The VR war has officially started. High-quality and riveting virtual reality gears can easily be purchased, currently online, like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.
The Vive initially suffered a minor payment processing problem, but it was easily fixed. The Rift also suffered some delay last month which caused missed shipping of early orders. Now, those who have just decided to get the Oculus VR headgear will have to wait till August or probably September before they get their hands on one.
Not so long ago, HTC accidentally cancelled many pre-orders for their VR gear. The company was able to fix the issue immediately, and orders that were accidentally cancelled where given a spot for the second wave of shipment for the Vive instead of being put back at the end of the line.
It is estimated that HTC will be able to address the backorders without further delay, and there are plans to offer the virtual reality gear at retail stores this summer, Ubergizmo reported.
The Taiwan-based company has joined forces with Microsoft, which has its own set of company stores across the United States and Canada. Gamestop was also reported to be carrying the Vive, intended for U.S. customers as well. Additionally, Microsoft's stores located in New York, Washington, Utah and Colorado are said to be offering an HTC Vive demonstration area for the public to try and test the new VR product.
Aside from being used for gaming, Geek has reported that German automotive giant BMW is currently using the HTC Vive in designing their future releases, although they are not new in VR and have already embraced the technology since the '90s. The cool things is that they are also using computers similar to what a normal VR enthusiast uses. Basic specs are an Intel Core i7 processor and dual NVIDIA Titan X GPUs.
Going now to the Oculus Rift, right after the delivery of Kickstarter backers and the first few pre-order units, the company suffered a major drawback because of parts shortage. However, it took a few days more before the company acknowledged the issue, which was not taken happily by its customers. The company then decided to waive the shipping fee for the delayed orders.
RoadtoVR reported that shipping status for those who have pre-ordered the Rift will be updated this coming April 12.
Currently, pre-orders for the US$800 HTC Vive are estimated to ship out by June while the US$600 Oculus Rift has an August shipping date.
