cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Which VR HMD will you buy next? - Rift S - Valve Index - Quest etc

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee
Hi guys, since we now know that Valve Index and Rift S will be released very soon, I was curious to see where everyone in the community currently stands on their next purchase.

I've tried to give as many options as possible below and included bundles with Quest + Rift S and Quest + Valve Index since I'm guessing many in the community will be buying more then one HMD just as I plan to myself.
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!
156 REPLIES 156

Anonymous
Not applicable
My point, which you seem to have missed, is that the cap doesn't fit ANYONE here. We're all considering the Valve Index if the specs, lenses, price and PC requirements are right. NONE of us have a blind loyalty to Oculus. You're post is yet another thinly veiled dig at certain members of this forum.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

snowdog said:

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that the cap doesn't fit ANYONE here. We're all considering the Valve Index if the specs, lenses, price and PC requirements are right. NONE of us have a blind loyalty to Oculus. You're post is yet another thinly veiled dig at certain members of this forum.



Again a personal attack @snowdog, especially when my comment referred to the VR community and not to one particular forum or group. I am glad you can speak for everyone, but I do hope that most of the posters here are open minded enough - please keep your "thinly veiled digs" too yourself. 
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Anonymous
Not applicable
Calling your personal attack a personal attack isn't a personal attack. You know full well who your thinly veiled dig was aimed at. You can try and back pedal all you want, we all know what it was and who it was aimed at.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
Okay @snowdog - listened to your point of view. I corrected you again that it was not aimed at you, no backpedalling, not my style - if you want to take it on, and try and derail the discussion, great, but if you have a serious point to be made, the moderator is always there for you!

Now trying to get this back on topic.

I wonder with Valve Index if they could lock users in with a platform that supports a special SteamVR ecosystem and if this will be the first headset that will be lead by the games and not by the hardware specs?

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

CrashFu
Consultant
I have a strong loyalty to Oculus, but that's because they've earned it and continue to earn it. IF they did something to seriously disappoint me  (either in terms of business or ethics) that loyalty could change.

Also, up until a year or so ago I was as much of a Steam-addict as anyone else.  It wasn't my love of Oculus that turned me against them, it was the horrible, unethical things that Gabe Newell and Valve were doing, and willfully allowing to happen on their platform. It was also the realization that their irresponsible, parasitic business model and the monopoly they've built are harming the PC gaming industry.

In fact, I have positive opinions of Sony and PSVR, and I'd love to see other companies get into the VR industry, and I don't think it's "unfair" when any of those companies have exclusives that aren't available on Oculus Home.  I have a somewhat positive opinion of the HP Reverb  (in that I acknowledge it sounds great for very specific uses)  though I find it annoying that people harshly criticize the Rift-S for minor design tradeoffs but act like the Reverb is flawless.  Bit of a double standard there, isn't it?

Oh, and I feel sorry for HTC, and I'm quietly rooting for them to fully distance themselves from Valve (Viveport requires you to install both Steam and SteamVR to use it)  and make a comeback.

So yeah, it's really only Valve that I hate.  But you shouldn't have to be a Valve-hater to realize you can't trust any VR system they put out, after how they mishandled and neglected the Vive and every other piece of hardware they've been involved with.  I dare say you'd have to be extremely loyal to the Valve brand to even consider buying an Index until they've proven they'll support it properly after release.
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

CrashFu said:

.....
So yeah, it's really only Valve that I hate.  But you shouldn't have to be a Valve-hater to realize you can't trust any VR system they put out, after how they mishandled and neglected the Vive and every other piece of hardware they've been involved with.  I dare say you'd have to be extremely loyal to the Valve brand to even consider buying an Index until they've proven they'll support it properly after release.



Thanks for that cogent and measured reply, interesting perspective on Valve, and also why you have the view you have. I never thought of the issues with Steam, and how they should impact my interest in utilising the Index, but have to say my dealings with Valve have seen good and bad times. 
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Anonymous
Not applicable

CrashFu said:

It was also the realization that their irresponsible, parasitic business model and the monopoly they've built are harming the PC gaming industry.

In fact, I have positive opinions of Sony and PSVR, and I'd love to see other companies get into the VR


EErrrmmm - No offense - Sony and MS are the same in ways too you know. I mean they created a system design to lock customers in and then charge high rates on LC to create games on their platform. In lots of ways - it has harm a lot of things as well. Granted - the pay wall helps remove a bunch of crap - but it still exist and they do activity (lots of news on it) tell software creators not to make the game look better on PC and in lots of ways-  focus more on the console to make it look better. Windows is also pushing the Window store hard. My job is find ways to lock down OSes - but they in fact remove the ability to turn off the store. They even went as far as to make the window store unclosable in some cases from commands it's bad. As for a company to come out from left field it would be either Acer (StarVR), HP, LV, or Samsung, but it be nice if they could create something that would go toe to toe with the main store companies if they could find away to make it work.

As for VR related growth - sure! I would love if MS would partner with Oculus from their deals in the past. It would be soo amazing for the end customer if you could plug your Rift S in and call it good. I mean it's totally possible for that to happen as far as Rift S removing the senors now. MS is also pushing both platforms a bit more together as well just a bit. I think so they can get more double sells on software:) but hey - give the customer what they want, right? 

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

kevinw729 said:


SkScotchegg said:
.....
Index not good enough? 
.....
Everything else is simply not in the same league imo. All other HMD's have too many compromises/floors/cons compared to Rift S/Valve Index.



Yeah, it does seem weird - but you have to understand the history and there am some in the VR community that are emotionally invested in OculusVR and also have a resentment against Valve. No matter what they see from Index, it will never be any good - a same that the VR community was encouraged by some to become so tribal. 



I don't think that you can speak for the VR Community as a whole. I know that when I arrived at this community, it was VERY Tribal. But on the opposite end of that spectrum, where Oculus was treated poorly and Rift owners even worse. It was so bad that early adopters tried to create single Megathreads just to organize Rift discussion a midst all the Pro-Vive spam.

For anyone interested in seeing how bad it got here with the Anti-Oculus sentiment, this thread gives a good example:

Lastly, there has been a very strong "tribal" mindset that remains on the forum to this day, regarding Commercial vs Consumer. And we all know who fuels the "resentment against Consumers"
😮

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

kevinw729 said:


snowdog said:

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that the cap doesn't fit ANYONE here. We're all considering the Valve Index if the specs, lenses, price and PC requirements are right. NONE of us have a blind loyalty to Oculus. You're post is yet another thinly veiled dig at certain members of this forum.



Again a personal attack @snowdog, especially when my comment referred to the VR community and not to one particular forum or group. I am glad you can speak for everyone, but I do hope that most of the posters here are open minded enough - please keep your "thinly veiled digs" too yourself. 

Extreme pot kettle here.  You literally derailed this conversation by taking a dig at the entire forum, and then bragging about it with comments like , "I was not referring to any one in-particular with my comment - but if the cap fits...."

And you actually have the nerve to invoke the mods?
" if you have a serious point to be made, the moderator is always there for you!"

I think that it is long overdue for the Moderators to put you in a time out to send the message that all of your thinly veiled baiting has run its course.

pyroth309
Visionary
My main issue with Valve is their flat management structure which continuously leads to "Valve time" and indecisiveness. They were stagnant for far too long instead of driving PC gaming forward like Sony does for PlayStation. Other than that, I don't have many issues. I wish they had some legit competition but that's too long of a discussion and It's being discussed more than enough elsewhere regarding Epic.

That being said, I enjoy Steam for the most part.  I like that they are as hands off as they can be with software. I can make my own decisions about what is offensive or not or what I consider good or not. Studies show that violent video games do not lead to an increase in real-world violence. So if it's not breaking any laws it's good with me.  One man's garbage is another man's treasure has never been more true than in gaming. 

 I do however wish the search tools were a bit more powerful and intuitive to help with filtering through shovel ware and I hope the upcoming UI changes improve that.

Their refund policy has allowed me to take chances on many games over the years that I thought looked interesting and I've found so many hidden gems that most people don't know exist and I wouldn't have found otherwise.

As far as Valves hardware history sure they've not exactly set the world afire, but the steam controller and steam machine are still around. More importantly they're still being supported today despite steam machine being irrelevant and steam controller not being very popular. Valve has also been doing work behind scenes with getting Vulkan supported in Linux for steam machines. Here's an article from last year.

 https://www.pcmag.com/news/360230/valve-steam-machines-are-still-a-thing

I look at each product individually and if the Index is good I'll buy it.  If anything Valve's history suggests they will still support it even if it sells terribly like their other hardware products.  😄