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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • RockstarRepublic

    Vive is clearly the best headset in terms of function, but it is ugly… it looks more like a prototype than an actual commercial product. The PSVR looks the most polished and fun to wear, but is missing the specs of the Vive (especially that outward facing camera).

    Vive’s controllers are nice but large stick like devices with that rough Steam Controller thumb pad are not all that great to use in my opinion. Oculus’s controller looks more functional and friendly to use. Not to mention more comfortable and natural.

    Vive’s lighthouses do a lot more in the way of tracking than the other two. Not convenient though. Oculus has a more ideal approach but you lose out on the benefits of Vive’s lighthouse. Functionality beats ease of use and assembly in this case.

    Steam is by far the best platform. With over 100 million active accounts, its an already established platform with tons of activity tied to it. Adoption and accessibility are easier, players already have game libraries within. Valve quality is the added benefit. On top of that, they also have Source 2 in development, which will be another engine to compete alongside the Unity, Unreal, Lumberyard engines.
    Oculus is owned by Facebook, so not only are they trying to control their own platform but the question of data mining comes into play. Facebook makes their profit with your information. I wouldnt want to touch a service owned by them I can help it.

  • Jamie

    well, tracking at least is easy – llighthouse takes a great steaming dump over the tracking competition, with PSVR a distant third

    constellation is good for an optical camera tracking system but tracking accuracy degrades exponentially (pixels have their limitations, especially at distance), whereas lighthouse degrades in a linear fashion and is vastly more robust

    optics is a little more challenging – I’d break it down even further…I would take the FOV of the Vive, the SDE of the Rift, and the sub-pixel density of PSVR all rolled into one

  • Torben Bojer Christensen

    Headset: Vive
    Reason: Higher resolution and viewing angle than PS-VR; Better aspect ratio than Rift, (same vertical FOV as Rift; higher vertical FOV). Only draw-back is the penTile pixels in Vive & Rift compared to PS-VR’s RGB pixels)

    Controller: Oculus Touch
    Reason: More buttons to press

    Tracking: Valve ‘Lighthouse’ – No brainier as it has the largest room-scale and the highest precision.

    Content platform: SteamVR
    PC does better graphics than PS and SteamVR is established and has the best sales/deals

  • Graham J ⭐️

    I think Gear VR / mobile should be in this list. Yes, there is a big capability and quality difference right now but not everyone wants an expensive, tethered solution and I believe mobile is the future. Today’s mobile GPUs are yesterday’s supercomputers.

    • Horror Vacui

      I too think that GearVR will quickly become the prefered VR device even if you own a Rift/Vive (PSVR being for console).

      In fact that’s exactly what’s happening for everybody I know owning both: Rift/Vive are fun prototypes, but they become eventually useless and annoying to use while GearVR is usable simply because it’s untethered.

      • yag

        “Everybody you know owning both” are probably not gamers…

        • Horror Vacui

          there are barely 13 millions oculus/vive ready machine, 35 millions PS4 and 200 millions vr-ready mobile, nobody gives a shit about gamers

          • Torben Bojer Christensen

            Gamers gives a shit about VR …Most mobile jusers don’t give a shit about VR

          • Horror Vacui

            Yet, GearVr and other mobile VR have sold 10 times mores than Oculus/Vive

          • Torben Bojer Christensen

            An entry-level and foremost much cheaper product that have been out for 6 month and has a potential user-base of 200 million have only sold 10 times more than new premium and much more expensive products that has barely hit the market and for now only has a potential user-base of about 13 million….You do the math, but I would say that the contours already paints the picture that gamers care a lot more about VR than other user segments. …Let’s see a couple of years down the line, when premium product become cheaper and the potential user-base grows even bigger.

            The mobile and premium products are not true counterparts, but caters for two different segments of users. You just cannot use the entry-level for the same thing as the premiums, but you can enjoy the fact that both user segments have been catered for…

          • Horror Vacui

            The premium sector has not been catered for, Oculus/Vive have many problem of functionality, form and platform. That’s my point, mobile and maybe console VR will drive VR adoption for the first years, and that’s just hopeful wish because it’s still might fall into oblivion for another 10 years, even Mark Zuckerberg said it.

          • Torben Bojer Christensen

            There will be a solid gamer-base long before VR goes mainstream (if it ever does that) …I am sure of it. I think you are focusing on VR going mainstream and the future at large, while i am just talking about foreseeable and current products.

            If Vive is not the premium product of today, what then would you suggest as the current superior product? Sure the will be better premium product some years down the line. But for now all we have is the entry-level mobile adaptations and some higher featured PC adaptations.

  • Zobeid

    I feel sort of uncomfortable voting on this poll. I’m still waiting for my Vive to ship. The last time I put on a VR headset was in the arcade for Dactyl Nightmare. If I answered, I’d only be parroting what I’ve read from blogs and reviews and previews. And that seems a bit pointless.

  • Horror Vacui

    Oculus for Design, Vive for tracking, PSVR for Platform/Curation

  • Scott C

    Comfort and integrated sound make the Rift headset a pretty clear winner for me. I’m watching for Touch to blow the Vive wands out of the water — the finger gestures and better ergonomics make it stand out, and tracking has been just as good from everything I’ve seen and read.

    Lighthouse vs. Constellation is a wash, for me. Lighthouse is neat, technically, but I’m skeptical of room-scale’s longevity in home environments to begin with given its demands on your living space configuration. Requiring standalone power for the Lighthouse boxes and manually mapping out the playspace are the kind of ease-of-use blunders that really seem littered all over the Vive’s design. Constellation will probably be just as good in the majority of scenarios, though I expect the use of a second camera (not necessary for the headset alone, of course) with a large playspace to start to tread into the same issues that look annoying about Lighthouse setup. Cameras ought to be able to detect playspace on their own, though, with the right software solution.

    I think Oculus has provided outstanding SDE support, but I’m disappointed with the way they’ve opted to further fragment the digital distribution market. I really want all my games in one place, and Steam is already a strong product, and it’s one that doesn’t give me heebie-jeebies in its association with a massive personal data mogul.