Ask Ars: I can’t choose between Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR!

Using the SteamVR store in the HTC Vive Pre. (credit: Kyle Orland)

If you are ready to jump feet-first into triple-A virtual reality gaming as soon as humanly possible, you have three main choices: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Sony's PS VR. None of these devices is actually in the hands of the general public yet—we’ll have to wait until next week for the Oculus Rift to start its first round of shipping—but all three are available for preorder right now. The Vive is the most expensive option at $799, but it comes with 3D controllers. The Rift costs less at $599, but it doesn’t come with 3D controllers. And the PS VR is the cheapest at $399, but then you’re locked to a console and don’t get to play any computer-based VR games.

There is no way to prove yet which of the three front-runners is best. Indeed, "best" is a hard word to define in context—best based on what? Best resolution? The Rift and Vive seem to be the winners there—but they use a Pentile subpixel arrangement, and the Sony kit doesn’t, so the resolution numbers don’t tell the entire story. Best VR experience? Well, that depends on what "experience" means to you—are you primarily going to be playing cockpit-based flight or racing sims where seated play is the main point, or do you want to run around your room playing virtual golf or tennis or shooting virtual guns?

Because how and what you play is a massively subjective experience—and because there’s still so much we don’t know about the final retail versions of all of these VR solutions—it’s hard to make blanket recommendations at this point. The absolute best answer right now to the question of "Which one of these things should I buy?!" is "You should probably wait until this summer when they’ve been in everybody’s hands for a few months and then decide."

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