Disclaimer: I haven’t had the opportunity to try any headsets at all 🙁 So take all I say with a huge sprinkle of salt.
Practicality/Affordability – I think it is important
I like practical stuff. I would like VR tech that is able to be adopted in some form by the masses. So TLDR: cheap.
VR headsets have come a long way. I remember being amazed at the Kickstarter of the Oculus Rift quite some years ago. It was kewl tech, and they promised it would go mainstream soon. Heck, even John Carmack (The Doom guy, but not the Doomguy) was in on it.
But since that time I have never even gotten the chance to touch a Headset before lol. High cost of entry (expensive) and not useful enough for what it does, given the high cost. Also perhaps I’m just poor.
There is also an issue where buying a VR headset is more of buying a service /experience as opposed to buying a tech. Perhaps VR headsets should be rented instead of sold. Otherwise it is a financial risk to the curious individual who may wish to try it out but is not sure about long term viability.
Grading Criteria for the headsets:
- Practicality: Is the gear practical to use? Is it clunky? Does it solve a problem? Comfort?
- price point: Consumer products should have low price point to be sufficiently affordable. Enterprise products should have appropriate price point for their target market.
- Tech: Is the tech significantly better than the last generation/competitor? Is it innovative? We aren’t just talking graphical fidelity or resolution here; we are interested in things like latency and framerate and subjective matters like nausea too.
- Compatibility: Can play the gamessssssss
Favorite VR Headsets
Winner: Valve Index
Pros: Apparently the best VR headset money can buy right now. With tech like this it might be wise to get the best, due to better support and everything… You pay for what you get, probably. One might use the Iphone vs budget Android in 2012 analogy here. If you can afford a PC for VR you should probably get a decent headset. Also, came out with Halflife Alyx.
Cons: Why is it so expensive 🙁
Budget runnerup: HP Reverb G2.
If you can’t quite afford the top tier HMD you should get this. It does not have significant problems except for “disappointing” tracking performance. But I’m sure you would learn to live with it, given its not exactly deal-breaking.
Favorite MR Headsets
Winner: Hololens
Pros: Microsoft invested in this tech a lot, and you can see many demos of this tech, from game demo to Medical tech. If you are buying this, you are probably an enterprise customer or a partner of Microsoft, in which case, a ecosystem and support from Microsoft would be very beneficial to your development and research work.
Cons: Wow many expensive, much dollars. If it is anything like some Microsoft products you know it possibly could be dead after a few years x.x
ETC
Can we have an opensource standard for HMD plz. New tech keeps getting centralized/consolidated and its very sad.
-Alexis