For a while now, entire world constantly worries about the notion of virtual reality and what it will actually look like. While some dwell on the thought what it will look like once it finally arrives, few people are more than aware that in some way, it is already here. The best support to this claim are two incredible devices that are just now starting to gain ground. These two items are HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, which although quite similar have some crucial differences that divide them. Here are some of the major ones.
Still quite obscure
Even though both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are the talk of the time for quite a while now, much about them is still pretty unknown. Both of these devices are still to come out, however we do know a bit or two about their release dates. The official launch of HTC Vive is scheduled for January 2016 while for consumer version to come out we will probably have to wait until mid-April. As for Oculus Rift, all we know is that it is expected somewhere in the Q1 of 2016. With this in mind, we have an interesting several months ahead of us.
Moreover, the prices of these two technological marvels are still obscure to everyone and seeing how price is always a major component this is a serious handicap for any legitimate speculation to be made. Some however speculate that the price of the Oculus Rift most probably won’t exceed $350. On the other hand, what we know more about are some of the basic specifications of the two.
Basic specifications
In most fields of performance, both Oculus and Vive show similar performance (as devices of the same generation should). For example for both of them, maximum resolution will be 2160 x 1200 with the refresh rate of 90Hz. Also, both of these virtual reality tools promise 110 degrees field of view but some things are still kept in the dark. When it comes to Vive we know that tracking area will be 15×15 feet while with Oculus this is yet to be announced. Contrary to that, Oculus Rift came clean with their requirements, listing NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 graphic card as minimum as well as Intel i5-4590 processor and 8GB RAM memory. As for HTC Vive’s requirements not much has been announced.
Design and controlers
As for the design of these two devices, none of the developers made any effort to do something original. Still, in their defense, they are designed primarily to look good from the inside as for their shape, it was never a primary factor here. As for the controllers, both Oculus Touch and SteamVR are both more than up to the task. One advantage of Oculus Rift however is that Oculus Touch will be already included in the price of Xbox One, while what will come to be with SteamVR remains to be seen.
From all that we could tell about these two incredible virtual reality enhancers, any competition between the two is bound to be a tough and even indecisive one. That is of course, if Valve (which greatly partakes in the development of HTC Vive) doesn’t decide to finally announce Half Life 3 which will support HTC Vive exclusively.
