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posted by
cmn32480
on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:22PM
from the is-it-live-or-is-it-memorex? dept.
from the is-it-live-or-is-it-memorex? dept.
Virtual reality or VR headsets are one of the biggest tech trends of the year, and could soon be part of our daily lives.
The first VR headsets were released earlier this year, and have already been selling in their thousands.
The PS VR even outsold every other console on the market, during its first week of release in Japan.
Tech expert Mark Zuckerberg, who created the social media site Facebook and owns a VR company, thinks that Virtual Reality is: "going to change the way we live and work and communicate in the future."
So, we asked four tech fans to put some of the best VR headsets through their paces, and find out what they think...
Headsets reviewed were the PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Microsoft HoloLens.
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Kids Review the Top Virtual Reality Headsets
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:24PM
I have access to the HTC Vive, Occulus Rift and the Hololens.
Microsoft Hololens: An interesting idea but the execution is flat out bad. Want a visual of the hololens? Grab a 27 inch monitor and hold it out at arms length. That's the view port size almost exactly. I went up to a 27" imac and did this to compare and they line up perfectly. The bad part is that since the view port is at arms length, you can't get close to anything as it goes out of view. One demo is a 3d ballerina that you can set in space, "click" her, and she starts dancing. Not a very good model but an interesting demo as you can resize these animated and non animated demo models. So you size here until she's about 5.5 feet tall. Now walk up to her and you're just looking at a floating head as the rest of her is out of view. So you have to stand back a good 10-15 feet to get the whole model in view. Drop a hamster in a wheel on a table and try to get in close for a look...Oops! the view port is now behind the hamster and you see nothing. How about one of those snazzy menu's you can stick to a wall? Just be sure to stand back at arms length to see it! You can actually miss a lot of stuff because its simply out of the view port. It's also heavy and has a clumsy adjustment which makes the unit sag on your head lowering the view port or cutting it off. The upside? Amazing space tracking. You can set a model somewhere and put the thing away for weeks and then take it out and everything is where you put it. I stuck a skull in the ceiling behind some duct work and a beam. Went back three weeks later and it was still there. If they get the view port closer closer so you can walk right up to stuff for a close up along with a wider and taller view and you have a damn amazing piece of hardware.
HTC Vive: Amazing. First VR I have ever tried and I was really impressed by the room scale and fluid head/room tracking. Only played a few demos but they were really fun. The Valve lab demos are very impressive. My favorite is the little game Long Bow, a defend the castle from a tower using a bow and arrow. You pick up the bow with the controllers and it feels pretty realistic as you pull the arrow back the and the controller vibrates to mimic the tensioning of the string. My friend came in for a visit and was instantly hooked playing the Brookhaven Project, a simple zombie shooter. The controllers become your hands and they add a lot of immersive feel. Another feature I like is it has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so you can use any set of headphones you want (including the cheap ear buds they give you). My brother bought in a pair of fancy noise cancelling headphones he uses for gaming and that really made a huge difference.
Downsides? The headset is somewhat heavy. The gasket around the front which seals out light is a sweat sponge. Passing around a sweat soaked headset with friends or coworkers is pretty gross. The resolution could be higher but that will probably be solved in the next iteration. You also need a serious gaming rig to run it. My brother worked with a custom computer builder to build a really fast rig for that thing. GTX 980 Ti, i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, water cooled. So while the Vive is what, $800? The PC you need easily costs double if not more. Expect to spend about $3000+ total. Another gripe is the umbilical gets in the way at times so a method of suspending it from the ceiling is a must or a person chaperone it. Suspension should be easy as the umbilical is quite long, about 5 meters. The room scale sensors are wireless for the most part but they need a line of sight to keep in sync.They loose sync if they get bloacked or arent perfectly aligned. So you need to wall mount them up high or use the sync cable if you plan to set them on a table. But honestly, the gripes arent that big a deal and manageable.
Occulus Rift: I only used it once after using the Vive multiple times. Good head tracking and the display is comparable to the Vive. It's also much lighter than the Vive but has a more flimsy looking design. No room scale is a deal breaker. And using a regular xbox controller vs. the dual controllers for the vive is awful. Once you go room scale, you cant go back. And the crappy built in, headphones are just that, crap. You can remove them but you need something called an audio tool. I'm not giving it a thumbs down yet. It just needs some improvements.