Comparison of Virtual Reality Headsets

Virtual reality, or VR, is creating a lot of excitement, mostly due to the recent launches of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.

The former was released into the wild jungle of ravenous VR enthusiasts recently and left a vibrating media storm in its wake. A week after the Rift release on April 5th, the HTC Vive headset hit the streets.

The differences are clear, and the implications for the beginning of consumer VR are amplified, so it’s a particularly fun time to be skeptical. After all, there’s a continuing uneasiness, a mix of vertigo and nausea, that often comes with the VR experience. Whether VR users will develop a tolerance and adapt, or whether the technology will be able to eliminate it, is another story. VR motion sickness aside, the thrill of being among the first users of VR headsets for the masses is evident.

Oculus charges $599 for its Rift headset, and $1,500 for a system bundled with a computer. Image: Courtesy of Oculus

As a proportional amount of VR GPUs hit the market, owners, consumers and enthusiasts alike are taking stock of what hardware they need for their personal VR system. Taiwan-based manufacturer HTC points in the direction of stronger graphics cards and requires one USB port and a moderately powerful GPU. The only real difference in HTC’s recommendation versus Oculus is that the Rift setup requires a minimum of eight gigabytes of RAM and an additional three USB ports.

Following are the HTC Vive minimum hardware recommendations.

GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or better
CPU	Intel Core i5-4590/AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better
RAM	4 GB or more
Video Output	HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 or newer
USB Port	1x USB 2.0 or better port
Operating System	Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 or later, Windows 10

HTC Sense: 70 sensors in the headset and two controllers interpret signals sent from a pair of wireless infrared emitters set up in two corners of a room. The Vive headset tracks your location in a room and the motion of your hands relative to where you are standing. Image courtesy of HTC.

Basic Differences

1.) The HTC Vive is more difficult to set up and requires more memory from your system.

2.) The Rift headset is $300 cheaper.

3.) The HTC is more fun to control and move around in.

4.) The Rift has more options to enjoy.

5.) The HTC has a blue-light warning chaperone to let you know if you’re going to smack into a wall.

6.) The Rift has built-in headphones, the HTC has a 1/8-inch audio jack for your own choice of headphones.

7.) The haptic feedback from the HTC controllers is a newer sensation than the Xbox controller that Xbox users are already familiar with.

Engineering Application of VR

Precision is a factor that can’t be compromised when it comes to engineering, and the accuracy of augmented reality (AR) data as it overlays physical reality will be a tough obstacle to overcome. When AR and VR combine with 3D scan data and as-built captured 3D models, digitally augmented and fully virtual engineering are enabled to converge in a more meaningful way. With as-built data sets captured from increasingly powerful 3D scanners and processed into 3D model data, the potential certainly is there, but the killer engineering app for VR and AR has yet to arrive. But there are a variety of interesting training applications, such as Boeing using an AR tablet to guide manufacturers, or the Smart Helmet from DAQRI, which is built for industrial environments and seriously augments the amount of information workers could have at their fingertips.