Microsoft VR headsets for Windows 10 - starting at $299

Price is right. That's the golden spot for me as far as VR goes. If Vive or Oculus hit that point, it's a must buy. At $800, it's a want to buy but I'll hold off until next gen.

You do get what you pay for, though. I like the Google Cardboard stuff with an iPhone and a cheap $15 headset. It's not horrible, and it can be decent. It's cheap and it feels that way. It's fun, though.

It will just come down to the games for me. Hopefully, Microsoft can drum up a lot of support (and not exclusive support from 3rd parties, I hate that) as well as first party games and applications.
 
Let's confuse the market with additional trash headsets.
 
Dayaks said:
Let's confuse the market with additional trash headsets.
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You obviously didn't read the article. "Microsoft said that the headsets will start at $299 and will include inside-out tracking sensors, obviating the need for external cameras or laser systems like those on the current Oculus Rift or HTC Vive." If you understood how big of a deal that was to not need external sensors like the Santa Cruz prototype you wouldn't automatically dismiss it as trash. These aren't some shitty third-party headsets. This is going to put coals under the feet of HTC and Oculus to get their inside-out headsets to market. Not to mention the fact that Oculus themselves have said their Santa Cruz headset will be between the price of Gear VR and Rift + Touch so $300 sounds exactly right. Now if they can get controllers working with this inside-out technology that's going to be a huge win.
 
zamardii12 said:
You obviously didn't read the article. "Microsoft said that the headsets will start at $299 and will include inside-out tracking sensors, obviating the need for external cameras or laser systems like those on the current Oculus Rift or HTC Vive." If you understood how big of a deal that was to not need external sensors like the Santa Cruz prototype you wouldn't automatically dismiss it as trash. This is going to put coals under the feet of HTC and Oculus to get their inside-out headsets to market.
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What good is that without hand tracking?

Why no specs?
 
Dayaks said:
What good is that without hand tracking?

Why no specs?
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One step at a time dude. You can't rush progress. The fact that inside-out tracking has been unveiled within a year of the Vive and Oculus being released is huge progress. Hand tracking will happen, and it's not like they said it doesn't hand-track. There will be some sort of device for input but it hasn't been detailed yet.
 
zamardii12 said:
One step at a time dude. You can't rush progress. The fact that inside-out tracking has been unveiled within a year of the Vive and Oculus being released is huge progress. Hand tracking will happen, and it's not like they said it doesn't hand-track. There will be some sort of device for input but it hasn't been detailed yet.
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Nah, they are already late to the game, and wait until more info is released I bet it'll be disappointing.

"Inside-out" isn't that crazy. I imagine you can do it pretty easily the same way optimal mice work. There's tradeoffs...
 
Dayaks said:
Nah, they are already late to the game, and wait until more info is released I bet it'll be disappointing.

"Inside-out" isn't that crazy. I imagine you can do it pretty easily the same way optimal mice work. There's tradeoffs...
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Lol. You have no idea what you're talking about. Inside out tracking is extremely difficult when you are talking about sub-millimeter positional tracking with high availability in 3D positional space. It's incredibly difficult and I am really curious the technology they are using to do this. I remember Carmack talking at Oculus Connect 2 years ago talking about it and saying it probably will have to do ambient light sensors and reflections to triangulate your position in your 3D space which is likely why the Santa Cruz prototype has cameras on all 4 corners of the HMD. I remember Norm from tested said the first thing he did when he tried Santa Cruz was he tried to cover up all the sensors. And he said even with one camera it was able to track very precisely.
 
Heh when these things come out, it will be $300 for the head set and $250 per motion controller because they have to integrate hand tracking in each controller. So it'll still be about $800 for a real VR experience IMHO.
 
zamardii12 said:
Lol. You have no idea what you're talking about. Inside out tracking is extremely difficult when you are talking about sub-millimeter positional tracking with high availability in 3D positional space. It's incredibly difficult and I am really curious the technology they are using to do this. I remember Carmack talking at Oculus Connect 2 years ago talking about it and saying it probably will have to do ambient light sensors and reflections to triangulate your position in your 3D space which is likely why the Santa Cruz prototype has cameras on all 4 corners of the HMD. I remember Norm from tested said the first thing he did when he tried Santa Cruz was he tried to cover up all the sensors. And he said even with one camera it was able to track very precisely.
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Oh yeah, and you believed him? I'd like to see that one camera point in space creation.

I like how the guy that is skeptical of the device that released no real info is the one that doesn't know what he's talking about. Completely ignore the "tradeoffs" comment at the end. That I recognize there are likely negative tradeoffs Microsoft did to make his happen and why I am skeptical.

Here I'll be more positive. What a magical device. Microsoft was courageous coming out with this design! (That we know jack shit about.)
 
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Dayaks said:
Oh yeah, and you believed him? I'd like to see that one camera point in space creation.

I like how the guy that is skeptical of the device that released no real info is the one that doesn't know what he's talking about. Completely ignore the "tradeoffs" comment at the end. That I recognize there are likely negative tradeoffs Microsoft did to make his happen and why I am skeptical.

Here I'll be more positive. What a magical device. Microsoft was courageous coming out with this design! (That we know jack shit about.)
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But, but, but, the windows phone was magical, so is win 10 anniversary edition, and the xbone, and kinect ;)
 
Dayaks said:
Nah, they are already late to the game, and wait until more info is released I bet it'll be disappointing.

"Inside-out" isn't that crazy. I imagine you can do it pretty easily the same way optimal mice work. There's tradeoffs...
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More than likely at the $300 price point Microsoft's solution will be disappointing. However, internally within MS, they will most likely have much higher end versions for different markets.

Doesn't really matter though.. as with all things, in about 2 years, if VR is still something of interest, Apple will release a headset and it will be 'ground breaking and revolutionary'. Probably have Siri built in so you can order a pizza while playing!
 
The first comment said it best: "That's a bold thing to claim without announcing specs or showing actual live footage."

Rift CV1/Vive resolution (1200x1080 per eye) is just barely acceptable as it is; I have my doubts that they're using the same 90 Hz OLED panels Oculus and HTC are on the $299 models, and there's a very real chance they'd cut costs by using lower-res 60-75 Hz panels.

Also, key words: STARTING AT $299. That implies higher-end HMDs with bigger pricetags, perhaps much bigger.

Most important of all, however, is software support. You can claim that your hardware is cheaper and better all you want, but if I can't play DCS World, Elite: Dangerous and so forth with it because the prerequisite APIs aren't supported, I'm not interested.

We've already got rifts forming in VR API support between Oculus and SteamVR/OpenVR; we don't need Microsoft making the API fragmentation even worse this early on.
 
My guess is that these MS partner headsets will either use the same dedicated HPU coprocessor as the Hololens for inside out tracking or Intel RealSense (Intel and MS announced at IDF that they were working together to create specs for headsets and PCs that other vendors can use and that the RealSense API will be opensourced next year). Cheaper headsets could use a single 1080p screen like the PSVR or Rift DK2 and more expensive ones dual screens like the Rift CV1 or Vive. These will use windows holographic as their platform and Forza Motorsport 6: Apex Premium Edition on the Microsoft store already lists windows holographic support.
It'll be interesting to see if these headsets will be OpenVR compatible to be able to run existing VR apps on SteamVR or if they will be stuck behind a walled garden in the MS store. Will also be interesting to see if all of these headsets will be compatible with xbox Project Scorpio.
 
External tracking is required for controllers at this point. Unless they are going to also release inside out self-tracking controllers, which would be horrendously expensive and likely not work as well considering how much the hands move compared to the head.

From a consumer perspective, this is only going to be useful for cockpit and seated games. If you want a decent seated only headset for $300, you can get one right now. http://www.osvr.org/hardware/buy/

It'll probably track more reliably than the MS one as well
 
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