A brief comparison of the three most spoken about Virtual Reality Head-mounted Displays..
A brief comparison of the three most spoken about Virtual Reality Head-mounted Displays..
A quick look at the three most well known consumer Virtual Reality Head-mounted Displays (HMD)..
2016 is already set to be the year of Virtual Reality. Companies such as Oculus leading the charge with their long-awaited ‘Rift’, the world has gone VR crazy & other companies intend to satisfy that craze.
This article; we will be focussing on three of the big players; the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive & the PlayStation VR.
The Oculus Rift
Oculus VR was formed by Palmer Luckey, Scaleform co-founders Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov, engineers Jack McCauley, Nate Mitchell and Andrew Scott Reisse. Oculus Rift being their first consumer endeavour into the VR world. Released as a Kickstarter Project in 2012, the product received unanimous attention immediately; passing their $250,000 goal within the first 24 hours & a total of $2,437,429 raised by the campaign end.
Through various Developer Kit releases & Demos, their product the Rift will finally begin shipping end of March of this year.
The HTC Vive
The Vive is a HMD built by HTC in conjunction with Valve Corporation.
Unveiled in March 2015 by HTC, the Vive is designed for use with Valve’s virtual reality platform, OpenVR.
During his Immersed 2015 keynote, Phil Chen, Chief Content Officer for HTC and Founder of the HTC Vive explained that he “stumbled upon VR” and first reached out to Oculus in 2012 to somehow work together. After being refused, that later led HTC to Valve which turned out to be “serendipity”. Phil also explained that HTC and Valve don’t have a clear dividing line between each of their responsibilities, and HTC is very much a partner in the research and development process
– Source: Wikipedia
The Playstation VR
The PlayStation VR is takes a different approach and operates on a completely different platform that both the Rift & the Vive being only accessible to owners of a PlayStation 4.
Project Morpheus was first announced at The 2014 Game Developers Conference. Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida introduced the device on March 18, 2014 and stated Project Morpheus was “the next innovation from PlayStation that will [shape] the future of games.”
On September 15, 2015, it was announced that Project Morpheus has been named PlayStation VR.
On October 8, 2015, Sony acquired SoftKinetic, a tech startup whose focus includes visual depth-sensing gesture recognition, for an undisclosed amount.
As of November 2, 2015, Sony has confirmed that they are still shooting for a release in the first half of 2016.
– Source: Wikipedia
Here is a short technical comparison of each HMD:
As you can see, each HMD has commonalities between them including integrated audio, HDMI connectivity, directional & projectional sensory systems, the Rift & Vive share the same display resolution/ refresh rates. These commonalities end here though as each HMD has it’s own Controller interfaces & proprietary tracking technologies.
The Rift makes use of ‘Oculus Touch’ – two hand-held wireless controllers which enable with omnidirectional movement detection thanks to a single external sensory device. The Vive however uses a similar two-hand wireless controller system, but make use of two sensory ‘tower’ blocks to interface and convert human motion into the digital world. Both devices can take advantage of a Microsoft Xbox One Controller – the Rift even shipping with one.
As for the PlayStation VR, this makes use of Sony’s already established PlayStation ‘Move’ Controller system, or optionally a Dual Shock 4 Controller.
Now, the question being which one is the one for you – or best value? Even with the knowledge we have it’s a tricky question to answer due to platform differences & unknown price points. Straight of the bat PC gamers are focussing on their two options, the Rift or the Vive. Opinions have been split over these devices; one party arguing that the Rift has a superior hardware HMD with regards to the package and ease of use, others argue Valve’s involvement with the Vive project and it’s ability to utilise SteamVR will edge it out ahead of the competition.
Oculus have been smart to get certain information out early – system requirements, cost & the fact that you can pre-order the device now with a release date would – and has – already tempted so many a prospective buyer. HTC/ Valve really need to hurry in this department.
PlayStation VR, you could say sits in a much more comfortable position since it will be the first VR system for the Console generation. Along with an already established control system that users will be familiar with, plus that fact that 36 million PlayStation 4’s have been sold, arguably already has the largest market by far. The comfort factor with the PlayStation VR is also support; having a single device for programmers to code their games for allows for a much higher universal application of the technology.
Judging from various reports & consumer feedback, each device is very, very special with promise to be the next technological leap not only in the gaming world, but both the social and enterprise workspaces. We might just be saying good bye to clogged up work-based commuting and hello to virtual offices sooner than we expect.
