For Father's Day, my older daughter unit and her boyfriend unit took his father and me out...

@dashcloud Actually, it doesn’t require that massive a system; except for the video card (GTX970), what I have now meets or exceeds the recommended specs. I haven’t actually looked, but a kid on line for the demo after us said it is about $200.

@dashcloud That is, $200 for the video card… the Vive is about $800 and the Oculus is $600, sans wireless controllers.

@dashcloud Just ran the Steam VR readiness app (or whatever it is called).

My graphics card (a GTX730) failed as expected and the CPU is rated as only capable (tho it was able to keep up except for ~2% of the frames tested, and this while transcoding video for a stream and doing some other stuffs).

@dashcloud as an owner of the gear VR and being in possession of an Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype which was basically the last Hardware revision prior to release to manufacturing I can say unequivocally that the experiences between the two are night and day. Most of the content on the PC is not in fact available for gear VR, though there are plenty of fun games available on oculus’ android store.

Don’t get me wrong the gear VR is a ton of fun especially if you have a Bluetooth controller compatible with your phone. With that said the instant I fired up the prototype Oculus Rift the difference in experience was massive. I would say that the single biggest difference between them experience-wise is the lenses in the actual Rift. The fresnel lenses offered in the rift have an uncanny effect that completely eliminates the screen door effect. This enables much higher immersion vs. the gear VR where you are constantly aware that you are staring at a screen because you can make out the pixel boundaries.

Couple that with the lack of dependency on battery life and the much larger library of far more expensive experiences and there really is no comparison. Although the gear VR offers a port to charge your device while playing the fact is that in practice this causes massive overheating preventing you from playing.

For someone for whom getting into VR proper is not an option gear VR is a great alternative but it should not be seen as anywhere near equivalent in any way.

@baqui63 GTx970? GUESS WHO JUST BOUGHT A GTX960 LAST WEEK? fml.

@JerseyFrank Goat reporting for duty!

@JerseyFrank Sorry

The GTX970 is the minimum recommended GPU. I’ve been doing some reading and to “future-proof” things one probably wants even better than a 970.

However, both the Vive and Rift will apparently function with weaker video cards, more than adequately for some titles and with reduced performance (and perhaps some other issues) on other titles.

@baqui63 there’s no such thing as future proofing. Sorry to disappoint. The idea of upgrading a computer and being able to measure up for five or even ten years is a farce. Especially with how rapidly VR is going to evolve.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@jbartus lol…

Trust me, I know this (thus my use of quotes around the term).

I’ve been building/maintaining/using computers of one form or another since high school (1978ish) and have thrown away literally dozens of things that were once the closest thing to “future-proofing.”

@baqui63 I have a 20 MB hard drive that was $3000 new… would you like it?

(Not really, dad would kill me… but hey it still runs!)

@jbartus lololol… And my daughters would not be happy either.

I never owned one, but I used to sell and install Cromemco Z-2H systems that had 8" 11MB hard drives in them. I found this Cromemco brochure with specs on the IMI 7710 hard drives.

I don’t recall pricing on the drives alone, but I want to say $5K, and that was in early 1980 dollars (which is $12-$14K in 2016 dollars). Frakking amazing how cheap technology has become and it will become even cheaper as time goes on.

@mfladd lol… she ^ is using a Vive…

My younger daughter made the comment that she’d probably not be able to play for more than an hour or so without losing it, at least at first.

During the Oculus demo, there is a scene where you are standing on a small platform way up in the air… that was a bit unnerving and got to me a bit.

I thought Google Tiltdraw (3D drawing program and part of the Vive demo) was the most impressive thing… I could see totally using it to sketch ideas in 3D and be able to walk around and through them.

@jbartus What do you think of Razer’s planned entry into the market? http://www.polygon.com/2016/6/13/11913140/razer-hdk2-virtual-reality

@dashcloud truthfully I’ve had no experience with the Razer headsets. Being dependent on OSVR has both benefits and detriments of course, as with any Open Source project. I just can’t justify forking out $400 to try it when I’ve got a Rift on-hand, I’ll see if my co-worker who’d heading up the VR charge has any experience with it and get back to you.

Just one clarification, that headset will be their second offering on the market, the link you provided is for the second edition of their Hacker Development Kit.

@jbartus So, a question if I may: Oculus or Vive?

I’m not really able to buy until retro pay from last four+ years comes to me later this year (I hope, or early next year), but I am seriously considering one of these (or maybe something else) before too long.

DU’s bf has pretty much decided on a Vive, tho he also won’t be buying for a while (he needs more than just a new video card, so needs to save up about $2K).

@baqui63 that’s the million dollar question. People I know who have had hands on both (I’ve not personally used a Vive) are largely pro-Vive and I am leaning that way myself. To me, the single biggest feature the Rift is missing that the Vive has is the passthrough camera. Why this wasn’t considered a vital feature for the Rift is beyond me, I’m guessing it was largely a casualty of weight shedding.

A lot of people talk about the Rift under performing in room-scale situations and while I can see how it might be less capable I also believe that it is not irreparable. From looking at the Oculus platform, I sincerely believe that as Room Scale VR gains traction it will be a simple matter for them to add a secondary camera, if necessary, to supplement the one already included to reach parity with the Vive’s dual camera setup. As such, I personally feel that fit and comfort are more important than any other factor and, if possible, everybody should try both and decide accordingly.

I will say that if I hadn’t come into possession of one of the Crescent Bay models I did have a Rift preorder in that I would have happily kept (since ‘cancelled’) and will likely keep my spot in line for the controllers, picking up a Vive in the nearish future. But that’s me, I’m a technology consumer of the highest order.

@jbartus Cool, thanks!

@baqui63 de nada.

@baqui63 one more thing… just on the topic of Rift Room Scale…

@jbartus if you are in fact “a technology consumer of the highest order.”, what the heck are you doing around here?

@jaybird I’m sitting at a $2500 desktop with a $4000 desktop next to me. I gotta justify the expense somehow and meh eats up plenty of hours.

Besides, meh helps me get things I neither need nor have a defined purpose for that I would otherwise be unwilling to expend resources towards. My Banana Boat speaker purchase is already paying dividends in our new hot tub we had no prior intention of buying and I’ve been handing out LED Work Light / Flash Light combos to all of my loved ones for their cars like candy.

@thekenya … And I am a parental unit.

@thekenya

Meh.

One of the first things to know about the forums is that most of the time it’s safer to “just go with it”.

@FroodyFrog, @thekenya, et al…

Seriously, tho… what is wrong with using unit in this way? I get that I can be dense and out of the loop, especially on socio-political stuffs, but ???

@baqui63

I’m starying out of that.

I merely was stating to @thekenya that it’s just easier to read what meh-mbers write, and nod/shake your head, than to start asking questions.

@baqui63 it would appear that @thekenya felt it was impersonal and objectified them, perhaps? I dunno. Not an issue for me.

@thekenya It’s a reference to the recurring original-cast Saturday Night Live Coneheads skit. The daughter (Laraine Newman) called her parents “parental units.”

@SSteve wow, another oldy among us - i saw the inaugural episode with andy kaufman doing ‘mighty mouse’

thanks for the memories…

@jbartus @baqui63 i think it is, perhaps, a comment on the gender neutral, or gender opaque, nature of the Meh.rum

@DMlivezey Andy Kaufman was a genius.