Vive could have Valve's support but the fact that it will released first is not really critical. Oculus still has a two year advantage relative on game developing. The question is who device will have more content, no who is first.

I've probably mentioned this before - the only thing Valve has to do to crush Oculus is make Half-Life 3 a launch title for the Vive.

g.

QFT

Let's hope Valve is not thinking on the same line, the last we need is a content wars.

This is a very cool application of VR tech:


Team develops virtual reality edition of Stellarum for Oculus Rift

This would mean "goodbye screen door effect"


Samsung starts work on an 11K display of 2,250 ppi

VR resolution bottleneck is not from the screens themselves, it's from the hardware to run it...

VR is more load heavy than it seems and is the reason gen 1 commercial units have such low res screens. 2 separately rendered 1200x1080 screens running at >90hz (going less than 90 creates a dimming effect due to 'low persistence' 20% on-time that keeps images from smearing).

This adds up to 233,280,000 pixels per second, which is the equivalent of pulling >112fps at 1080p on a regular monitor and quickly scales out of control as you bump up the res.

DX12 will help as will the native support of Win10, and foveated rendering will also go a long way towards reducing the load of higher res screens once we have reliable eye tracking but screens themselves are the last thing holding this back.

By 2018 when they aim to unveil the first of those 11k screens, it won't be many more years before they're miniaturized enough for HMD's and the contemporary hardware to run them though :p

https://youtu.be/pWlfUDiGqgc

Palmer Luckey interview with interesting questions and answers.

It now appears that Vive will not have the capacity for a full consumer release this year, with only limited quantities being available to select clients, with the bulk of the consumer release in early 2016. No surprise there.

We will probably see Vive and the Rift open for preorders around the same time this year. For those that plan to only buy one, there is still not enough info to make an informed decision. Release content, actual release date, price, and final hardware specs are still unknown.

The Rift will probably release with more content, but people will lean toward the unit with the better games/sims. The amount of content will not be a factor unless there are no clear killer apps. For flight simmers only DCS is currently looking at the possibility of implementing support for the Vive, to go along with their current Rift support.

I'm only interested in flight sims, so have no need for inputs, but that said I believe the Rift Touch has more possible uses as it brings in hands with more dexterity, than the current Vive wands. That said we don't know the final specs of either input.

I also like the fact the Rift will sell their Touch inputs unbundled which should make my initial VR purchase much cheaper if I decide to go with Rift instead of Vive. Not to mention the fact that Oculus may still have plans to sell their units around cost.

Both Vive and Oculus tracking units will allow considerable movement, but there are few VR games, or consumers with the room to implement it well. I'm sure there will be people with the required room, but the in-home market potential will be small. Movement will mostly be the domain of the VR arcades for the time being. Personally I have no need to run around my cockpit. Maybe one day when flight sims evolve further into better combined ground/air/sea sims.