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Comment by pdehaan | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious about what you mean by software experience. Presumably oculus home gets replaced, but is the performance of things like tracking noticably different?

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Yeah, the home screen is "different" (though that's actually probably where they are the most alike). It's stuff like the boundary setup experience is very different. Their respective SDKs are incompatible with each other, so the available software library is very limited on the Focus and Neo. But they are also mostly "stock" Android devices (other than the VR related APIs), so as a developer there are no artificial barriers like on the Oculus platform.

Tracking-wise, there isn't a lot of difference. Certainly not enough to warrant giving all your data to Facebook.

I haven't tried the Pico but the Vive Focus is not anywhere close to the experience of the Quest, especially when it comes to tracking.

The Quest stands out because the tracking is as accurate and consistent as on desktop class VR headsets. The software and user experience is a clear notch above any other standalone headset.

Yes, the Quest is better, that can't be denied, but I don't think it's head-and-shoulders better. I think we need to be a little more forgiving of the minor flaws of the other headsets on the market (like the Vive Focus) specifically because we need to not allow Facebook to realize their plans of dominating VR [0].

[0] https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...

I do think it's a level above the competition, thanks to their multi-year head start on the hardware-software integration (a la Apple) and their focus on VR comfort/quality. A year after it's launched, there's still no real competitor on the mass market side, just a few enterprise attempts (aka we haven't spent enough to get enough high-quality 3rd party content).

I think it might already be too late in terms of dominating.

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