight.
While Oculus has taken its time with Rift, the Vive’s gestation has been far quicker and is currently confusing us somewhat. An initial pre-production unit was widely demoed last year, alongside a promised release date of 2015 (which always seemed optimistic). That was moved back into 2016 and at the same time a refined dev kit was unveiled. Whether that hardware is what we’ll be buying, or HTC is to unveil a further hardware iteration in just weeks is unclear.
Presuming the consumer hardware is similar to the new dev kit, the HTC Vive is very similar in many ways to its main competitor. Relying on top-end PC hardware to power it, the Vive has the same basic specifications as the Oculus Rift - a 90Hz, 2,160x1,200 OLED display with 110-degree viewing angle.
As a phone manufacturer HTC has plenty of experience with sensors and there’s the usual collection of accelerometers and gyroscopes here. However, the Vive also includes an impressive laser tracking system, which lets you rig up external sensors to track your motions around a small-room sized area. Of course such a feature requires software support from developers and you have to factor the extra cost in as well, plus you’re still cabled to your PC of course. The same sensors also detect the wand-like controllers’ motions in space.
With similar hardware and a headset also aimed at dedicated PC gamers, the HTC Vive is going head-to-head with the more established Oculus (if you can be established before you’ve shipped a single consumer unit). Because of this it has less grass roots support amongst potential early adopters, but then HTC has got Valve.
The HTC Vive is the only headset to date to support Valve’s Steam VR, though nothing we’ve seen means there won’t be more later down the line. While the Oculus started as a very open platform, it was a dev kit after all, the company is now betting on its Oculus Store to generate income, rather than hardware sales and that will mean locking down its development APIs and only providing them to those making VR experiences to sell through the store.
While SteamVR isn’t an open platform (though there is an open version called OpenVR), it ties PC gamers to using a store that they already know and largely love. For a company that’s primarily a retailer these days, Valve engenders incredible goodwill amongst the gaming community (just don’t mention Half-Life 3 …).
With an unknown price and software support currently limited it looks like the Vive is a riskier proposition compared to the Rift. However, Valve’s support makes all the difference, and software support could build very quickly. That said, to get the most out of a VR headset you need dedicated VR games not just tweaked PC titles and Valve does have a reputation of taking its time to get things done.
Pre-orders start on February 29th and a price, with all its accessories, will really help understand where the Vive sits in relation to the Oculus. Personally I’d sit it out to nearer the end of the year before working out which of these close-matched competitors has the legs in the long run. As in a console war, the range and quality of software, and where you buy it, looks to be a bigger differentiator than the device you buy initially.
PlayStation VR
And now for something completely different. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive do have their differences, but both are fighting over essentially the same market, gamers who most-likely already own high-end PC rigs. Sony will instead be targeting the approximately 30m gamers worldwide who own a PS4 console.
At first glance it looks to be a separate market, but then the kind of early adopters likely to buy a VR headset this year are also likely to own both a PC and games console, so there’s considerable competition still.
It’s hard to say just how strong a play Sony’s is. If you were to make a shortlist five years ago of companies you though could deliver a good VR gaming experience, Sony would almost certainly be on it, while its main competitors either wouldn’t get a second thought or barely existed. Compare them to the huge brand power of PlayStation and you’d think it would be a done deal.
Sony’s advantage is also its potential downfall though. While I’m now convinced that the PlayStation 4 is powerful enough to produce compelling VR experiences at the kind of frame rates and detail levels required in order to make them comfortable to play. It’s undeniable that the console isn’t as powerful as the recommended PC specs for the Oculus Rift and that could limit the graphical fidelity and detail in games.
The headset’s resolution is lower than its competitors at 1,920x1,080. That may be keep prices down, or ease the processing burden on the PS4. It may also be because with PlayStation VR, the console outputs to both the headset and your TV at the same time, so others can see what’s going on, and potentially allowing for co-op gameplay experiences. Sony understands the living room and family dynamics and this kind of feature proves that.
Sony looks to have given the design of the headset a lot more though than most as well. It looks far cooler than the still prototype appearance of the others. The donut shape sits on top of your head, with the weight sitting downwards, like a hat, with the screen just sitting lightly on your face. It’s a big improvement over the strapped to your face feel of Rift and Vive.
There’s also a bonus in that Sony’s long-running Move controllers are perfect for many VR experiences, while the DualShock controller is so familiar to PlayStation gamers that they’ll only need get their head around one new bit of kit, rather than two or more.
PlayStation VR will build on the huge success and 30m installed userbase of the PS4
Then there’s Sony’s trump card, its long-running relationship with software developers and it’s own internal studios. When it comes to creating great software experiences, Sony is up there with the best, though I’d love to see what Nintendo could do with VR too!
With the PlayStation 4 being such a huge success, if anyone could bring VR gaming to the masses then it’s Sony. It may not have the best specs, but the design is top-notch and you know it’ll just work when you plug it in. This is likely to be the must-have gadget this Christmas and our only concern is that we’ve yet to be a told a price.
If Sony can't manage to launch VR into the mainstream, then maybe no one can, though it's worth noting that historically-speaking successful console peripherals are very thin on the ground indeed - for every Kinect (yes, but it sold very well), there are many 32X's and Powergloves.
Conclusion
I’ve talked a lot about games here, but what about other types of VR experience, such as 360-degree videos and photos. Well those are great, and I’ve loved them on headsets such as Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR but I don’t see anyone buying an expensive headset like these for anything but gaming, and gaming-like experiences, at first.
After all that discussion my advice is pretty straightforward for the time being: wait. If you’re planning on buying a VR headset this year and own both a PC and a PS4 then I’d err towards PlayStation VR as being the superior, hassle-free experience, and one that you can show off to others. If you absolutely must have the best possible graphics, don’t care about playing with others and like tinkering with hardware then it’s simply impossible to call it between Oculus Rift and HTC Vive right now.
I’ll update this article once I get a price for the HTC Vive but until then I really can’t come to a clearer decision than that.
