Oculus Rift - Virtual Reality Headset

I was hesitant to purchase the Oculus Rift. I did a lot of investigation for about 6 months. I found reviews that were quite negative and some that were quite positive too. I don't often write reviews, but after all the negative comments I found, even though some reviews were good, there is a lot of bad information out there on the Rift that I want to set the record straight. So now that I own a set and have played with them a few hours, I think I can give some first impressions and squelch some bad info. First, there is ZERO screen door effect. People do not understand what that is. Projectors have it at times and it is a pixelation that stays stationary on your screen and normally in dark areas with some light in other areas of the screen and while the camera pans the pixelation STAYS stationary. Trust me, I know. I have a theater room with a projector and at times I can see it. What they are referring to with the Rift and SDE is the led circuitry you see due to the low resolution. It does play some odd effects on your eyes due to the lighting and grid pattern of the LED arrangement on the video screens you're looking at due to how close your eye is to those screens as well as magnified by the lens themselves. Think of the old-time green CRT monitors where you could see the lines of resolution. It's a bit like that, except both horizontally and vertically. Is it obvious? It is at times but THAT is the resolution that comes with the first-gen consumer version of these types of displays. Is it a game-changer? You decide. Let me put it like this. I'm a gamer and I LOVE high-end graphics and go out of my way to purchase the latest and gratest video cards and displays to get it. The Rift is NOT high-end graphics, but it IS the best that is out there. If you don't concentrate on the lack of resolution so much and look at what the 3D vision and head-tracking is doing for you, you'll forget about the resolution. Now the resolution is good enough for me that when I was playing Elite Dangerous with it in an SRV I could clearly see the tread pattern of the wheels outside of the glass cab not to mention all of the scenery I took in in awe. It's not 4K. It's not 1080p 10ft from a TV. It's higher than that but at 1/2 from your eye. Technology has to get a LOT better before they can make screens with that kind of resolution where you cannot detect it 1/2 from your eye and magnified on top of that. Pull up your chair to your monitor on a white background and look closely at your display. You see those pixels? That's what you see in the Rift. 2nd Gen will come out one day but we're a ways from that in my opinion. Are you a glasses wearer? It was no issue for me using glasses. They do not touch the Fresnel lenses. Mine do fit close to my eyes, not on the end of my nose. If you have them out that far then yes they're going to hit the lenses. I tried the Rift with and without glasses. Due to my near-sightedness I was okay. Was it sharp? No. Usable, absolutely. Putting on your glasses does make it hard to put on the HMD (Head Mounted Display). Taking off the HMD was even more odd and difficult as it wanted to pluck the glasses off my face. It's not easy, but doable. Once you have the glasses on and get the HMD on everything is good and quite comfortable and my glasses never touched the lenses and I could even adjust my glasses forward and back to get that sweet-spot they talk about. So if you're going a short stint with the HMD, I just keep my glasses off. If I'm going to sit in on a few hours of Elite Dangerous, I'll go to the hassle of putting on the glasses and getting them in to the lens cavity and get it all adjusted. Head tracking was instantaneous. No jitter. No loss in frame rate. No issues turning my head completely 180 degrees by leaning out of my chair and looking behind the cockpit in Elite Dangerous to see the entire spaceship in all it's glory. Weight. It's very lite, much more so than the Vive. When I whip my head side to side it never slips and I don't have it on tight at all. It's just that light. No neck pain, no strain of any kind. Motion sickness. If you are prone to motion sickness or sea sickness, you might have an issue in certain games. I know I felt it a little bit as I was bounding across the hillside in an SRV on some moon in Elite Dangerous with 10% gravity and going airborn. It messed with my head a little and I just had to back down and take it easy a bit. I consider myself a tough guy and while everyone gets seasick on a boat, I'm the one having lunch and a great time while everyone else is spilling groceries. So just know that you ARE susceptible to this issue. Be careful and go easy at first or it's going to be a bad experience for you. Controllers. The XBox controller they give you is good. I had no issues with it and the first thing I did was play that Lucky game. Pretty cool, quite fun. For serious gamers? You're going to need to either memorize all your keys and key combos before dawning the HMD or get yourself a HOTAS setup. For me I purchased the Thrustmaster Joystick and Throttle setup and I have the pedals on the way. Going that route enables you to not only memorize all your button inputs but also keeps your hands still! If you have to move your hands around, you're going to look like a blind person learning where all the keys are at. Seeing through the HMD. Not true. You can't see through it AT ALL. If you can, you've torn the material inside somehow and busted the plastic casing. Otherwise, you just can't see through it, period. You're going to need a LOT of USB ports. For me to run the keyboard, mouse, desk microphone, joystick, throttle, pedals, Rift HMD, XBox controller, Constellation Tracking camera (for the HMD), it required that I have 6 2.0 USB slots and 2 3.0 USB slots plus one HDMI slot on my NVidia 980 TI. That's every USB slot I have on my rig. Could I use a USB bus? Maybe. I would use it for the keyboard/mouse/microphone I'm sure. You can't put the Oculus Rift setup on any USB bus at all. I'll admit that of all the research and reviews I read on the Rift I thought I was going to be disappointed. I wanted to at least try it out before I'm gone from this world even if I had to return it due to not being happy with it. Boy was I wrong. I'll never return it. This is the future. This is the next step of gaming. I can't wait until Star Citizen (currently in Alpha) supports the Rift and they do say they will be supporting it 100%. This takes the "immersion" factor to a whole new level. I'll never play Elite Dangerous any other way. Just one benefit alone...I can watch my target through the canopy of my spaceship looking up and side to side and never have to hit any special keys. I just look around like I would if I was really there...and DO feel like you're really there.

I wanted to love this, I really did, but after dealing with Oculus support I am obligated to provide a negative review. First, I will say that Amazon has been fantastic with my purchase. Oculus has been terrible. I built a new PC just for VR and had a fresh install of Windows 10. Everything was great, but then I noticed in the Oculus start screen, (the white screen where you accept the Health and Safety warning) when I looked closely the display wasn't level. It was tipped down on the left and up on the right. In most games I wouldn't notice this, but others it was distracting. I contacted Oculus and they made me jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that I purchased a genuine Rift (since I didn't buy directly from them). I had to take pictures of the screen showing the tilt, pictures of the UPC codes, pictures of the receipt, etc. It was exhausting just to get some support and acceptance that I actually had a problem. I went so far as to purchase a third sensor to try and resolve the problem, but that didn’t improve the problem. Eventually Oculus said that I would need to return the product. They told me, “Since you purchased from Amazon, you may want to contact them first. In some cases this can be a faster customer experience.” The big red flag for me. If a company cannot handle returns, then there is a problem. After returning the Oculus to Amazon I tried to return the extra sensor to Oculus. They refused to accept the return because it was “opened”, even though I have the original box and foam packaging, and cited the long running support case. I find it to be terrible customer service and I wanted to warn anyone that if you have problems with Oculus, don’t expect a pleasant experience. Oculus does not stand behind their products. Caveat Emptor. P.S. Remember your Oculus games are locked into the Oculus software forever. Mine are now useless to me. The HTC Vive + Steam is a superior choice.

I researched the Vive, PS4 VR and Oculus Rift w/ Touch controllers for about a month reading idk how many articles and reviews and found that for one...they all cost the same if you don't already have the PS4 so no matter you will spend about $800 plus tax on any for the full system. The Oculus Touch controllers had the highest review as did the Oculus headset. It seemed the ONLY reason ppl said the PS4 VR was cheaper was cause a lot of ppl had it already so they didnt factor in the cost of when they had to buy one. The only reason the HTC Vive seemed to get better reviews was due to already having the controllers out w/ their set. SO for me it was a no brainer the Oculus had a better quality, comfortable, nicer looking headset and less cords/easier set-up. The controllers, which are out now, where said to be more fluid, comfortable and less "clunky" that the Vive's. None of them are wireless, though I did read the Vive is coming out w/ a limited number of an attachment to make their headset wireless but at another $200, which brings there total to $1000 if you get that. I love my Oculus headset and now that the touch controllers are out everything on Steam that was only for the Vive is available for the Oculus! I was hoping that would happen and it did! There are still some titles you can only find on the Oculus store though and I haven't seen prices SO FAR that are cheaper on Steam than on Oculus, so that is good. There are a lot of free things apps, some good cheap ones and then games in the $30-50 range per the norm. There is also a program you can buy called vorpX that will allow you to play older games as well like ESO; they have a list of games and there are youtube videos that show you how to set it up. The home screen is relaxing and easy to navigate and you can customize your avatar. The games are fun and visually appealing. There are even virtual "chat rooms" and gaming you can do w/ other ppl and talk to them through a built in mic. I will say the clarity wasn't HD like I had hoped..maybe I am too spoiled on HDX, blu-ray and 3D quality but once in games you don't notice it and become immersed in what your doing. It was like going from HDX back to DVDs, but It is still amazing to say the least even the short "movie" experiences you have on the Rift are great. The set up was super easy and took all of like 10 mins tbh. Overall I would have to say I am very happy w/ my purchase and that I didnt buy a different VR system. Also, knowing that they are partnered w/ Xbox and Microsoft officially now tells me there is a bright future for the Oculus Rift not just in gaming but in useful apps that can help w/ work or study. FYI they already have VR medical A&P and an art app that you can actually use w/ your 3D printer and other stuff of that nature. OH and before I forget...yes you probably would want a high end PC to run it BUT they has recently done an update that will allow for some lesser spec'd PC to use the Rift. [...] For those who will ask if their PC will run it there is a"pc checker" on their website that will let you know. FYI I was surprised there is NOT a customer support number if you need it, you have to email or use forums to get in touch w/ them which could be very annoying if you can't solve an issue you have w/ the store or equipment yourself or through past forums. Oh Also I haven't had any issues getting sick or nauseous from the games I have either.

Wow. I have to say i went through a few phases of buyer's remorse after shelling out the cash and waiting for this stuff to arrive (touch controllers 1 day, headset 2 days). I plugged it all in, put it all on (realizing that it mostly interferes with my glasses, but i suppose that's the fault of my pathetic human body), and was astounded. The first demo had you interacting with a little robot feeding you cartridges for a 3d printer and was stunning. This is the future. No more buyer's remorse here. Various awesome games are available -- i've spent most of my time in Elite Dangerous and Obduction. I'd like a real terrestrial flight sim. Publishers appear to be slow to adopt but only time will tell. Obduction... that's an interesting head exercise. I still remember the first time i played Myst and how amazing it was... and i played it again recently and saw how poorly it aged. I can only hope that in 23 years Obduction looks as dated! Because right now the Rift system combined with the point and click (is it still that?) adventure game is stunning. Maybe in 23 years I'll be commenting on how we used to wear large headsets and stagger around blindly in our rooms before they started beaming lasers into our retinas? who knows. And flying around space in VR? Stunning doesn't even cover it. Elite Dangerous is a different game with this piece of kit. Plus i can finally look around and find things. I don't have much issues with motion sickness in real life and after a week i haven't had much with this either, except when i turned on "smooth turning" in Obduction. That was a step too far. Teleportation and 45 degree click turns are much better. Riding a train where your head tracks the compass instead of the chassis is also imperfect. If you can do roller coasters you'll have absolutely no problems here, in my opinion, unless you are trying to find your limits. If you can't handle teacup rides, you'll still be able to play just fine, just stick with the teleportation technique. If you can handle them, you might even be able to handle walking/running in game, but teleportation works just fine so you're not missing much. Whatever you do, just still stick with the click turns. No one can handle smooth turns unless they're an accredited astronaut. Glasses are a pain. I'm thinking about going back to contacts just for my gaming sessions. It's a little odd: I'm -2.5d or thereabouts. I can play most games without my glasses with the rift, but the stuff that's ~1 to ~3 feet from my face is most blurry, while the stuff at an infinite focal range tends to come in fine. My head is big, so my glasses are wide, and they get a bit wedged into the headset when i wear them, and over time the multiple sets of lenses start to fog up so I prefer to play without glasses. It's not a deal killer, but it does get annoying to be limited by my eye-failures. Maybe i could get custom lenses? I'm not going to hold Oculus accountable for this, but over time this needs to be addressed. So overall, 5 star device. Except... mine had an errant glue bead just hanging out on the bottom. I picked it off but the glue is embedded in the fabric. It doesn't affect anything, but.... i payed a bit of cash and kinda expect perfection in QA. So. Minus 1 star and a slightly irked "c'mon. really?" But once i put the headset on and the virtual world descends, the glue bead stops existing. I suppose.

The value of this headset depends on what you want to do in VR. If you just want to play racing sims and controller games in VR then this headset is worth he price. However IMO VR is not VR unless you have more than a windowed view into the Game. You will have to buy the Oculus Touch controllers. They are great controllers for a great price. The controller tracking is poor though. USB compatibility for this system is terrible. When you buy an Oculus Rift and Touch controllers there are too many hidden costs. You may have to buy a USB card. You WILL HAVE to buy a third Constellation camera (if you want decent tracking). You may buy a 4th Constellation camera (If you want great tracking similar to the Vive). You have to buy USB extension cables. And you might have to buy (or 3D print) brackets for your camera because the best setup is to invert the cameras and place them high. I returned this and the headset and bought the HTC Vive The visuals in the headset are terrible. I bought them because people kept saying that the Screen Door Effect (SDE) was less than the Vive. That is NOT true. They just look different than the Vive, not less. For the Vive the SDE is as if you were pressing your face against the "screen door" In the Rift the SDE appears as if you are standing about a foot back from the "screen door" The God Rays should be call OMG rays! They are extremely immersion breaking. They feel as though you are looking into the world behind a glass window and every now and again someone behind you shines a flashlight on that glass. The nose gap was a poor design choice! The size of your nose will determine how much of the outside world you will CONSTANTLY see. The screen on the headset is dull. Bright game environments look extremely dull when compared to the HTC Vive. Overall this headset lacks the immersion factor. The OMG rays, nose gap, and dark screen all break my immersion when I use this headset. I returned it and bought the HTC Vive

Let me put it to you this way, this thing is amazing. Now, you have to keep in mind, this was made for games specific to the oculus. Other games do not play with it unless you have downloaded additional software. This is also definitely not something for people with no computer skills. There is a lot of adjusting and work you have to put into this to get it to work great with non supported games. As far as the hardware goes, you need a pretty beefy pc to run everything smoothly having at least a gtx 970 graphics card (equivalent or greater) to operate it. The headphones are excellent and provide great sound. The two screens within (yes two, in order to make the 3d effect) have a bit of a grainy texture to them since your eyes are so close to the screen but after a few minutes of play, you hardly notice. Wearing the headset is surprisingly comfortable and easy. It still messes up your hair, sorry. (go get a haircut ya hippie) It is very lightweight and made of a pretty descent material. It feels extremely professional and well made. The head tracking is also excellent. It really feels hat where I would look in real life is where my head moves in game. But now onto game play. It is important to note, the oculus and vive both have specific supported games for them. 3rd part software is available to play unsupported games. So, I will break the review into two parts: Oculus games and non oculus games. 1. The oculus in itself is a great piece of tech. It is very good at the motion capture, it is easy to set up, and it even works with steamvr. The free games that are included with the oculus are great tid bits of fun to play around with and feel the experience the oculus will eventually offer as the product becomes much more popular. The games are smooth and enjoyable and they are designed specifically for players to get used to a very new form of game play, so do not expect super fast paced shooters like call of duty any time soon. The oculus provides an amazingly in depth world that you get to enter (sitting down of course) and experience while listening to the great audio provided through the excellent built in headphones. 2. Now, in order to play non-oculus supported games, you need to purchase and download a piece of software called vorpx. It is a $40 application that basically bypasses the oculus dashboard and home screen to play the game you want. Now, the vorpx review aside, you must keep in mind you are fitting a square into two ovals. The game screen will never be perfect unless developers start making games supported by vr. The screen will always be too big and some of the objects on the side will be off screen, or the screen will be too small and there will be an area of grey color at the bottom of the gameplay screen. Putting aside the limitations of non-oculus supported game screens, the games are actually pretty amazing. I have tried Fallout 4, Alien: Isolation, and Arma 3 so far. Immediately, they are quite amazing because everything is now 3d. That is right, 3d gaming. The head tracker worked pretty well however, there are some pretty big limitations with controls. Maybe additional software will be developed to play the more keyboard necessary games, but until then, be ready to mess with control schemes for a few hours until you get them set up right and not interfere with some of the vorpx hotkeys. One other issue with non-vr supported games is the vertigo. I will tell you outright, unless you purchase one of the vr treadmills such as the virtuix, the oculus will make you motion sick with non-vr games. The fast pace motion of Arma 3 and Fallout 4 almost made me vomit and I am not prone to motion sickness. I have not experienced any motion sickness with the supported games for the oculus. However, these games are not nearly as fast paced so who knows. Overall, the oculus is a great brand new piece of technology that is sure to blow you and your friends' minds with how awesome it can be. Since it is still so new, there is not much support by 3rd party software and gaming companies. So until then, the oculus is limited to either the supported vr games or a pretty limited experience with non-supported games. It is still worth every penny due to the fact that there is still so much this object is capable of, even if the 3rd party software companies have yet to catch up.

First off, this does provide for a pretty cool experience, one that you can't really be told about, you just have to see it for yourself. It feels pretty wicked to be able to see yourself inside a virtual car, if say, you're playing racing games. However one big thing is preventing me from properly enjoying these, and it's not even part of the electronics. It's the lenses in the headset, they create a lot of glare. You notice it the first time you put the headset on for the setup and I can't seem to unsee it. People seem to refer to these glares as 'god rays', whatever they are I see them in the Oculus home screen, I see them in Lucky's Tale, especially in the cave areas, I see them whenever there is any white text or border. It makes me feel like I'm wearing a really cheap pair of glasses, and being a glasses wearer I've experienced a really bad pair of lenses. Given that, I'm really sensitive to this issue and it causes my eyes to strain really bad. I'm trying to be immersed but I can't really handle this. When they figure out how to make a solid plastic or glass lens that doesn't have this issue to any degree, that'll be when I jump back into VR. I can deal with the current gen low res displays, just can't deal with these lenses. If you can get past the lens problems, the headset itself is fairly comfortable. Lucky's Tale is pretty cool visually to see. Project Cars and Dirt Rally are also cool, however it seems like every game has a different way in which to reset the center of the screen. Sometimes you'll put on the rift and not see anything, only to have to look around a black 3d space for where the game window is. Project Cars generally doesn't look very good graphically, a gtx 1070 and i7 6700k is not enough to get this game to run at 90 fps with decent graphics. Pretty much have to put everything on low, it's not pretty and you can't appreciate the fine details this game otherwise has. So keep in mind when playing non-made for VR games, you may not get to play them as you are used to seeing them. It sort of feels like you've stepped into a playstation 1 game visually. I hope this tech gets to where it needs to be so it can be fully enjoyable. Clean picture, a clean picture is the first thing I can hope for.

update: I have gone through 4 defective oculus rifts. Always the same, works for a few days and then it starts to have connection problems. My latest replacement turns off when ever I adjust it on my head. I love the headset and the games but this is unacceptable! The Oculus Rift is awesome, unfortunately it appears that there are a lot of defective headsets. I first purchased two of these, one for my wife and one for myself. The one for my wife was working perfectly from the beginning, but mine was having a problem not connecting with the hdmi. I tried my headset on her computer but it still was not working. I tried her headset on both of our computers and it worked fine. I exchanged my headset for another and the replacement works perfectly. Unfortunately, my wife's headset which had no problems in the beginning started to get the same problem as my original headset. I did a google search to find out what the problem could be, and found out that this is happening to many people. People have reported that after a few days, and for some weeks and months, that this hdmi problem occurs and they have to contact oculus for a replacement because there is a defect in the cables that they are using. Now I don't know if I should keep it since there is a big possibility that it will stop working in the short future. The headsets are great but this major flaw puts a big damper in my confidence in the product.

El oculus rift realmente vale lo que cuesta, sin embargo hay cosas que no se deben ignorar antes de comprar, como es el mareo y la cinetosis (motion sickness) que provoca al usarse, especialmente con los juegos de acción. Yo con 5 min de un simulador de una montaña rusa tuve para marearme (y no me suelo marear tanto en una montaña rusa de verdad). Esto no es algo que Oculus no advierta y no creo que sea una falla del producto o algo que se pueda resolver pronto. Debe de haber personas más propensas que otras. Otra cosa mas es la resolución; al ser ligeramente arriba de FullHD y por la proximidad al lente, ves los pixeles muy marcados, los objetos que en el mundo virtual están "lejos" son poco distinguibles. Esta es una desventaja en algunos juegos. Lo positivo: CALIDAD. Desde que te dispones a abrir el oculus, la calidad es lo primero que llama la atención, desde la caja hasta los cables, pasando lógicamente por el visor. Los materiales con los que esta hecho son muy buenos. Otro aspecto positivo es el sensor de movimiento, es muy preciso, eso te da la sensación de inmersión al no tener lags (sienpre y cuando uses una buena tarjeta gráfica). Ojo no cualquier puerto USB 3.0 será compatible. Algunas tarjetas madres viejas con USB 3.0 no son tan compatibles. Sobre los juegos. Tener paciencia que apenas arranca esto de la VR y juegos buenos los hay contados. Yo personalmente compre el oculus para otros fines como el diseño en 3D así que no tengo queja. Definitivamente recomiendo el oculus, ahora que bajo de precio es una opción atractiva para quien guste de probar cosas nuevas en el mundo de la tecnología. No es recomendable para personas que usen lentes

I was skeptical about getting a VR headset, I'd seen video's online but had never really seen what all the hype was about. Then the price dropped on the Oculus Rift and I decided well why not. Wow am I glad I got this, I love Simulators like DCS World, Prepared 3D and wow has the Oculus just blown the game play out of the park, it now feels like I'm in the plane I actually got motion sickness in one of my first dog fights it felt so real. It's hard to describe how it feels sitting in your chair and looking around at all the switches and leaning over and looking out the window of your plane but it's far more realistic than watching a 2D image on your monitor. I will also add what you've seen on YouTube or other video services doesn't do VR justice, watching a 2D representation of a 3D experience is not anywhere close to what you will experience. The headset is great and for me sitting in a chair the cable is long enough, but if I was doing larger moving (room sized gaming) I might find it a little too short. It does fit over glasses but they can't be too big either so if you wear over sized aviator style glasses you may find they don't fit inside the headset. I would highly recommend that anyone who plays flight sims or combat flight sims should get a VR headset and Oculus has been great for me. Just remember your air sick bag for those first couple of flights.

Great VR headset. Works very well in a moderate sized play space with 2 sensors Screen door effect is slightly noticeable, and the OLED screen on the Oculus CV1 is slightly dimmer than the Vive. But for the money, it can't be beat. VR controllers are also excellent, all the buttons and sticks are capacitive surfaces. Only gripe I have with the Oculus Rift CV1 is the build quality is not great. Lens making plastic squeaking noises when adjusting IPD. And my Oculus Rift came with a "distorted" bubbling headband. **See ATTACHED PHOTOS** I think the adhesive used has degraded due to temperature differences probably during shipping or storage. Mind you that I have only owned and used this headset for less than 2 weeks. The headband was like this when I got it out of the box, but it is getting worse after the initial week of use. The great thing is of course, Amazon's Customer Service is providing a replacement. Excellent service and reliable as always as I heard bad things about Oculus/Facebook's Customer Service.

No funcionó, lo tuve que regresar, y perdí $2000 pesos por el reembolos, HORRIBLE no lo recomiendo en lo absoluto

BUYER BEWARE! Oculus touch has terrible tracking, I've had the touch since it's Dec release and it still doesn't work. Oculus took 2 months to do a software update to fix the tracking issues but that update just made it worse. I've been attempting to contact oculus support about a refund or replacement and they just ingore me. DONT BUY A RIFT! To sum it up: *great hardware *terrible tracking (fundamental for VR) *even worse customer support I'd steer clear of this one, if I can get a refund I would buy a VIVE.