Oculus Rift Pre-Orders to Open on January 6

[LionOfNarnia]

https://www1.oculus.com/blog/oculus-rif ... january-6/

[smartroad]

Waiting on the Vive me

[LionOfNarnia]

I'll be waiting for quite a while, to see what shakes down, but I'm sure some will jump to it.

[Loriath]

I may have a PC that can use it by the time the Fourth Gen rolls out

[IronDuke]

I think I'm going to hold out until the Vive comes out. Make a comparison then.. Do you think they will force me to open a Facebook account and "Like" them as part of the registration process? (Just kidding).

[TorTorden]

My question is how much is it going to go for ?

Or set me back that is.

[Riboflavin]

Going to wait for the Vive as well.

[charlie2alpha]

Judging from how my eyes and brain reacted when I tried to watch movies in 3D it's probably wasted money for me. Also, it requires double the 3D rendering power than normal. Maybe as Loriath said, when its fourth (or later) gen is out...

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I may get one. I could probably sell it for a profit if I don't like it.
But I think I'd rather have the Vive, but I won't pay a lot extra for it.
But I also usually wait for the price to come down.

[TorTorden]

Judging from how my eyes and brain reacted when I tried to watch movies in 3D it's probably wasted money for me. Also, it requires double the 3D rendering power than normal. Maybe as Loriath said, when its fourth (or later) gen is out...

The thing with this latest fad of 3d for movies and tv is it bases itself entirely on stereoscopic images and on quite poor ones at that.
And uses either polarized glasses or active shutter glasses to prevent both eyes seeing both images.
Two solutions with glaring problems since they honestly don't truly work.

On top of this the human brain uses far more than just the stereoscopic offsetting between the right and the left eye to achieve real depth perception and any use of these non clear glasses decreases these other factors.

Chief of this concert of complicated factors are contrast (black to white luminosity), colour correctness, image sharpness. And motion fluidity. The act of wearing these glasses washes out the contrast and colour calibrating through these, well you can just forget about that.
In addition having a display trying to display both images simultaneously messes with motion fluidity and picture clarity, as well as making the image in total seem a lot less bright.

Active 3d with shutter glasses improves clarity but costs more brightness.
Pushing more lumens through a panel of any kind washes out blacks and you loose image fidelity in both ends.

Passive 3D looses less brightness and thus has slightly better fidelity but is fuzzy since both eyes still perceive an image at the same time.

Add on a level of discomfort from these horrible contraptions they call 3d glasses and it doesn't really sound like a good idea now does it?

To me I can see the so called 3d effect but I also notice how much I loose in all the other aspects of the image and loosing say seven out of ten parts of what I consider needed for a good image just to have a 2.5D stereoscopic effect added is simply annoying more than anything,
In effect I often find myself seeing more depth and more suspension of disbelief in the 2d version of a movie than the 3d one.
And I have tried many on qiute expensive gear, chiefly projectors at screens exceeding 100"+.

Now the rift and VR in general is a completely different beast. You don't have shutters or polarized lenses anymore but two dedicated screens rendering separate images in a container blocking out the outside world. So no loss of contrast, no loss of colour fidelity and absolute sharpness and motion clarity since either eye never see the image meant for the other.

And the cherry on top is that Games aren't pigeonholed by an archaic notion like with movies where "anything above 24fps doesnt feel like a movie, so therefore it sucks" but fluidity or fps is aimed at a pace of 75 frames per second, a very large leap from movies that still are 24 frames per second. (3d sends two images in the same span as on for 2d, but displays for half the time, making things feel even more like a slide show)

Yes for now that's going to demand some pretty gnarly systems and even my rig is probably on the very edge.

But In short the tech between a 3D blue ray and Vr is like comparing a bicycle with a sedan, I'm not claiming you are going to like the particular car but it's in a completely different league than the other.