Okay, so I’ve tried to kid myself on now for a while that I don’t want VR, like every time I see it I don’t go pffft, aye right, VR, that’s for maddoes!
But I want it, I really want it. I am cursed with that modern-day condition of “wanting to see what its like”, but the problem with that is that it usually costs me a bloody fortune to “see what it’s like” and that’s the other problem I have, once I “see what it’s like” I get bored and want to see what “something else is like”.
It was like that with Surround Sound. Stopped off in a hifi shop more years ago than I care to remember and listened to Terminator 2 in pro logic, after that I was hooked and many years later still fret about whether the front speakers are louder than the back ones, yeah, I know first world problems eh?
That's another thing that draw me to VR, it must be a great medium for watching film, and i love film, and again wonder "what its like" to watch a film on one of these systems.
So, it started the Lawnmower Man years ago, what would that be like, how cool would that be? Thought that Max Headroom was the coolest thing ever and to be in that world of someone else making would be awesome…
Course the closest I would get for a long time was a pair of these,
It did me for a while, wasn’t very good, but it made some Magazines and books "pop" nicely, but always felt like that episode of Community
i.e. not very good.
Kid yourself on as much as you want, but it wasn’t the best experience, the world of the Lawnmower Man was still as far away as it ever was.
Then the next stage came and I remember being in Toronto a few years back and got pant wettinlgy excited over Sony’s first stab at VR, they ran a resolution of 800*600 and literally rested on the bride of your nose, but that was me hooked, as hooked as I was over the surround sound from years before. Lawnmower Man was closer, only by inches, but still it seemed closer, the only problem was how painful the damn thing was after a few minutes and of course light bleed from under your nose.
So, I waited and years later we got treated to Android phones and cheap VR eye gear, first of course was google cardboard,
Then things got a wee bit better,
Not much mind you, wonky controls, overheated phones and batteries that whizzed down so fast that one or two sessions on it left you feeling the eye sweat and panda eyed madness.
But hey, it was VR and that was the main thing.
Sony PSVR
Now there are three main contenders looking to destroy my bank account, Sony have come up with the Sony PSVR, a good-looking unit and feels like every Sci FI movie you ever watched where someone was jacked into the Mainframe.
Oculus Rift
This one seems to be in the middle between the PSVR and the next one up, but it’s a doozy, I’ve demo’d it, it is a great system, hires OLED eye gear, fast enough that you won’t get motion sickness, no light bleed and with the move controllers you actually feel like you can see your hands interact with the environment, all round a really nice system
HTC Vive
I’ve Never had the pleasure of trying this system but it looks awesome, crisp visuals, sensors round the room to make it an even more immersive experience. Seems to me that at the moment this is the one if you want to feel that real immersion in the “other world”, this could be the lawnmower man experience that I have always been looking to encounter.
But, and there’s always a but, they all have their problems, the VIVE is a pain to set up, the software is buggy and it’s the most expensive of the systems.
the Rift, as I like to call it, suffers from sometimes less than crisp visuals, has no motion controls and VR sickness is a major issue. Where the Vive is a pain to set up this isn’t.
The PSVR needs its own extra processor unit, needs the PS4 camera and move controllers and then uses up all the spare USB slots, visuals are the poorest of the three and it feels a wee bit fiddly.
However, PSVR has Rez Infinite,
And that seems to be the killer app, that baby is as close to the Lawnmower Man as I will ever get.
That leaves me with a choice to make, go for the cheapest option and get the one game I want and then wonder ”what the other ones are like”, or go more expensive and then have it sit collecting dust, and of course there’s this.
How I think I look in a VR helmet
And how I actually look,
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