I was hesitant to purchase the Oculus Rift. I did a lot of investigation for about 6 months. I found reviews that were quite negative and some that were quite positive too. I don't often write reviews, but after all the negative comments I found, even though some reviews were good, there is a lot of bad information out there on the Rift that I want to set the record straight. So now that I own a set and have played with them a few hours, I think I can give some first impressions and squelch some bad info. First, there is ZERO screen door effect. People do not understand what that is. Projectors have it at times and it is a pixelation that stays stationary on your screen and normally in dark areas with some light in other areas of the screen and while the camera pans the pixelation STAYS stationary. Trust me, I know. I have a theater room with a projector and at times I can see it. What they are referring to with the Rift and SDE is the led circuitry you see due to the low resolution. It does play some odd effects on your eyes due to the lighting and grid pattern of the LED arrangement on the video screens you're looking at due to how close your eye is to those screens as well as magnified by the lens themselves. Think of the old-time green CRT monitors where you could see the lines of resolution. It's a bit like that, except both horizontally and vertically. Is it obvious? It is at times but THAT is the resolution that comes with the first-gen consumer version of these types of displays. Is it a game-changer? You decide. Let me put it like this. I'm a gamer and I LOVE high-end graphics and go out of my way to purchase the latest and gratest video cards and displays to get it. The Rift is NOT high-end graphics, but it IS the best that is out there. If you don't concentrate on the lack of resolution so much and look at what the 3D vision and head-tracking is doing for you, you'll forget about the resolution. Now the resolution is good enough for me that when I was playing Elite Dangerous with it in an SRV I could clearly see the tread pattern of the wheels outside of the glass cab not to mention all of the scenery I took in in awe. It's not 4K. It's not 1080p 10ft from a TV. It's higher than that but at 1/2 from your eye. Technology has to get a LOT better before they can make screens with that kind of resolution where you cannot detect it 1/2 from your eye and magnified on top of that. Pull up your chair to your monitor on a white background and look closely at your display. You see those pixels? That's what you see in the Rift. 2nd Gen will come out one day but we're a ways from that in my opinion.
Are you a glasses wearer? It was no issue for me using glasses. They do not touch the Fresnel lenses. Mine do fit close to my eyes, not on the end of my nose. If you have them out that far then yes they're going to hit the lenses. I tried the Rift with and without glasses. Due to my near-sightedness I was okay. Was it sharp? No. Usable, absolutely. Putting on your glasses does make it hard to put on the HMD (Head Mounted Display). Taking off the HMD was even more odd and difficult as it wanted to pluck the glasses off my face. It's not easy, but doable. Once you have the glasses on and get the HMD on everything is good and quite comfortable and my glasses never touched the lenses and I could even adjust my glasses forward and back to get that sweet-spot they talk about. So if you're going a short stint with the HMD, I just keep my glasses off. If I'm going to sit in on a few hours of Elite Dangerous, I'll go to the hassle of putting on the glasses and getting them in to the lens cavity and get it all adjusted.
Head tracking was instantaneous. No jitter. No loss in frame rate. No issues turning my head completely 180 degrees by leaning out of my chair and looking behind the cockpit in Elite Dangerous to see the entire spaceship in all it's glory.
Weight. It's very lite, much more so than the Vive. When I whip my head side to side it never slips and I don't have it on tight at all. It's just that light. No neck pain, no strain of any kind.
Motion sickness. If you are prone to motion sickness or sea sickness, you might have an issue in certain games. I know I felt it a little bit as I was bounding across the hillside in an SRV on some moon in Elite Dangerous with 10% gravity and going airborn. It messed with my head a little and I just had to back down and take it easy a bit. I consider myself a tough guy and while everyone gets seasick on a boat, I'm the one having lunch and a great time while everyone else is spilling groceries. So just know that you ARE susceptible to this issue. Be careful and go easy at first or it's going to be a bad experience for you.
Controllers. The XBox controller they give you is good. I had no issues with it and the first thing I did was play that Lucky game. Pretty cool, quite fun. For serious gamers? You're going to need to either memorize all your keys and key combos before dawning the HMD or get yourself a HOTAS setup. For me I purchased the Thrustmaster Joystick and Throttle setup and I have the pedals on the way. Going that route enables you to not only memorize all your button inputs but also keeps your hands still! If you have to move your hands around, you're going to look like a blind person learning where all the keys are at.
Seeing through the HMD. Not true. You can't see through it AT ALL. If you can, you've torn the material inside somehow and busted the plastic casing. Otherwise, you just can't see through it, period.
You're going to need a LOT of USB ports. For me to run the keyboard, mouse, desk microphone, joystick, throttle, pedals, Rift HMD, XBox controller, Constellation Tracking camera (for the HMD), it required that I have 6 2.0 USB slots and 2 3.0 USB slots plus one HDMI slot on my NVidia 980 TI. That's every USB slot I have on my rig. Could I use a USB bus? Maybe. I would use it for the keyboard/mouse/microphone I'm sure. You can't put the Oculus Rift setup on any USB bus at all.
I'll admit that of all the research and reviews I read on the Rift I thought I was going to be disappointed. I wanted to at least try it out before I'm gone from this world even if I had to return it due to not being happy with it. Boy was I wrong. I'll never return it. This is the future. This is the next step of gaming. I can't wait until Star Citizen (currently in Alpha) supports the Rift and they do say they will be supporting it 100%. This takes the "immersion" factor to a whole new level. I'll never play Elite Dangerous any other way. Just one benefit alone...I can watch my target through the canopy of my spaceship looking up and side to side and never have to hit any special keys. I just look around like I would if I was really there...and DO feel like you're really there.
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