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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

Dangerous2women
Expert Protege

Synthetic said:

people are going to regret getting vive at a later date, just my $899 opinion


No they're not. Vives full room scale can be judged NOW and it has been, often quite favorably. I mention this as it's the only true differences between the two.

we don't know what oculus touch will do or how well it will be but right now you'll need at least another ir tracker for oculus to match full room scale. 

Thatll add  to its overall price which could be well over 899$. 

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
Dangerous2women The Touch comes with a second camera.  Developers who have the Touch dev kit say it works just as well as Vive, up to about 4x4m, where cameras are placed Vive-style in opposite corners to optimize coverage.

Chances are the Touch will be priced to keep Rift and Vive very close.  My money is on $200 for the Touch.
I'm also hoping they'll ship the second (Touch bundle) camera with a longer cord to allow kitty corner placement.  Valve definitely got the camera placement right for minimizing the occlusion umbra.

As for right now, the two big differences are that Vive has Wands at release, and it has the front camera.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

Ryder35
Protege
Wow, just got my "we are about to finalize your order" email from HTC. Ordered beginning of April and thanks to a "feature" of Digital River's order system got an April Wave 2 shipping date. So excited.

Ordered my rift on order day at 20 minutes and have late May estimate. Make of that what you will.

VizionVR
Rising Star
https://mobile.twitter.com/JeremySelan/status/721152355580776449/video/1
Not a Rift fanboi. Not a Vive fanboi. I'm a VR fanboi. Get it straight.

I think CV1 will do room scale well, but room scale won't be good... may not even be worth doing even... without Touch. So the question for us CV1 users is... WHEN sorry, when will we get Touch?

Chewie71
Adventurer
 Wow! looks like Monday is the day for a lot of order arrivals.

VizionVR
Rising Star
Digital Foundry review with some Rift comparison. It's a fair review that calls out positive/negatives for each device.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phC-uG5Yues

Not a Rift fanboi. Not a Vive fanboi. I'm a VR fanboi. Get it straight.

Zoomie
Expert Trustee
Thanks for posting this.  One of the more informed and unbiased video reviews I've seen.

My takeaways: 
My reason for preferring the Touch design (without having tried either) suddenly clicked.  To me, the Vive wands look like holding a remote control or laser pointer that is used to interact with the environment.  In many applications so far, the controller is pictured in the game and the top of the controller is what interacts.  You're interacting with an object that interacts with the world.

Games like Job simulator are the stand-outs, where your hands DO interact directly.  From what I've seen of the Touch, they remove that "tool" for interaction and allow you to interact directly.  I guess I'll have to wait a few months to see if my instincts are correct.  For games where you're always using a gun or sword, it's not a big deal.
I hope developers move away from the 'use a tool to interact" mode of design.

Can Touch do room scale interactions?  I'd say it has to.  Oculus must get it working in order to level the playing field.  People who tried Touch at games conferences have already said it did room-scale just fine.  Developers have likewise said it works.  I think they delayed it because they want 100% reliability.  The capability is there, but they want to make it fool proof.  Look at how much effort they've put into making the HMD simple to use and now apply that to hand controls.  

Every review of the Vive loves room scale.  Oculus definitely needs to catch up soon.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke

Hanover
Rising Star

Zoomie said:

You joke Chewie71, but sometimes the simple solutions beat the elegant ones.  There's an urban myth that NASA spent millions of dollars designing and building a pen that wrote in space while the Soviets just handed their Cosmonauts pencils. 



Doesn't the PSVR just let you flip up the front of the visor? I thought I read that somewhere. To me, that seems the most elegant solution.