Oculus Rift 600$$ Ridiculous.

So who's gonna spend 600 dollars on an Oculus Rift? I'm sure not going to.
I would have spent 450 tops. Which is more than enough if you ask me.

But 600 isn't cheap for anyone let alone the average consumer.
So in y'alls opinions, do you think a 600 price tag will still leave it as a niche market to only the people with elite computers can actually enjoy? Or do you think people will wastefully spend money to get their hands on this amazing piece?

Amazing or not, I can not justify a 600 price tag for it, let alone the average consumer.

 

It's official price tag is $600? Skip.

 

Yup.

And to think the founder said this -

Roughly in that ball park means like 100 more or whatever, not 50 dollars shy of being twice as much lol.
Of course that's my opinion.

 

Some people spent that much on their GPU. Not sure why it would be out of the norm to expect a such a price tag on technology like this.

 

$730 in the UK before shipping charges, then probably an extra $100 plus charges for the hand controllers later on, totally out of my budget range, was prepared to spend up to £400 but no more, also why force an xbox controller on us, make it an option to reduce the price by $50. Guess Ill be hoping Hololens or Valves headset is better priced.

 

$850 CAD for me. I just can't justify buying it. Not without some purpose greater than "because it's neat".

Anyone have any million dollar ideas for VR applications?

 

I've got PSVR, it is absolutely excellent. There is not much of a difference due to various optimisations across the board.

$600 for VR? absolutely not. Count me out. Ideally it would be $99, but production would have to be in the 10s of millions of units to achieve that.

I'm pretty sure $600 if accurate is just for enthusiasts. The costs need to come down big time.

 

I'd need to test live device to see if it is worth the money. DK2 wasn't THAT impressive.
Also, they won't be available till april... not a great way to do business.

Reminds me of oreos story. The cookie originally was knockoff of another brand. However, it surpassed popularity of the original.

What are known alternatives to Rift?

 

The deal breaker for me is that the controllers are not included, so on top of that price, there's also the price of the controllers when they are released as well.

 

Prop 250 more lol

 

I'm not a big fan of special controllers in VR. I quite like the classic joypad as i'm not really big into waving my arms around with flashing lights. I did all that at glastonbury a fair few years ago.

 

I'm looking forward to the MS style augmentation. To be honest I'd only have interest in Oculus VR style for things where I'd lay down and go to sleep, say a planetarium app or something...and I'd probably wake up in the morning with a broken Occulus VR set.

 

Nope! People are odd. An entire new console (RetroVGS) with programmable gate to change it into many different consoles (hardware emulation) was coming and people cried that $350 was way too much for that. And now these guys are pushing out just a VR peripheral at double that price (or more). I think only a true fanatic and / or person with a load of extra money would buy this.

 

IIRC price of atari adjusted for inflation is about $750. And people bought that.

I'm interested in practical application of VR, namely virtual desktops. However at the moment, I think oculus guys seriously screwed up.

 

I loved the idea of having two hand tracking controllers. For that price you'd think they'd be included.

Anyone has any idea why the price is so high? What technology is in it that skyrockets the price?

 

I bought the first devkit and was so amazed by it that I'll probably get this one as well, even though I've only used my Rift for like 5 hours in total. The only downside is the beast machine needed to power it so I guess I'll have to get that first.

I don't get how you're surprised by the price though. A proper monitor costs about the same, and the Rift is a proper monitor with a lot of other junk added on top.

 

For $600 I can have a pretty good computer or buy all the current gen consoles available on the market (taking into account prices for my country). Sorry, but nope.avi

//edit: On top of that it turned out Oculus guys are just bunch of liars. DK1 was $300 and before FB buyout they've said on numerous occasions that consumer version will be actually cheaper.

 

Oculus was already going to be a difficult sell to the general consumer. This price tag is a little steeper than expected, but is not unreasonable for a high-end PC peripheral. And at the end of the day, that's what Oculus Rift is. Given the projected system specs that they released for this device, it was never going to be within the reach of the general consumer. You need a $1,500+ rig just to run it, and that's if you build the rig yourself.

More casual consumers are going to be dipping their toes into VR using the Samsung Gear. And with the Oculus firmly planting its flag in the hard-core PC demographic, this will open up considerable opportunity for Sony to reach for a broader audience with their PlayStation VR.

I'll probably still get an Oculus Rift. But I'll also probably wait a few months, partially to save up the money.

 

I got mail yesterday that I seem to be getting one for free cause I backed em during Kickstarter , so check your mail/spam or wait for one in case you did the same.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game/posts/1458224

 

The reaain i complain is the founder said it would be in the 350 ballpark, not 50 shy from twice as much. I can see a hundred more, but 250 more is alot.

 

There's the Samsung Gear VR, which is only about $100. (but requires a fairly expensive phone, and is a lower-quality option)

There's the PlayStation VR. No actual word yet on how much it will cost, but it is going to partially use the PlayStation 4 for rendering and utilize existing controllers like the Dualshock 4, PlayStation Camera, and Move controllers. (so will require a $60 camera and $350 console, on top of whatever the cost of the headset is)

There's also the Valve HTC Vive. There's also no price for this one yet. But it is expected to be more expensive than the Oculus, and has much steeper requirements in terms of convenience. (you will basically have to clear out an entire room)

 

Yeah, I understand, but for the amount of hardware you're getting I don't think the price is too bad.

That's sick. I was 100% sure I backed them, but then I realized I pre-ordered the devkit right after the kickstarter.

 

Sounds like that for decent vr people would need to buy oculus either way.

PSVR is playstation only, HTC vive is probably more expensive, Gear VR is lower quality plus requires phone.

Unless HTC Vive does some stunt like dropping price.

 

Buy Google Cardboard and get the hype out of your system for 10 bucks. heh.

For $600, this thing better run like SAO.

Guess it won't flop as hard as the Ouya though.

 

They have the financial backing of Facebook, so yeah, it's probably not going to flop. When you have pockets that deep, it opens up a lot of options.

The initial Kickstarter significantly adjusted people's expectations for this device. The original objective was to make a cheap/mass-market VR solution. But with the purchase of Oculus, and the financial backing of Facebook, they were able to significantly expand the performance scope of the device. They were also able to dig a lot deeper into testing, and finding the limitations of what it takes to make a device like this viable for actual use.

One of the biggest discoveries they made during this process is how easy it is for people to get sick while using VR. They also figured out ways to counter-act this tendency. One of the best strategies was increasing the performance of the device, from the speed of the motion-tracking to the resolution of the screens it uses. And those extras don't come cheap.

The pricing for the Oculus places it far out of the reach of a mass-market audience, such as those that went out to purchase a Wii. The Oculus will be a device for computer hobbyists initially. This is a crowd that spends $300+ on their video cards. $600 for a VR headset is not that much of a stretch for such consumers. But such consumers are a much smaller audience. I do hope that Oculus and Facebook are taking such factors into consideration.

 

This is way overpriced. They faintly announced a price tag around $350-400, and a worldwide release. From France it would cost me 740 € (incl. taxes and shipping). I would have to wait for, then buy, the missing vr controllers (certainly at a ridiculously high price). I dont give a **** about the xbox one pad (free ? serioulsy ?). However, nice they include the remote so we have an alternative controller. Release Q1 ? yes, shipments starting from March 28, may after one hour or so. Too much to say. I love VR, i love my DK2 (also got a Gear VR for dev and really enjoying it), and i want to see VR becoming mainstream. Both as a developer and as a user i'm really disappointed. Not a smart move.

 

I agree that this puts it outside the price range of most people, but that is ok. This is a first adopter move and while they continue to refine the technology the prices for the components will come down as will the price of the units. The end result is in ~5 years I am sure we'll see mass market priced offerings from these guys with better hardware, fewer problems, and an affordable price. I'm ok being patient while problems decrease and quantity of content increases No need to be first in line here!

 

In Europe, you have to add the VAT and the shipping costs so in any case, it costs more than 700 euros for us.

Needless to say that the current reactions on various potential consumers forums are very negative and the "big public" will never buy it at this price. The important question now is to foresee if the prices will decrease overtime due to increased production (like in the hi-fi segment in general) or if it will die before reaching maturity.

 

Well, the real consequences for this move are more about the individual developers than they are about the Oculus itself. Oculus is owned by Facebook, a sizable tech company with deep pockets. They can afford to ride out a slow build-up of potential users, and this high price-point is almost certainly because they intend to sell the hardware for a profit. (instead of going the subsidized-platform route)

The people who will be hit hardest by a slower ramp-up of users are the developers who have invested more heavily in making games specifically for VR experiences. They will be feeling the pinch by having a much smaller audience to sell their wares to. The competition in the VR space will help with matters, but it will still be lean times until the potential audience grows big enough to sustain larger development projects.

 

Well said. That price point is a classic "early adopter tax." It's not that Oculus is overcharging (Palmer Luckey claims that they are not making any money on these, even at that price point), but brand new products don't have the same economy of scale as established products.

They could have made a much less expensive unit by using off the shelf components like the DK1 and DK2 did, but my understanding is that the 1.0 consumer version offers an experience that is significantly beyond those. I believe it has custom made screens specifically for VR, etc. If they only offered experiences like you get on DK2, I don't think that would help VR take off. It's got to be better than that.

 

My order says $914 Canadian. I have not told my wife yet. I place my odds at being alive when my Rift arrives at 50/50.

 

Actually, I have suspicion that they didn't fix the VR sickness.

There's opinion that most virtual reality devices suffer from this problem:
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/obscure-neuroscience-problem-thats-plaguing-vr/

Basically, eyes have two mechanisms - one is for focusing on things, and another is aiming both eyes at the same thing. In real life they both work in unison, but in VR devices, mecahanisms need to be decoupled from each other. Each eye needs to focus on close screen BUT they are looking at things behind it.

And it is possible that this thing causes nausesa in some people. According to the article, nearly all VR devices have no countermeasure against that problem.

---

Another issue is tetris effect coupled with VR. There were couple of articles about it, and scientific name about it, but I can't find articles and forgot the scientific name.

 

Probably only a matter of time before someone sues them for either making them sick or "messing up my vision". Having FB in the mix will have more people including lawyers seeing big $ (or pound or whatever) signs.

 

Another iteration another few hundred dollars? What else is new with oculus. Probably should have bought it back when it was like $300.

 

This is par for the course for new, unproven technologies. Look at any new tech release, from the first home tvs, vcrs, smart phones, Internet access, electric cars and so on. Early models are always priced high. Only the wealthy or technophiles can obtain them.

Once the market is proven to exist then installing more capital to lower the unit cost makes sense. Market competition kicks in. Volumes go up and prices go down.

And personal VR devices are still very much an unproven tech. There is a lot of buzz in forums like this, but they have yet to become a thing for the general public. And as yet no one has conclusively demonstrated that VR is better then conventional tech.

 

I was struggling to decide if I want one, but then I saw that Greece is not included in the countries you can preorder from, so problem solved for me!

 

While I have reasonable doubts new technolgoies, this is facebook we're talking about. They probably put EULA that will prevent you from suing them in any fashion.

Speaking of messing up vision, I think people have reason to be more concerned about google cardboard. Wouldn't be starting at smartphone screen at that distance.

Better for what?
Creating dynamic 3d surrounding environment using conventional methods will be more expensive.


And volumetric displays aren't here yet.


If you know alternative for that kind of thing, I'm all ears.

 

Why not just use a recent example which has modern markets behind the reasoning, such as PS4? Much more relevant.

Also the rift uses several off the shelf components. What is really happening here is that facebook and oculus realised that they could go the enthusiast route like GPUs do - the initial product is expensive and enthusiast then when bringing new ones out you sell the old far cheaper. You make much more revenue this way.

As there is competition, it makes no sense for them to discount when they're selling out in 14 hours (yes it is grotesquely overpriced). Supply and demand, and all that.

Happy to develop for it if they send us a rift, otherwise no.

 

Of course VR is better at VR then the alternatives. But is VR better for stuff that people are actually willing to pay for?

In games the question would be "Is the gaming experience better with VR then with conventional tech?". Sure its a very vague and woolly question. But its still undecided, and its pretty important. There are a bunch of cons with VR that may just mean that traditional 2D screen gaming stays dominant for years to come.

 

That was true of the DK1 and DK2, but supposedly the consumer version has 200-300 custom made components, including the screens.

 

This is a case of pricing based on fan boy critiques and those that plan to 'get rich quick by being first to the market with Oculus Rift games' aspirations...pay it if you want but the price will probably drop a lot within a year's time.

 

I was initially excited for VR and own the DK1 and DK2. I have messed with some Unity stuff with them, but have barely touched them for actually playing games. (it also doesn't help that I got massively sick playing Alien Isolation for 30 minutes in VR once).

As time has passed, I'm feeling that VR for gaming might not be the obvious "win" I thought it would be. But I do think there's a lot of potential for non-gaming applications. I tried a 3D chat application and it was surprisingly compelling and natural. For content creation it could be interesting. For car racing sims and flight sims, it's also a natural fit. Could be useful for certain types of training. I've also read about weird uses like pain management and overcoming phobias.

It's probably unfair to judge the experience based on DK2 though. I understand that the consumer version is super comfortable and has solved a number of issues. Even so, it may be a stretch to expect gamers to strap something on their head for extended play sessions.

 

$600, a high-end PC, and it's still tethered. Plus, it'll still make you sick. Yay for VR!
Gigi

 

My impression is that Palmer Luckey is unwilling to compromise on quality for short term gains (selling to the mainstream right off the bat). A high quality product is important for the future of VR, or we could end up repeating 90's VR.

And yes, I can't think of an electronics product that didn't go down in price over time, but that's hardly unique to this product.

 

.
That's cryptic. People are willing to pay for almost anything, with enough hype/marketing.
Did you have something other than games in mind?

Probably not. I was looking for VR devices for other applications. virtual desktop and as aid in modeling, VR tours, etc. Non-gaming stuff.

As i mentioned before, VR experience with Dev Kit II wasn't that great. I also have harder time seeing stereo in magic books and anaglyph glasses for some reason (effect just isn't strong and it takes minutes for it to manifest for the first time), that might have something to do with it.

 

I bought into the hype around the dk1 so bought a dk2. I've used it for about an hour or two total. Now it sits on shelf gathering dust. It's just not a great experience at all. The whole VR thing is totally overhyped and I can't see it ever becoming main stream, maybe in another 10 years when it weighs about 10 grams is wireless with total 360 degree emmersion, no gaps around the edges, same resolution as your eyes and costing less than $100! Anyone want to kickstart that one off?

 

I'm not sure if trying to turn vr into headset/headgear is the right way to go to begin with.

Wouldn't that be a better idea to create VR chair? You know, add as much hardware as you need, and keep the helmet weightless by installing servo/robot arm that will keep it suspended in air while tracking your head movement and moving helmet out of the way?

That thing would probably cost a fortune though.

 

This is definitely a wait and see product for me after owning the DK2 and clocking a couple hundred queasy hours on it.

 

I don't understand why there's headphones and a gamepad included now.

People who care about sound don't want to use "built-in" stuff, and surely it's not adding any value for people who don't care 'cause they'd just whack whatever headphones they already have over the top.

And if we're playing games... why on Earth would we not already have our gaming peripherals of choice? Gamepads aren't rare, and while it's new and nice there's nothing especially unique about that one. So what problem is it solving? (Unless it's MS they're coming from, angling to have controllers in common between Oculus-designed stuff and Hololens-designed stuff, or something?)

 

I'll cut to the chase - I think this generation of VR is a pipe dream. Here's why:

1. VR costs too much to become widespread - The technology in the Oculus, the most advanced piece of VR tech that has solved the most technical problems, costs $750+ USD. Most consumers will not pay this. This cost is justified - in order to avoid motion sickness, you have to have high resolution, high FPS experiences, otherwise you find it really easy to trigger the physiological triggers that cause "VR sickness"...as the VirtualBoy by Nintendo found out the hard way during the 64-bit console era in the mid 90s.
   
   
2. VR is not casual enough for the casuals to embrace it - Users are spoiled for ease of use on the web, with their phones, with their consoles, and more and more so with their operating systems. Further, we developers are getting equally spoiled with tools like Unity that make development "easy". From what I've seen there's nothing easy about creating VR, and putting up VR still requires a lot of cables and sensors and a high-performance machine and by this point you've long lost the people you need for VR to succeed - the casuals.
   
   
3. VR does not have an established library accessible to the Average Joe - I cannot name, off the top of my head, more than a handful of games that use VR in them - MineCraft is easily the most prominent, but why spend $700+ USD (including Shipping & Handling) to play a game that you can play on a PC for the cost of the game? Further, what other notable games use VR? That's a serious question - I pay attention to the gaming market, but I cannot name more than three (MineCraft, Elite: Dangerous...actually, two.) Further - where's Sword Art Online? As much as I make fun of the newbies who pop in wanting to make a SAO MMORPG, such a MMORPG would be the killer app that would sell more VR than anything we've currently got put together, doubled.
   
   
4. VR still has not adequately solved the motion sickness problem - part of what makes VR hard to develop is that you have to have a very high framerate to help combat "VR sickness." Your average joe developer - including, and especially me - is unlikely to have the resources to put towards a game that performs well enough not to make people sick. There's certain physiological triggers for motion sickness as well that, while I'm sure are explored, aren't common enough knowledge to empower people to make VR games at the scale needed to give this generation of VR momentum enough to alter the landscape of gaming.
   
   
5. VR is being championed by the wrong audience - Much like the Ouya before it, the community getting most enthused with VR isn't the end-user; I've seen precious few cases of people knowing how far along this generation of VR is, or even that it's a thing worth paying attention to (or, paying for in the first place.) We developers can be excited, and we should be, because VR changes how we make games. The end-user needs to be excited though, because they're the ones investing the most in this - they invest their money, yes, but more to the point they invest their time and emotions into experiences that the VR acts as an interface for. When they don't know it's a thing despite years of press releases, gaming journalism, and other sources of information on this technology, that's a bad sign.

As much as I'd like to see VR become a widespread thing, as much as I'd love a more 'natural' interface with game worlds to happen...I'm sorry, I just do not see it in this generation. The next one could be a way different story.