Few virtual reality (VR) developers are fortunate enough to be working with all 3 major head-mounted displays (HMDs) at this point in time. Technolust studio Iris VR is one such team, bringing its original title to the Oculus Rift and a Papers, Please-inspired spin-off,Technolust: Scanlines to both PlayStation VR and HTC Vive. With so much time with each HMD under his belt, the studio’s Blair Renaud recently took to Reddit to offer some thoughts on working with all 3. Specifically, the developer talked comparisons between the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
“Let me pick on the Vive a little bit,” Renaud began. “This thing is pretty neat. I can walk around and use motion controllers with pretty solid tracking, resolution of the HMD, lenses and HMD are all comparable to the Rift. That being said, in it’s current state, I really can’t see a lot of people buying it. For a number of reasons.
He continued, looking at SteamVR’s Lighthouse sensors that track a user for Room Scale support. “I can’t see someone going on a website, clicking “Buy awesome VR” and having the box that showed up at my place show up at theirs. Setup of the hardware is ok for trade shows, but it more that rivals ikea furnature [sic] in the butt pain catagory.
He then cited the relatively short battery life for the controllers, stating that each has about 20 minutes of use in them before players lose tracking, though it’s not yet confirmed if this will be the case for the consumer kit. “They take about 4 hours to charge and aren’t of a standard type you can buy at the corner store,” Renaud noted. “Again.. this is in it’s current state, and I’m sure much will be imporved for the consumer version.
The developer also turned his attention to the Oculus Rift and its Oculus Touch controllers. “Though the Rift doesn’t have motion controllers in the development kit, I beleive the controllers are much better suited for VR in general,” he said. “I don’t currently have Touch controllers, but was very impressed with the demos I tried at Occulus Connect 2. Overall, everything in the Rift CV1 is of higher quality, from stability in woftware to overall build quality. We’ll see if that changes for the Vive before launch.”
But what of PlayStation VR? According to Renaud, the device is in a ‘league of its own’. “Huge install base to start, solid consumer experience, single target for developers. I think they’ll do really well. Not as sure about the move controllers, but am quite happy that the Dual Shock 4 controller is also tracked.”
“Let me pick on the Vive a little bit,” Renaud began. “This thing is pretty neat. I can walk around and use motion controllers with pretty solid tracking, resolution of the HMD, lenses and HMD are all comparable to the Rift. That being said, in it’s current state, I really can’t see a lot of people buying it. For a number of reasons.
He continued, looking at SteamVR’s Lighthouse sensors that track a user for Room Scale support. “I can’t see someone going on a website, clicking “Buy awesome VR” and having the box that showed up at my place show up at theirs. Setup of the hardware is ok for trade shows, but it more that rivals ikea furnature [sic] in the butt pain catagory.
He then cited the relatively short battery life for the controllers, stating that each has about 20 minutes of use in them before players lose tracking, though it’s not yet confirmed if this will be the case for the consumer kit. “They take about 4 hours to charge and aren’t of a standard type you can buy at the corner store,” Renaud noted. “Again.. this is in it’s current state, and I’m sure much will be imporved for the consumer version.
The developer also turned his attention to the Oculus Rift and its Oculus Touch controllers. “Though the Rift doesn’t have motion controllers in the development kit, I beleive the controllers are much better suited for VR in general,” he said. “I don’t currently have Touch controllers, but was very impressed with the demos I tried at Occulus Connect 2. Overall, everything in the Rift CV1 is of higher quality, from stability in woftware to overall build quality. We’ll see if that changes for the Vive before launch.”
But what of PlayStation VR? According to Renaud, the device is in a ‘league of its own’. “Huge install base to start, solid consumer experience, single target for developers. I think they’ll do really well. Not as sure about the move controllers, but am quite happy that the Dual Shock 4 controller is also tracked.”
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