so whats the verdict? Oculus or Vive?

Better is always a subjective and loaded question, I am lucky I have both.

Right now you can purchase the Rift without Touch controllers, which makes it cheaper, though I expect once Touch is out future releases will have it bundled. The Rift is lighter and easier to put on than the Vive and has slightly better resolution for text. You can mount the Rift camera on a motion rig for tracking. The downsides of the Rift are god rays, which are pretty bad if you have eye issues like astigmatism and you play sim games like ED, pupil swim where your periphery sort of floats, and little room for glasses. Rift production screen and lens quality has been variable, with red tint really bad for some and others reporting uneven grooving and smudges, exacerbating the god ray issue. For my eyes, and others, increasing the distance to the lens reduces god rays and pupil swim, at the cost of FOV.

The Vive is a complete VR package and suits VR enthusiasts rather than sim enthusiasts. That is not to say you can't use the Vive with a motion sim, it will do seated experiences and work pretty well for 2-3DOF rigs, but unlike the Rift the Vive was designed for room scale VR and that is where its strengths are. Interestingly I can reduce the eye to lens distance on the Vive and increase the FOV while reducing the Frensal lens rings.

There have been plenty of horror stories for Oculus and HTC help and I have experienced that with both.

Oculus just did an about flip and removed the Rift as a hardware lock for accessing the Oculus store, after plenty of justifiable bad press. That they implemented hardware locked DRM in the first place and the lousy consumer launch do throw up Oculus red flags for me, and hence I am limiting my purchases to Steam and will re-evaluate Oculus as a store front after gen 2 VR is out and other players enter the market.

If I was only doing VR sim experiences then I would go with the Rift, if I was a VR enthusiast first and foremost, I would go with the Vive.

Edit - Above is my original comment from June 2016, below is an update from June 2017 which I posted here: https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/vr-motion-cancellation-time-to-test.10241/page-7

A bit of an update from my original comments on the subject, based on owning the Rift and Vive, plus doing lots of public VR demos.

Price is now a significant factor following the Oculus price reduction, but it is not necessarily a determining one.

It makes sense to choose the Vive if your choice is driven by above average or large roomscale, robust tracking, not wanting USB cables snaking everywhere, you plan early adoption of eye tracking, wireless and tracked peripherals, are considering motion simulation and want native motion cancellation, wear glasses or need greater adjustability for eye issues, or if you have a philosophical concern about Facebook and user data.

Choose Oculus if your choice is driven by lower price, included audio, refined design, slightly larger sweet spot and slightly less screen door effect and you want native freebie/exclusives, or if you never plan on using tracked controllers.

The Rift really benefits from a third sensor for roomscale but be aware it does not play nice with all USB ports or cables, plus other USB peripherals like wheels, pedals and HOTAS may complicate the USB bandwidth issues.

The Vive controllers are great at simulating things, such as guns and swords, while Touch is better at simulating hands. Personally I prefer the Vive haptics and Oculus positional audio, but their respective counterparts are fine and not a deal breaker.

The Vive wands can also be used in creative ways, such as a joystick, wheel or virtually any other input device: https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/use-vive-wands-as-a-joystick-or-wheel.10452/

With respect to tracking according to this data source less than 2% of Rift owners (4 cameras) experience comparative tracking with the Vive, and even then only reach those comparative figures over a much smaller tracked volume of less than 8sq m, with the average being only 3.3sq m, while the Vive average is a much more substantial 5.7sq m and can go out to an officially supported 12sq m: http://ghostline.xyz/publications/W...[{"num":1375,"gen":0},{"name":"XYZ"},0,595,0]

In fact the Vive can actually have base stations up to 8-10m apart:



My personal Vive playspace is big enough (8x4m) that I can also run my Rift in the area normally used by just the Vive:


I do lots of public VR demos and have had thousands of users. In my experience there are far greater differences between individual users and use cases than there are between the Rift and Vive themselves. As a consumer you really can't go wrong with either the Rift or Vive HMD for first gen consumer PC VR, both will be superseded but that is at least a year or more off. The best thing is to try them both, preferably back to back, and then choose what suits you best, based on your own personal needs.

There are other HMDs hitting the market later this year, which you may also want to consider, if you can wait.

The Vive can do seated just fine, better than the DK2, but it really shines with room scale and tracked controllers. I doubt Oculus Touch will match the tracking versatility, possibilities and range of Lighthouse coverage. In theory Lighthouse also has real possibilities for motion cancellation, but I have not yet got around to that other than discussing it with other developers that have done some tracking tests.

There are some emerging mixed mode seated and room scale experience for the Vive, via Flyinside for FSX and Prepar3D. You can walk around and do actual pre-flight checks then hop in the plane and fly it. Further down the VR track there are similar possibilities, like having actual multiplayer driver pit exchanges, say for Bathurst or the Le mans 24hr, that would be real interesting with a hard core competitive title like iRacing.

I expect the CV2 to perhaps be 2018 at the earliest. Oculus has not even launched Touch yet and I would expect CV2 will be at least a year or more from when Touch is widely available.

The CV1 improves resolution @Boomslangnz, but the quality is an evolution and not a revolution, VR is still a long way from 4k screens.

If your computer is beefy enough the Oculus debug tool lets you use supersampling, which increases the crispness of the images, but uses significant system resources: http://www.roadtovr.com/improve-oculus-rift-game-image-quality-using-this-tool-oculus-debug-tool/

The real difference you will notice is the Fresnel lenses, which are bitter sweet. They increase the sweet spot, but at the cost of god rays and the fine lines of the lenses themselves. It pays to spend time adjusting the fit of the Rift to minimise the down side of Fresnel lenses, but how much you notice things like god rays depends a bit on the quality of your own vision.

Different people are more susceptible than others to VR sickness. Some are not bothered, some adapt by doing repeated short sessions in VR, stopping whenever they feel the slightest bit off, and some people never adapt. A well known Valve VR dev Chet is one who has never got their VR legs and sparked some controversy when commenting on it a couple of days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4rzrrn/valves_chet_faliszek_on_twitter_can_we_stop/

With VR and motion it is best to alter you motion profiles so they have shorter but faster axis movements. If there is any perceived lag then a motion sim will exacerbate your VR sickness sensitivity, conversely if you have really fast accurate motion then it will help reduce sensitivity for many, as it gives the brain addition reinforcing cues that match the visuals.

Glad VR exceeded your expectations @Archie. Tacked controllers and room scale deepen the immersion even further.