Should I buy Oculus Rift or wait for the next generation of VR?

Well, the 2nd Oculus Rift generation (codename 'Halfe Dome') overviewed at the last Facebook Developer Conference F8 really will be awesome! 140° FOV, eye tracking for foveated rendering and therefore high resolution displays are possible (maybe 4k per eye) and (maybe) varifocal displays to address the last human 3D sense (so all human 3D senses are addressed). 2 years ago Michael Abrash (Oculus Chief Scientist) presented these specs in his VR roadmap speech for the next 5 years. He now said these technologies will happen faster than he assumed back then (I assume because of lot of money put into research by Facebook/Oculus).

So even if they are ahead of the assumed timeline it will still take some time. (I guess ~1-2 years). Still a lot of time to enjoy the Oculus CV1. So my advise is get an Oculus CV1 now and enjoy the revolutionary Oculus CV2 in ~2 years when production costs got optimized.

https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-oculus-half-dome-prototype-vr-headset-140-degree-varifocal-f8/

 

But then Oculus co-founder and Head of Oculus Rift Nate Mitchell said "However, don’t expect to see all of these technologies in a product anytime soon.” Of course this post was addressed to people thinking an Oculus CV2 will happen soon.

https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-half-dome-prototype-dont-expect-see-everything-product-anytime-soon/

But, which also could mean the 2nd Oculus Rift generation could get released earlier but without all technologies presented in the Facebook Developer Conference F8. In that case I guess varifocal displays won't get released early. So things are still very vague.

Still I think get an Oculus CV1 now and enjoy it. The revolutionary Oculus CV2 still is far away from getting released (my guess probably in ~1-2 years)

 

One member in the AC-forums said he upgraded to the new Vive but, ended up returning it for various reasons. He said the improved resolution was not worth the overall cost but, there were some other annoying issues too. I've not read anything so far that would compel me to purchase any of the current HMD's over my CV1.

What Oculus is said to be developing does seem intriguing to me and I fully agree that GPU's are not advancing rapidly enough to run higher-res displays any time soon. There needs to be other tech developments to reach the image quality gains we'd all like to see.

 

Yes, we indeed need eye tracking for really high resolution displays. With eye tracking and foveated rendering, optimization will be so awesome. Imagine, if you put out your arm straight only the area of your thumb does have full resolution (still somewhere like 2 x 8k or 2x 16k displays needed). Everything else around your thumb is very very low resolution.

 

Here's a very good article about the subject of Eye-Tracking and all that:
https://www.roadtovr.com/why-eye-tracking-is-a-game-changer-for-vr-headsets-virtual-reality/

 

Looks like im going to wait a good 2 years until I get an HMV. With foveated rendering, eyetracking, higher fov etc.. from going to monitor to trying VR for the first time it will be even more insane. Hopefully rfactor has increased its graphical features by then too, specially car interiors.

Also, hopefully by then we have good ready-to-use motion sims for home use.

 

I started with rf2 on triples. Then when Codemasters' F1 2017 came out with eyetracking, I got a Tobii tracker and I liked it because I found it easier to find the apex. When the mixed reality headsets came out, I got a Lenovo, which doesn't work with F1 2017. Now that RF2 has vr, I will never go back. Sure, the fresnel lenses give a strange pattern and the images aren't as sharp, but the feeling of actually sitting in a car outweighs that and it doesn't take too many laps get my brain to settle in and concentrate on racing and not on how the trees and spectators are rendered. Being able to just turn my head to see someone alongside me or look to the left before pulling out of a garage (and not having to program a button to do that) is a big deal for me. Personally, I can give no good reason not to do it.

 

I'm going to sell all my old VR stuff, so the Vive Pro really won't be that much and when something new comes out I'll just do the same thing.

 

So here we are. I still didn't buy anything. Im going to be buying AMD 3700x computer and will decide later on on what GPU, then even later (2020?) an VR, I hope by then the 3700x and the GPU I buy isn't deprecated...

Who here is getting the Valve Index? apparently it's going to be the next big thing in VR. I wonder if resolution is finally good and screen door effect finally gone.

 

The Valve is good but damn 1000$+ plus 300$ for shipping and tax is to much for a Headset that isn’t revolutionary.

 

It's $500 for only the headset

would love a review by a sim racer