Oculus Rift or HTC Vive – Which Should I Get?

For starters, he complains about the comfort of the Vive vs. Oculus due to the weight of the Vive. He’s clearly using a 1st rev Vive, though, whereas the latest rev, which you can order today (and I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that the target audience is those buying a new one) is actually lighter than the Rift.

As someone who has used both the 1st rev Vive and the latest and who also owns a Rift with 3 cameras, the Oculus Rift really only wins out for me in 2 areas:

1. The controllers are awesome but they’re not better than the new knuckles controllers. I even agree with his point that some experiences are actually better with the large, unwieldy Vive controllers.

2. The price. The Vive really needs to come down in price to be a worthwhile recommendation, especially now.

Other than that, the Vive wins for me. You can choose whichever audio/band style you prefer, the ease of setup for the lighthouses is light years better, and the experience for most people when done 1-to-1 is better (for all the people I’ve demo’d them to). I typically show people AZ Sunshine, the Blu, Job Sim, and some seated games on both and then show off Lucky’s Tale for the Rift (awesome game) and The Lab for the Vive. Without fail, everyone has preferred the Vive with a few people mentioning that the Oculus did have less distracting visuals in some areas.

Even for the price, though, I would recommend new users wait for the newer Vive when the knuckles come out. Especially with the Facebook fear-mongering, the Rift is just not where it needs to be to compete. There are too many places where it takes you out of the presence that VR absolutely needs to be compelling.

I doubt I'd ever buy anything from Facebook, but then again I'm an oddball in that my FB account has been unused for many years. Last time I logged in it was a rotting cesspool of shitposts by people I had long stopped dealing with, not very enticing to go read.

There are a few key deciding factors: people with (1) VR rooms > 4m^2 (~12'x12'), (2) large glasses, or (3) staunch anti-Facebook beliefs. If you fall into one or more of those camps, Vive is your best choice.

Otherwise, at $399 (vs. Vive's sale price of $699) the value of the Rift simply overwhelms all other factors. With ceiling mounted sensors, Rift's room scale tracking is within a percent or two of Vive's, though in a smaller range (as above, about 12'x12'). It also includes more software that adds to the value.

Note that a full apples-to-apples comparison adds the following costs to Rift: a 3rd sensor, a USB card, mounting brackets, and extension cables. Total: about $130 (note that the article misstates the price of a third sensor as $99; it is $59). This remains $170 less than Vive's $700 sale price, excluding software value.

Note that an equivalent comparison could also add costs to the Vive: A deluxe audio strap (for similar comfort and integrated audio), and potentially the upcoming Knuckles controllers. Total: between $200 and $250 (assuming a cost of $100 to $150 for the controllers, which seems conservative given a single replacement controller is $129 from HTC), getting back to the similar price advantage of the Rift.

Tracking is less of a hassle on the vive. Fewer cables, easier.

rift has their own ecosystem which can also play almost every game on the steam library.

vive primarily has steam, but with some hackery (revive), you can play some rift games.

Hardware-wise, they're practically the same. Comfort-wise, Rift takes it.

Development-wise? tough, but I think Rift takes it as well. You get a free license for unity or unreal4 i forget which. And they've improved the developer documentation greatly recently.

The good thing is most multiplayer games support both.