For the past five days, I've spent nearly as much time in virtual reality every bit existent reality. My calves anguish and my neck is sore, but all in all I've had a pretty proficient fourth dimension. I've been using the Vive, an ambitious new virtual reality system created by HTC and Valve.

With the Vive prepare in my living room, I've been everywhere from outer space to Aperture Science'due south stark white labs to a tranquillity beach where I only sat on the footing and listened to the waves. Similar, I actually saturday on the ground. With my own barrel.

The Nuts

Valve and HTC's Vive is the near immediately impressive (and imposing) VR headset on the market. It comes with a price to match: $800. For comparing's sake, the Oculus Rift is $600, though it will get bear upon controllers later this yr that will probably bring it a lot closer to the Vive in terms of price and functionality. PlayStation VR volition come in a $500 bundle when it launches after this year. And of course, the Vive's $800 price tag doesn't include the powerful gaming PC required to operate it—a pre-made organisation that meets the Vive'due south specs volition easily cost yous over $1000. I tested the Vive on a PC with a GeForce GTX 980 graphics menu, an Intel i7 processor clocked at 2.nine GHz, and 32GB of RAM.

One time yous've got the Vive headset, room sensors, and remote-shaped controllers synced and working, you can walk through a virtual infinite with your own legs and grab things with your ain "hands." That's the key differentiator here: while the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR have and then far been largely focused on seated experiences, Vive is more focused on standing, walking, grabbing, and bopping. In that location's a chip of a naturalistic, Wii-like feeling to some of its games, in that respect–particularly the ones well-nigh golf and tennis.

Gaming with the Vive is much more than versatile than it was with the Wii a decade agone, mostly because the new VR headset and controllers put you inside the game yous're motility-controlling. When it works, information technology's the closest affair we've got to virtual reality as imagined in sci-fi books and movies. Information technology's tough to describe, merely the sense of "there"-ness is unparalleled. You have hands and anxiety! You are the character. You see the virtual golf grade all effectually you, wherever you expect. You come across virtual easily where your hands are. You lot can choice upwardly a virtual putter and play. Before I got my Vive, I figured I'd exist over that after a few days, that the sheen would fade into the background of my experience. That hasn't happened still. I'g still knocked back when I enter a new place. I feel like I'm there.

Trouble is, emulating reality isn't like shooting fish in a barrel. It's predicated on the notion of everything coming together so perfectly as to fool your senses into believing you're somewhere you're non, someone y'all're not. The Vive is a young piece of hardware, and more to the bespeak, the current software lineup feels like the Early Access version of a (potentially) much meliorate feel. Speaking of...

Setup tin be a pain.

The Vive can be fiddly every bit all hell. Its box is a cool sort of blue, conjuring warm feelings of afternoon skies and ice foam cloud wisps. I saw that box, and I was like, Man, I sure do feel calm right at present. Perchance I'll never be angry, upset, or frustrated again! So I opened information technology. Information technology was divided into multiple compartments: one for the headset, one for the sensor boxes, one for the controllers, and ane for the trivial box that connects them all to your figurer. Beneath those sections? Wires and more wires.

The first thing I had to practice was open my web browser and go to an HTC website. There, I downloaded a plan that would guide me through the setup procedure. It estimated that the whole thing would accept around 28 minutes. OK, I said to myself, this won't be then bad. In hindsight, I find the 28-minute estimate hilarious for two reasons: 1) it is extremely specific, 2) in my feel, it was extremely inaccurate. Setting up the Vive took me two hours, and I was cursing like the son of a sailor and a warlock the entire fourth dimension.

The setup process itself was actually pretty straightforward. I had to plug in two small sensor boxes on reverse sides of my room and make sure they were about six feet off the ground (I used tables and boxes, but y'all tin can screw the sensors into your wall, if your landlord'due south cool with that), plug a special base station into my PC's USB and HDMI ports, and plug the headset into the base station. Information technology was one time everything was supposed to be upwards and running that things got hard.

In club to use the Vive, you've got to designate a room space. It has to be at to the lowest degree 1.5 x 2m (5 10 6.5 feet). In that infinite, you can walk around freely. If you get too close to its boundaries, the Vive's "Chaperone" software will display a faint outline of a wall.

Offset, though, I had to brand room for all of this. Just what I've e'er wanted,"a skilful reason to keep my apartment clean. Then I had to trace around the outer perimeter of the infinite I'd cleared with a controller, merely to larn that I hadn't cleared enough space. So I pushed tables, chairs, and my bed equally far against the walls of my tiny apartment equally I could. And then I tried tracing the perimeter once again, just the sensors kept losing runway of my controller while I did information technology. At that signal, I had to unplug the sensors, movement them slightly, and effort over again until, finally, everything came together.

So I had my space. Done, right? Of course not! Every fourth dimension I tried to start Steam'south VR program, I was informed that it couldn't detect my headset. "My headset is right here," I told my computer, pointing at the headset on my head. "I found it. Information technology is found." With the assist of Steam'southward VR troubleshooting page, I solved that issue by downloading some new drivers. Later that, Steam VR found my headset, simply to tell me that, essentially, information technology wasn't playing dainty with my PC's HDMI port. At that point, I resolved to throw my Vive into the sunday one 24-hour interval, after it's outlived its usefulness. Ultimately, I disconnected the headset from my PC and reconnected information technology a few times until, for some reason, it worked. I withal have to practice this occasionally when trying to play a Vive game. I grind my teeth a lot. I've begun to have trouble chewing tough meats.

I'g going into and so much particular here considering I really desire to convey how many trivial annoying things can go wrong when setting up a Vive. Virtual reality is a daunting prospect with its high cost point and, you lot know, the part where yous take to wear a sweaty brick on your face. The barrier to entry is already prohibitively high. Setup needs to exist as unproblematic as possible for this thing to really grab on, and right now, the Vive only isn't at that place. In all likelihood, Valve and HTC will refine the process, but in the present year of two-m-and-xvi, information technology's a big, frustrating knock against an otherwise cool experience.

The headset fits kinda weirdly.

I've found myself having to adjust and readjust the Vive headset. Weight-wise, it's mostly fine (my neck only hurts considering I've been marathoning VR games for multiple days in a row), but if I move my face too much by smiling, laughing, scrutinizing, or what have you, the forepart-heavy headset slides to a betoken where the lenses are out of focus. This becomes especially noticeable whatsoever fourth dimension I'm trying to examine detailed in-game objects up close. Suddenly, it'due south all a blur. To solve the problem, all I have to do is achieve upwards and pull the headset back into place, but having to do that every 5-ten minutes can get kinda annoying, not to mention immersion-breaking.

That said, when everything's in identify, games look great. While none of its games pack the graphical dial of an ultra loftier-end PC game, they look decent enough that my brain buys the illusion. Despite the temptation to believe realer virtual reality = better, I've found that more stylized games are improve at leaping the uncanny chasm. Games like Task Simulator, Irrational Exuberance, Hover Junkers, and Fantastic Contraption spirit my mind abroad to other places, whereas more than realistic-looking experiences sometimes exit me thinking, "Huh, that texture looks awfully muddied up shut," or "Why doesn't this cereal box tell me exactly how many calories are in every bite?"

There's some jank in the trank.

The Vive'south sensors can be, well, sensitive. If they lose track of a controller, you might notice that your in-game "paw" is suddenly floating off into the sunset, leaving you without so much as something to wave farewell with. If they lose rail of your headset, everything tin can suddenly disappear, paving your vision over with a bounding main of gray. I besides encountered a few moments where my in-game view started shuddering, which is the starting time time any sort of video game has ever made me feel nauseous.

Sometimes, you just need to reposition your sensors a chip. Even with as close to an optimal setup as I've been able to go, I've even so had to put up with a few moments of unexplained jankiness.

The microphone ain't great.

In his impressions of the Oculus Rift last week, my colleague Kirk Hamilton praised the Rift's built-in headphones and mic. The Vive, by contrast, doesn't accept congenital-in headphones (yous've gotta wear your own on height of the headset). You might not think that's a super huge deal, but it'southward one of those convenience features that impacts your experience more yous'd think.

The Vive's congenital-in mic is, well, crap. Listen to the sound on this video of Surgeon Simulator VR I tried to record:

Information technology sounds similar I'm talking through a tin can can that's duct-taped to a 56k dial-up modem and run through a puberty filter. Sometimes my voice cuts out nearly entirely for no apparent reason. It's basically unusable for recording videos or streaming games, and I wouldn't really recommend it for communicating in multiplayer games or conversation programs either.

The cord, the cord, the corrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.

In social club for the Vive to function, the headset must exist plugged into a base station that plugs into your PC. This means that there's always a cord abaft behind yous. It'due south plenty long, but it invariably gets in the way. Earlier long, I got used to stepping over it (so much so, in fact, that LOCATION OF Cord has become a weird sixth sense, a affair I've started subconsciously tracking), only information technology never stopped being… there.

Certain, it'southward a necessary evil, simply it's distracting. Just when I got to feeling super immersed in Space Pirate Trainer right now, similar I couldn't be more than immersed if real space robots came and dunked my caput in a toilet, I'd nearly trip over the cord. The illusion would shatter, and my robot-blasting fervor would fade. I wished my Infinite Pirate gun could shoot the cord, or at to the lowest degree teach it to feel pain. Fuck the cord.

All that said…

When it's working, Vive VR is astounding.

You might have heard people compare the Vive to Star Trek's famed Holodeck. Information technology's definitely not that seamless (and I've nevertheless to become shot or create a new species of photonic life in it), but in the Vive's best moments, the comparison is apt.

While playing the prelude to surreal space exploration game Irrational Exuberance, I remember staring slack-jawed every bit a planetoid came autonomously before my eyes, pieces hurtling toward me like shooting stars. How could I not? I was witnessing this otherworldly catholic consequence, and I was at that place. Or at to the lowest degree, near plenty to there that my brain decided, "Eh, good enough."

I swatted the baby asteroids with my "hands," producing a satisfying rumble from my controller, and watched as they split and sunk into infinity. Briefly, nothing else actually mattered. In that moment, I was lost in the immenseness of the cosmos.

So I stubbed my toe on my function chair and shouted, "FUCK!" only before I remembered it was 2 AM and my girlfriend was sleeping a few feet away. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The VR Experience.

For real, though, I can't remember the final time I said "wow" this many times in a calendar week-long period. And it wasn't just when I was getting pelted with virtual space rocks.

The smallest interactions are the most impressive.

The almost astounding moment I've had with the Vive involved a tin of popcorn.

I was playing the amazingly desperately named run a risk game The Gallery–Episode 1: Call of the Starseed, walking along an abandoned beach. Evening calm was intermittently interrupted past the crashing of waves, or the occasional caw of a seagull. I came beyond a bivouac, too abased. Someone had been there recently, though. They left behind all sorts of stuff: a cooler, beer cans, chairs, a embankment ball, even fireworks. I spotted a tin of unpopped popcorn and picked information technology upwardly. On a lark, I held it over the burn down. Information technology began popping. Popping! That's the master thing popcorn does, except in video games, where usually information technology just sits in a country of sterile passivity until the end of time. I tried the fireworks. They blasted off into the evening sky. Then I shot one at the ground, because I wanted to see if getting tertiary-caste burns in VR would likewise give me third-degree burns in real life.

Later, I encountered a notation total of sensitive data. I picked it upward and read information technology. "It would be bad if this roughshod into the wrong hands," I thought to myself. Instinctively, I held it over a candle, and it burned to a crisp. The game never told me to do this, nor did it even imply it was possible. I just did information technology because, well, that's probably what I would do if such a state of affairs occurred in existent life.

By the same token, though, Vive VR games have a way of falling apart when they don't take that kind of internal consistency. Valve's own Vive launch game, The Lab, contains one of the virtually impressive VR vignettes out there. It's chosen Robot Repair, and information technology sees you… repair a robot for Portal's maniacal Aperture Scientific discipline company. Early on on, though, there's a bit where you lot observe a drawer full of tiny silhouette people. When they see yous, they make up one's mind you are their god, and the experiment becomes contaminated. You're instructed to shut the drawer, at which signal the tiny people are all incinerated. But one slips out and falls to the floor. Immediately, I tried to pick that 1 up. Naught happened. I couldn't interact. Similarly, I couldn't choice up objects on nearby shelves.

In regular games, I wouldn't really care nearly any of that. But in Vive games, I have easily, damn it. My brain expects them to be able to reach out and touch, non laissez passer through stuff as though I'm Casper The Impotent Ghost.

I've been having trouble telling virtual reality and existent reality autonomously.

Not in the "seek help" sort of way, but like, OK: the other day I was talking with a friend most coffee cups. I had this really vivid recent memory of a bunch of coffee cups, and I couldn't place where it was coming from. I remembered picking upward a bunch of them, reading their logos, peering into them, seeing some gnarly stains, etc. Had I been to a ceramics shop? No, last fourth dimension I did that was while Christmas shopping concluding twelvemonth. Maybe I was remembering doing the dishes? No, I oasis't done that since Christmas terminal yea… I mean last week. Christmas last week.

Then it hit me: my memory came from Valve'southward The Lab. In the game's hub expanse, there are a bunch of items you can examine, including very detailed coffee cups. That also explained why my coffee cup memory was tied so intrinsically to my memory of torturing a tiny man trapped in a jar.

Virtual/real-earth defoliation goes both means, though. A couple days agone, I was playing Chore Simulator, and my girlfriend was like, "Are y'all about fix to go to bed?" And I was similar, "Oh, it's probably pretty late, huh? Totally." So I decided to leave VR and go to bed. Trouble: I needed to accept off the headset, but I was holding controllers in both hands. Solution: put the controllers on the table in front of me. Problem: the table was not real. Fortunately, this occurred to me about one second before I sent my controllers clattering down. I stopped myself just in fourth dimension. Afterward I sent my brain to time-out.

So yeah, Vive VR tin exist really immersive. However…

Marathoning Vive games is physically exhausting.

Despite my career choice of Guy Who Spends Most Of His Waking Hours Playing, Writing Nearly, Or Discussing Video Games, I'm in pretty skilful shape. I practise daily, and I'm consumed by guilt when I can't brand the time to do so. I say this because, well, I'thousand in a off-white amount of hurting correct now. From playing video games.

On their own, typical Vive activities–walking, reaching, standing, occasionally kneeling–are not especially intense. If you do these things every day in continuous 3-five 60 minutes chunks for a week, though, don't be surprised if your neck, shoulders, knees, and calves start rebelling. See, people are great at walking and running, but with many Vive games, you actually spend virtually of your time standing still. The human trunk haaaaaaates that.

The Vive mileage I've put on my joints hasn't been debilitating, but it can become distracting. With actually good games, it doesn't matter much, because I'm so into them. But yesterday I was playing Vanishing Realms, a Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler. It made a cracking first impression with intense sword-swinging combat against big ol' skeleton jerks, but my enthusiasm waned every bit the game's pacing took a dip. I got bored, and my listen began to wander. Before long, I realized that my legs were cramping, and my shoulders were tired, which compounded my distraction. Ultimately, I had to quit out and remainder.

On the upside, you tin can configure the Vive then you can play games while sitting down, and information technology works just fine once you've moved your sensors closer together. Many Vive exclusives, still, are meant to be played standing. Just keep in listen that you're gonna have to take breaks. Correct at present, though, that's not a huge concern, because...

Many Vive games feel like they belong in Early Access.

Some of the games are in Early Access. The Vive'southward launch line-up is brindled with proto-games and glorified tech demos. I can count the number of games that feel like actual complete experiences on i paw.

In fact, I'll do it for you right now: i) Fantastic Contraption is the best ane, with tons of puzzles, great personality, and some vivid structure mechanics. ii) Vanishing Realms isn't the best action-take a chance game always, simply information technology'south at to the lowest degree got a fair amount of Stuff to explore and do. 3) Job Simulator tells a dystopian tale through comedic future-robot takes on modern day drudgery. iv) Hover Junkers is a thrilling multiplayer shooter with awesome social features, though information technology'due south more than mechanically complete than it is total of capital-C content. 5) The Gallery–Episode 1: Phone call of the Starseed is the outset episode of an take chances game that has solid puzzles and a coherent, well-voiced-acted narrative. It'southward pretty glitchy, though. 6) Tilt Castor isn't even a game, only it lets you paint sweet art on thin air, so I'm including it. 7) Aristocracy Dangerous works likewise with the Vive as it does with the Oculus Rift, and remains 1 of the most immersive things you tin do in VR.

OK, two hands. But I'm only using a very modest portion of the 2d hand.

In the past week I've played so many brief proof-of-concept demos that could (and maybe will) be peachy games with more development. Surgeon Simulator VR, Irrational Exuberance, #SelfieTennis, Unseen Diplomacy, Audioshield, Windlands, Infinite Pirate Trainer, even Valve'due south own The Lab—the list goes on.

It makes a degree of sense. Every bit much every bit whatever other entity in software development, Valve has embraced the Early on Access model. And why wouldn't small developers want their games leading the accuse on an heady new platform, like the Vive? In this instance, it only becomes a problem when most of the games populating a vaunted 30-plus-game launch lineup feel incomplete or otherwise unsatisfying.

The all-time uses may not be games at all.

There'southward a lot in the piping for VR that has nothing to practise with video games. Some of it is already here. Kirk wrote nigh Virtual Desktop, which wraps your figurer desktop around you in VR. I tin ostend that it is, indeed, a super absurd fashion to work, and also lookout man movies, TV, and uh, porn. Speaking of VR porn, that'south already here too, and a whole lot more is on the mode.

There'southward also stuff like AltSpace VR, which lets you lot hang out with people on the other side of the world equally though you're in the same room. Y'all can watch stuff together, explore, do karaoke, throw parties, and all sorts of other stuff. My girlfriend and I are probably gonna try using information technology to proceed in touch while she's away in England for a few months. I don't know if it's actually gonna be any skillful, but it points to ane of the many directions non-gaming VR could get. There'south so much untapped potential here, and it's super heady.

The Vive is really absurd, but it'due south got a ways to become before it's essential.

The Vive's current game lineup prioritizes quantity over depth. Its coolest not-gaming applications remain largely theoretical, promises that will hopefully be fulfilled downward the road. Y'all'll probable need to upend your habitation's floorplan to apply it, and the hardware can be finicky and tough to get working.

While the Vive'due south best moments are some of the coolest I've experienced in video games, I can't recommend purchasing it right now. You'd exist spending $800 on something that's going to exist much better later on months' worth of software (and possibly fifty-fifty hardware) revisions, and at that place currently aren't plenty great games to justify the investment.

The Vive really is something you should see for yourself, but if you want to effort information technology, get to a store that's demoing it, or brand friends with somebody who already ordered one. I'm excited well-nigh what the futurity holds for the Vive, but the futurity's not here nonetheless.