HEAD TO HEAD
Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive Cosmos vs. Valve Index
VR has come a long way. Some would argue it’s not quite there yet (some members of the APC team, in particular), but it’s hard to deny that the platform has made leaps and bounds in the past few years. Since Palmer Luckey broke the mold with the original Oculus Rift, several competitors have emerged, most prominently HTC’s Vive and the more recent Valve Index. Oculus hasn’t been resting on its laurels, though, and tethered VR clearly isn’t dead – but which model out right now is the best for you? Let’s break it down….
1 Value
Despite its ludicrous $2,000 price (which is higher for Aussies than in other countries because Valve doesn’t officially ship the Index here, so a go-between service like Auspost Shopmate is needed) the Index sold out quickly. Valve restocked, of course, but with Half-Life: Alyx looming on the horizon, it sold out again. The price has dropped somewhat since then, though, but it’s not even close to the $1,149 Vive Cosmos or Rift S at $649.
That significantly lower price doesn’t come with any huge drawbacks either. Yes, the Rift S is the oldest of these three headsets, and it has a slightly lower resolution, but it still performs perfectly well when paired with a good VR-ready PC. The Rift S also has the lowest refresh rate of the trio, but only by a small margin. In a sense, you get what you pay for when it comes to VR, but the Rift S is undeniably good value.
Paying more than $2,000 for a VR solution in a market where all the big players are broadly comparable isn’t a great proposition. Both the Index and the Cosmos were criticised on release for being overly expensive, and as long as there are eminently affordable options (such as Sony’s best-selling PSVR), those criticisms will remain valid.
WINNER: OCULUS RIFT S 2 Controllers
All three VR platforms come with excellent, high-quality controllers. All have proper motion controls and similar button layouts, and the Rift S and Cosmos both utilise “inside-out” tracking systems that use cameras mounted on the headset itself to track the controllers. Full finger-tracking is a feature touted by the Valve Index, the only one to have controllers that properly wrap around the hand.
The controllers on the Oculus Rift S are particularly nice, using touch sensors on the buttons to simulate proper finger-tracking to reasonable effect. The number of games that use finger-tracking is relatively small, though, so it’s unclear if this really gives the Index an edge. A few titles (such as Valve’s Aperture Hand Labs tech demo) show it off nicely, to be fair.
In practice, we favor the Rift S controllers. The Cosmos controllers are very similar in design, but don’t sit as comfortably in the hand, and are a bit heavier. The Rift S controllers are the lightest, but the buttons and triggers still feel firm and responsive. The Vive and Rift controllers both look a lot nicer than the weird, jagged Index knuckle controllers, too. Another win for Oculus, then.
WINNER: OCULUS RIFT S 3 Design
When we say “design,” we’re not just talking about aesthetics here. If we were, the winner would be the Rift S again; the Valve Index is pretty fugly compared to the other two, with the Rift S looking sleek and smooth in black, while HTC’s latest headset is a truly sci-fi piece of hardware.
The Index might look weird and chunky, but the design extends beyond mere aesthetic value; in fact, given that you’ll be strapping your chosen headset over your face, we would go so far as to say that appearance is irrelevant. Design extends to extraneous features like earphones; the Index is equipped with a pair of near-field speakers that are strapped to the headband, hanging just out of reach of your ears. It’s a great design choice; zero contact means that extended sessions won’t get uncomfortable, and the directional audio quality is phenomenal without cutting off all outside sound altogether.
The Cosmos headphones press against the ear, potentially making for sweaty lobes, while the Rift S has tiny built-in speakers that don’t really measure up. Add in the high build quality of the Index (the cushioning is excellent, and the entire headset feels durable) and it’s a clear win for Valve.
WINNER: VALVE INDEX
4 Performance
It’s difficult to benchmark tethered VR headsets, as they rely on a PC to power the games. Were we comparing standalone headsets, like the Oculus Quest, which use a headset-integrated processor, this category would likely be easier. As it stands, we’re going to have to look at some other elements.
Eye display resolution first: The Oculus Rift S loses out straight away, with 1280x1440 per eye (or 2560x1440 total), while the Index and Vive Cosmos have 1440x1600 and 1440x1700 per eye respectively. The shift in resolution is noticeable between the Rift S and the other two, but the Index and Cosmos are pretty much indistinguishable.
The Index’s two displays also have a leg up over the competition in two important areas: refresh rate and field of view. While the Rift S and Cosmos sit at 80Hz and 90Hz respectively, the Index packs a mighty 120Hz refresh rate, with an experimental 144Hz mode for some games. It can make a notable difference, although broadly speaking, as long as it remains above 80Hz, it shouldn’t interrupt gameplay immersion. Lastly, the Index has an effective maximum FOV of 130 degrees – significantly more than the other headsets, which are around 110. WINNER: VALVE INDEX
5 Ease of Use
As much as we like the Valve Index, it isn’t going to win this section. Oculus and HTC have been in the VR game for a while now, and they’ve learned from their mistakes; in this case, it’s the introduction of inside-out tracking that really leaves the Index in the dust. You’ve still got to set up base stations around your room, and enter the floor height of the room you’re playing in, then use the controllers to mark the four corners of the room, then have Steam on your PC calculate a usable play area…. It’s a convoluted process that feels outdated and clunky.
The Rift S, however, simply shows you a spooky gray-tinted video feed of your surroundings using the external cameras, and has you paint out a play area using one of the controllers. It takes seconds, and the boundaries fade in unobtrusively if you get too close to the edges.
The Vive Cosmos is almost as good, automatically mapping out walls and corners in your play area to use as markers. It takes even less time than the Rift S, but it’s not infallible; if the exterior cameras lose track of the controllers, it takes frustratingly long to reorient them, and low lighting conditions can prove ruinous. WINNER: OCULUS RIFT S
And the winner is…
We have to hand it to Facebook, it knew what it was doing when it bought Oculus in 2014. The VR giant has come a long way since the original Kickstarter campaign for the first Rift prototype, constantly at the forefront of what makes VR great.
It’s true, the Rift S might be the least powerful piece of hardware on show here, but it’s not enough for a VR headset to simply have the latest eye displays. It has to be affordable, and it has to have the support of developers. Oculus was the first on the scene to modern VR, garnering it a decent chunk of the market right off the bat, and the company has kept as much of that as it could.
Yes, the Valve Index is the high-end VR headset right now. The quality of the headset itself is undeniable, and anyone who says that Half-Life: Alyx will be best experienced on a different platform is kidding themselves. But the Rift S is far better value, much easier to use, and when it comes down to it, the VR experience is much the same regardless of your choice of headset. All we’d advise is getting a good pair of earphones.