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Comment by manyxcxi | Hacker News Reader

I worked on a demo experience for the Vive unveiling and for the first time in my career I felt like VR was more than a gimmick. We were working with beta (maybe more like RC) hardware, had no controllers, and only one tracking cube.

I had two a-ha moments with it that sold me... There was a small demo room called something like Shopkeeper (think an old goblin's hut filled with wares) and I actually reached out to grab a faerie/wisp that was buzzing nearby. The second was a Valve demo app where a Portal like robot came stomping into the room and I actually jumped the F out of the way, only to have the floor start falling out from under me and scrambling back to safety.

For a few fleeting moments at a time there was no virtual, it was reality and it was freaking amazing. And all this without the added immersion the controllers provide.

The Vive is by far the best VR setup I've tried. It's made the rifts we had around seem like toys.

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Those demos are both part of The Lab, a set of VR demos distributed by Steam. To everyone else with a Vive: get it. It's free, and it's frickin' awesome, even though the Steam description spoils one of the games.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/

I tried a Vive the other day. It's the closest experience to magic I've ever had which didn't involve sacrificing chickens.

What game does the description spoil? I have a Vive and have played all the Lab demos and I don't really see anything that spoils any of them.

For those who want to show Vive to friends: http://imgur.com/qJucDyO

Also if you have a somewhat okish wheel+pedals Project Cars, Assetto Corsa (needs ReVive) and Dirt rally are all great experiences. Though this doesn't take advantage of the room scale stuff (so can be done with an Oculus) but still found that great enough to go and buy a Vive for my home racing sim setup.

There's also now SculptrVR for 3D building/drawing.

I'd update that to add H3VR

H3VR seems so mundane if you hear someone describe it:

"Yeah, it's a game where you get to shoot a variety of guns, all of which are very nicely modeled and have accurate mechanics like bolt handles that work etc in a variety of shooting ranges"

I mean, who would want to play that... but when you do, oh my goodness is it satisfying. The fact that it's VR makes rather mundane sounding experiences incredibly immersive and great. I've pretty much stopped playing all the great "normal" non-VR games that I bought in the steam sale because of VR.

Now imagine if you could create a triple A game on this platform. Holy fucking shit, it's going to be the end of the world.

That's fantastic, thanks!

A vive headset without controllers is by itself objectively worse than a rift on all accounts. Maybe your experience shows how important software is.

There are definite points of contention on this. The Vive headset doesn't face nearly as significant a glare issue as the rift, it is far better for glasses wearers than the rift and for some people the improved brightness is a significant advantage.

Integrated audio is definitely nice, but not a deal breaker and the improved ease in reaching a comfortable setup is definitely and advantage, but it makes trade offs in other areas.

You could split hairs about where the trade offs were made (fov vs SDE) but the displays and optics are so similar that those dont matter.

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