The Rift just got a lot more expensive to set up for those of you who prefer it to the Vive. The kit has expanded its requirements and prices for those who would like the ability to move around in VR and those who want something more accurate than the basic remote. To upgrade your remote is $199 and the additional sensor to track your body movement is $79. While that is not too bad as they are additional features it seems that Oculus had the incredibly bad taste to use a proprietary audio connector. That means if you want upgraded audio that is receiving from the same source as your video you need to fork over an additional $49. As The Register points out, this is somewhat more than the originally quoted $350 price tag for a functional VR headset.
"It's bad enough that the basic system costs $599 – almost double the expected price of $350. Today, the Facebook-owned biz revealed a range of accessories that will push its cost even higher."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
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- Kaby Lake and VR to push PC market to growth in 2017 @ The Inquirer
Eff Zuckerburg, FB, and
Eff Zuckerburg, FB, and Occulus. I wonder when Rifts will start showing state sponsored content, interrupting your gaming with nauseating political ads.
… for Trump
… for Trump
Thankfully after yesterday,
Thankfully after yesterday, he’s done.
I doubt that.
If it were
I doubt that.
If it were anyone else, maybe, but he did the right thing out the door and apologized for it. Mercy if every single dirty thing we did in the back of a bus or locker room was put out for friends and family to see.
But hey, the “outraged” Clinton just had his own dirty video leaked, and he did grope someone. I have yet to hear the dirty mans apology.
The price is ridiculous. I
The price is ridiculous. I bought an Oculus DK2 for 350 + 50 in shipping and fees and figured that I would buy the cheaper consumer version when it eventually came out. So much for that idea.
“To upgrade your remote is
“To upgrade your remote is $199”
No, its $199 for a set of motion control touch controllers and an additional sensor for precise controller tracking.
“the additional sensor to track your body movement is $79.”
Yes and no, this would be for a third sensor used optionally for touch controller occlusion redundancy in room scale games. Also, your body is not tracked, the headset is and the rift comes with more than enough (1) in the box to track it in a decent sized room.
“While that is not too bad as they are additional features”
I agree.
“use a proprietary audio connector.”
Yeah but the audio connector is open for 3rd parties to make any accessory they want (in addition to the faceplate insert), free as far as I can tell.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/566q39/oculus_has_opened_up_the_audio_connector_and/
“That means if you want upgraded audio that is receiving from the same source as your video you need to fork over an additional $49.”
Just, no. First, the headset comes with headphones built in. Second, you never ever needed and still don’t need to use them. You can use any head phones you want. Just plug them into your PC?
Sorry, didn’t mean to go on a rant and I don’t like the Palmer propaganda stuff he pulled either but that’s no reason to reprint another website’s misinformation…
I agree with your sentiment
I agree with your sentiment here. Not only is the information not quite right, the Title is negative from the outset. Why has every site jumped on the Vive bandwagon? Its like no one can dare challenge Valve. Hands on reviews of touch have been very positive and UploadVR even stated they believe the Oculus Touch experience is better than Vive. What ever happened to staying impartial?
Vive is cheaper and Oculus is
Vive is cheaper and Oculus is a let down on many fronts (oculus exclusive games, price not in a ballpark estimate)? Valve is almost universally loved company. It is really simple if you think about it.
“Vive is cheaper”
In the US
“Vive is cheaper”
In the US market, they are priced the same (OK, 1 cent less with Touch included), but in most other markets, the Vive is noticeable more expensive due to higher shipping costs. Australia gets shat on particularly badly here.
You need that $79 additional
You need that $79 additional sensor for it to be in feature parity with vive.
You might have a point, I
You might have a point, I have become rather disappointed in numerous issues involving the initial project as well as high level employees currently associated with the Rift. That might have come out in the post, sorry. I don't think I deliberately misinformed anyone, this was a quick post with the highlights of the news on the page I linked to and I would be disappointed to learn someone made a decision about purchase based solely on my little blurb.
Your info is pretty much on par with my post, albeit much more positive. I would say that Vive's implementation of movement tracking is superior at the moment and the third camera would be needed to match capabilities. The audio thing just pisses me off in general, no matter who comes up with yet another connector.
Is it a fair guess that your
Is it a fair guess that your disappointments with Oculus are centred around their exclusive software titles, rocky launch and (now with Touch) greater than double $350 bundle for the full VR experience?
I came here to make the post above that you replied to, so I’ve got to say that your blurb at the least comes across as very bitter.
To make my position clear, I’m not looking for an apology on that as I regularly read PCper and watch the podcast and enjoy the personality you guys put into your work, but it was instantly apparent to me that I would need to look elsewhere for an informative summary of what I was reading.
You’re a tech site, so… that’s very bad.
I hate having to affirm that this isn’t personal (because there are quite a few toxic anonymous posts here in general) – I’m replying in the interest of offering feedback (I wrote this out before I saw the comment you replied to). Do with it what you will but it’s given in sincerity.
“The Rift just got a lot more expensive to set up for those of you who prefer it to the Vive.”
–
– Nope. You can still buy the regular Rift + Xbox One controller for $599. The Rift + Touch bundle is just another option and it works out to be one dollar cheaper than the Vive ($798) and includes two more input devices (the mini remote and the Xbox One controller).
“The kit has expanded its requirements and prices for those who would like the ability to move around in VR and those who want something more accurate than the basic remote.”
–
– This is pretty murky. Oculus actually announced that they had worked with AMD and Nvidia to lower the PC requirements buy publishing a new minimum spec. Part of that announcement was a $499 AMD powered PC built by a boutique system builder.
Also, Oculus never really pushed the room scale VR thing beyond press demos because they wanted to be judged buy the quality of Touch and the second sensor that comes with those controllers.
Not sure what “more accurate than the remote” means – are you referring to the mini remote (that IIRC isn’t even tracked?) or the Xbox One controller that definitely isn’t tracked? In either case neither can be critiqued on a feature both lack, so…
“To upgrade your remote is $199 and the additional sensor to track your body movement is $79.”
–
– Sigh… You don’t upgrade the mini remote or the Xbox One controller – that implies they are deficient somehow and they are not, they are just not motion controllers. You get two motion controllers and an additional sensor all for $199. You can buy a third sensor for $79 but that’s overkill and is in no way a proven necessity for high quality room scale VR. Rifters would have asked Oculus to sell the sensors separately in any case.
“While that is not too bad as they are additional features it seems that Oculus had the incredibly bad taste to use a proprietary audio connector. That means if you want upgraded audio that is receiving from the same source as your video you need to fork over an additional $49.”
–
– Two things here. One, yeah I get it. A headphone jack on the HMD would have been nice, but because of their current design there isn’t any additional cable clutter, and to me that is a bigger plus (at least they’re making the CAD files for these public.) Two, while these buds will be $49, they will punch far above their weight class. Oculus says that they are comparable in audio quality to $900 earphones. I’ll take that with a pinch of salt, but even so I was planning on buying IEMs specifically for VR around $300-$400 – so OMG $49 bless you Oculus if they are good.
Also, the article itself implies that the headphones that come with the Rift are sub-par. That’s nonsense.
“As The Register points out, this is somewhat more than the originally quoted $350 price tag for a functional VR headset.”
“It’s bad enough that the basic system costs $599 – almost double the expected price of $350. Today, the Facebook-owned biz revealed a range of accessories that will push its cost even higher.”
–
– Yeah the Rift is pricey. As of now it’s just as pricey as the Vive. But something you don’t hear discussed is that the Rift provides the lower entry point into VR at $599. Funny that you never hear that mentioned huh? What you do hear a lot of is that Oculus is owned by Facebook. Because it’s popular to hate on Facebook.
I think part of the problem in this case is where the info for the blurb came from. There are a few really good VR sites out there that aren’t the least bit shy of criticising the big VR players without jumping of the let’s-bash-[insert VR HMD maker here]-today bandwagon. Road to VR is one such site (they actually started their site two years before the Rift kickstarter).
The Register clearly looks to be taking advantage of the negativity Oculus has accrued over the last few months – and it comes across as biased, not informative.
I’m not suggesting Oculus be given a blank slate, but is any of that history really pertinent to the hardware announcements made at Connect this year?
Unfortunately the most useful warning for the consumer is overlooked in favour of beating the price issue to death. Mainly that Oculus doesn’t have a good launch track record and prospective buyers may want to keep that in mind if hoping to receive the Touch units in time for the holiday break.
Just for some background, right now I can’t afford either the Rift, the Vive or the PC to run them. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in factual news about them.
I don’t know which I’ll end up going with when I do get into VR. How Oculus’s stance on exclusives and their policy on support of 3rd party headsets plays out (which they want to do but Valve won’t permit them to use the Oculus SDK on their headset). On the hardware front I’ll be waiting for gen 2 from both companies because I want a wireless PC powered HMD with none or much less of that “god rays” effect.
Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say. Love this site and the work you guys do and have a great week Jeremy. 😉
“The Register clearly looks
“The Register clearly looks to be taking advantage of the negativity Oculus has accrued over the last few months – and it comes across as biased, not informative.”
Which is hardly a surprise, The Register is a digital tabloid. In terms of ‘accurate reporting’, it rates about as highly as The Sun or The Daily Mail.
Citing it is an embarrassment.
“… What you do hear a lot
“… What you do hear a lot of is that Oculus is owned by Facebook. Because it’s popular to hate on Facebook. …”
It’s facebook, they do some pretty shady things. So yea, they deserve the hate.
I don’t necessarily disagree
I don't necessarily disagree with your arguments but mate, your comment is more than 10 times the length of my quick news summary and link. I think expecting the minute details of a full review or editorial post from something with word count barely over 100 is a little ridiculous.
My personal opinion stems from the inaccurate price expection that the Kickstarter created and how that turned out for original investors as well as the more recent crap that Palmer Luckey pulled. Exclusive software titles are pretty common and don't bug me.
Kickstarter backers are NOT
Kickstarter backers are NOT investors! And I say that as a frequent Kickstarter backer. The ACTUAL Series A ($16m) and Series B ($75m) investors (the ones who received that $2 billion buyout payment) likely couldn’t be happier with how their investment turned out, with a return of ~2000%!
People may have had wishful thinking over the price of a finished consumer model using custom parts vs. a devkit using CotS parts (literally the front assembly of a Note 3, for example), but that’s a problem of notoriously poor price estimation by consumers.
Never said they were, I back
Never said they were, I back Kickstarter projects I do not invest in them. It also is not intended as a platform to start your IPO which is more or less what happened and yet another great way to damage what Kickstarter was intended to be.
Fig seems to have both now, backer and investor, which is kind of neat.
Ah, I didn’t mean to imply
Ah, I didn’t mean to imply that your post should have been a full article or in-depth, just that the chosen bullet points weren’t the best representation of the new info.
I totally get that you’ve got a word count limit to work with and can’t make miracles happen out of that.
The expectations on price were badly managed.
I’ll hold out for the HTC
I’ll hold out for the HTC vive, esp since the wireless version is in the works…