BEST VR GAMES
20 reasons you’ll want the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive
SO VIRTUAL REALITY IS FINALLY HERE. Well, it’s on sale, at least. Waiting lists are pretty long too. Plenty of us won’t have been able to afford the $600–800 for the headset, or in fact the cost of the computer upgrade you’ll need to run it on your system.
Of course, we’re only talking about the biggest, best applications here, running on the best hardware. That said, we’d heartily recommend any interested parties try out the headsets before buying—we’re already seeing them used extensively for marketing stands in malls, and it’s likely that some of the phone and computer retailers will have demo stations soon enough.
Even so, they’re still expensive, especially when you factor in the cost of the computer hardware most people will need—a new Oculus Ready computer is around $1,000. It’s plausible, therefore, that the much more limited PlayStation VR will be the most mainstream gear, given that the total cost of a PS4, controllers, and headset will be under $800. The biggest argument not to buy any VR headset quite yet, though, is that what's available right now are early models, which will be replaced in a year or two by better versions. Already, Sony’s bosses have been talking publicly about releasing a PlayStation 4.5, ostensibly to run games on super-resolution 4K screens, but more likely to be bundled with a headset, camera, and controllers, and to enable better quality, more impressive VR simulations.
If you want to try out VR on the cheap, the easiest way is to get a Google Cardboard headset for your smartphone. They’re normally for sale for under $20, have a wide range of apps available, and are a good starting point to see whether VR is for you.
We’re at the start of a new industry here, where the sculptors are tentatively chipping away at their rock, trying to work out the best techniques, and see what form lies inside. It may take some time for them to make something like Michelangelo’s David—but we’ll be happy to marvel at their primitive hewings for a while yet.