Official VR Headset discussion

[Destroy]

They lost me at backpack pc’s, gonna be like ghostbusters, cue the music

Sure but the Jest err... Quest is chicken feed compared to this.

[Nascar24]

Sure but the Jest err... Quest is chicken feed compared to this.

No thanks, the quest is heavy enough.

[Nagorak]

I actually bought a used Zotac VR GO about a year ago. I managed to get it for $1000, which I thought was OK for a semi-portable i7 6700/1070 machine.

I use it for a portable computer along with a portal monitor...kind of like a less portable laptop, but still better than dragging around a desktop. It's not good for setting up in a coffee shop or something, but not so bad if you're just going somewhere and staying there. So, for example, when I went to visit my Dad last year for the holidays, I brought it. It's powerful enough to do VR, so you can use it to demo it to people. Also it can be easily moved around the house as an extra gaming PC/VR PC.

But, anyway, VR backpacks work OK. The biggest problem is battery life, which is pretty short. My VR GO came with 2 batteries, and that gets you maybe 1.5 to 2 hours of game play. Really you'd need another set so you can have one charging at once, while the other are being used. That would get you 5-6 hours I think, which is more than most ever would use.

Also you're wearing a backpack, which although it's not that heavy, all things being equal it's worse than not having one. I think the VR backpacks were an OK concept, but for personal use they were basically killed by the wireless adapters which are simply more practical. Probably for some commercial "warehouse scale" applications they still make sense (which I think is why Zotac made one). I suppose it would still work if someone really wanted a wireless Valve Index or Rift S, but otherwise just going with a Vive Pro Wireless makes more sense.

Still, if you want a semi-portable secondary machine and you can find a VR backpack cheap enough, it may be justifiable, but only if you can also use it for something else besides being a VR backpack. The trick is to check Ebay for used, because the people selling them take a big hair cut due to them being such a niche product, which most have no interest in.

[Destroy]

nVidia on newer cards has Variable Rate Super Sampling for VR

[SirBaron]

nVidia on newer cards has Variable Rate Super Sampling for VR

That's a pretty nice feature to have.

[wabbitslayer]

OK, about to make a purchase (for my teenagers) this week:

Rift S or Quest (64gb)???

Read about both til my eyes are bleeding and I still don't know!

[Trunks0]

Quest. If they ever want to tether to a Desktop/Laptop they can either wired or wirelessly and they can use it stand alone.

[Nascar24]

Quest is the only one to buy these days.

[Destroy]

Quest is the only one to buy these days.

Total BS. There is no ONE to buy.

Buy what suits your needs and price point.

[SirBaron]

OK, about to make a purchase (for my teenagers) this week:

Rift S or Quest (64gb)???

Read about both til my eyes are bleeding and I still don't know!

I have quest and if you buy this https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

then you will be also able to connect it to your PC. If your GPU is pretty good then you can use Oculus Debug Tool to increase the quality.

Also if you use something like ALVR (if you have good wifi) then you can also play said PC games wireless and pretty decent looking too.

[wabbitslayer]

I guess I'm wondering...

if all you have to do to play pc games (steamVR) on the quest is add a cable...why are they even making the rift s?

EDIT: Just saw and read the "quest games" thread.

Decision made

[Nascar24]

Total BS. There is no ONE to buy.

Buy what suits your needs and price point.

Total fact! Wires suck.

[Nagorak]

OK, about to make a purchase (for my teenagers) this week:

Rift S or Quest (64gb)???

Read about both til my eyes are bleeding and I still don't know!

Honestly, the Rift S is kind of a flawed product. The tracking is really good, but the screen is pretty bad. The blacks aren't even remotely black, just sort of a dark gray. I recently bought (and returned) a Vive Cosmos and it has the opposite problem, the screen is pretty good, but the tracking is horrid. Even with the Cosmos, the LCD blacks aren't as good as OLED blacks, and I still think OLED screens, like the one on the Quest, are superior. Still the blacks on the Cosmos (and I'm guessing the Index) were at least passable, whereas on the Rift S they weren't.

There's also another plus of the OLED screens which I didn't know about until trying the Cosmos. With the LCD screens I experienced this weird visual effect of vertical lines running across the screen when I turned my head. The LCD pixels formed a perfect horizontal-vertical grid, and it seems like whenever my eyes moved, they'd jump and immediately focus on the vertical lines running down the screen. That actually sucked pretty bad. However, it doesn't seem to occur with OLED displays because the PenTile matrix results in sort of a diamond pattern that doesn't have straight lines to focus on. I didn't notice that effect so much on the Rift S, but I assume it was there too.

So, I personally wouldn't recommend a Rift S, and I can say that the Quest has a good display (since it's the same as Vive Pro/Samsung Odyssey). However, I don't know how much image quality is lost with image compression on the Quest, or how much latency there is, especially if you use the sideload wireless connection. Assuming it's just those two as an option, I'd probably roll the dice and go with the Quest, because I thought the Rift S was pretty unacceptable.

But, if money is no object and you don't need portability, my personal go to would still be the Vive Pro with Wireless Adapter. Another possibility if you just want a cheap headset is to get a Samsung Odyssey+, which for the price is a pretty good option. Its controllers aren't as good as the Rift S, but its screen is waaaaaaaaay better.

[OverclockN']

Spent a few hours using the Steam Index this weekend at a friends, and it was fantastic. This is the 3rd VR unit I've tried, and it'll be the one I buy when Alyx is close to release. The unit itself, while not perfect, was good enough. The controllers are utterly amazing. I've been holding off since VR really started coming around to get a decent unit.

Played a lot of Boneworks and Pavlov sitting and standing. I've really only done racing sims with the headsets and never felt sick, after hours of use. Good to know FPS style games dont affect me either. So far, all my friends have gotten sick, but VR has no impact on me whatsoever. No idea how that works, but I guess it's a good thing.

I still don't think there are many games worth getting (for me), so I'll hold off until Alyx is closer to release. Steam Index is great though.

[CurrentlyPissed]

Spent a few hours using the Steam Index this weekend at a friends, and it was fantastic. This is the 3rd VR unit I've tried, and it'll be the one I buy when Alyx is close to release. The unit itself, while not perfect, was good enough. The controllers are utterly amazing. I've been holding off since VR really started coming around to get a decent unit.

Played a lot of Boneworks and Pavlov sitting and standing. I've really only done racing sims with the headsets and never felt sick, after hours of use. Good to know FPS style games dont affect me either. So far, all my friends have gotten sick, but VR has no impact on me whatsoever. No idea how that works, but I guess it's a good thing.

I still don't think there are many games worth getting (for me), so I'll hold off until Alyx is closer to release. Steam Index is great though.

Order it now then, I think they are still on a 3 month backorder.

[OverclockN']

Order it now then, I think they are still on a 3 month backorder.

Nope, I can wait.

[wabbitslayer]

Wow....has anyone tried to buy an Oculus Quest lately? Good Luck!

About as bad as trying to get a Ryzen 3 last July.

Finally got one one the way, though

[Nascar24]

I bought the Quest from Amazon, I think it was in November before I knew it was a thing. And kind of on a whim. So never had to go searching for one.

[Destroy]

Samsung Odyssey Plus on sale again $229. Great value bang for the $$.

[Destroy]

I see HP has a no cables option now too.
As expected, its for certain elite only as its expensive as heck, $3300.

[Trunks0]

I see HP has a no cables option now too.
As expected, its for certain elite only as its expensive as heck, $3300.

That's not really a wireless solution, that just strapping a PC to your back. Which works perfectly well, but it is a really expensive way to do it.

[Exposed]

Samsung Odyssey Plus on sale again $229. Great value bang for the $$.

This is really the best option out there, even better than the Quest if you don't care about its standalone mobile gaming option. If you want to play PC games in VR, a Samsung Odyssey for $229 is about as good as you can get.

The same screen in the Vive Pro with good controllers and good tracking for sitting/standing/room.

[Nagorak]

This is really the best option out there, even better than the Quest if you don't care about its standalone mobile gaming option. If you want to play PC games in VR, a Samsung Odyssey for $229 is about as good as you can get.

The same screen in the Vive Pro with good controllers and good tracking for sitting/standing/room.

For the price it's definitely a steal. The controller tracking isn't as good as the Rift S since it only has two cameras, but it works surprisingly well. You can play games like Beat Saber with no serious problems. And the screen is one of the best on the market. It's a great entry level headset. I actually have an O+ I use for seated games, since with its anti-SDE coating it's better than my Vive Pro (also great as a portable headset).

[Destroy]

Looks like the Samsung might be on sale again because they are soon to launch their next improved VR headset. I'm sure the price will not be nearly as good as the O+.

I think the bug look is badass!!

https://www.roadtovr.com/new-samsung-vr-headset-design-surfaces-recent-patents/

[logical]

So is the quest with a link cable the best price-performance choice at this point?

[wabbitslayer]

Our Quest arrived on Monday it's gotten the battery drained and recharged and drained again every night this week. I asked the 11 year old if it is as good as he thought it would be and he said "Better!"

Freebie games have been played....about to pick up Drop Dead and Superhot.

[Trunks0]

Robo Recall: Unplugged is allot of fun as well. Been playing the crap out of it as of late.

[Nascar24]

Copying some oldie but moldies over to my Quest as I type this. Quake 2 and Half Life.

[SirBaron]

VorpX is ****, just thought I'd mention that.

[Nascar24]

Didn’t even know what vorpx was, looks like not a whole lot good to say about from a search.

[Destroy]

VorpX is ****, just thought I'd mention that.

Disagree. It's easily worth 40$ to be able to run so many games in VR.

I've got 35 hours in Thief2 all in VR, amazing ride!

No, its not perfect. Some games just aren't very good with it but others are great.

[SirBaron]

Any of those others games from the last 5 years and not 20 years ago?

[Nagorak]

So is the quest with a link cable the best price-performance choice at this point?

If we're talking about PC VR, from purely price/performance standpoint the Samsung Odyssey is better, especially when it's on sale.

[SirBaron]

So is the quest with a link cable the best price-performance choice at this point?

Quest for me is the best, because I can play the same PC games except without a wire at all. I use LINK for the long game sessions, i.e. Walking Dead. However for those short sessions that I play I use ALVR.

Also the controllers of the Quest/Rift S are vastly superior to the ones from Samsung.

Also not sure if the Samsung has this, but Quest has Guardian features, where you can set up a stationary barrier (i.e. sitting or standing still) or you can create a roomscale barrier where you paint the barrier using the VR camera's in the headset so that you can paint which bits are safe to walk and which are not.

Then if you get close the Headset will show the grid in the game partially to show you are leaving the safe space.

[Exposed]

Quest for me is the best, because I can play the same PC games except without a wire at all. I use LINK for the long game sessions, i.e. Walking Dead. However for those short sessions that I play I use ALVR.

Also the controllers of the Quest/Rift S are vastly superior to the ones from Samsung.

Also not sure if the Samsung has this, but Quest has Guardian features, where you can set up a stationary barrier (i.e. sitting or standing still) or you can create a roomscale barrier where you paint the barrier using the VR camera's in the headset so that you can paint which bits are safe to walk and which are not.

Then if you get close the Headset will show the grid in the game partially to show you are leaving the safe space.

Wireless has some drawbacks, noticeably the latency. Linustechtips did a video on this. Frankly being wired isn't an issue if you have the space to move around.

Controllers are better, not sure about "vastly superior". The Odyssey controllers are modeled close to the Vive controllers. The biggest impact to your VR gaming experience isn't going to be the controllers, it's going to be the headset display. I played games with the xbox 360 controller on the Oculus Rift when it first came out. The eventual touch controllers were nice, but display quality will always be the #1 factor for most people. Which is why I switched from the Oculus Rift w/touch to Samsung Odyssey.

Odyssey does have barriers you can set up. You basically walk around your available space in a one time setup and the software does the rest. If you get close to the barrier, you'll see the grid.


Samsung Odyssey is $229.

Oculus Quest by itself is $399, more if you want to play PC games.


Both have the same resolution per eye, in fact the Odyssey AMOLED display is the exact same one found in the Vive Pro (which is because Samsung makes them).

For a PC gamer looking to get into VR, it just makes more sense to get an Odyssey for the price. It's cheap now but I bought it when it was $399, which I thought was a great upgrade from the Oculus Rift I had before.

The only upgrade from here is any unit that offers a drastic improvement in display resolution and quality. What you see is far more important than controls imo, and being wireless is great only if you don't notice any lag, which isn't quite there yet.

[SirBaron]

If there is lag it's unnoticeable because I can play any VR Game with no added sickness, or awareness of any delay.

[Nascar24]

For VR no wires is the holy grail as can be seen by sales as of recent. I would rather have a slightly worse display and no wires then to have the wires. Its a game changer, went from the dam wires of a PSVR, and to me its night and day better, wires suck. Just pulling them out and winding them back up after done sucks. My cat likes the wires, He chewed on my first PSVR ruining it.

[Trunks0]

Well the Quest connected to a PC wirelessly is far from perfect and not exactly fully supported yet. It's pretty great on it's own though, I really enjoy it despite the reduced graphic fidelity since it's fairly low spec'ed.

[Nascar24]

Not perfect but far better then I ever thought it would be at this stage of the game and more then acceptable to me. I tried the link method and it brought me back to the dark days of VR.

[SirBaron]

Well the Quest connected to a PC wirelessly is far from perfect and not exactly fully supported yet. It's pretty great on it's own though, I really enjoy it despite the reduced graphic fidelity since it's fairly low spec'ed.

Depends what you mean by fully supported as it's not really supported at all, as it's third party that does all the wireless stuff.

Also the quality depends on the router and wifi strength etc. at the moment I do 125% resolution with 100MBPS which looks pretty good, but I need a new GPU. If I want faster latency I use 100% and 60Mpbs.