Anyone here into VR?

[hainer92]

Just wanted to try my luck and ask if anyone here uses VR because I've been wanting to get my first headset lately but have been hesitating a lot because I don't know the right call to make here. Either I start small with the Oculus Rift S or I go all out with the Valve Index for the best experience.

I've been trying to do some research by myself by like looking at comparisons and buyer's guides to see what I'd be missing out on if I went for the Rift S. The thing is I just don't realize how much of a difference is made by higher resolution per eye, and different kinds of tracking - I'm definitely a simpleton at this right now.

Just wanted to get an opinion from anyone here who thinks shelling out extra for the Index is worthwhile.

TIA!

[WILL1384]

I love VR, and I had spent about 800 hours in Skyrim VR, but after that I came to the realization that there almost no "long play" games in VR, and I just don't want to spend $30 or $40 on a game that only lasts 10 to 20 hours and has no re-play value.

Also I hate Facebook, back when Oculus was still Oculus and you could have an Oculus only account, I had bought a bunch of games and had a lot of fun with the Oculus Rift, but then one day I got an email saying I had to ether get a Facebook account or lose access to my games, and right then I just stopped using the Oculus Rift, and basically gave up on VR.

I would stay far away from any Facebook related stuff, the reason the Facebook VR hardware is cheaper is that they are data mining you.

[thorr]

I love my Quest 2. It doesn't require any wires and works with my PC either wirelessly or with a wire, my choice. You can set up a different facebook account that you don't use if that bothers you, and I seem to recall that they removed the requirement for facebook accounts, but I could be wrong.

[callanabrown]

I play minigolf, regular golf, darts, Nock (think Rocket League but with arrows to hit the ball), Beat Saber, all very often with my friends on Oculus Quest 2.

There are a few great 1 player games but, especially back in COVID and but continuing now with work from home, VR gaming has become a very social thing.

Oculus Quest 2 is definitely the best option right now at the price point, convenience and adoption/support.

[Chilli_Vibes]

I have a Reverb G2 revision 2 - the one with the newer face gasket, and USB cable.
I love its clarity, one of the best screens, and resolution of its price point. The high resolution screens do need a very good GPU, something like a RTX 2070 as a starting point, I have a RTX 3080, and it's still not enough for full resolution (2160x2160p) in some VR games.
I would also agree with the second post, in that Facebook are the main reason for not going for a Quest 2 - good hardware, poor everything else. You need to have a Facebook account, and there is no way around this. You also need a REAL Facebook account, not some fake name, address, etc... or you risk having a permanent ban, then no VR for you. You also cannot use it offline, you need to be signed into your Facebook account every time you use it. If you don't care about your privacy, then knock yourself out and get a Quest 2, but some of us do care.

[lamarax]

I've been through a number of tethered headsets (with the OG Vive as my first foray), my standard always being outside-in tracking. I keep the Valve Index as the best all-rounder.

That said, any "retro enthusiast" such as we 're all here, should get into VR to at least experience Jeff Minter's masterpieces in the medium: Polybius and Moose Life (and of course EmuVR; hit me up if you don't know where to find it)

[AmanoJacu]

I have a HP Reverb G2, first revision, had it pre-ordered and got it in December 2020 after some delays and a 50€ discount because of them. I have bought a ton of steam games very cheap in bundles, but most of them are hardly playable. In addition, the ones that let you "move" are very uncomfortable and I can only play for a few minutes and they just aren't worth the hassle of the setup.

The games that work the best are the ones you are static, my favourite one is Pistol Whip, then Beat Saber and Ragnarock. The problem I have with Beat Saber is that the tracking in my set-up isn't that good. Graphics and resolution are very nice (I have RTX 3080). Half Life Alyx is awesome, but as I said I played it very little, and also I found it extremely difficult, last time I played I used cheats for infinite ammo.

I also use them for 3D p0rn and it can be very... inmersive

[Wave]

I love VR. Or to be more specific, its potential. VRChat with full-body tracking is my favorite thing so far.

It's a weird time to buy because all the current options are getting long in the tooth and everyone thinks new models are on the horizon, but can't say quite when.

As such, I'd rec most people buy a Quest 2 as their first get-acquainted-with-VR device right now. It's the cheapest good option and will expose you to the widest variety of experiences, both native to Quest (it's easy to sail the high seas, btw...) and PCVR. Also, it's wireless, which is a big enough advance imo that I never want to go back to being tethered. When new hardware does appear, you can jump to that and sell/hand down the Quest, etc. having already gotten your feet wet and with a better idea of what's important to you in a more expensive device.

Yes, Meta/FB is a shitty company, you are the product etc., but I'm glad I relaxed my usual politics here and let myself have some fun / gain some knowledge at a subsidized price. (In my case I was able to use an old fake account, too.)

If money were no object and the user doesn't mind being tethered (and having to get easily broken controllers replaced) Valve Index gets second place. It's due for an upgrade though.

[AngelicLiver]

Facebook/Meta are reprehensibly awful but I'm a big fan of the Quest 2, I don't use Facebook so just have a burner account with a pseudonym. Meeting friends in VR for Walkabout Mini Golf (it really is a must have, I don't even care about golf) just about kept me sane throughout the pandemic. PCVR works great too, wireless or with a relatively inexpensive USB 3 cable.

I've owned and used a lot of HMDs over the years and love the Index but there's a lot to be said for the convenience of wire free, inside-out tracking and at that price point it really is a fantastic deal. I'd also wholeheartedly recommend the BoboVR M2 Pro battery/head strap, the official "Elite" strap is absolute junk. Three, THREE failed catastrophically on me, cracking each time with very little use. One failed whilst stored in the box, complete rubbish!

[431Unknown]

Quest 2 and PS VR user here and without a doubt Quest 2 is my favorite. Gotta love no cables draped across the room.

[Chilli_Vibes]

Tethering only comes into play if you take your VR out of the house, or into another room. If you VR game using a PC then you will be tied to that PC, and wireless doesn't come into play if you hang your cables from ceiling pulleys. I hang my cables on VR pulleys and wires no longer get in the way, it feels like a wireless headset with minimum headset "pull" from the pulleys - and you really only get this if you need to crouch down, or get down low.
Plus, wireless introduces latency, it's what wireless does - we don't yet have latency-free wireless. You'll also need a damn good, and fast router within wireless distance of your VR play area. Lastly, wireless needs compromises, such as compression, because we don't have the technology to stream full 4k, or above, video resolution, plus audio data, plus the tracking, in raw data form - it has to be compressed.

[AmanoJacu]

Tethering only comes into play if you take your VR out of the house, or into another room. If you VR game using a PC then you will be tied to that PC, and wireless doesn't come into play if you hang your cables from ceiling pulleys. I hang my cables on VR pulleys and wires no longer get in the way, it feels like a wireless headset with minimum headset "pull" from the pulleys - and you really only get this if you need to crouch down, or get down low.
Plus, wireless introduces latency, it's what wireless does - we don't yet have latency-free wireless. You'll also need a damn good, and fast router within wireless distance of your VR play area. Lastly, wireless needs compromises, such as compression, because we don't have the technology to stream full 4k, or above, video resolution, plus audio data, plus the tracking, in raw data form - it has to be compressed.

Not everybody can bother to install ceiling pulleys, I certainly won't do that. My HP Reverb 2 has one single cable and I don't mind it anyway, and I'd rather have a cable than play wireless with less quality. However, for some applications that aren't that demanding, being able to use it wirelessly, or even without using a PC at all, may be worth it for some people, that's one of the reasons the Quest 2 can be appealing.

For the use I give my Reverb 2, I think a Quest 2 would have been better and cheaper, but I'm happy with it.

[LamerDeluxe]

I have been creating VR (and AR/MR) applications for a living for over six years now. Still have my original Vive, but upgraded to an Index.

I have a Quest 1 and 2 from work, where they also have the Index and wireless Vive Pro, Oculus cv1 and a Windows MR set. Apart from that I've tried the Varjo headsets, including the current flagship one, as well as the Pimax 8K.

If you have a reasonably powerful PC I would advice going with an Index. The Quest 2 is nicely low priced, but it is not in the same league as the Index. Even though they are probably losing money on every headset, you notice the build quality is not as good. Also the tracking on the Index is better. I personally am also not a fan of Facebook/Meta at all, never had a Facebook account and I don't like their met averse idea.

As for Windows MR headsets, there are often complaints about problems with the driver software.

[Chilli_Vibes]

Not everybody can bother to install ceiling pulleys, I certainly won't do that. My HP Reverb 2 has one single cable and I don't mind it anyway, and I'd rather have a cable than play wireless with less quality. However, for some applications that aren't that demanding, being able to use it wirelessly, or even without using a PC at all, may be worth it for some people, that's one of the reasons the Quest 2 can be appealing.

For the use I give my Reverb 2, I think a Quest 2 would have been better and cheaper, but I'm happy with it.

I know it's not for everyone, but my pulleys cost me £22 on Amazon, took 15 minutes to setup, and no more cable issues.
At the back of my headset is a 3D-printed tiny bracket that clips to the very back of the headstrap, and it forces the cable to go up, which is where the triangle setup you see comes into play. This sits directly above the centre of my play space, which is 10 foot x 12 foot. You don't even know you are tethered, until you need to crouch, or move outside of the 10x12ft boundary.

vr-pulleys1.jpg (48.77 KiB) Viewed 3325 times

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0777H24ZG/

[thorr]

Tethering only comes into play if you take your VR out of the house, or into another room. If you VR game using a PC then you will be tied to that PC, and wireless doesn't come into play if you hang your cables from ceiling pulleys. I hang my cables on VR pulleys and wires no longer get in the way, it feels like a wireless headset with minimum headset "pull" from the pulleys - and you really only get this if you need to crouch down, or get down low.
Plus, wireless introduces latency, it's what wireless does - we don't yet have latency-free wireless. You'll also need a damn good, and fast router within wireless distance of your VR play area. Lastly, wireless needs compromises, such as compression, because we don't have the technology to stream full 4k, or above, video resolution, plus audio data, plus the tracking, in raw data form - it has to be compressed.

The key thing here is that the Quest 2 has its own built-in computer and there are a ton of really great games that run just fine on it. Not every game requires huge specs. For example, I have gotten very good at ping pong by playing in VR and it actually translated to real world improvements. Yes, there are better headsets for PC games, no doubt, but they don't have the major advantages that the Quest brings where you can go anywhere and not worry about cables (just walls and other objects that might be in the area). And, the Quest can play the PC games just fine too, wired or wireless depending on your preference of a tiny amount of additional lag vs being tethered. When I play Squadrons, I am sitting in my chair, so I am tethered. I can't imagine playing Beat Saber with a cable. The pulley idea is great as a compromise if you only have a higher end VR device that can't do wireless.

[thorr]

Interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc

[throAU]

i’m into VR and as above highly recommend the quest 2 despite facebook being who they are.

wireless tether to pc for high end games but the device specific titles are pretty impressive too. and no wires.

i haven’t had much time to spend with it lately but beat sabre is a pretty good workout too. ditto for pistol whip.


Sure there are higher end devices than the quest, with better displays, etc. but the barrier to entry is huge - and the quest 2 is still pretty darn good.

High end PC + High end GPU (which I do also have and use with the Quest 2 - R9-5900X + 6900XT - so don’t think i’m being a quest fanboy because i don’t have a capable PC!) + Headset, vs. a subsidised quest 2 that can run things on device. It’s no contest, and if you’re thinking that the onboard titles on the quest are crap or whatever…. its surprisingly capable.

For most people its a case of multiple thousands of US dollars to get a PC+VR setup that works better than a $350 US quest 2 setup.


For the OP:
A colleague has both the Rift S and the Quest 2 and prefers the displays in the Quest 2 - plus wireless tether and on-device games as well.

[Caldor]

So much is happening for VR this year. The Lynx VR headset is shipping soon for pre-orders, the Quest Pro will release this year as well, and PSVR2 will release late this year or early 2023. Pico is also entering in direct competition with the Quest (non-Pro) headsets with the Pico 4 which will be much like the Quest Pro except without the eye and face-tracking it seems, with a price similar to the Quest headsets.

I mostly use the Oculus / Meta Quest 2 for everything VR. So many great ports to VR as well for classic games. You can play Doom 1-3, Quake 1-3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half Life on the Quest 2 in standalone mode, all with quite good VR support. The mods are done by the Dr. Beef team.

There is also a nice C64 emulator on SideQuest which runs on the Quest 2 itself directly as well. It has a full retro-room and C64 setup virtually where the games you put into specific folders will then become floppy disks in the virtual room.

With a PC there are also several awesome retro gaming options. The Amiga was one of the very first computers to have VR and one of those original games was actually ported to PCVR. "Polygon Nightmare" an oculus rift tribute to "Dactyl Nightmare". There is also EmuVR which is free and open source, and you it gives you a full room but then supports pretty much all retro systems. You can customize the room a whole lot with posters and I think you can also add music and videos as well as make custom cartridges for games. There is also Neon Retro Arcade on Steam where you get your own retro arcade full of arcade machines that can be customized even more than EmuVR, with custom graphics on arcade cabinets, you can have music come into the game as cassettes and videos as VHD tapes, custom posters and there is also a SNES and maybe some other classic systems that you can make custom cartridges for.

The Pico 4 is looking more and more interesting, the feature that seems most attractive to me is that it will come with support for displayport connection directly to a PC instead of having to stream wirelessly... although that should be an option as well. I just suspect it wont have as good tracking as the Quest, not nearly as good software overall and not nearly as many games released for it, but Pico has been in the game for a while, just not in Europe or the US, so we will see how it turns out.