Without a doubt VR is starting to take off, 4 years after it became commercially available to most home users.
This is in no means partly due to the success and accessibility of Playstation's PSVR.
In this series of blogs I will be checking the pros and cons of 3 of the most popular HMD's.
HTC Vive, Oculus Quest and PSVR. I'll also take a look at the software and stores along with the changing times for VR games.
Today's spotlight is on the most expensive of the three, the HTC Vive. Is it worth it?
HTC Vive has a 1080x1200 resolution @ 90Hz comes with two excellently responsive control wands and two Bluetooth Lighthouses. It works perfectly well in a stationary position with one lighthouse, but excels with both lighthouses for room scale games...if you have the space!
The Lighthouses come with brackets to wall mount them which works best, standing them on shelves etc. works OK but they do vibrate a little and this can lead to some tracking issues. You can also buy camera lighting tripods to mount them on.
The original HMD head strap is pretty bad and you will need to shell out to upgrade to the deluxe audio head strap which makes a world of difference.
The headset is noticeably heavier than the other two and becomes hot very quickly, with little ventilation it also become foggy at times. It becomes quite uncomfortable after a couple of hours of gaming...and pretty wet.
Cabling from the HMD to your PC is generous but pretty thick, which can make it feel a little restrictive when playing room scale. You're likely to get it wrapped around you at first but after a while it becomes second nature to step over during play.
Given that your PC is up to spec the Vive performs excellently, the tracking is top notch for both the wands and HMD , there are few to no glitches when playing after a proper setup.
Steam is the go to store for Vive games, while initially the selection seemed quite large, the majority were nothing more than tech demos and wave shooters.
Times are changing now however, with more quality titles coming to market. Although the store is still saturated with cheap low quality titles there are some genuinely good games on offer.
Vanishing realms, Beat Saber, Mages Tale, Onward, Boneworks to name just a few.
Bethesda and Ubisoft were two of the first large studios to put out VR content, but the result was underwhelming. Both Skyrim and Fallout 4 VR were plagued with
optimisation issues at launch and neither really hit the nail on the head despite ongoing patches. If you compare the majority of reviewers time in game as under 10 hours compared with 70-1000 hours (I shit you not) for the non VR version it speaks volumes.
One of the most anticipated games of 2020 is Half Life: Alyx. Regardless of the fact that its VR only. Hopes are high that this title changes the standard by which all subsequent VR releases will be judged.
SO is the HTC worth it? In a word, no.. but with a caveat
IF you have a dedicated space in which to set up a gaming area and leave it set up.
IF you already have a powerful enough PC to run these titles, that are incredibly resource hungry.
Then its definitely worth consideration, especially as Steam games are comparatively cheap to buy here in China and you'll be done with many of the titles within the 2 hour refund limit. This goes some way to offsetting the initial, quite expensive outlay.
After the honeymoon period of wonder and excitement playing in VR has worn off, the Vive is simply too much maintenance to bother with, especially if your time is at a premium.
Next Blog I'll give my honest opinions on the VR headset that made the biggest impact on the VR market as a whole. The Playstation VR,
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