The Ars VR headset showdown—Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive

In our original reviews of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, we tried very hard to examine these virtual reality systems on their own merits without constant comparisons to the competition. But no product exists in a vacuum. After years of buildup, we’re now faced with two competitive, PC-tethered VR headsets hitting the market right next to each other. Unless you have a spare $1,400 to spend to buy both headsets (or more if you need to outfit a gaming PC, too), you’ll have to pick one or the other if you want virtual reality in your home as soon as possible.

Today, we’ll lay out the major pros and cons of both Oculus and HTC’s VR systems as we see them in order to (hopefully) guide you to the headset that’s right for you. If you’re just planning on scrolling to the bottom for our final verdict, though, here’s a spoiler—we’re not entirely sure you should buy either one just yet.

Visual similarities

On a pure baseline of technical specs, there’s remarkably little difference in the Rift and Vive. Both sport two 1080×1200 pixel OLED displays (one for each eye) that provide an utterly convincing 3D effect. Both headsets have 90 Hz refresh rates, low-persistence pixel switching, and accurate, low latency head-tracking that quickly updates your apparent VR view as you move and tilt your head in space.

You can still pick out the pixels and a slight “screen door effect” between those pixels if you really try. Staring at the panels at close range means each individual pixel appears a little blurrier and fuzzier than it might on a hi-res monitor or TV, but those problems are practically identical on the Rift and the Vive. At this point, it’s hard to say one looks noticeably better than the other for the same software.

Both the Rift and the Vive let you adjust the interpupillary distance enough to allow easy focus for a wide range of face shapes. Both officially sport a 110-degree field of view, enough to fill most of your vision while still leaving noticeable black bars on the edge of your periphery. (While there are some claims that one headset or the other has a bigger functional field of view in practice, we can’t notice a difference.)

If we were to go looking for visual differences, we could argue that the Rift’s lenses suffer a bit more from the crepuscular “god ray” effect, which causes some apparent lens flare when bright pixels are displayed on a dark background. You could also say that the Vive’s image sometimes looks blurrier at the periphery if you move your eyes off center.

Neither puts much of a thumb on the balance between the two, though. The Rift and the Vive each provide a highly convincing, nearly indistinguishable visual sense of virtual reality. These systems meet the minimum baseline for an enjoyable sense of presence.

Get comfortable

If there’s one area where the Rift unquestionably bests the Vive, it’s in the design of the physical headset. I was comfortable wearing the Rift for hours at a time without breaks and without any desire to take it off. With the Vive, on the other hand, I found myself needing to take frequent breaks and constantly fiddle with the fit to get comfortable.

Not only is the Rift 80 grams lighter than the Vive (about 15 percent), but that lighter weight is balanced much better on the head. This is primarily thanks to the Rift’s pair of rigid arms, which extend from the side of the headset past the ears, coming together in a firm triangle that fits snugly under the back of the skull.

These arms sit on a pivot, which lets you tilt the headset easily up and down on your face for comfort (and focus adjustment). The arms also sit inside a sheath that gives them about an inch of springy give. This makes the headset relatively easy to take off and put on like a baseball cap, even with one hand (though users with glasses may run into some trouble).

By contrast, the Vive uses thick, hard-to-adjust vinyl velcro straps that never feel totally secure on my head no matter how much I adjust things. This design means you have to clamp the Vive to your face like a pair of ski goggles, pushing the heavy headset directly into some sensitive parts of the face with nothing but a layer of soft foam padding separating you from the hard plastic. That’s noticeably tougher than the Rift, which almost floats on top of your nose thanks to plastic and vinyl spacers and solid, supportive foam around the eyes.

Besides the constant pressure on the sinuses, the Vive’s design also forms a tight seal around the eyes, trapping heat and locking out air. This can lead to a lot of unnecessary sweat and noticeable facial redness after prolonged use. The Rift’s design is much more airy and breathable in this regard.

The Rift has a few other design touches that just make it more enjoyable to wear, such as squishy, over-the-ear headphones that flip right down into place from their (removable) mounts on the support arms. The Vive, on the other hand, has a headphone extension cable that dangles annoyingly from the top of your head, and it comes with short-corded earbuds that have a tendency to get tangled and pulled out of your ears while playing.

The Rift’s single, light tethering wire flows smoothly behind the left ear and down the computer, while the Vive’s coiling, three-part cord sits heavily over the center of the head and back behind the base of the skull. And the Rift has a handy built-in sensor that automatically turns the headset off when you take it off. When it comes to comfort, it’s not even a contest.

Platform wars

If headset design is the Rift’s biggest triumph over the Vive, the underlying software platform is the Vive’s biggest triumph over the Rift. The Oculus Store and Library management tools work OK, but they’re horribly bare bones compared to the fuller features of SteamVR.

On the Vive, you can see your friends’ activity and chat with them from inside the headset over audio or text (through an awkward hunt-and-peck VR keyboard). On the Rift, friends lists seem almost ornamental; there are no real ways to interact with online buddies from the menu. We also had trouble getting voice chat to work in Rift games that ostensibly supported the feature.

On the Vive, you can bring up a quick view of the Windows desktop from the SteamVR menu at any time, and soon you’ll be able to connect a Bluetooth smartphone to pass text messages, phone calls, and calendar alerts to VR. The Rift doesn’t support either of these multitasking-friendly features.

On the Vive, you can also play 2D Steam games in a vision-filling “theater mode,” download one game while playing another, and download new 3D backgrounds for your default VR menu. None of these features is yet available on the Rift.

The twilit view that greets you when you first put on the Vive.

The twilit view that greets you when you first put on the Vive.

With the tap of a button, a full Steam menu appears like a floating screen.

With the tap of a button, a full Steam menu appears like a floating screen.

Valve makes it as easy as possible to spend money without leaving virtual reality.

Valve makes it as easy as possible to spend money without leaving virtual reality.

With the tap of a button, a full Steam menu appears like a floating screen.

Valve makes it as easy as possible to spend money without leaving virtual reality.

Yet another Web browser that you can use to view this fine website.

If you’ve ever wanted to chat with your friends using an awkward virtual reality hunt-and-peck keyboard, now’s your chance!

Click the “desktop” button and you can look at your windows desktop without having to take off the headset (check out the cool “infinite reflection” effect from the headset mirroring here, too).

If you launch a “non-VR” game while inside VR, you can play it in “theater mode” with a huge 2D screen dominating your VR view.

Double-tap the Steam menu button and you get this squiggle-vision view of the outlines of your surroundings.

You can also bring up a full-color view of your surroundings as a miniature handheld screen.

Then there’s the Vive’s handy front-facing camera, which can give users a quick view of the outside world (either as squiggly outlines or a small full-color live video) without the need to take off the headset.

Oculus may well add many of these features through downloadable platform updates in the near future (though the camera and Bluetooth connection seem like secure Vive advantages). For now, though, the Vive enjoys a significant advantage in terms of its software platform.

How do you want to play?

Beyond the headset and platform differences, though, the biggest thing separating the Rift and the Vive is the packaged controllers. The Vive comes with two fully trackable controllers that effectively let you see your hands in front of you as you look around in VR. The Rift, on the other hand, comes with a standard Xbox One controller that is similar to the dual-stick controls you’ve used for decades (plus a handheld remote that’s useful mainly for scanning through videos).

There’s nothing stopping either headset from working with other controllers (though the Vive’s hand-tracking controllers won’t work natively with the Rift’s tracking camera). In fact, Oculus will be coming out with its own hand-tracking Touch controllers later this year, and many Vive games already support a standard controller or the traditional keyboard and mouse. Third-party controllers like racing wheels or wireless body trackers will work just fine with supported software.

It’s not much to look at, but trust us, it’s the most accurate and usable motion controller released to date.

It’s not much to look at, but trust us, it’s the most accurate and usable motion controller released to date.

Those divots in a ring at the top let the controller triangulate with one of two Lighthouse trackers in the corners of the room.

Those divots in a ring at the top let the controller triangulate with one of two Lighthouse trackers in the corners of the room.

From top to bottom: a general menu button, a clickable thumb touchpad, and the Steam menu button (which brings up the system overlay).

From top to bottom: a general menu button, a clickable thumb touchpad, and the Steam menu button (which brings up the system overlay).

Those divots in a ring at the top let the controller triangulate with one of two Lighthouse trackers in the corners of the room.

From top to bottom: a general menu button, a clickable thumb touchpad, and the Steam menu button (which brings up the system overlay).

On the underside you can see the index finger trigger and the grip buttons that you can squeeze with your fingers and palm.

The retail controller on the left is almost indistinguishable from the Vive Pre controllers on the right.

The infrared Lighthouse laser tracking station is the size of a few decks of playing cards, and it only needs to be plugged into a wall outlet.

The included swivel mounts can be mounted to a wall or ceiling or placed atop a tall camera tripod.

All that said, the packaged controllers have an outsized influence on the kinds of games and experiences available for each headset. As such, Rift games tend to be designed to be played seated in one place, looking at things happening around you rather than touching them directly. There are lots of games that take place in vehicle cockpits, and many take place from a third-person, god’s eye view of the action below. In first-person, you often awkwardly look at an object and push a button to interact with it, which just feels weird in the immersive world of VR.

The majority of high-profile Vive experiences are instead designed to be played by simply picking up and holding the virtual objects around you. The controller in your hand can become a gun, a sword, a tennis racket, a magical paintbrush, or countless other natural tools, which you use largely as you would in real life. The intuitive interface this provides is really unlike any game or computing controller we’ve ever seen before.

Many Vive games also encourage or require you to walk around the room, jump in the air, or duck down on the ground to dodge incoming fire, pick up something out of reach, or simply traverse the in-game space. If you have the room to enjoy it, these “room-scale” experiences are a nice added feature for many Vive games. If you don’t, most games can technically work just standing (or sometimes sitting) in place.

Again, Oculus plans to launch its Touch controllers later this year. That will give the Rift similar hand-tracking capabilities (and technically enable room-scale experiences through a second tracking camera, though Oculus hasn’t done much to encourage this idea). Still, the fact that those controllers aren’t launching as an integrated part of the Rift hardware tells you a lot about Oculus’ priorities. On the Rift, hand-tracking seems destined to be at least something of a market-splitting add-on, a niche within the VR niche that may draw more limited support from native developers (and multi-platform porters) than the Vive’s integrated hand-tracking.

This is not a small difference. The vision-filling, all-encompassing virtual reality on both the Rift and the Vive creates convincing worlds that beg for you to reach out and play with them. But right now, that is really only possible on one of the major headsets.

Exclusively confusing

Of the notable games in the Rift’s 30-strong launch library, the high-octane online space shooter Eve Valkyrie comes closest to a killer app. Tracking the enemy with your head at 360 degrees is a game-changer in the truest sense of the word.

Of the notable games in the Rift’s 30-strong launch library, the high-octane online space shooter Eve Valkyrie comes closest to a killer app. Tracking the enemy with your head at 360 degrees is a game-changer in the truest sense of the word.

This flat screenshot doesn’t do justice to how cool it is to track the ball up and down a 3D pinball table in Pinball FX2 VR.

This flat screenshot doesn’t do justice to how cool it is to track the ball up and down a 3D pinball table in Pinball FX2 VR.

This glowing, pulsating stone near the beginning of Chronos is also much more impressive in VR. You’ll just have to trust me.

This glowing, pulsating stone near the beginning of Chronos is also much more impressive in VR. You’ll just have to trust me.

This flat screenshot doesn’t do justice to how cool it is to track the ball up and down a 3D pinball table in Pinball FX2 VR.

This glowing, pulsating stone near the beginning of Chronos is also much more impressive in VR. You’ll just have to trust me.

In racing games like Radial G, you can see turns, dips, and rises far ahead of time just by glancing in their direction.

That translucent sphere around your character makes first-person jumping and swinging in Windlands surprisingly comfortable in VR.

Feeding this cute little guy and his friends will keep you coming back to Farlands daily.

Playing Defense Grid 2 in VR is like looking down over a living table of futuristic wargame miniatures.

Third-person platforming in Lucky’s Tale is fine in VR, but I actually missed the ability to pan the camera around my character.

Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games explains your detached viewpoint by literally turning you into a balloon trailing behind the heroes.

Puzzle games like Darknet would probably work OK on a 2D screen, but they’re much more impactful in VR.

The Oculus Video app lets you stream Twitch, Vimeo, and Facebook 360 videos, plus movies stored on your hard drive, as if you were on the Moon.

One of the more impressive Jaunt VR videos puts you in the middle of a 360 degree view of a Disneyland celebration.

Since the Rift and the Vive are both essentially add-on monitors for a Windows PC, you might think any generic game made for virtual reality would just work on either headset. In practice, things are a bit more complicated.

What natural cross-compatibility does exist between the Rift and the Vive is strictly a one-way street. If you have a Rift plugged into the computer, SteamVR will detect that and can easily launch most VR-compatible games onto the competing headset (you can’t easily launch the SteamVR menu or 2D Steam games on the Rift, though). The same is not true of the Oculus Store. Games purchased on that platform won’t run on the Vive; they won’t launch at all if the Rift isn’t plugged in and detected.

For some games this lack of cross-platform support from Oculus to SteamVR isn’t a big deal. Titles like Elite Dangerous, Project Cars, Radial-G, Time Machine VR, and many others are all available in indistinguishable forms on both the Oculus and Steam stores. Some other currently Rift-exclusive titles, such as Eve Valkyrie and Adr1ft, already have SteamVR/HTC Vive ports planned for the near future. Yet others should be relatively easy to port to the Vive if the developers desire.

Then there are the games that will remain exclusive to Oculus’ platform because Oculus helped fund their development. Launch titles like Lucky’s Tale, Chronos, Into the Dead, and Hero Bound: Spirit Champion will always be playable only through the Oculus Store and the Rift. Back at E3 2015, Oculus said there were two dozen such Rift exclusive games in the works, a list that now includes upcoming titles like Insomniac-developed third-person adventure Edge of Nowhere, first-person shooter Damaged Core, mountain traversal simulator The Climb, card-based RPG Dragon Front, and rhythm game Rock Band VR.

On the other side, many of the most compelling Vive titles are functionally exclusives for the time being thanks to their reliance on hand-tracking controls (and, sometimes, on room-scale traversal). This includes almost all of the Vive’s killer apps; even though these games can technically run on the Rift, it’s currently impossible to interact with them on the headset. It’s currently unclear whether the pending Oculus Touch controllers will be able to replace Vive controllers universally or whether games will need to be ported to the new control standard.

So far, we have to give the Vive the edge in this battle of the exclusives. The ability to reach into the environment with your hands and hold in-game objects is unique enough to make most Vive-exclusive games feel fresh, while none of the Rift’s exclusives really feel like can’t-miss killer apps at this point. More generally, however, the Rift’s library feels like a better-curated selection of complete, fully developed games. Many current titles made for the Vive feel like short “first episode” tastes of larger games, early access titles still in need of a little polish, or short prototype experiments without much in the way of depth.

Just wait…

As impressed as we are with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, we’d still recommend you wait on a VR headset unless you have a rabid interest in VR. As the first generation of a largely unproven technology, both headsets have some major problems that need to be ironed out before they can appeal beyond early adopters.

For the Rift, the lack of hand-tracking is a major strike. It’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend a VR platform that currently can’t run killer apps like Audioshield, Job Simulator, Hover Junkers, Tilt Brush, and many others that use your hands to create an entirely new experience. The Touch controllers will eventually help Oculus on this score, but right now their quality and functionality (not to mention their release date and price) are big question marks. Add in the current issues with the Oculus platform itself, and there are clear reasons to wait at this early date.

For the Vive, the clunky, downright uncomfortable design of the headset itself is a major issue. Being uncomfortable makes it hard to get lost in a VR experience for hours at a time. Like it or not, Oculus’ commitment to securing exclusive games could also cause some regret for Vive owners, even if none of the Oculus exclusives currently feel like must-have system sellers that we simply couldn’t live without.

Box designed by Apple in California (not really, but come on…).

Box designed by Apple in California (not really, but come on…).

Note the lack of Mac and Linux logos on that minimum spec listing…

Note the lack of Mac and Linux logos on that minimum spec listing…

The box opens up into a nice, form-fitting carrying case, complete with springy bungee handle.

The box opens up into a nice, form-fitting carrying case, complete with springy bungee handle.

Note the lack of Mac and Linux logos on that minimum spec listing…

The box opens up into a nice, form-fitting carrying case, complete with springy bungee handle.

The Xbox One controller and other accessories are hidden in a secret compartment under the tracking camera.

Kyle Orland

This “tracking triangle” lets the camera track the Rift when you turn 180 degrees and also hugs the headset to the back of your skull.

It’s here, and it’s real.

This little switch lets you adjust the distance between the lenses for perfect focus.

The single cable coming out from the Rift splits into HDMI and USB connections near the end. A USB extender comes packed in.

The tracking camera comes on a stylish base and can be tilted up to cover standing use.

you can unscrew the tracking camera at this division and screw it onto any standard camera mount.

The one-handed Oculus Remote is useful primarily for watching videos, but we wish there were similar volume buttons on the Xbox One controller.

A thick book of translated warnings and regulations, a cleaning cloth, and two stickers to deface your laptop complete the package.

To further complicate this decision, there’s PlayStation VR, a major competitor launching in October. If you don’t already have a powerful gaming PC, PSVR’s roughly $850 “all-in” price (which includes a PS4) will be hundreds of dollars cheaper than either the Rift or the Vive (if you’re already locked in on the idea of virtual reality on the PC, just ignore this paragraph). Sony’s platform will have its own hand-tracking controllers, its own set of exclusive games, and the support of developers big and small that Sony has been courting for years. We’ve been very impressed with Sony’s VR solution in multiple trade show demos over the years, and it’s hard to recommend jumping into the VR format wars before one major competitor is even available.

Right now, there are too many questions about how the VR platform wars will shake out to be fully comfortable locking in to any one system. You don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on what amounts to the Betamax of VR. Even if neither headset is a complete market failure, it’s hard to know at this early date which one will attract the best exclusive software going forward.

More than that, both headsets are clearly first-generation products that will likely be surpassed by cheaper, higher-quality models relatively soon (and the underlying PC required to power these headsets will only get cheaper). Oculus told Ars in 2014 that the second consumer version of the Rift would be coming a year or two after the first. More recently, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said the hardware refresh cycle would be “somewhere between a phone and console.” Updated SteamVR headsets are no doubt in the pipeline as well from HTC or other manufacturers.