Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[ZeroEx]

I'm still holding out to see what the competing VR solutions are like before I decide.
People need to chill out over the price tho. VR was never gonna be as cheap as they were anticipating. There's a lot of tech in the whole package besides the headset. That's just my opinion of course.

 

[orangpelupa]

Turning against consoles now, his twitter is a goldmine. Surprised nobody told him to shut up already

Yeah, probably see some shady sites going to get happy time with Palmers tweets

 

[RedVi]

Ha... It's $1100ish here because they added $50 to the USD price, charge $140 USD for shipping, and then conversion. Also, imported items over $1000 are meant to be hit with 10% tax, so it could end up being over $1200...

Way to go Oculus...

 

[MrFox]

I'm still holding out to see what the competing VR solutions are like before I decide.
People need to chill out over the price tho. VR was never gonna be as cheap as they were anticipating. There's a lot of tech in the whole package besides the headset. That's just my opinion of course.

Right, it was never going to be the 200-400 ballpark they said early on. Nor reduced below 350 to make us swallow the facebook acquisition, which they assured enables them to lower the price. Nor the repeated 350 target. When they were showing the final prototype at trade shows, for gamers and journalists to review, they continued saying the target was around 350.

Those statements held up until they opened the preorder and you blame people being surprised of the continuous bullshitting. Geez I wonder why people are furious, they should have known it was all bullshit.

I never considered Vive for my PC because I bought into the BS of oculus value proposition, but all of a sudden Vive is legitimized as the most honest player in the PC space, despite the slightly inferior optics.

 

[zed]

Must be some stuff up, only US $463 here in nz.

Hopefully once supply is no longer outstripping demand (whenever the hell that might be) the price will come down.

Nice, a month after launch the price will drop from $599 to $499. I guess I'll wait then, pity about the early adopters though

 

[manux]

There is reddit ama ongoing with palmer luckey. Good questions and interesting answers...

https://nr.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...key_founder_of_oculus_and_designer/?limit=500

Little snipped to wet the appetite

I handled the messaging poorly. Earlier last year, we started officially messaging that the Rift+Recommended spec PC would cost roughly $1500. That was around the time we committed to the path of prioritizing quality over cost, trying to make the best VR headset possible with current technology.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t make money on the Rift. The Xbox controller costs us almost nothing to bundle, and people can easily resell it for profit. A lot of people wish we would sell a bundle without “useless extras” like high-end audio, a carrying case, the bundled games, etc, but those just don’t significantly impact the cost. The core technology in the Rift is the main driver - two built-for-VR OLED displays with very high refresh rate and pixel density, a very precise tracking system, mechanical adjustment systems that must be lightweight, durable, and precise, and cutting-edge optics that are more complex to manufacture than many high end DSLR lenses. It is expensive, but for the $599 you spend, you get a lot more than spending $599 on pretty much any other consumer electronics devices - phones that cost $599 cost a fraction of that to make, same with mid-range TVs that cost $599. There are a lot of mainstream devices in that price-range, so as you have said, our failing was in communication, not just price.

 

[MrFox]

So... The lens is 14 elements in 5 groups, all glass with 3 aspheric and two fluorite high dispersion lenses? Like many high end DSLR lenses?

We have a professional bullshitter here.

 

[hughJ]

Pretty sure he's talking about a lens element, not some contrived comparison with a $10k wide angle rectilinear lens assembly or whatever.

Serious question - why are you so emotional over this? You're posting here like you're on some sort of personal crusade of nitpicking and it really doesn't reflect favorably on you at all.

 

[MrFox]

How many times have I posted here?

 

[manux]

How many times have I posted here?

If you go and read the reddit q&a you will see answer from mr. palmer to the exact point you were raising. Single element versus optics consisting of group of lenses and what he really meant in the answer above.

 

[hughJ]

By 'here' I mean on B3D in general, admittedly I'm probably lumping your post together with the ones of similar ilk before it. The outrage and gnashing of teeth is bizarre enough on Reddit, but to see similar reactions spill over here isn't something I'm used to seeing on this forum. Sifting through Twitter, Reddit AMA, etc looking for reasons to be further outraged on account of the price of a piece of consumer electronics is childish.

 

[manux]

I'm quite happy with oculus trying to do the better thing instead of the cheap thing. Consequently it will be pretty easy to choose which solution is right for you or if none of the options is suitable.

Want to have it cheap? Piggyback on your phone
Want to have better experience but not spend a fortune, how about that ps4+morpheus

and there is the clear highend with expensive pc and expensive headset option from oculus and quite likely the even more expensive option from htc.

I also like how oculus is trying to create standard environment where developer can trust on certain level of audio, motion tracking, controller, computing peformance(minimum spec pc) etc. This way there is good incentive to for example create proper 3d audio that all users will experience in guaranteed minimum quality level.

 

[MrFox]

By 'here' I mean on B3D in general, admittedly I'm probably lumping your post together with the ones of similar ilk before it. The outrage and gnashing of teeth is bizarre enough on Reddit, but to see similar reactions spill over here isn't something I'm used to seeing on this forum. Sifting through Twitter, Reddit AMA, etc looking for reasons to be further outraged on account of the price of a piece of consumer electronics is childish.

Your attempt at a character assasination fallacy wasn't lost on me.

I will not post here again as it is obviously pointless.

 

[hughJ]

I wasn't trying to run you out of any particular area of B3D forums, I certainly don't lounge here enough to consider any territory marked. My question was presented quite literally - I've seen you post elsewhere in these forums and I've never had any real reason to question your maturity (or anyone elses here), which is why the sort of outrage shown and fishing to look for more felt so strange to me in a place that's generally quite civil.

 

[eastmen]

So I apparently have 2 oculus rifts preordered..... Some how. My gf thinks we might have as many as 7 preordered. Going to be an interesting couple of days.

 

[Clukos]

There is absolutely no way they are losing money selling this thing for $599 w/o VAT. They don't have the luxury of making profit off of licensed software like Valve and Sony do. And the comparison to a high-end phone/TV is hilarious, those are usable products, not some peripheral.

 

[orangpelupa]

@eastmen what happened? Oculus Store think you need 9 Oculus Rift so it automatically pre ordered them for you?

 

[hughJ]

As crazy as it sounds I almost think the bigger Kickstarter backer gift is being able to bypass this whole pre-order nonsense. The idea that a pre-order getting lost or reshuffled in the queue could conceivably translate to several months of shipping delay would gnaw at me. I'd be shocked though if anyone ends up getting billed for more than one, if anything people with multiple orders might get them all cancelled as Oculus might assume you're a re-seller. That's what forced them to halt all Chinese orders for a while with the DK2.

 

[eastmen]

@eastmen what happened? Oculus Store think you need 9 Oculus Rift so it automatically pre ordered them for you?

It kept giving me errors ,so I kept trying. 2 so far have order information generated. I have like 9 unrefunded charges on my visa .

 

[MrFox]

I wasn't trying to run you out of any particular area of B3D forums, I certainly don't lounge here enough to consider any territory marked. My question was presented quite literally - I've seen you post elsewhere in these forums and I've never had any real reason to question your maturity (or anyone elses here), which is why the sort of outrage shown and fishing to look for more felt so strange to me in a place that's generally quite civil.

You must have missed my posts about online DRM.

I have strong opinions about major event which shape the industry. I express them with a significant amount of passion, because I have enough knowledge of past historical events which delayed or prevented the advancement of this admitedly horribly superficial artistic medium (the game industry) which never seem to be capable of reaching the level of other established mediums, and it is stuck in a worse place than pure entertainment... In my opinion it is because the majority of consumers and industry workers accept the status quo without question. It is strongly tied to accessible technology, and user base.

Oculus was supposed to be driving VR adoption, which I am very passionate about for personal and professional reasons, and I am angry about the seemingly deliberate misleading tactics. I want to call them out, because I am here to express my opinions. Hence my two (2) posts above about it.

Civility is relative, and cultural. I am not sure if this is a culture clash, I do not know nor want to guess your nationality, but if you consider outrage at public figures to be a form of immaturity, in my culture it isn't. Outrage might be sometimes irrational, but it triggers discussions, and exposes the gullible. It's also when you'll see defenders come out wherever there is outrage against their business interests. I like to trigger it, but I am not here to make friends or influence people. I am an anonymous consumer.