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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

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
You can play seated outside of your play area without having to do the room calibration as long as your seated area can be detected by the sensors. You'll also have to turn the chaperone to developer mode or off. On the Wand press and hold the top button above the touch pad to bring up the menu which allows you to change the seated position. So in your case you'll sit in your cockpit first then change it.


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

SlimBoyFat
Adventurer


You can play seated outside of your play area without having to do the room calibration as long as your seated area can be detected by the sensors. You'll also have to turn the chaperone to developer mode or off. On the Wand press and hold the top button above the touch pad to bring up the menu which allows you to change the seated position. So in your case you'll sit in your cockpit first then change it.


Just what I wanted to hear, thanks very much.

Edit: Just realised that I'm a dumb ass! The seat moves independently of the triple screens, so I can just slide the seat back into the 'play area' whenever I want to use the Vive with the seat. Problem solved.
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

PassiveVR
Expert Protege

DrOculus said:

@PassiveVR  You make me sick, you come in here telling us how much you are having a fantastic time in the Vive and I have to wait until May to get mine, well out of order you are hahahahha

Joking aside thanks for giving us you`re thoughts on experiences you are having with the Vive..I really can`t wait to get mine!!!



Have you used other VR? DK2? I think for sure, if you have, you'll definitely appreciate that massive difference proper controls *AND* roomscale brings.

Audioshield is a lot of fun if you love music and want to feel like you've had a workout

The Lab is brilliant, and funny, in places

Vanishing Realms is the closest yet I've seen to the ideal of VR we all imagined (especially when the archers turn up), though it's simple gfx and linearity mean it's hardly a deep experience, if you have decent space it really shows the potential of this type of VR. Word of warning, keep auto pause on as you may end up ignoring the chap grid during a heated battle and whack your controller on a wall 😉 it's so engrossing during battle. I love catching archer's arrows with my wooden shield! Stepping to avoid them, doing all kinds of contortions, like arching your back out of the way, as an arrow flies past. And if you can, try lining up a bit of real world space to allow a good walk down the corridors, I even JOGGED back and forth at one bit between a right angle corridor and some steps, to really feel I was there, Like I was waiting for an attack or a friend to show up. getting on the floor to avoid swinging wall axes and fearing for your life is a real joy. It doesn't really get much more involving than this! All it needs now is the software to catch up, the PCs to get faster so we can pump super real GFX to really nail the 'other world' feeling, and obviously for the HMDs themselves to get better in all respects to the point you can't see the edges, don't feel the weight, never see the pixels etc.

I'm kinda hoping they don't hold back Gen 2 for too long, I know we've only just bought these expensive items, but Vive and its abilities has only made me yearn for more advancements to accompany its already brilliant controls and roomscale/tracking, so that we can really go full-on with VR, in a physical way. I don't know how they will solve for physical boundaries in the future but for now this is the closest we get to the VR dream. I'm happy switching to gen 2, 3,4 etc as soon as possible until we get to an effortless form of 100% immersive VR that the Vive has hinted at (the DK2 never did hint at that by comparison - as good as it was at the time it just felt held back by lack of controls; and even though I tried walking in Alien Isolation on DK2 it was only do-able in small, buggy, steps and god how I wish they would support Vive officially, as hinted at, with a free moving alien tracker/torch etc and proper walking/roomscale. I wouldn't want to play that again in a seat with a gamepad, it's a massive downgrade to do that now!).

Oh the torch in the blu "dark abyss" is amazing, you can shake that as fast as you like and it remains 1:1 and looks almost real. The more room you have to walk without chap grid, the more involving it gets with every step, every move of the hands, every crouch to examine etc.



Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
I'll say this again here. I've PM'd a couple of Vive heads but a MUST HAVE game for any Vive owner is The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed. The graphics are of decent quality (much better than Vanishing Realms) and there's enough objects to pick up and play with that really shows off the strengths of room-scale/wands interactions. I'd probably go as far as saying it's the best Vive game at the moment for gamers. Not as good for demoing to non-gamers though because it's a bit more complex.


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

PassiveVR
Expert Protege
It probably is the best experience/game/showcase for Vive right now (The Gallery), I wouldn't advise Realms as being better or more polished or as deep, but it does its simple job well, and for me it was specifically to test some things out. I'm waiting for a demo of The Gallery or a sale, it's pricey for a short game and having bought loads on steam already I've got to wait now for the old gaming funds to replenish. 🙂

PassiveVR
Expert Protege


You can play seated outside of your play area without having to do the room calibration as long as your seated area can be detected by the sensors. You'll also have to turn the chaperone to developer mode or off. On the Wand press and hold the top button above the touch pad to bring up the menu which allows you to change the seated position. So in your case you'll sit in your cockpit first then change it.


Can confirm. My chaperoned play area is from the edge of my desk to the far wall (15 feet away). When I sit, rarely, for VR I'm still perfectly tracked by the base station above and to  my right. My desk is in that right hand corner. If you have them angled right there's no need to mess around. Turn chaperone grid to developer and you won't even see it as it'll be on the floor only just behind where you're sitting.

DrOculus
Adventurer

PassiveVR said:


DrOculus said:

@PassiveVR  You make me sick, you come in here telling us how much you are having a fantastic time in the Vive and I have to wait until May to get mine, well out of order you are hahahahha

Joking aside thanks for giving us you`re thoughts on experiences you are having with the Vive..I really can`t wait to get mine!!!



Have you used other VR? DK2? I think for sure, if you have, you'll definitely appreciate that massive difference proper controls *AND* roomscale brings. .....

I hope you didn't take me the wrong way Passive, I was joking saying you made me sick with envy because i want my Vive now 🙂

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar

Glad you got it sorted @SlimBoyFat

i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified

VizionVR
Rising Star
Received my Vive yesterday. Opened the box at 5:30 PM, was fully set up at 7 PM. This included permanently mounting both lighthouse base stations which requires drilling and screwing the included hardware to walls. Tripods can be used, but the feet of the tripods would have encroached into my precious, precious VR space. 🙂

Setup time also included a bit of troubleshooting. I'll say this right now, The setup instructions could definitely use refinement. I was stuck at one point because one of my wands was blinking blue while everything else was working perfectly. I went to the troubleshooting "guide" and it was absolutely worthless. Had to go to Reddit to search for the fix. Once I found out that a blinking blue light meant that the controllers were not paired (whatever that meant) I then had to figure out where in the setup menu I could pair my controllers. It was an otherwise quick fix that took me twenty minutes to find it. That was literally the only issue I had during setup. I know my way around troubleshooting, but if I had zero previous experience, I can see where a lack of proper instructions might be terribly frustrating.

Not one problem since. Tracking (HMD and controllers) are dead on perfect at all times. Zero software glitches. Zero hardware problems.

I'm REALLY liking the rounded FOV, compared to the box-like FOV of the DK2. Looking through a box is an instant immersion breaker. The Vive's rounded (and larger) FOV feels natural and your brain quickly ignores it. FOV is definitely larger than DK2. In DK2 my eyes were so close to the lenses my eyelashes brushed them. In Vive I have a slightly larger FOV even though my eyelashes aren't anywhere near the lenses. 

Fresnel artifacting (AKA: god rays) Mostly non existent in most demos (I played The Lab for over five hours straight) though I can see how they could be really distracting if they get worse.

SDE is much better than DK2. If DK2 is cheesecloth, Vive is a 600 thread count sheet. Still there but greatly minimized and no longer an immersion breaker even in dark scenes.

Sweet spot seems larger than DK2, but that could just be my enjoying the complete lack of chromatic aberration, one of the benefits of fresnel lenses. God rays or zero RGB pixel separation, I choose god rays I guess.

Playtime:
I loaded up Valve's The Lab and spent the next four hours in full roomscale mode, baby! (9' x 12' area) 🙂 . I was forced to stop due to my leg finally throwing in the towel. So I pulled a chair into the center of the room and kept playing for another hour. I would have played longer but I had to get up for work in five hours. The Lab, like almost every other "roomscale" game, can be played seated. For most games, roomscale is an OPTION, not a necessity. Though seated roomscale can, and often will, diminish your immersion in the game. For the wheelchair bound a 9' x 12' area is awesome for wheelchair roomscale. Just be mindful of the cable when in a chair.

The Vive controllers feel solid and a bit weighty. The balance point is perfectly located at the trigger. The haptic feedback and trackpad are identical to what's on my Steam Controller. One negative. After playing for a bit the controllers begin to get slippery. I may wrap the handles with a thin layer of cloth. I should invent a "Wandom" (tm), a small piece of stretchy material to cover the controller's handle to aid grip.

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

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar

😄 'Wandom'

i7 5960X @ 3.8 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 PC2800 | GTX Titan X Pascal | Win 10 64 bit | Asus ROG PG348Q | EVGA X99 Classified