Rating on HTC Vive.

The Enthusiast VR

The HTC Vive is a truly amazing product. Valve and HTC have put together the best possible VR experience to date. Before my purchase of the HTC Vive I was able to test other headsets like the Occulus Rift. Although their performance in terms of screen resolution and resulting image fidelity is similar, the HTC Vive is the best overall product in terms of "room VR experience". Below I will summarize my experience with the Vive:

Installation/Setup:
The Vive is delivered in a very nice package. I suggest that you keep it for future transport. Also make sure to download the HTC Vive Setup app that walks you through the installation process of all components. Most of the setup concerns installation of the Lighthouse boxes and configuration of your play-area. Make sure you take your time there - don't rush things. I had no problems following the instructions and I could set up everything in roughly 30 minutes.

Headset configuration:
Make sure to measure your interpupillary distance and adjust the headstraps accordingly. Only a properly adjusted headset will result in a truly magnificent experience.

The VR experience itself:
The HTC Vive is a truly amazing product. The only downside of this first-gen product is the low resolution and the resulting "Screen Door Effect" as you can clearly distinguish single pixels from the two panels. At first this was one of my biggest concerns before purchase. However, you will totally forget about this visual disturbance while playing. The Room VR experience is absolutely amazing. Experiences like Google Earth VR or NVidia's Funhouse will make you forget that you are actually wearing a headset. The controller and head tracking is absolutely flawless, delivering an extremely immersive feeling (I had no "background" movement nosie).

Any enthusiast can totally buy this truly amazing package. But make sure to test it first, especially if you can handle the first-gen limitations like low-res displays.

+ Flawless room-scale VR experience

+ Very large field of view

+ Steam as software distribution platform

+ Controllers

- Low-res displays resulting in "screen door effect"

- Cable management (there are lots of them)

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