Best Of

"For many of us, I don't think it's "grumpiness", it's "it will cost $1000 to play this game""

This is, for the most part, untrue in 2020. The Oculus Rift Quest is all-in-one and costs less than an Xbox and it doesn't need a PC to play at all. With the newly released link cable, you can plug it into your PC and play Rift S quality games while still having the flexibility of play where you want when you want it. I know $400 isn't cheap, but we're far and away from the days of needing $1,200+ worth of upgrades and hardware to be able to play.

VR runs great on mid-tier PC hardware these days. It runs fine on a GeForce 1080, so if you've upgraded or rebuilt your PC in the last four years, you're probably good to go already. As the hardware has improved, the software has also lowered the previously insane high requirements to be able to play VR on your PC.

It also helps that most VR games are priced accordingly. You won't find $60 games - most are around the $15 dollar price point. If a game is more of an hour long experience, you'll typically pay an amount that makes sense for what it is.

"Oh @UPSLynx - I'll bite, tell me what hardware you played it on. I may consider looking like a dork in the comfort of my own home so I know what happens to Alyx"

My current PC is:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/g3y4zY
Not listed - GPU: 1080ti, and my M.2 is an Adata SX8200 XPG series rather than that Samsung.

I built it about 8 months ago, so I'm not really the best person to ask in terms of scalability (I didn't build this for VR, I just wanted to rebuild with new hotness). I'm playing on the Rift S. I opted for the more "premium" experience over the Quest, though looking back I'd probably go Quest instead - Quest has gotten much better software and firmware support than the Rift S, and the freedom of playing remotely would have been nice.

The Rift S / Quest launch was what finally got me over the line and ready to buy. Having the external sensors/cameras is a dealbreaker for me right now. I don't have the space for them currently, and in the case of the Original Rift, I didn't have 4 USB ports free for all of them. Rift S only has one cable to deal with, which splits into Display Port and USB.

Alyx played flawlessly for me on this system, and I haven't had any issues running any other games outside of some early issues that are common with buying day one new hardware. Pretty much any issues I had around launch have been fixed via firmware and software updates. There's still a tiny bit of jank because VR still is very much in its infancy, but I'd say at this point, the VR experience has matured enough to feel like a legitimate gaming platform, rather than the "garage-made hardware for tech demo experiences" it was known for in its early days.

tonight 8 EST