IWoah, hold on with that $300 price tag on the newest VR device on the market. The Microsoft Surface VR has just hit the news market and there seems to be a lot of hype around the device, but let’s take a deep look into this device.
It’s Not VR-Ready Just VR-Compatible
That’s right, this is another trick-of-the-hand by the Microsoft company to get a foothold in another industry. The VR headset can play many of the basic games that are available on the market for the other headsets, but it will not work for the top-notch video games that the other headsets can handle. They can get away with this because many of the headset companies are coming out with a Minimum requirement, which means that Microsoft can build a system geared toward that minimum rather than build a system that can handle much more than the minimum.
The Actual Price Tag
Yes, the headset is about $300 but the system, once again, takes the bulk of the money and in this case, a few grand, which includes a Core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, and the GTX 980M GPU. Knowing that, the total cost for the machine along with the headset is nearly twice as expensive as either of the PC headset and nearly four times as expensive as the headset for the PlayStation.
The Good News
It is a $300 headset and it will be purchasable with most high end PC’s on the market. It can handle most of the games that are ready for the Vive and the Oculus. While it isn’t the best, it does represent what a company can do if they focus on building more consumer-ready products. Sure, needing a massively expensive computer to back it up is still bad but it shows that there’s a dedication to get this out to everyone. The other part of good news for this product is that you will not need to have any extra sensor as it tracks its own position using a six-degree freedom range.
While it may not be as powerful as the current PC headsets, it’s a good headset if you want to just have it as an accessory to an expensive computer. This allows the user to enjoy VR while also not needing to buy an entirely separate machine for the same price as the VR headset. This is an example of things to come in the future of VR technology.
