Monday, May 6, 2019

Hello Again VR

I couldn't be more prescient if I tried... just on the heels of Avengers: End Game (I still plan on writing a full review btw) and the obsessive cycle continues to spin, this time swiftly swinging from Marvel to Virtual Reality.

Last week, Tuesday April 30th was the annual Facebook press conference, and we finally got the last details needed for the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift-S. While many, including myself, were hoping they would be released immediately, the release date of May 21 was announced, so it's not too far away, but still would've been nice to have it in my hands already...oh well.

Both the Quest and the Rift-S are coming in at $399 (for Quest that's the 64 GB model while the 128 GB model is $499.) These are easy enough to stomach price points which make it easy to jump into. I put in my pre-order for the Quest as soon as I was able, so hopefully we get release day delivery, but we'll see.

On the other spectrum, and what came as a major troll-move by Valve, they finally released all their specs on the Valve Index, and the timing couldn't have been better (they released the info about 20 minutes before the Facebook conference began on April 30th... lol.)

The Index was highly anticipated for a long, long time now, and the specs seem pretty nice, although the price does not seem very nice. With the headset, the controllers and the base-stations (which will be needed for tracking,) the Index comes in at a whopping $999. If you already have base-stations, and don't mind your Vive controllers, the headset alone can be bought for $499, which isn't horrible... unfortunately I don't have a Vive so if I jumped into Valve's version of VR it would set me back a grand... yikes!

As I believe I stated before, I fully anticipate the Quest to be the device that finally gets VR to go mainstream. It is cheap (enough) and fully stand-alone. Those who have tried it or have been trying it for weeks now all seem to enjoy it. The negatives are slight compared to what this will acheive. It is the first VR Console and in terms of comparison, I would say this is this generation's version of the NES, graphics may be 'eh' but it's loads of fun and is going to spark a whole new gaming revolution... mark my words!

I just had to pre-order the Quest, it was almost imperative that I have one of these! Not only will this device be great for playing and traveling with, but I truly see this as the catalyst to launch us all into a Ready-Player-One-esque world where VR dominates everything, so I look at it as buying a piece of history more than anything... (and watch out come Christmas time, I suspect this will be THE GIFT of the season!)

Ok so Quest is pre-ordered, I'm getting it without question... my next dillemma however, is:

A) do I upgrade my PCVR from the original Rift??
2) do I go with Rift-S or Index??
D) do I go with something else entirely??
4) do I stick it out for a while with my Rift and Go and Quest and see what comes down the line and/or wait for price drops??

The logical answer would be option 4... I truly need to just wait, no matter how hard I find that to do. The Rift-S isn't a full 'next generation' machine, it is a 1.5 if anything (maybe even a 1.43) and the Index, although impressive in most areas, is $1,000! It's pretty hard to justify that, even if that leans a lot closer to 'next gen' than most other options out there. I will truly have to fight my desires, and hope my brain wins out over my heart.

With all that being said, these are exciting times. Thankfully the "VR is Dead" crowd will be pacified by the release of the Quest, and the mere fact that we had such a jam-packed week full of VR news, info and anticipation just goes to show that companies are starting to take this serious and the competition is heating up. Capitalism at it's best will ensure that all aspects of VR is improved as we move forward and the consumers will benefit immensely!

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