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I'm sure you're points are valid for your setup, but just a few notes:

- The Oculus Touch controllers will require placement of two cameras (when they come out), similar to the two Vive base-stations. You're currently comparing the setup of a seated Oculus experience to a Room-Scale Vive experience, it's like comparing setting up a Chromebook vs a Desktop computer. Yea, the desktop takes more setup, but it's more powerful.

- There's 1 3-in-1 cable on the Vive that has HDMI, USB, and power, and then there's a really short one that connects to earphones/headphones. Are you sure you are talking about the consumer version?

- If you lose tracking often, you probably need to alter your setup, or make sure you don't have a large reflective floor or mirror in your tracking space. The Vive uses lasers for motion tracking that have sometimes been interfered with due to high reflectance. I've personally never had tracking issues I couldn't resolve by repositioning.

You also don't need to put them at weird angles, mine are on either side of the room, basically 1 foot above my head facing each other. They have a rather wide 120 degree field of view.

- You can adjust the focus distance on the Vive, might want to check that if you are having blurriness. That said, the resolution on both devices is identical, but they are both not super-high as they are the first consumer devices of this generation, so it won't be picture perfect. That said, it doesn't generally hurt the immersion if the game/experience is well designed.

That's just some information / my experiences, the Oculus is a great device, I just personally think the Vive really leap-frogged them in this first round.

On the set up, it might be right but unfortunately I do not have a room to spare for a full room VR.

The odd angle I am refering to is having the sensors above the player. I used a bookshelf on one side but had to buy a tripod on the other side.

On the cable, the problem is that even when seated, you end up turning on yourself, and then you don't have one but many cables to manage that you cannot see. It almost requires some assistant.

On blury edges, it doesn't feel like a resolution problem, rather an optical problem. Perhaps my headset wasn't adjusted properly but I couldn't find a way to improve it.

Ah ok, yea I haven't really tried a seated experience on the Vive, I could see that being the case.

I use command strips on the walls for my base stations in my bedroom, so no tripods take up any space and no damage to the walls =)

The blurry edges could be a focus thing, could also just be how it is, I've personally experienced a better FOV on the Vive than the Oculus, but I could be mis-remembering.

Blurriness can eventually be helped a bit by supersampling (already possible, just need a powerful system to handle it), and some work being done on things like foveated rendering [1] helping to create higher-res displays.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKR8tM28NnQ

Setup can be full of issues for sure - but when it is working properly you should never be losing tracking. Are you using the sync cable? Things got a lot better when I started using that. I still am not understanding the "many cables" functionally there is only one. It is a pain to deal with, but if there is any roomscale with Oculus touch, you will run into the same issue until we can get wireless systems.

Blurry edges depend a lot on where the headset is sitting on your head, and playing with the straps can really improve the experience (even the feeling like it's heavy). Mine is fairly tight on the sides and then long on the top strap, pulling everything back a lot further than it feels like you are supposed to.

Anyway, not trying to criticize your preference, but hoping your Vive experience can get a bit better.

Vive is not designed for seated use. You really need to use it in 3D space to appreciate it.

That may be the case but VR manufacturers needs to think hard whether they will stand a chance to go mainstream if they require a full room with no furniture.

You don't necessarily need a full room with no furniture, just a big enough space in a room, which can be temporary - for example, I use half my kitchen with the table moved back. You only need 1.5 x 2 m minimum (though that is a little restrictive).

I think 100,000 early adopters given the current very high price suggests going mainstream isn't much of a problem.

Your tracking issues may be due to how your base station on your bookshelf is positioned. Is it clamped to the bookshelf and tilted downwards? If it is just sitting flat, then that's not following what the instructions said, which is to have both base stations positioned at least 6 feet high and tilted downwards 35 to 45 degress.

It is, I bought a tiny tripod for the book shelves.

> On the set up, it might be right but unfortunately I do not have a room to spare for a full room VR.

Are you using roomscale? It wasn't clear from your comparison. It's the biggest difference that matters between Vive and Oculus. Roomscale is fundamentally a superior experience. Until Oculus has a generally available implementation of it, Vive is at a different level above Oculus.

I am using the seated experience. Unfortunately I do not have a spare room to dedicate to VR

Since you already have the Vive, you should at least try roomscale once by temporarily moving around furniture. It changed my perspective on the potential of VR.

There's code paths in the driver for artificial vignetting - likely added as a means for reducing risk for motion sickness in fast moving scenes. If those paths are activated erroneously (there's quite a few bugs transitioning between game and menus)

I also own both, and I find myself agreeing with you on half these points and disagreeing on the other half.

In particular, the Vive is really only harder to set up because it's the full deal right out of the box. The Rift is just the headset, an Xbox controller, and a single webcam that you can place on your desk. Out of the box, the Rift is wholly incapable of room-scale VR. Of course, that will change with Touch, but at that point it won't be any easier to set up.

I will agree with you that the Rift's picture quality is significantly better. The Vive suffers from severe chromatic aberration towards the edges. You do get used to it very quickly because of how engaging the experiences are, but when I switch between the headsets it's the very first thing I notice.

I think the problem of comfort is a complex one. The Rift is definitely lighter and it has a better weight distribution. And yet somehow the Vive is really not uncomfortable at all for me. It has a much softer face cushion for one thing. Overall I'd say it's a bit of a wash in this department. I slightly prefer the Rift, but not as much as I thought I would.

I've heard a lot of good things about the Oculus, especially the touch controllers.

My main experience demoing the dk2 around was that the first thing everyone did was try raising their hands in front of their face, and that motion sickness hit about 30% of people. The Vive fixes both of those problems, and they're first to market.

Still, facebook has deep pockets, and from everything I've heard their headset is better and their controllers are better. I can't wait to give them a try.

The next big thing that I want in VR is multiplayer.

There are actually already a bunch of pretty decent VR multiplayer games (at least for the Vive). Some of my favorites, on Steam:

Battledome, Rec Room, Hover Junkers

There's a bunch more, but these are the most polished, in my opinion. Battledome/Rec Room really shine because you can get right next to a person, wave at them, talk to them (built in mic on the Vive headset). It's super immersive and cool to be literally right next to a person that is maybe in another country.

I've tried Rec Room and I really like it. It's amazing how much fun it is to play with someone else.

It still seems like early days for multiplayer. There's no way to see other people's facial expressions, and the avatars are pretty basic. There's also no support for having a local multiplayer experience. Hololens is doing some interesting things, allowing multiple headsets to see the same holograms, but their hardware is still super limited. The void is also doing interesting things.

I guess I should have said that I want better multiplayer.

Oh for sure, these aren't even large studios, most of these are single developers working part-time after hours on them.

The Void's Ghostbusters game looks amazing. They are using custom hardware and a more expensive tracking technique, but it is an awesome example of a "VR-Arcade" sort of business.

I've only tried Hover Junkers off your list but it is my current favorite game. It's so awesome, my friends come over and play and my main issue is how to deal with a gross sweaty headset after someone has been jumping around in it for 30 minutes. :)

If you like pool, Pool Nation VR (http://store.steampowered.com/app/269170/) is both multiplayer and fairly polished.

Disclosure: A friend of mine worked on it.

Many of the top titles on both Vive and Rift are multiplayer (Elite Dangerous, Battle Dome, Eve Valkyrie, Tabletop Simulator, Hover Junkers, Pool Nation VR, etc.) and that's only games, ignoring purely social multiplayer experiences like AltspaceVR. I'm not sure why you think there is a lack of multiplayer content currently or in the pipeline (Project Arena, Ripcoil, The Unspoken, RIGS )...

I agree that the Vive Basestations are a hassle to setup, they do have an advantage of not having to take up a USB port and not having to be connected to your computer compared to the Oculus cameras. The Touch controllers will come with a second camera which I think is required.

I agree with you that the Oculus is more comfortable most of the time, unless you have glasses. The Vive has enough space to accommodate glasses, but I could not get the Rift on comfortably, though they fit fine in my older DK2.

My Rift doesn't have a vertical green line between the two eyes. That sounds like a technical issue.

Maybe distance between his eyes is larger than distance between your eyes, and he is seeing the edges that aren't normally seen for most people.

I haven't found the Vive uncomfortable as far as weight but it did slip off my head when I was jumping around playing Hover Junkers. If it were lighter, it would probably have stayed in place.

I didn't like the light gap around the nose of the Oculus but I would assume it's easy enough to "plug up."

For niche cockpit genres like simracing Oculus is probably the better buy. Comfort is king when you're trying to run an endurance race.

Personally haven't tried Oculus, but the Vive does get really heavy on the face after 30 minutes or so.

Funny enough Dunkey parodies the complexity of installing and using the HTC Vive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z55rJznqF3E