I just bought my Vive a few months ago...

^^^I would not worry too much about it, we are going to see a lot of new and improved VR hardware coming through 2018/19, so enjoy your Vive for the next year or two, and by then prices and competition should see some great deals when you do come to upgrade to better VR hardware by that time. I have the rift myself and it is fantastic, and i got it in the summer sales last year, but both the Vibe and Oculus are now old tech, don't mean they are no good, far from it, but VR hardware is gaining momentum and it should really take off in the next year or two, i can't wait personally, i want to go down the non room sensor requirment and from what i have seen from the MR/AR headsets this is going to big over the next year as well, that and wireless head VR headsets. 🙂

Now 78% more expensive!

Khronikos:

It isn't that great of an upgrade to be honest. It will cost a lot too. But you also gotta be aware the tech is changing fast. By the end of this year they will be approaching 4K panels in both eyes. At least getting closer. 4K panels are where VR starts to get interesting IMO.

I have used few VR devices. And I can say that there are two main categories for display which are important. 1st and most important is view angle. 2nd is "black/dark" space in between pixels. (those clearly separated pixels feel like watching brick wall) Resolution is important, but that does not bring comfort to brain. VR having 4K and clearly separated pixels will still make it unpleasant to use. 3rd most important is motion tracking preventing motion sickness, that includes precision and input lag. 4th is resolution 5th is adaptive sync 6th is device comfort like wireless and weight. So, 1st) we have quite good viewing angles already and one does not feel like watching through tube. 2nd) this is still common problem but is very close to being OK 3rd) solved, works just fine even in cheaper devices. Problems come mostly from software 4th) resolution is already good, yes, higher is better if there is HW capable to render. 2x 4K screens are good just for watching movies, games would suffer, wireless connection will suffer, ... 5th) still being ignored 6th) wireless connection should have been here long time ago, even if only via waist bulkier device with battery, display controller for wireless. (That would improve on weight problem too, as headset would have just screen and sensors.)

The looking from a tube effect becomes a lot less when using the eye mask mod. I'm curious about the wireless adapter. Is there any info on pricing and how does it attach to the vive? Does it require the audio strap addon?

Khronikos:

It isn't that great of an upgrade to be honest. It will cost a lot too. But you also gotta be aware the tech is changing fast. By the end of this year they will be approaching 4K panels in both eyes. At least getting closer. 4K panels are where VR starts to get interesting IMO.

I agree. Until the Screen Door Effect is eliminated (or close to it), I think I'll hold off buying another VR headset. That being said, I think 4K panels in both eyes ought to be "good enough". I just realized, but one of the frequent challenges with VR was getting the lenses to focus properly, without distorting the image too much, while also having consistent pixel density. Since OLEDs are flexible, do any VR headsets use half-pipe displays? Obviously that doesn't really help much with vertical perception, but vertical is a lot less important. I think doing this would otherwise make image clarity much better.

^^Funny thing is 1080p is fine for a VR display, the problem is the Vive and Rift are using phone screens that were never mean't to be used 3 inch's from your eyes, hence why the screen door thing is a issue, but i hear actual VR screen are on the way this year designed with a high pixel density. Of course if you have a 1070/80 then you got room to bump up the supersampling for now and that helps alot. 😉

XP-200:

^^Funny thing is 1080p is fine for a VR display, the problem is the Vive and Rift are using phone screens that were never mean't to be used 3 inch's from your eyes, hence why the screen door thing is a issue, but i hear actual VR screen are on the way this year designed with a high pixel density. Of course if you have a 1070/80 then you got room to bump up the supersampling for now and that helps alot. 😉

Meh - aside from the SDE, there's a distinct blurriness with 1080p, at least using the OSVR 1.2 (which I have, and also uses phone OLED displays). The displays have to be within 3 inches from your eyes or else the FOV will get narrower. That's also why I think warping the displays will work better - you could move the display farther from your eyes (if necessary) without sacrificing FOV at all, which in turn reduces the SDE. It's even possible you could get away with 1440p per eye.

XP-200:

^^Funny thing is 1080p is fine for a VR display, the problem is the Vive and Rift are using phone screens that were never mean't to be used 3 inch's from your eyes, hence why the screen door thing is a issue, but i hear actual VR screen are on the way this year designed with a high pixel density. Of course if you have a 1070/80 then you got room to bump up the supersampling for now and that helps alot. 😉

Definitely. Setting SS to 2.5 with my 1080ti makes it a whole lot better. Combined with the eye mask mod and it's near perfect.

^^2.5, that 1080ti is now paying for itself. 😉

Interesting. Maybe these will be my first vr headset. Resolution (and price 😛 ) has made me wait. Tho i think racing sims would be much more fun in vr, maybe for once i get a better cense of speed. Something a very few games manage to give me, dirt is one of few games i feel things are really fast. And porn, vr porn here i come!... Kidding, or am i. Hmm... Even if 4k resolution sounds great. The hardware that runs this kind of resolution in 60+fps is really limited. I bough a gtx 1080 for 4k, it was the best gpu at the time. It has a hard time pumping out enough frames in many games. Tho i manage. Even if the ti is out, and is better than the regular 1080 i wouldnt call it a full fledge 4k card. Maybe next gen will break that line, and finally it will be possible to run 4k with a bit of overhead. Im planing to upgrade gpu or maybe whole pc this year to hopefully run most games in 4k with 60+ frames. If im right, vr need 90+ frames for best experience?

Looks like I will be playing with my old HTC Vive for a few more years.

I'd been holding off on the Vive myself because of the price and also because I don't really have the space to set up the base stations properly. I recently bought the Acer Mixed Reality headset and it works surprisingly well for all the tracking done in the headset itself. There's also a mixed reality steam app that makes it compatible with all the SteamVR games.

For me, the most interesting part of that is wireless. I hope that next generation of the VR headsets will have this as standard, even if I should carry a battery in a separate backpack. I also hope for price reduction. It's just really hard to justify spending so much on something that already equires quite beefy PC and has very few uses. There really should be more games and applications for VR, but again ,probably due to price, there isn't.

^^Those Mixed Reality headsets i think will be the future, they are as of now way cheaper than the Rift or Vive and already beat both in screen and lenses features, and do not require room sensors, and from what i have seen they work fine. If i had not bought a rift last year in the summer sales in would have certainly bought one of these MR ones that are out now, the Dell one looks very good and the reviews seem very positive.

Backstabak:

For me, the most interesting part of that is wireless. I hope that next generation of the VR headsets will have this as standard, even if I should carry a battery in a separate backpack.

The only reason I would want wireless is because of having the cords being tugged on. Otherwise, I prefer the cords due to having a more reliable and consistent experience. What boggles my mind is why USB-C (or at least Thunderbolt 3) hasn't been used. You get 1 relatively small cord that should be capable of delivering power, display, and I/O. Like it's almost as though it's meant for VR. But going back to wireless: I personally think VR is the perfect option for 60GHz WiFi. That frequency is way too high to be of any practical use for home and office use, but all of the pros and none of the cons affect VR. You get crazy high bandwidth with great latency. Since it isn't a common frequency in households, there shouldn't be too much noise to disrupt the signal (therefore resulting in faster and cleaner packet delivery). You would likely just do it as an ad-hoc connection, which further helps maximize the available bandwidth and latency. The big downside to 60GHz wifi is how easy it is to block the signal, but since you need to be within line-of-sight of all the other sensors revolving around VR, that's largely irrelevant. I really don't understand why nobody seems to be prioritizing this.

I also hope for price reduction. It's just really hard to justify spending so much on something that already equires quite beefy PC and has very few uses. There really should be more games and applications for VR, but again ,probably due to price, there isn't.

It's enthusiast hardware that requires enthusiast hardware. It's still a bit experimental, and a luxury. That's kind of like complaining why an AMG S class isn't more affordable - it's not supposed to be. But in 20 years, the features that comes with one will be found in budget cars.

XP-200:

^^Those Mixed Reality headsets i think will be the future, they are as of now way cheaper than the Rift or Vive and already beat both in screen and lenses features, and do not require room sensors, and from what i have seen they work fine. If i had not bought a rift last year in the summer sales in would have certainly bought one of these MR ones that are out now, the Dell one looks very good and the reviews seem very positive.

Yeah everything I have tried on my Acer headset from the Steam store has worked perfectly. The only thing I had to buy that was extra was a bluetooth 4.0 usb adapter. I had an older one that wasn't fast enough and caused the controllers to lag and stutter. For half the price of the Vive it's a great deal.

schmidtbag:

The only reason I would want wireless is because of having the cords being tugged on. Otherwise, I prefer the cords due to having a more reliable and consistent experience. What boggles my mind is why USB-C (or at least Thunderbolt 3) hasn't been used. You get 1 relatively small cord that should be capable of delivering power, display, and I/O. Like it's almost as though it's meant for VR. But going back to wireless: I personally think VR is the perfect option for 60GHz WiFi. That frequency is way too high to be of any practical use for home and office use, but all of the pros and none of the cons affect VR. You get crazy high bandwidth with great latency. Since it isn't a common frequency in households, there shouldn't be too much noise to disrupt the signal (therefore resulting in faster and cleaner packet delivery). You would likely just do it as an ad-hoc connection, which further helps maximize the available bandwidth and latency. The big downside to 60GHz wifi is how easy it is to block the signal, but since you need to be within line-of-sight of all the other sensors revolving around VR, that's largely irrelevant. I really don't understand why nobody seems to be prioritizing this.

Yeah, the tugging of the cable is pretty much it. It might seem silly, but even the stupid headset cord was so annoying that I bought wireless. It was alway either too short and tugged on the headset or too long and i rolled over it with the chair, but that is probably a personal preference. As for the 60 GHz band, it is as you say, the use here is excellent since you still need to be within the same room and the attenuation is fine at that. However, the 60GHz band isn't free in every country. Some have full 57 - 64 GHz for use in licence free wireless networks, i.e. USA, but that isn't universall. The problem here is, that the legislation is just ahead of the market. Like state regulators have no interest in the band as it is litterally useless for anything that would stretch outside the room, but they still want to fit several different systems in there and there are just none that want to use it or can use it now.

Whoooo.....you need to take a breath and chill my friend, this is far to unimportant a topic to be getting worked up over. 😉 Anyway i have the rift and even without supersampling games look great in it, Robot Recal, Arizonia sunshine, Stra Trek Bridge Crew, Elite Dangerous, all look and run great on the Rift, and that is with each eye only getting 1,080 x 1,200, but the screen door effect is caused by the off the shelf OLED screens that were never designed to be held 3 in from your eyes, but you can add some super sampling if your card has enough juice and you can make the image look better, i mean you got a 1070 so give it a try yourself, what VR headset you got, Vive or the Rift, both can add supersampling via third party apps, give it a try, you will be surprised just how good it is. 😉

They need RGB displays. PSVR's 1080p RGB display makes it extremely comparable to oculus/vive's higher resolution display. A 4k RGB with ~20% larger FOV would be a great place for VR. To use a pentile display is a big mistake since it then requires a higher resolution to equal an RGB display of a lesser resolution which means more rendering power is then required for the same visuals.