OT: Virtual Reality - has Anyone Bought or Used a System?

My buddy has a Vive, and it's pretty fantastic.  I've done VR stuff back in  the day, and had messed around with a Galaxy Gear demo at a shop once, and was kinda whatever, but getting into the Vive was mind blowing.  You never per se "forget" you're not in a virtual world, but many of the games are so immersive and entrancing you completely lose yourself in them and do forget you're standing in a room surrounded by people.  I haven't had a chance to mess with any of the apps besides the drawing one which I forget, but that was also really cool.  Creating art in a 3D space with glorified MS paint tools that you can move around and futz with was really cool, especially for non-gamers.  

If you have the computer hardware to run it, and your computer is in a room that has enough space for the room scale VR, I would definitely recommend.  I'm likely going to get a PSVR instead of the Vive or Rift due to a space issue (even though by all regards the PSVR is inferior technically/visually), but if you can make a Vive or Rift work, they're very cool.  

I find it about as intriguing as 3D TV which is to say that the only thing more annoying than being told people will want to wear that stupid thing on their head for hours is being told by a bunch of commercials that it's the most fantastic breakthrough of our times. It's so ridiculous. If you're an early adopter type and love playing with this stuff then great, I'm sure you'll enjoy it but to think this is going anywhere in the larger consumer market is ridiculous. I wouldn't hold out hope that there is going to be a ton of content or widespread adoption. 

It's pretty cool stuff, but I'd wait for wide-scale adoption.  The only people for whom it's worth it to buy right now are developers.

I have a Gear VR.  The gaming is OK i think, but the porn viewing is revolutionary.  I had my first threesome on it.

and feel like throwing up just thinking about them. 

VR seems like just another technology that isolates us into our own "shell" of humanity and hinders interpersonal interaction. Parents complained in the early days of video games that we were no longer "playing outside." 

But at least at the old video game arcades we were going out as a group of friends and standing in a group behind the "Centipede" champ watching him kick ass. Then heading to McDonald's together on our bikes. 

At least with the earlier home consoles we were playing as a group with multiple controllers, all at a friend's house. 

Now we're just putting headsets on and playing in online worlds as avatars. Everyone just stays at their home or in their dorm. 

And now this ... putting goggles on and seeing and touching through virtual eyes and hands. 

No thanks. 

I got a free GearVR when I preordered my phone. It's pretty cool in concept, but I went to use it for the first time in about a month and it had to go through like an hour of updates to use any of  the apps, which was pretty furstrating. It works well if you have bluetooth headphones to use with it.

https://youtu.be/Qsna1ChGt0E

Absolutely hilarious.  Looking forward to Ace Combat 7.  Don't have one, but will be monitoring reviews for the next 6 months or so. I'll be playing football would be awesome on it.

There's simply not enough out there right not to justify getting into the VR space.

Someone brought an MS Hololens to a party here. It was underwhelming. The game reminded me of a 90s arcade game. You have to use Cortana to control the thing, which is about like trying to control an untrained dog or a teenager. What I heard most from people trying it was "Hey Cortana...HEY! Cortana... HEY!!!! CORTANA!!!!!"

So yeah, nascent technology with the usability and code quality one should expect.