Oculus Rift Catch-All

I'm not super worried about the initially high cost. There's a lot of development costs built into that price, and setting it there means that the people buying it are already likely to have the hardware necessary to really run it. Unless it flops mightily, I fully expect the price to drop within the next few years.

For perspective, when the very first eink Kindle was released in 2007, it was priced at $399. Now you can get a brand new one for $80.

How much of that Kindle drop is due to Amazon subsidies? Can Occulus do anything similar if they need to get the price down?

I'd imagine that the economy of scale is going to play a big role as manufacturing ramps up. Plus, once the store is launched, they'll could start to treat the headset as a loss leader. But I doubt we'll ever see the PC headsets in the sub-$100 range. The mobile headsets are already targeting that price, though.

Triple post!

Double post

I think the Kindle comparison is apt. It's first party hardware (not really 'subsidized', they make it). They made it, they can price it however they want. If they want it to move and get in lots of homes because it's really the content that makes them money, they can go the Kindle route. They'll probably do more like home consoles do and price close to the cost of the thing while still earning a profit.

One thing to look at, for as many advancements as have been made, the first version and first wave of content will be disappointing to some people. So there's an advantage to pricing it higher and keeping it to a self-selecting crowd for now. They can legitimize the product that way and start iterating on the next one. Though I will probably get a headset of some kind early next year I expect better ones to be available within 1-2 years. This cycle is comparable to the iOS devices. Your iPhone 5S is still viable but your 3GS really isnt.

There is a bit of a standards war in the making. I'm sure all of the manufacturers remember the video wars and don't want to be the Betamax or HD-DVD.

The real trick will be to get VR supported in the drivers and allow the developers to abstract their implementation. This way games (and other software) can be hardware agnostic - similar to the way graphics cards are now supported.

Speaking of implementation, have you seen this:

Peter Schifrin, one of the artists featured, was a teacher of mine.

So I tried to activate one of my Occulus sleepers this week to score an early version of the CR1. Didn't happen, though I am going over their for lunch and demos in a few weeks.

Thought this was nice.

And they announced Valkyrie will be a 'pack in' with pre-orders of the Rift retail kit. Annyoingly, there was no news on a date, price, or when one could actually pre order the Rift with this news.

polypusher wrote:

And they announced Valkyrie will be a 'pack in' with pre-orders of the Rift retail kit. Annyoingly, there was no news on a date, price, or when one could actually pre order the Rift with this news.

Yeah, CCP Games can be quite slow sometimes

I take comfort in the fact that every single time they've made any public announcement since May of 2015, they've always said "Q1 2016". That consistency and confidence is reassuring. Okay, confidence at hitting a quarter maybe isn't such a big deal, but at least they've never become more ambiguous with "Early 2016" or other language different or less specific than "Q1 2016". At the VGA's last week again Luckey said "Q1". He could have said nothing, but he specifically said Q1, so for them to maintain that message for this long, leads me to believe that it's sticking.

So I guess I'm counting on March 31 2016 and anything earlier than that is just a bonus!

My biggest wish right now is that someone would really lay down the facts on the performance of various GPUs. I'm waiting to buy one just for the Rift and I'd like to know if the either 290 or the 970 edges out the other, even by a hair.

Preorders start 1/6/16 at 8am PST.

Kinda peeved they're talking preorders and we still don't have a price.

As long as the price isn't crazy, I will be preordering it on Wednesday.

Me too. I'm guessing $400 shipped. If it's higher than $500, may be waiting for the secondary market.

Same. Im sold if the price is 400-500. Hoping there will be a date to go with the price on Wednesday.

Six months ago I would have been totally hyped for this, but requiring a GTX 970 as a minimum video card means tacking another $300 onto whatever investment the Oculus hardware will require. I'm sure many have already made that investment so it's no big deal, but it's a tough pill to swallow for a first gen system.

Yeah the 970 is pricey. VR is going to be high end gaming for a while unless someone targets a lower quality set of games. I guess that's what GearVR is for though. In a year, a 970 will be more mid-range but I bet it will still be $200+

Alz wrote:

Six months ago I would have been totally hyped for this, but requiring a GTX 970 as a minimum video card means tacking another $300 onto whatever investment the Oculus hardware will require. I'm sure many have already made that investment so it's no big deal, but it's a tough pill to swallow for a first gen system.

Yup. As I said in another thread, I don't have the horsepower in my computer, and it's a laptop, so I'd be looking at an investment of over $1,500 for new PC + Oculus, at least.

polypusher wrote:

Yeah the 970 is pricey. VR is going to be high end gaming for a while unless someone targets a lower quality set of games. I guess that's what GearVR is for though. In a year, a 970 will be more mid-range but I bet it will still be $200+

2nd 3rd quarter will be seeing a huge shift in video cards. 970 will definitely drop or rather the new stuff coming out will be better performing and cheaper than the 970.

Cant remember which thread this was posted in, but it will definitely affect peoples buying decisions.

some good info on what to expect from next gen (2nd to 3rd Qtr 2016) graphics cards

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015...

the TL:DR
– PC graphics finally moves away from ancient 28nm transistors in 2016
– HBM2 memory will give an insane 1TB/s of bandwidth and support 32GB of graphics memory
– Overall upshot could be a near doubling of gaming graphics performance…
– …or today’s performance at roughly half the cost
– Proper 4K gaming on a single GPU should be possible
– GPUs with enough performance for really high resolution virtual reality (VR) look likely, too

Everytime I hear that the next gen will double the top end card's performance I just smile and laugh.

TheGameguru wrote:

Everytime I hear that the next gen will double the top end card's performance I just smile and laugh.

I'm sure it's sales speak, but why do you think it wont?

He's Jaded

I like the idea that budget cards will outperform last year's high end cards. That would be sweet. Its been a while since it felt like there was a proper performance leap, just incremental changes for like 5 years.

I'm sitting tight for this new year of video cards, then I am all in with a new card + Rift or Vive.

ranalin wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Everytime I hear that the next gen will double the top end card's performance I just smile and laugh.

I'm sure it's sales speak, but why do you think it wont?

Because it's never happened.. there is no Moore's law when it comes to GPU's. If we see a 50% performance boost at the top end it would be a first.. forget a 90-100% performance increase.

It might be that AMD Arctic Islands and Nvidia's Pascal deliver a serious improvement over the current generation but color me skeptical.

If I didn't have to upgrade my video card I would be all in. I'll probably end up waiting until the Vive is out and see how things shake out from there. There's always the chance i'll lose my will power and buy one after I try it though. I'm excited about VR but have not had a chance to give it a whirl yet.

I'm going to take the plunge. I'm at the low end of the recommended specs, so I may have to upgrade my GPU later this year, but I think I'll be OK for at least the launch window.

With all of or medical bills I don't think I will be able to preorder, but hopefully will be able to pick one up next holiday season, which will let the video card scence also shake out.

I did see this that someone posted on reddit:

Can I use a weaker PC for basic content?

With weaker hardware, it may be possible to run very graphically simplistic content like virtual desktop, virtual cinema, and 360 videos, alongside very low fidelity games, however you will be totally on your own without support if you choose to do this.

If you do wish to take this non-recommended path, your PC must at least meet the absolute minimum requirements:

Video Card: GTX 650 / AMD 7750 desktop GPU or better and newer
USB Ports: 2x USB 3.0 ports
Video Output: free HDMI 1.3 output
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

http://fortune.com/2016/01/05/htc-in...

New details on the Vive today at CES. I'd been accumulating money in my steam wallet to get this and it appears it is going to be the most powerful of the VR competition, so good move by me selling off virtual TF2 items so I can buy this guy with "free" money.