HTC Vive: Holodeck or Hollow Tech?

We'd bet that we weren't the only ones who grew up in the '90s with Star Trek: The Next Generation playing on a television as deep as it was wide, watching the crew of the Enterprise role-playing in the holodeck. Or some years later being wowed by bullet-time in The Matrix, when Neo emerged from a virtual universe only to dip back in and out of the ultimate simulation while fighting the machines for the very survival of humankind. It was science fiction back then, and while we're not for a second suggesting that the HTC Vive (or even the Oculus Rift or PSVR) offers anything close to the holodeck experience that we dreamed of all those years ago, it very much feels like we've made the first meaningful step on that path.

But these first steps into virtual reality also illustrate just how far away the holdeck is, and how long our journey getting there is going to be. Because while the Vive offers moments of pure brilliance, we're not sure that's enough right now. We might now have our first round of premium consumer VR headsets, but we don't yet have something that's anywhere near ready for the mainstream. This feels very much like what it is: first generation hardware.
 
When you get the HTC Vive it doesn't work straight out of the box. We'll not regale you with tales of home improvement and furniture relocation, but it needs to be said straight off the bat: this headset requires the most investment, the most time, the most space, and most commitment; and that's compared to all of its VR rivals. The two mounted Lighthouse sensors need to be placed in the room at least six feet above the ground, either screwed into the walls or attached to shelves (or even on tripods, if you've got them). The headset is attached to a spaghetti junction of cables, and you'll need a spare multi-socket extension cable to power it all. Setting it up is simple enough, but it can be a massive faff.
 
And then, key to your fulsome enjoyment of the headset, you need space. A lot of space. How much do you need? Well, we played in a decent sized room and even then certain games wanted more square meters than we were able to muster. If you've got a pokey living room, or if you'll be playing in the corner of your bedroom, put your chequebook away now. The Vive might have a unique selling point, but the space requirement automatically rules out a lot of potential customers.

The Valve endorsed HTC Vive requires the most significant financial investment you can currently make on VR, and that's only considering the headset itself. You may also need to upgrade your hardware to make sure you get the best out of the experience (if you want a large enough room to take advantage of every game, hell, you might even need to buy a bigger house). But assuming your rig is up to scratch and you've got the space, the headset itself is the main investment (it costs £689 / €799). For your money you get the headset itself, two controllers, two Lighthouse sensors, earbuds, a link box, and a collection of cables to connect everything together.
 
But does it work, and does it deliver the quintessential VR experience? We'll do our best to answer that for you now, but it's tricky, because as it will become clear before we get to the end of this review; virtual reality isn't for everybody, and within that, the Vive isn't for everyone who wants a VR experience.
 

One of the Vive's main strengths is that it's a jack of all trades, in the sense that you can play in a large room (the optimum), a small room, standing, and seated. However, is it a jack of all trades, but the master of none? Well, not one of the other headsets offers room-scale VR, so in that sense HTC's offering has the competition beat. And it's this area that we'll consider first.
 
Using the Lighthouse sensors mounted on opposite sides of the play space, the movements of the headset and controllers are tracked, allowing you to move freely within the confines of the pre-determined digital space, marked out in-game by a customisable boundary. You define the space using the controllers supplied in the box, and doing so, along with in-game warnings when you stray too close to the edge, means you can enjoy the virtual space in relative safety (there's always a danger when you can't see, most notably in this case from the trail of cables that flows from the back of the headset).

Different developers have worked out a variety of potential ways of moving you around in-game, but most involve you using the controllers' touch pads to indicate where you would like to move, sometimes even allowing you to adjust the direction you'll face when you get there. It's a straightforward system, and it works. In a slow paced game it's fine, although it can get disorientating during more action-focused titles where you might need to move quickly to escape harm.
 
The effectiveness of movement in the digital space is usually determined by the software, and the type of atmosphere that it's trying to achieve. Playing mini-golf is easy enough; you just click where you want to go, take your shot, move on for the next. If you're trying to dodge enemy attacks, you're much more reliant on the movement controls being accurate and reliable. Mastery of the scheme takes some practice, but it quickly becomes intuitive and variations of it are used across a number of titles so there's plenty of crossover.

Another thing that we really liked was the controllers and how they were rendered in the game space. Some take on the very literal form of a pair of controllers, other times you see adapted designs, or most interesting of all, you might see a pair of digital hands, and you're able to pick up and interact with items in the world, holding them up, throwing them, and so on. We did have a couple of issues with the tracking of the headset and the controllers, and on occasion it caused disorientation and tainted the experience, with hands/controllers disappearing, or shifting position and not being where we expected them in relation to our real-world movements (pro-tip: make sure there's no mirror on the wall of the room you're playing in). Still, when it works, it works a treat, and you get a sense of place to an extent that you'll have never felt in a video game before.

Not everyone will have access to the space required for room-scale VR, and thus standing or seated is the other option open to players. Sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship or airplane feels supremely natural, and we can imagine simulation enthusiasts will be among the first wave of early adopters as they seek to bring additional realism to their hobby. If you're going to sit in the cabin of a truck and then calmly manoeuvre your vehicle around a city for a number of hours, then VR is the perfect tool to enhance your role-play.

But even if you're sitting in the cabin of a train, or piloting a racer at breakneck speeds, there's no guarantee that virtual reality isn't going to make you sick as a dog (this is a VR problem, not something exclusive to the Vive). We found ourselves feeling nauseous when playing games that offered six-degrees-of-freedom, such as Elite: Dangerous, and while Wipeout-like racer Radial G: Racing Revolved didn't have us reaching for the sick bucket, we didn't exactly feel amazing when we pulled the headset off either. There's simply no way of knowing whether you'll suffer from motion sickness until you try it for yourself, but the disconnect between your perceived reality and your actual reality can have an adverse effect.

It can get a lot worse, and we've witnessed firsthand someone have an almost violent reaction to the device, where upon losing sensory awareness in the real world, panic set in and completely ruined any potential enjoyment that they might have had. This can be mitigated against to a degree, as you can use the camera on the headset to map out the environment around the player - which, no kidding, looks like you're seeing through the eyes of a terminator - so you can stay aware of your actual surroundings with the push of a button, but we're not sure that'll be enough to convince someone anxious about stepping into the virtual realm.

VR can be an intense experience, and it might not be something you're comfortable doing for extended periods of time. We enjoyed it most when playing in short bursts, while others are happy playing it for much longer periods of time. It's also fair to say that some people plain don't like it, no matter how long or short their experience is, and not necessarily because of intensity, anxiousness, or anything of that sort. Whether it be the design of the headset, the quality of the visuals, or the medium's lack of maturity; there are those - such as Gamereactor Sweden's Petter Hegevall - who simply don't enjoy the Vive.

It's not all doom and gloom though, and like you we've read reports of people who've had an absolute blast playing around with the Vive, and we've spoken to friends and colleagues who've had extremely positive experiences. Indeed, Gamereactor Germany's Christian Gaca had a marvellous time with the headset. And while we're not yet completely sold on VR, we have to admit that there was a few moments where we were completely wowed by some of our virtual experiences.

Here's the problem, though. These jaw-dropping moments are just that, moments. Meeting the whale in theBlu, or flinging planets about in Universe Sandbox 2, or playing some of the choice mini-games in The Lab; they offer up some incredible experiences, tantalising glimpses into a possible future for interactive entertainment. But looking across the range of software that we have access to, and beyond that through the ever-growing library on Steam, it's hard to see the killer app that makes virtual reality an essential adventure in 2016.

We don't want to judge the headset based on the software available for it, because it's not HTC or Valve's fault. It is, however, very much their problem. At the moment the range of games feels like a collection of demos and prototypes, some of them half-cooked, others overly simplistic. Even some of the lower priced experiences feel like something you'd find on the disc full of mini-games that Nintendo inevitably gives you with each new home console in order to show you the potential of what will come in the years ahead (indeed, Valve has taken care of that in this instance with The Lab, which is quite possibly the best VR experience you can have on the Vive right now). Except here, these experiences are all low- to mid-priced titles in their own right, and trying them out will only add to the overall expense.

Even games we already know and like, such as Elite: Dangerous, didn't benefit hugely from the inclusion of VR functionality. We certainly enjoyed seeing the inside of our spaceship from the new perspective, but it didn't drastically change the way we approached the game, or even make us want to return for an extended play session, this due to the intensity of the experience and the feeling in our gut whenever we had to roll our ship out of harm's way.

It isn't helped by the fact that the 2160 x 1200 resolution isn't as crisp as it really needs to be for total immersion, and because you can see all those little pixels. To be fair, the wires that get tangled around your legs don't help with immersion either. We used the headset with a system that met the recommended requirements, but at no point were we blown away by the visual fidelity of anything that we played. Considering it's by far the most expensive VR option, we're not sure there's the extra quality needed to significantly distance the Vive from its competition, beyond, of course, the room-scale functionality.

The headset itself is heavy and a bit unwieldy, with the extra weight coming from the 30-odd sensors built into the casing, and although it's not unbearable after an extended play session, it's not particularly comfortable either. It sits heavy on the cheekbones after a while, and during more energetic experiences - or if you're lucky enough to live somewhere that boasts warm weather - it can get quite sweaty. The fact that there's no built-in headphones feels like an oversight, especially considering the price, and the straps don't reflect the premium pricing either. That said, the lenses are of a high quality, and we appreciated the option to adjust the focus via a dial at the front of the box.

The controllers, simply put, are brilliant. They're light in the hand, robustly made, intuitive to use, and largely reliable. It was very jarring when the sensors were unable to track them accurately, but this didn't happen very often, and the overall build quality is suitably high. We liked the trackpads (they're a great solution and allow for a lot of flexibility) and the positioning of all the buttons is the result of careful and purposeful design. They really do help elevate the VR experience, making it feel genuinely futuristic.

Of similar quality is the Steam UI. It's easy to navigate the menus, close down applications, and start up new ones (this is, in no small part, thanks to the quality design of controllers). Valve's ability to develop intuitive software shines in this respect, and we had very few issues getting up and running, and then accessing whatever we wanted. It might be a bit busy, but it's manageable, and you can even link the Vive's own software to your Steam account and access your library of games that way, should you wish. On the other hand, troubleshooting and support could have been better.

The hardware package is rounded off by the Lighthouse sensors, of which there are two in the box. We found them a little unreliable in terms of tracking at first, until we later discovered that a mirror on the wall was causing the tracking to go haywire. Setting up the sensors is an undertaking and in some cases will involve an electric drill and home modifications, which might not be an option for people in rented accommodation. The tech does have obvious benefits though, most notably by allowing you to be placed in a much bigger virtual space, letting you walk around and interact more naturally, which in turn increases the sense of immersion considerably.

There are certainly some incredible experiences to be had in the virtual realm, but many of them are fleeting and throwaway, there to be enjoyed once or twice, never to be looked at again (or only to be re-downloaded when someone who has never played VR comes over for an inquisitive look). We don't want to judge the headset against the quality of externally developed software, but the lack of a killer app, along with a mixed bag of launch titles, means that it's hard to ignore this key factor. Especially when the cost of entry is so high. If we were talking about a piece of kit that was £150 then we'd be singing a different tune, but picking up VR headset as expensive as this feels like taking a risk when the future is far from being assured.

Our advice, if you're still considering making a pre-order, is to make sure that you try a headset on for size before you slap any money on the table, and take a long hard look at the list of existing and upcoming games, because upgrading your hardware and buying the device is only the first step; after that you've got to keep feeding it games and experiences, otherwise it'll sit gathering dust on the shelf.

We've had a strange time with the HTC Vive. On the one hand it offers a truly impressive experience, and the ability to move around in the digital space thanks to the room-scale tech gives it the edge over Oculus and PSVR, but on the other hand there's not enough software, the tracking (for us at least) wasn't 100% reliable, and certain games can make some people feel unwell. There's undoubted potential, and once or twice we were convinced that we were experiencing the future. However, as it stands, the Vive today only offers a glimpse of what it might one day become, and once we'd removed our jaw from the floor and started looking around for more meaningful experiences, our enthusiasm began to diminish. Of course we've not played every game, so it's hard to be definitive, but thus far we remain unconvinced.

Virtual reality might well be the future of gaming, or at least a part of it, but it's a future that still looks a long way off, and it certainly doesn't feel like a sensible investment at this moment in time. However, if you're desperate to get VR in your life and you're equipped for the adventure, by all means go for it, because it's certainly not without merit. But know that you're heading into frontier territory. And while a new frontier can mean exciting and amazing experiences, there's also no guarantee that you'll like what you see along the way, or that you'll want to stay there for very long when you get there.