Oculus Rift vs Microsoft HoloLens

Round 4 - Gaming

Lots of traditional first-person games are being ported over to the Rift, but Oculus says the best VR games will have to be tailor-made. That's because locomotion—the queasiness from when your eyes think your body is moving but your brain does not—is still an issue. And there isn't yet a silver bullet controller to solve that problem.

There are more questions for gaming on HoloLens. We could see I-spy games being really popular, and FPS games that have us blasting aliens that come in from the kitchen. But from the information we have, it seems much easier to program games for Oculus, since developers won't have to deal with real-world variances. The HoloLens does have mobility going for it, though, and this could open up new gameplay opportunities. While we're confident some cool casual games could come out of this, we reckon the bigger AAA games will be on Oculus.

Winner: Oculus Rift

Round 5 - Entertainment

With VR documentaries already announced, including one from legendary nature documentary producer David Attenborough, it's going to be tough to beat the Rift here. Who knows, VR and not 3D could turn out to be the next big thing in video. So we expect to see a whole new class of TV and movies created for VR. Plus, much of the porn industry is also, ahem, behind VR as well, so there's that...

On the other hand, HoloLens could be used with existing display technology to, yup, you guessed it, augment entertainment content. The possibilities here are pretty extensive, and augmented entertainment that allows you to still see what's going on around you may be more attractive to mainstream audiences. But it's the kind of theory that may not translate to practice. We think the wider viewing angle and all-encompassing approach that Oculus brings help it trump HoloLens, at least for now.

Winner: Oculus Rift

And the winner is...

Oculus won three out of the five categories here, but really, the two devices aim to serve different purposes. Is there room for both headsets? Only time will tell. Perhaps one day we might see an amalgamation headset that combines elements of VR and AR. Conversely, both of these headsets still have a lot to prove and if they aren't executed well, both could become shovelware.

For now, we'd have to give Oculus Rift the advantage. People can relate more easily to the idea of VR. And with Oculus VR doing a really good job embracing the open-source community, there are currently more developers working with the Rift headset.