If you are ready to jump feet-first into triple-A virtual reality gaming as soon as humanly possible, you have three main choices: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and Sony's PS VR. None of these devices is actually in the hands of the general public yet—we’ll have to wait until next week for the Oculus Rift to start its first round of shipping—but all three are available for preorder right now. The Vive is the most expensive option at $799, but it comes with 3D controllers. The Rift costs less at $599, but it doesn’t come with 3D controllers. And the PS VR is the cheapest at $399, but then you’re locked to a console and don’t get to play any computer-based VR games.

There is no way to prove yet which of the three front-runners is best. Indeed, "best" is a hard word to define in context—best based on what? Best resolution? The Rift and Vive seem to be the winners there—but they use a Pentile subpixel arrangement, and the Sony kit doesn’t, so the resolution numbers don’t tell the entire story. Best VR experience? Well, that depends on what "experience" means to you—are you primarily going to be playing cockpit-based flight or racing sims where seated play is the main point, or do you want to run around your room playing virtual golf or tennis or shooting virtual guns?

Because how and what you play is a massively subjective experience—and because there’s still so much we don’t know about the final retail versions of all of these VR solutions—it’s hard to make blanket recommendations at this point. The absolute best answer right now to the question of "Which one of these things should I buy?!" is "You should probably wait until this summer when they’ve been in everybody’s hands for a few months and then decide."

However, there are some solid decision points we can look at if you want to ride that crazy early adopter wave—big points, like do you want to play on console or PC? Do you want to primarily play standing or sitting? Do you want to spend a lot of money or a hell of a lot of money?

Caveats, assumptions, and GearVR

There are actually more ways out there to VR-ify your life than just the Big Three of Oculus, HTC, and Sony. If you primarily want to explore casual gaming, you can opt for the Samsung-only smartphone-based GearVR (in fact, you might already have gotten a GearVR with your last smartphone purchase). You give up positional tracking but gain a big library of accessible games and 3D movies for a relatively low cost.

Or you can go for Google Cardboard if you don't have a Samsung smartphone and just want to see what this whole VR thing is all about without spending any money—though the experience won’t be all that comparable to an expensive VR headset and a solid gaming PC or console. But Google Cardboard does let you do some neat tricks—like bypass Oculus exclusivity, for example.

Speaking of exclusivity: yes, there are going to be some games at launch that will be playable only on the Oculus Rift. If one of those games—like, for example, EVE Valkyrie—is a must-buy for you, then that makes the choice easy. We’re not really going to address exclusivity in our chart below—just top-level features.

Finally, we’ve built our flowchart with a few assumptions, mainly that you’re going for either a Rift, a Vive, or PS VR. This chart is not intended to be a comprehensive decision tree of every available VR solution that can be purchased or pre-purchased today.

Again, this chart is only intended to help you decide between a Rift, a Vive, or Playstation VR. We made the choice to confine it to those three options because they are the most important, highest-profile head-mounted VR displays in the early adopter wave. If you want to play high quality AAA and indie-AAA VR games in 2016, you need to own one of these devices.

The giant flowchart: Pick your path to VR below

The final takeaway

If you don’t want to go through the flowchart and just want me to tell you what to buy, here’s the short-short version: if you have a PlayStation 4, buy the PS VR. If you have an Xbox One and want to stick with consoles, buy a PlayStation 4 and then buy PS VR. If you have an Xbox One and don’t want to buy a PlayStation 4, buy a gaming PC first and then join the PC crowd. If you have a gaming PC and you want to play standing-up, run-around-the-room VR games right now and refuse to wait, buy a Vive. If you want to play sitting-down games, or if you don’t really want to spend $799 on a Vive, buy a Rift. Unless, of course, your PC doesn't meet the minimum spec. Then you'll need to buy some new parts or a new PC—or perhaps just a PlayStation 4.

Also, understand that everything will be different by the end of the year. The Rift will have 3D controllers like the Vive. There will be more games available, and some Rift exclusives might sway you. One of the devices might show a bunch of manufacturing or customer service issues—like, the first run might all come with bad screens or something or have other red-ring-of-death-style massive problems.

Anything could happen. If you’re the slightest bit unsure of how to spend your money—and it is a lot of money—you should just wait until the summer. Come June or July, the VR landscape might look totally different. We'll have our own in-depth reviews of all three major VR solutions in the very near term, too, so those will provide some additional data points for your decision-making.