Comment by tikhonj
6 years ago
I have an Index. As long as you have a solid PC, the experience is great—it single-handedly convinced me VR was more than a gimmick. Great quality picture + audio, reasonably ergonomic and I love the controls. Overall, I've been super happy with it.
Downsides to consider:
• You need a solid gaming PC (with a 2070 or better).
• Expensive ($1000 for the kit)
• Connected to the computer by a wire, awkward for "room-scale" VR
• Base stations provide great tracking but require setup (mounting high up in your room) and mean that the setup isn't very portable.
• Limited/janky access to exclusive titles. (You can hack around to get Oculus-only titles to work, but it seems rough and I haven't tried it myself.)
If you're not budget-constrained, I believe the Index will give you the best overall experience.
> You need a solid gaming PC (with a 2070 or better).
As a counterpoint, I am using Index together with 1070 Ti and the performance is flawless.
As more anecdata, I had a pretty satisfactory experience with my Vive on an old R9 290x from ~2013. Some more demanding games would occasionally stutter, but everything was generally smooth (based on the performance graph not dropping below the HMD's refresh rate).
The Index is higher resolution/refresh rate and will require more hardware, but if you just want to get into some VR and dick around, the Vive is more than enough to get started, can be found for <$200 used, and a ton of the popular games (e.g., Beat Saber, SuperHot VR, etc) just really aren't that graphically demanding.
The Vive is also compatible with the knuckles controllers and those can be purchased separately, so you're not totally locked out from some of the more game changing stuff either.