Trouble in VR Paradise -- RIFT May Not Launch This Year...

Uh oh.

"I did say that before we made a lot of changes to our roadmap and we've expanded a lot of the ambition we had around the product and what we wanted to do," said Luckey of the initial 2015 launch window, according to a Gamespot report.

Translation: It's been more difficult than we anticipated as new challenges have arisen.

Oculus may have kick-started (har har) the VR revolution, but it appears that they're primed to be left in its dust. Nobody with their head screwed on straight cares too much about Morpheus (yet), but the love child of Valve and HTC, the Vive, is set to rule the VR roost. The combination of impressive hardware engineering and untouchable software support make for a potent product.

What do you think?

From the last thing I read, people are suffering motion sickness with the OC Rift. The Valve VR has this problem solved. This sounds like a big deal to me and they might be trying to fix this. I would choose not puking over price at this point.

@FoxbatAlpha: Agreed 100%. Though I'm struggling to imagine the Vive coming in above $350USD. I don't really care about all the extra controllers they've been developing, and only really care about the headset and laser space identifiers (whatever you want to call those little blocks you stick in the corners of the room), and the software support through Steam.

VR is screwed when Apple dips their hand in the pot.

I have zero interest in VR.

maybe if it gets enough Likes

Right now id say Oculus has the most support from software developers although I recon in most cases games made for VR will be games made for VR = made for both and not one or the other.

That said the Vive is looking increasingly more attractive to me as Oculus havent released any info for ages now and no one seems to know what to expect from it or when it will release. I like that there is competition though and the more people pushing VR the greater chance of success it will have, I just wish Oculus would make their mind up and give us a clue as to what the retail Rift can do.

@pelvist: The Vive has Valve, though, so in terms of software, how do you touch that?

Just like smartphones, am I right?

MEH..

OR apple makes it more streamlined and accessible.

High five.

@musicalmac: Exactly. They ruined handheld gaming.

Oh you poor thing. You'll just have to get used to it, I suppose. :(

Man, Oculus is really missing the boat here. So many other companies are announcing plans for VR and they have a truly golden opportunity to get to market and establish their brand before the "me-too" devices arrive.. and they are completely blowing it.

They've spent so much time announcing and beta'ing their device that bigger tech firms with R&D assets are going to meet them in the marketplace. Seriously, get the thing in people's hands already.

I agree. Between the hardware and the ecosystem,the Vive has a lot of potential.

@musicalmac: Im not really sure, Valve dont release many games lately and I read Oculus have in house software development working on games and other things like a movie studio that are making films for VR too. With Carmack and Abrash spearheading Oculus software development id expect something good to come out of it and there is as much if not more support for Indie developers with Unreal Engine, Unity and even Source engine having support and tools already built in for the Rift.

I am leaning toward Vive right now just because they have said "here is what its going to be and this is when it is releasing" but i am half expecting Oculus to bring something out to beat it and it could potentially have real hand tracking as they bought NimbleVR not that long ago. What Oculus may have around the corner is why im stuck on the fence, I dont want to buy the Vive only to find out a couple of month later that the Rift is much better.

You know what I love? On the train hundreds of people playing some game on their smart phone.

They are gamers and don't even know it. Nothing wrong with that. I still have my 3DSXL I don't see how smart phones ruined handheld gaming.

@musicalmac: How much does getting used to it cost? $3 with $1 microtransactions?

With the increase in the number of mobile controllers and desktop equivalent API's / engines running on mobile hardware, no one will have to get used to the "freemium" ecosystem that currently resides on mobile.

Let NVIDIA lead by example, they currently have games like Crysis 3, Borderlands 2, and Resident Evil 5 running on Android. As mobile SoC's continue to improve in performance and capabilities, these types of games will be possible on your smartphone.

I just tried it and ...

Why is Valves VR headset headed (har har :P) to rule the roost?

I saw the demo that the 2 guys from Gamespot did while playing with Morpheus and they were both blown away and honestly....it looked really cool.

I don't think Rift started the revolution or whatever...I mean...Morpheus and VIVE have to have been in development for a long while now. These types of tech don't happen as quick as a couple of years. It might have been the most well known....but the other 2 could have been in development around the same time.

I just thought....when was Rift introduced...so much has happened the passed few years....I could be wrong but it only feels like a couple of years since it's been even at the kickstarter stage.

There is no trouble. All these companies are trying to one up each other. In the end... we get a better overall VR experience as a result.

@NVIDIATI: Hooray, 2050 we can get overpriced Apple products playing Borderlands!

Thank god for Android.

Yea the rift has blown it in my eyes showed it's product way to early hyped everyone up before they were ready and the competition is swooping in before hand the valve and HTC will take over the pc and even morpheous for ps4 is meant to be a great piece of tech, real shame

In all fairness, it will only be another 1 to 2 years before smartphones can offer Tegra X1 levels of performance.

Currently, the Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge offers some of the highest levels of GPU performance in a smartphone, even then it's still less than 1/2 the performance of Tegra X1.

Of course, low level API's such as Vulkan (OpenGL Next Gen) will allow for higher performance from mobile devices. As Valve continues to push SteamOS / Linux gaming and developers adopt Vulkan, it will become a very simple task to port or create 'PC-class' games on mobile devices. Bringing this all together with Valve's investment in VR, the ecosystem could grow very quickly.

oculus is completely on the background now with valve's vr headset. No motion sickness and 2 x 1080p screens and it will lauch this year november, it doesn't matter if oculus is better, if they launch 6 months later, everyone that cares about vr will have one already.

And how much better will the oculus be, they can say it will be better but I won't take their word for it.

And let's not forget this is facebook now, so if i can avoid the oculus rift to experience vr, I will. There's still some part of me that thinks that the oculus will invade my privacy.

@pelvist: I originally would have agreed with you. Carmack on the Oculus team seemed like a huge development (even if I didn't fully understand how his expertise would help the company). But now I'm wondering how they'll make Rift a more compelling product than the Vive.

I think people are very very skeptical of whether morpheus will work on the PS4. Sony are claiming they'll have FPS at 120 to counter sickness and will magically be able to do that through a patch. What do you think the odds of that are?

@blue_hazy_basic: You can trust a Sony promise like you can trust a wasp who says the sting won't hurt.

@blue_hazy_basic: I honestly don't know. But I'm sure they've had their VR headset idea in mind for a while now with the PS4....so even though a patch seems a little far fetched....I'm not ruling it out.

All I know....is that the demo that the guys did on Gamespot was really impressive so I have hope for it.

I haven't been following the VR trend, but why should I not care for Morpheus?

The thing with all those demos are they aren't run on the hardware that will actually use them (that's why half the demos you see at E3 for the xbox/ps are run from PC's)

@blue_hazy_basic: I didn't know the Mropheus demo they played was not on their own hardware.

That certainly doesn't sound promising.

No ****. Although lets not forget what kinect was claimed to be able to do. I'll wait until I see an actual working model running before making judgement.

It might be great, but what I read online (SO MUST BE TRUE!) was that the PS4 hardware would struggle to maintain a 120FPS.

Those of us who have realistic expectations, and a memory that surpasses that of a goldfish, are skeptical of Sony's ability to come through on their promises with Morpheus.

Too many replies in this thread, I need to multi-quote :P

Well its early so doubters could be wrong and it might be amaze-balls.

Sure, and maybe they'll follow through. The smart consumer, however, keeps their expectations lower lower lower lower low low low...

(Interesting note about this gif relative to the thread: Sony's chance of giving us what they're promising with Morpheus is about as likely as me making it under that limbo stick)

@musicalmac: Not sure that guy is human. Wow.

No, this sounds like they were caught off guard by HTC and VALVe's offering and need to improve their's before commercial release.

PS4 hardware is struggling to maintain 30fps in alot of its games, unless Pong (with original graphics) is a launch title with morpheus i think it's fair to say that 120fps is not going to happen. Unless it's running at a horribly low resolution.

Solid gold "Edition" edition starting at $10,000 USD.

To me, battery life is going to keep smartphone gaming from being a legitimate platform for non-casual gamers. The fact that phones these days are still barely managing 6 hours of screen-on time is a huge deterrent.

Unless someone has some revolutionary battery technology hiding somewhere and is planning on releasing it to the market soon.

I don't think that will be a problem down the road, especially with the focus on efficiency seen in new SoC's and display technologies.

In addition to that, some game controllers already contain a battery to charge your smartphone. Take the Moga Hero Power for example, it has a 1,800 mAh battery inside:

like i said pc gaming is overhyped and everything around it, they can only make it work with titan black xrated 12 gb 8 billion transistors.

@blue_hazy_basic:

Lol 120 fps? Yeah, I don't see that happening, but I'd love to be wrong.

the can easily get 120 fps. A game like counter strike go looks pretty good and is not very demanding, they'll have to lose the aa and high detail settings though. So forget realistic vr, but cartoonish vr at 120 fps will certainly be possible on the ps4.

@commander: Sony themselves said they can't at the minute on the PS4. I don't see VR working if we have to go back to blocky 80's graphics to get it so people aren't vomitting after 10 minutes. You also need stable FPS, not just averages and peaks.