Oculus Rift CV1 vs HTC Vive for AC - What is the best?

There are some advantages on both sides. So it's not clear cut for all people. I would basically break it down like this - The Oculus is a easier experience to get going and understand VR quickly. The vive takes more effort but then is a better experience. Once things are setup and on your head there is a clear winner in my opinion. Here are some basic thoughts and why after 2-3 weeks I simply stopped testing the oculus.

Vive has much better glass. The chromatic aberration on the oculus is simply terrible outside of center. The vive on the other hand has a larger field of view that doesn't distort in color. In fact I never see that hard blue outlines I see in the oculus along straight hard contrast lines - In sim racing this is the painted edge of the track so it's everywhere and unavoidable. The vive has a larger portion that is simply in focus. The vive allows for inner ocular and distance correction where as the oculus only has inner ocular adjuster. Neither go narrow enough for the general populous and I don't know why this is acceptable.

Vive sits closer to your face and thus gives you a larger field of view, it's significant and I am not sure why this is quickly over looked in reviews comparing the two. I find the vive incredibly similar to wearing a real helmet. I also found that BOTH require a lot of fussing on your face to find the optimum focus. But because the vive is more like goggles it's easier to move around and then secure to your head. Then when doing quick darts/rotations (like looking to your blind spots) the head unit does not move. The oculus on the other hand does, and worse because the stock unit only comes with one sensor, it can lose it's tracking for a split second when you turn your head too far. This can become particularly bad when you turn back around (forward facing) and you've been slightly re-positioned due to tracking (ugh my steering wheel just moved 3 inches to my left!). I've literally never had this happen on the vive. On the oculus I found it to be a real problem, however, now that you can get multiple sensors I highly suspect that can be cured.

The vive was brighter, had more contrast, color was more even - however the oculus had more vibrant colors, except that the damn image is very cool temperature wise.

Glasses - I wear them, I need them for driving.. So I need them in VR.. the oculus is TERRIBLE with glasses.. I have relatively small glasses and a narrow head. So how anyone is stuffing them into their oculus and not scratching the lenses is beyond me. I got contacts that fit over the vive and the oculus as I knew this would be an issue. The vive is better as the headset has a gear to move it forward/back to allow for glasses, but it's still not great. At any rate the contacts I purchased were from https://vr-lens-lab.com/ . The oculus ones simply don't work. They don't stay seated as there just isn't a great way to do it. I rigged something up to help but would still need to adjust them. The vive contacts pop on in 10 seconds and your done. So for someone how doesn't want to wear glasses and goggles a the same time this is a great solution.

Now the oculus is extremely easy to setup, it's prettier and the materials feel nicer. It takes more time to download/install 'home' than it did to get it working. It's just super simple. Has built in ear phones. In general I find the oculus to be great for simply watching vr content. Not active playing. It's cheaper too. The vive requires more time to setup properly with it's two sensors that need power. The headphones on the oculus I almost immediately removed (easy to do so and nicely designed to accommodate) as I find it's much better to use real headphones to cancel out your surroundings. So there was no gain for me here.

Some people will find the ease of use of the oculus to be a winning solution. For me with over 400 hours now in VR I find the experience and visual quality to be much more important.

Nathan

 

Great read. Watched and red many comparisons but this was the only one that made me lean towards the Vive.
Thanks for taking the time to write what feels like an honest and unbiased opinion.

 

He is wearing glasses though, which changes your perception of any secondary optics quite a bit.

He mentions that in his write up but it should be in the first sentence imo.

 

Yep, a rare thing these days with paid reviews on Utoob

Replied to @Gunja

 

Hope you don't mind me asking this here....

I have been using your .ini file for a few weeks now, and generally very happy with it.

One very slight niggle I have, is that it is very "bright" overall in most "normal sunny" weather situations. Is there a way of toning the brightness level down easily? I've tried lowering saturation right down, but it doesn't help.

 

under [AUTO_EXPOSURE]
a line
TARGET=0.32 ; target average brigthness that auto exp is trying to achieve (0 -> 1)
INFLUENCED_BY_GLARE=0
Try to lower that number a bit, what ever it is for you.
And did you rename his pp.ini file to default? What ever you choose in game it always goes to default for VR users.

 

Thank you - will try that tonight.

I have renamed and the filter is working fine (very well actually; brake lights clearly visible with little impact on performance), it's just very bright overall on anything other than overcast conditions.

 

ye, you might wanna try a small change like 0.30

 

Is "Distance correction" the option added by Kunos to correct the "world scale" issue (slightly tiny) with the Vive ?

 

To be fair - I tried with my normal contacts, and with the vr contacts as well. I did not test the oculus with glasses on because there is really no way to do so without risking scratching the oculus glass.

 

No, the vive can physically move the head unit closer/further from your eyes. Innerocular moves the glass closer to your nose or your ears (horizontal distance).

Nathan

 

You didn't feel world scale difference between the two thus?

 

I believe you are describing the pupillary distance (PD) for horizontal distance. The center of the lens should match the center of the pupil. You can get the number from your glasses prescription. Mine is 66mm I think the standard value is 63mm.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

i've never had mine measured, but anywhere from 67 to 70 feels most comfortable for me in the rift

 

What are VR contacts?

 

Interocular distance the distance between the eyes, usually used in reference to the interpupillary distance (the distance between the two pupils when the visual axes are parallel).

So the vive has two corrections - interocular (horizontal) and distance from the eyeball to the glass. Both are physical and relate directly to the lens and your eyeballs.

Assetto has a virtual version for innerocular - which I've found should be set to the same as your headset. Changing this does change the scale of things.

My optometrist told me the average was 58-59mm. I was 60mm so I fell within the headsets range but 3 people at work are below this and when they look straight ahead into the distance it's blurry and they get headaches.

n

 

no offense but read the post - I literally provided a link.

 

He's talking about the VR lens lab inserts. I saw a review that they didn't stay in place well so I skipped it and got their other product which are more or less the same as these but come with a frame and strap.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

Ahhh, interesting.

My prescription is -11 and -5 so I'm intending to use my contact lenses.

 

AC has the best exposure settings. I still can't find a good brightness for Pcars.