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HTC Vive Reviews Thread

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary

Here's a thread for HTC Vive reviews (please post any you find) as the official launch is hours away.

Note: If you're not interested in the Vive on the Oculus forums then don't click the topic or read it.

Cramgaming.com

https://youtu.be/wB2qXp2SSNI



Destructoid

"VR is here, and I have been sold as a believer. While the Oculus is a very strong VR headset, the Vive feels like it's in a league of its own comparatively. The big sticking issue is how the market reacts to the price long term, and if development of new games maintains a consistent pace."

Kotaku

While the Vive’s best moments are some of the coolest I’ve experienced in video games, I can’t recommend purchasing it right now. You’d be spending $800 on something that’s going to be much better after months’ worth of software (and maybe even hardware) revisions, and there currently aren’t enough great games to justify the investment.

The Vive really is something you should see for yourself, but if you want to try it, go to a store that’s demoing it, or make friends with somebody who already ordered one. I’m excited about what the future holds for the Vive, but the future’s not here yet. 


The Verge 8/10


    GOOD STUFF

  • Lots of innovative motion control-based games and experiences
  • Emphasizes motion control and body movement
  • Rich, customizable user interface
  • Solid construction
  • BAD STUFF

  • Heavy and ungainly
  • User experience can be glitchy and confusing
  • Many games still feel unfinished
  • Highest total cost for a VR headset


POLYGON 8/10

So yes, the Vive asks a lot from anyone buying the platform, but it gives just as much back, if not more so. Everyone has the same reaction after a demo, in our experience: They remark on how complicated it seems and how little they’d want to set one up in their own home, and then they get wide-eyed and want to tell you all about how amazed they are by the experience. Valve’s challenge is to get the second part of that reaction to overrule the first, and the company will have an uphill battle on its hands, but it’s off to a very promising start.

GAMESPOT

Before you take the plunge with Vive, you have to prepare yourself accordingly. Unlike Rift, Vive comes with strict spatial requirements if you plan to utilize its hardware's full potential. It's not the easiest suite of hardware to set up, nor is it as refined as Rift, but Vive delivers the most advanced VR experience to date, a luxury that comes at a cost and with compromises. Where Rift feel's like a VR headset built for mainstream consumption, Vive caters to the hardcore crowd that will stop at nothing to get the best VR experience. Over time, Oculus can presumably catch up when it releases its Touch controllers and sells individual sensors to expand Rift's interactivity and motion-tracking capabilities. But for people who can't wait, who are willing to go the extra mile right now, Vive is the only way to experience today's most advanced VR technology from the comfort of home.

ENGADGET 

The Vive is no doubt the geekiest thing I have in my home right now -- and that's saying something. It's an impressive effort by HTC, which has had a rough few years in mobile, and Valve. It's oh-so-close to being the Holy Grail of VR experiences. It's just too bad that ergonomics get in the way of truly enjoying it.

At the same time, I'm sure there's a market for the Vive, even in its current incarnation. Hardware geeks are known for sacrificing their bodies for the glory of technology, and I'm sure they won't have a problem with a few aches and pains for glorious, immersive VR.

Tested - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDBp6OnsKY



IGN Review - 9.3/10 


AMAZING

The Vive's room-scale VR and motion-tracked controllers make it an incredibly powerful system.


Pros:
  • Amazing VR
  • Room scale
  • Motion controllers
  • Comfortable
Cons:
  • Tracking issues



System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
381 REPLIES 381

rat8cheese
Protege


I think it will be time that the vive boys get their own forum. However for the time being it will be cool to see some reviews here.

It´s already funny to see comments like "rift is JUST a new perspective, while the rift is a whole new thing blabla" though.

The vive is the same product as the rift with a few advantadges and some disadvantadges. It´s not something completely different than the rift, I do think that some people will be disappointed.

Suprisingly enough, we will find out that the vive has a slightly larger FOV and therefore a slightly worse SDE/image quality.

We will find that the chapeone system is awesome and that the "wands" add heaps to immersion.

We will find that the rift is slightly better when it comes to weight and ergonomics.

In about 3 to 6 month, when the touch release, the vive will have no advantadges anymore. The only thing that really seperates the vive from the rift is the front facing camera. That is a cool gadget that could be very useful in future applications.

It is not enough to beat optics and ergonomics though.

All of this is subjective rambling though. Looking forward to some objective reviews in this thread!


Points well taken.  Ergonomics I think will be subjective for each person's head shape/size.  When I said 'perspective' I should have elaborated.  When the 30 games revealed for Rift launch I found almost every game is what we already do now.  Edge of Nowhere (Tomb Raider), Luckey's Tale (Mario), Chronos (Fixed camera classic Res Evil), and some tower defense games where you're looking down in God mode.  I can't overstate how disappointed I was with this bc it was the same old stuff just a "different visual perspective" with the headset.  That's when I began looking at the Vive.  The tech demos Arizona Sunshine, Space Pirate Trainer, etc. while not fleshed out was more along of what I pictured when I thought of VR a few years back.  I think immersion and presence come down to more than graphics like many have said.  I don't care if both headsets have SDE, I tried DK2 last year and didn't care it had SDE bc I liked the technology of VR and feeling immersed.  So then it comes down to tracking and 1:1 motion controllers...those immerse you in the VR world more than SDE takes you out of the world in my opinion.

And no more advantages when Touch releases?  Too early to say.  That camera aside from convenience has potential.  I'm no developer but I can already picture some mini-uses and augmented reality uses.  Too much unknown with the Touch:  Price?  Tracking vs lighthouse? Release date?  

Out of curiosity, lets say touch releases for more than $200, would you be okay with that?  Then you have the "complete system" like the Vive but still with no camera.  Let's say it's $50 but room scale is inferior to Vive, would you be okay there?  Of course it could be $50 and superior to Vive given it's releasing later so could be more refined and tech costs could be lowered.  But again, just too many unknowns whereas the Vive you know what you're getting for your money day #1.  

Yes, I can't wait until the reviews start coming.  Like I said I still have my day 1 pre-order of the Rift.  I don't mind trying out both then deciding for myself and selling the other given how much the these headsets will sell for on Ebay but right now it's looking more like the Vive is the keeper.

snappahead
Expert Protege
Ugh..can we not, people? Does it always have to turn into a lame thing? Can't we be happy for VR finally arriving and be happy for all the people getting consumer VR regardless of which system you get? It's so deflating that there's all this bickering at the same time that we're seeing the birth of a new medium and these two incredible pieces of technology are FINALLY getting into the hands of of the VR community. 
\
I remember when it was about VR and how excited we all were.
i7 3820 16 gigs of Ram GTX 780ti

nightauditor198
Adventurer
I think I would be ready to pay up to 250 dollars for the touch controllers. I would prefer them selling in the 100-150 bucks range, but if they would stick a 250 buck price sticker on it, I´d still buy it.


Actually the whole motion controller thing is a pretty big factor in all of this for me. I really do prefer the touch design, and people who have tried it seem to like it too. I really do think that they are superior to the vive wands in a lot of ways.

We´ll see what´s what when they release. In the end snappahead is completely right though. We all should be happy that we can even have this discussion 🙂

Stelzer
Expert Protege
There I so much hate coming from Reddit //vive to //oculus I hoping this will calm down in a couple of months. 

snappahead
Expert Protege

This forum has some strange bugs. I accidentally put the cursor in the quote it seems to be stuck here for eternity.
i7 3820 16 gigs of Ram GTX 780ti

snappahead
Expert Protege

Atmos73 said:




I remember when it was about VR and how excited we all were.


But then Palmer sold out and people never forgave him for it.


That's on them and I won't go into that, but I think the bigger problems started the moment an alternative was realized. Once HTC/Valve announced the Vive, many people decided that they had to pick a side. I don't understand that mentality and hope I never do. Pick a system and enjoy. Why is it more complicated than that?
i7 3820 16 gigs of Ram GTX 780ti

mire
Explorer

Stelzer said:

There I so much hate coming from Reddit //vive to //oculus I hoping this will calm down in a couple of months. 


Me too. Just enjoy whichever you got, stop trying to make other people feel bad because they chose the other option.

Anonymous
Not applicable

snappahead said:

[snip]

Once HTC/Valve announced the Vive, many people decided that they had to pick a side. I don't understand that mentality and hope I never do. Pick a system and enjoy. Why is it more complicated than that?


I think part of it is based on a feeling that (a bit like Betamax and VHS, or Blu-ray and HD-DVD), whichever headset 'wins' will be the one getting support and content - and that's a reasonable assumption to make. There's no guarantee that you will ever be able to buy a VR headset, safe in the knowledge that practically all VR games will be playable on it.

Headsets may eventually move towards a unified standard, but there'll always be the push to include some great new feature (a stereo front camera for proper AR blending, a haptic glove instead of a wand, or eye focus tracking), and for developers to write games/utilities/apps that make full use of a non-standard feature.

If you buy a headset and it gets crowded out, you've invested your money and enthusiasm in a dead-end. If the headset you've bought becomes the basis for the de facto standard, then you can be assured that even if you upgrade it will be to a system that's largely familiar, just better.

So people champion the system they favour, both because they want it to have long-term support and plenty of content, but also because they've invested their enthusiasm and perhaps just a teensy bit of their self-esteem in their ability to make sound decisions.

I, of course, am no exception 😉

mire
Explorer


Atmos73 said:




I remember when it was about VR and how excited we all were.


But then Palmer sold out and people never forgave him for it.


Nah, the free Rift made up for that. It's at least a 300% return on my Kickstarter investment ($300 turned into $900 of hardware), and I can bump it to 500% for the near future if I decide to cash out and sell my headset on ebay.

The realities of bringing this thing to marker were always going to entail some level of "selling out", unless they wanted to be completely dependent on Steam, which would be a terrible business strategy no matter how much you love Valve. Even if they'd taken on private investors instead of selling to a bigger company, they still would have ended up with a proprietary storefront.

Now that the shipping problems have been addressed, people need to settle down and let this all play out.

SlimBoyFat
Adventurer

mire said:


Stelzer said:

There I so much hate coming from Reddit //vive to //oculus I hoping this will calm down in a couple of months. 


Me too. Just enjoy whichever you got, stop trying to make other people feel bad because they chose the other option.


+1 it all comes from people's own insecurities about their own choice if you ask me. Luckily I'm in a position to buy both (all three if you include PSVR) and hence I don't need to take sides just as I don't take part in the console war as I'm lucky enough (or stupid enough!) to be able to buy them all. It's the scourge of the modern age, the pathetic fanboy/hater culture that seems to fill the whole of the interwebs. Enjoy what you've got and don't worry too much about that what you haven't got.
Intel i7 4770K @ 4.5 GHz | Asus Z87 MAXIMUS VI HERO | 16GB 2133MHz | GeForce GTX 780Ti 3GB GDDR5 | Samsung 500GB SSD | Thrustmaster TX | Occulus Rift DK2