The Guide to Choosing the Right VR Headset, Part 2
June 27, 2016
Last year we put together a Guide to Choosing the Right VR Headset – both as a blog post and as an infographic. However, it’s now 2016 – the year of Virtual Reality and it brings several new and big ‘players’ to the market.
So, you’re not sure if you should buy an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR or Samsung Gear VR? We’ll try to help you out because we’ve had the incredible opportunity to try them all in Silicon Valley.
Here are the main strengths and weaknesses of each one, they should help you decide which one is the best for you.
HTC Vive
Strengths:
Directly released with a controller – the Steam VR controller
Uses Steam VR
Has awesome content: Tilt Brush, Audio Shield, SculptVR, Realities.io, and much more
Great positional tracking – thanks to the two ‘lighthouses’ built into the headset, the user can walk around physically – provides room scale tracking
2 OLED displays
High FPS => No motion sickness
Weaknesses:
Still rather heavy
The design is not that aesthetically pleasing
Highest price among the main competitors - $800
Oculus Rift
Strengths:
Appealing design
Lower price compared to HTC Vive - $600
Easy to use
Lightweight
Awesome content already available – The Climb, Chronos, and more
2 OLED displays
High FPS => No motion sickness
Weaknesses:
Heats up pretty seriously
No room scale positional tracking
Their controller is not out yet. It’s expected during Autumn
Most available content is paid
Samsung Gear VR
Strengths:
Over 1 million devices sold => guaranteed interest and content
New version on the way
Cheapest headset among the ‘big players’ - $99
Wireless
Gives the opportunity to play every PC game in VR through Intugame VR
Weaknesses:
Requires a specific smartphone – one of the following models: Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge
Comes without any additional hardware or software (including the needed smartphone)
Original content is mobile apps which don’t provide the experience that the other VR platforms do
PlayStation VR
Strengths:
Expected price is pretty low: $400
PlayStation console + PlayStation VR headset < Oculus Rift + required PC
Most promising and abundant content
Weaknesses:
Worst positional tracking among the VR competitors
Just a bit late to the party – expected to launch in October
The PlayStation Move controllers don’t work well for Virtual Reality
Hopefully these key points would be helpful when you make your VR headset choice this year – you can take into account the prices and what you get for them.
And thanks to Quark VR SDK more and more games will be available on ALL VR platforms!
