reportedly, ValvE's & HTC's Vive will hover around 1500$ price point

[Misanthrope]

VR is 3D done right.

Providing separate images for each eye with no light leakage and hence not suffering from the clarity loss which plagued that tech. Also there's no comparison in terms of immersion levels. The head tracking and FOV changes everything plus the fact that you are no longer looking at a window into the virtual world, instead you are inside the virtual world.

Also when did 3D die? There are 3D cinemas everywhere.

Might look better but is even more inconvenient and expensive.

Also 3D never becomes a standard it's just a novelty that comes and goes, no really a success story if you ask me

[Samfisher]

source: http://www.androidauthority.com/htc-vice-price-667174/

---

so, there you have it folks .. the VR's short existence

 

Has anything that is basically the "first" in a whole category of anything ever been cheap though?

[silberdrachi]

Also when did 3D die? There are 3D cinemas everywhere.

 

3d in the home is pretty much dead. TVs have moved away from 3d to 4k or high dynamic range or extra smart features. As for 3d games, i can only think of a few that actually did it without making people sick, and i can think of only a few companies that ever even released 3d monitors.

 

3d in theaters is much easier to justify because there is no initial investment for the consumer, just 2-4 more dollars for the tickets. The issue is that most movies shown in 3d aren't actually shot in 3d which causes problems with some people (me included) that get nauseated or headaches. Digitally enhanced 3d movies (most recent i can think of is star wars) are all post production tricks. And a lot of movies shown in IMAX either arent shot at all on IMAX cameras, or only small sections (again starwars one of the few scenes was the escape from the desert planet).

[Humbug]

Might look better but is even more inconvenient and expensive.

Also 3D never becomes a standard it's just a novelty that comes and goes, no really a success story if you ask me

I am not claiming that VR is going to take over the world or replace monitors

But I feel strongly that it will find a solid user-base in some applications. Gaming/medicine/construction are just some of those.

 

Also there's like 75,000 active 3-D cinemas in the world. Despite being a problematic technology you cannot call it a failure and having clarity issues. It was only a failure in the home. Likewise VR will find it's use cases where it is successful...

[qwertywarrior]

hahaha no ... its gonna cost around 800$

[SirSquid]

this is a rumor with no offical word from HTC or Valve and should be taken with a grain of salt.

[zMeul]

Has anything that is basically the "first" in a whole category of anything ever been cheap though?

Ford model T

[Octagoncow]

Unless HTC is trying to make a profit, I'd be very surprised if it ends up costing that much. I realize that it's a first gen product and comes with controllers; but, that still seems pretty high. I'm guessing it will be around $1000

[Humbug]

Unless HTC is trying to make a profit, I'd be very surprised if it ends up costing that much. I realize that it's a first gen product and comes with controllers; but, that still seems pretty high. I'm guessing it will be around $1000

On one hand the BOM cost should be higher than the Rift because it has additional functionality. It has a front camera so that you can see the world when needed without taking off the headset, it also comes packaged with the full room-scale VR bundled.

 

On the other hand Valve did most of the R&D (not HTC) and then handed it over to HTC to commercialize and manufacture. I don't know what percentage they are giving Valve.

[Guest]

Jesus mother freaking Christ 0_0 what the hell!  

[Humbug]

hahaha no ... its gonna cost around 800$

that was my gut feeling too

 

but one thing's for sure there are enough people who are willing to pay for expensive display tech

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/dp/B00OKSFXZU

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Digital-31MU97-B-31-0-Inch/dp/B00OKSEVTY

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-UltraWide-Widescreen-X34/dp/B016GNX4SE

not average PC gamers but they will find a user-base.

[werto165]

that was my gut feeling too

 

but one things for sure there are enough people who are willing to pay for expensive display tech

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/dp/B00OKSFXZU

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Digital-31MU97-B-31-0-Inch/dp/B00OKSEVTY

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-UltraWide-Widescreen-X34/dp/B016GNX4SE

not average PC gamers but they will find a user-base.

It's also OLED low persistence 90hz screens, as far as I know there isn't a reasonably priced OLED monitor on the market atm. 

[MoonSpot]

put VR on the back burner for a decade or two.

 

Released 1995 for $180.

 

Two decades down.  What now?

[christianled59]

No way. I was shocked with the oculus, as I fully intended to buy a Vive and realized it would cost more. But at $1500 there is absolutely no way. It can't be that much. How is the Vive worth almost $1k more? Lasers on each side of the room and a headset camera are nice, but not $1k nice. This doesn't even include the controllers. Holy shit.

[werto165]

I just want oculus to release this tech already: 

 

[silberdrachi]

that was my gut feeling too

 

but one thing's for sure there are enough people who are willing to pay for expensive display tech

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/dp/B00OKSFXZU

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Digital-31MU97-B-31-0-Inch/dp/B00OKSEVTY

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-UltraWide-Widescreen-X34/dp/B016GNX4SE

not average PC gamers but they will find a user-base.

 

My problem with that justification is that i can find legitimate reasons to use those displays OTHER than gaming or movies. I can look at huge swaths of values in a data set, or have all my tools on one screen, or just view multiple webpages at once. Or things like professional video and graphics work. The problem with VR right now is the have only addressed the gaming world, they just kind of hand wave and say "Oh you will be able to watch movies and do other stuff later too" but havent shown any of that off or told any one their plans.

[Humbug]

No way. I was shocked with the oculus, as I fully intended to buy a Vive and realized it would cost more. But at $1500 there is absolutely no way. It can't be that much. How is the Vive worth almost $1k more? Lasers on each side of the room and a headset camera are nice, but not $1k nice. This doesn't even include the controllers. Holy shit.

it's probably not true

 

http://www.androidau...e-price-667174/

 

 

there’s no saying this is the absolute final price for the HTC Vive either. The figure was reported by Focus Taiwan, based on estimates by “foreign brokerages”. Those estimates laid the cause of the higher price tag at the feet of the Vive’s spatial recognition and advanced wireless controllers.

i.e. it's not from HTC or Valve

[dragosudeki]

Devs will support them because the amount of work required isn't too scary. Most of the R&D and pain and experimentation has been shouldered by Valve and Oculus over the last few years.

It's not like optimizing a game or porting to a new platform. Both Oculus and Valve will work with all the major AAA devs to get support baked into the major engines (already begun). Soon you will have Unreal4, Frostbite, Source2, Unity 5 and more all natively supporting both Vive and the Rift. Then new games developed on those do not need to do that work again.

 

What will have limited support is the room-scale VR because that requires games specifically to be built around that and the gameplay to built around that from the ground up. But as a seated experience both the vive and the rift will get good support from games that were not planned as VR games but retroactively get the feature added. Driving and flying games particularly will jump on board.

 

Supporting this is not comparable in difficulty to (for example) porting you game to Linux and getting it running on openGL. And even that a lot of devs have done despite the minuscule market share...

I do agree with your points, but I still think there are some problems.

 

Maybe I'm overestimating it, but the Oculus Rift CV seems like something that will hit performance pretty hard. To add onto this, we are already seeing problems with games not being optimized, resulting in unstable or unreasonable performance for what you see.  These compounding factors can really ruin the VR experience, especially when graphics quality is a key thing to making it more enjoyable (due to screen being more close). If these compounding factors hit hard enough and people realize it, the VR market will really be limited to an already limited amount of gamers with high end configurations.

 

Porting and OpenGL is not peripheral related, so it really isn't comparable and Linux arguably is somewhat popular and easily accessed by others. This is a little bit more like (but not really) the Kinect (which is an amazing technology), which you can see how many games are dedicated to the peripheral or simply do not use it. While, engines will have VR support, I really do think the uses of it in the game will be there for the sake of having it. Don't think we will see any really cool ways of using the headset, unless the game was made for the VR tech which would also depend on how big the market gets for it. 

 

Room-scale VR will likely not happen anytime soon, but can possibly bring back the idea of arcades? I don't want to see VR end, but slow adoption and/or potential not utilized is one of the reasons why technologies don't do well.

[Sauron]

 

I love how people expected brand new tech to be instantly affordable for everyone... oculus sort of lead peope to believe that and they shouldn't have, but let's be real. These are very high quality screens attached to some decent processing power and advanced software, they were never going to be cheap at launch. I don't hear anyone complaining when nvidia releases a 650$ graphics card or when intel releases a 1500$ 10 core xeon, why is it any different for this?

[flexluthor]

Thank you, I needed reasons not to buy VR gear and this helped me along with Oculus.

[Samfisher]

Ford model T

First affordable car, not first car.  Big difference.

[christianled59]

it's probably not true

 

http://www.androidau...e-price-667174/

 

 

i.e. it's not from HTC or Valve

I know. I'll be surprised if it's over $1k. If Vive was the only headset releasing, they could probably get away with it. But at that price, I don't see how they could remain competitive if it's that much. I think it'll be $700-$800. I won't be paying more than $700 and even that hurts me.

[Humbug]

Porting and OpenGL is not peripheral related, so it really isn't comparable and Linux arguably is somewhat popular and easily accessed by others. This is a little bit more like (but not really) the Kinect (which is an amazing technology), which you can see how many games are dedicated to the peripheral or simply do not use it. While, engines will have VR support, I really do think the uses of it in the game will be there for the sake of having it. Don't think we will see any really cool ways of using the headset, unless the game was made for the VR tech which would also depend on how big the market gets for it.

The kinetic is something which requires more than support. It requires that gameplay be built for it specifically.

 

In the case of virtual reality game engines are already 3-dimensional. So for example in a driving or flying game it's not dificult to give a seperate POV for each eye and then integrate the head-tracking to allow the player to look around the cockpit (which you could already do with the keyboard anyway LOL).

 

Obviously i'm oversimplifying a bit but you get the picture in terms of which one is more inconvenient for devs... The difficulty in supporting the kinetic will be comparable to the difficulty in getting quality apps for room-scale VR. But as a seated experience you can be sure that people will be playing Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous etc on the HTC Vive.

[Guest Kloaked]

Bwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

 

 

Oh wait they're serious.

 

Couple this with the fact that you need a computer for this VR stuff that's also in the $1500 range and you have a product that only the really early adopters want while also having no proper game support for another 2 years.

 

All these first-gen VR devices will be completely irrelevant in about a year when gen 2 rolls around and completely kicks gen 1's ass.

 

BWHAHAHAHAHAH

 

No.

 

This is a rumor. This isn't even confirmed.

 

Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.

[Misanthrope]

I am not claiming that VR is going to take over the world or replace monitors

But I feel strongly that it will find a solid user-base in some applications. Gaming/medicine/construction are just some of those.

Also there's like 75,000 active 3-D cinemas in the world. Despite being a problematic technology you cannot call it a failure and having clarity issues. It was only a failure in the home. Likewise VR will find it's use cases where it is successful...

Not gaming, not even enthusiasts can easily afford it. Other applications are specialized so those succeed on very different supply/demand interactions regardless of the strength of the tech.

Finally active movie theaters it's a lousy metric show me total revenue split between 2d and 3d