What You Need For VR Gaming

Virtual Reality has come a long way since the days of Pygmalion’s Spectacles, the 1935 Sci-Fi short story that essentially predicted the concept of VR head gear. The concept was always a good one, with many iterations happening through the decades. It wasn’t until 2010, however, that things really started to get interesting.

This was when Palmer Lucky launched his headset prototype. The world stood up and took notice of the concept when his Kickstarter campaign raised the necessary funds to make the product a reality. It was then bought by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, which properly kicked off the renewed interest in VR as a viable tech for the masses.

Cut to 2020, and the world of gaming getting a major makeover. There are so many amazing options for gamers to play using a VR headset, and the industry is only just getting started.

Getting The Right Headset

Now, your VR experience is all about the headset. Your options are, by contrast to other devices like gaming consoles and PCs, fairly limited. However, this is changing quite rapidly and by the end of the year, we could be swimming headsets at every price point and tech capacity.

The latest and greatest headsets are the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. These two were released this year and have a nifty piece of software and hardware called positional tracking. The headsets come with tracking devices that you put around your gaming space and they send information back to the headset so that it knows where you are in the space. By the end of the year, there’ll be a third headset added to this mix, the Sony PlayStation VR, and it’ll offer the same tracking technology.

To Tether Or Not To Tether

When it comes to VR gaming, you also have to consider what games you want to play and how they will be powered. Some headsets need to be attached to your computer, which means you need to get a powerful gaming PC with the right video card to power the headset. This is quite a big expense, but the experience is very much worth it, especially if you love the thrill of playing slots games for real money.

You also get gear that is standalone and doesn’t need to be physically tethered to anything. This does give you greater freedom to move around, but it also has some drawbacks. For example, the image quality and the games you can play might not be as powerful. The Samsung headsets in this category are pretty great because they wirelessly link to your smartphone and tablet, and you play the games and apps off the mobile device.

If you’re not a Samsung fan, but like the idea of going mobile with your VR gaming experience, then the Google Cardboard is a good choice. It connects wirelessly to any iOS or Android mobile device, giving you far greater flexibility. They are, however, very much the budget choice for VR tech and don’t give you a fully immersive experience like some of the more expensive options do.