Which Accessories are Best for my HTC VIVE?

[McyD]

On 4/4/2020 at 12:26 PM, Veggies said:

Alienware M15 Gaming Laptop

 

I recommend the Alienware M15 Gaming Laptop Intel i7-8750H (2.2-4.1 Ghz on 6 cores). This machine meets or exceeds these requirements with a 15.6″ LCD, 16GB RAM, 512 GB PCIe M.2 SSD storage, NVIDIA GEForce RTX 2060 graphics card with 6GB.

Why are you suggesting a laptop... Unless the OP is specifically planning on carting everything around, which I do not see mentioned by the OP, save money, get a Desktop.  You will get a lot higher specs, for the same or lower cost, plus the ability to upgrade.  I swear the world is full on Laptop Fan boys now that do not know any better.  A laptop is for one thing, portability, you are paying a premium for it to be small, light, have a battery, and to make that battery last as long as possible.  The caveat to all that is you are paying a premium for efficiently and miniaturization at the cost of performance and ever being able to upgrade it.  BTW, unless you have a first gen or so Alienware, you are paying for a re-branded Dell, as Dell bought Alienware years ago to profit of the name, as they lacked a gaming laptop Rig (I laugh at the name "Gaming Laptop").  Since then it is commonly acknowledged that Dell has pretty much ruined the product by cheaping out and basically the Alienware, is now just generic laptop in a pretty casing using the cheapest parts they can and pretty much only exists still due to fanboys still buying it for the name Alienware...

[HackPerception]

I used to be super hardcore in the PCMR camp but having a VR laptop has opened up so many opportunities for me and has allowed me to share VR experiences with a huge number of people in a variety of crazy places. I think laptops certainly have their place in helping VR gain consumer legs and that as edge computing kicks in the lines will blur between desktop and mobile. It's very awesome being able to have a complete "desktop" VR rig that's self contained within in my backpack and can run off an external battery bank - I've taken headsets to dozens of festivals at this point.

For the the vast majority of people though - I think the money is better spent on a GTX2060/2070 desktop rig.

[HackPerception]

On that note - a subpac is one of the better VR accessories you can buy since they work outside of VR. It looks like the MX2 is EOL though and they're asking for suggestions for their next model.

[JohnyDL]

I'm thinking I actually agree with the idea a Laptop might be a valid accessory for a VR rig too, right now there's the current global thing going on but if I could grab my VR headset, controllers and a single light house and go to a friend's house or set up in a side room of a party/wedding and let others try VR (especially beat sabre) I think that'd be fantastic, especially if you throw it together with a cheap projector and a soundbar you can turn a one person experience into something closer to karaoke. I'm wondering if it might even be an experience that people might want to rent in the same way as they might hire a DJ or bouncy castle.

I mentioned before that I might not recommend any "gaming" laptop but I'm struggling to think of a none gaming device that'll out of the box have the horses, stability and most importantly the customer services because while I'm at home I can tinker to get my home built PC working nicely but if I'm demoing things to others I need it to look really easy to set up especially if part of the reason is I want other people to buy in and make more developers think there's an audience in VR worth making games for. My first experience with VR was the original Oculus dev kit I think in 2014 and because I watched the people struggle to get something set up that was worth demo-ing and didn't make everyone who touched it have motion sickness I knew that while a nice tech toy it was just a toy at that point and it wasn't something I'd want to buy for myself or would get any use out of.

And while Dell might have cheapped out on the case (I have no experience myself) the hardware inside is all that really matters and that seems priced competitively (see my last post in this thread) and dell hardware just never gives up from my experience. I absolutely love my desktop and would definitely say that's a better choice for me at home that doesn't mean everyone has the space for one or that everyone would see the benefits from having one like I do. Laptops are a thing of compromise sort of by design, but if the compromise is a laptop with steam VR or any mobile VR, then the laptop makes a lot more sense to me.

[chilli chubb]

I have been gaming since the 1990s and I wouldn't recommend a notebook for gaming whether VR or not, but I admit its portability is indeed a real bonus if you are into LAN/VR parties. I have seen vendors bridge the gap by offering equally portable Shuttle mini-PCs for the portable VR crowd but whether these offer an available PCI-E slot for wireless gaming is another matter. Talking about wireless, this is one of the best upgrades (or "accessory") for the HTC Vive. I bought one for my Vive Pro and I feel that wireless VR gaming is a real game-changer albeit at an eye-watering cost.