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Any VR enthusiasts? I'm looking for a high level comparison of the overall VR rigs, and what is on the near horizon.
For the first time in my adult life I actually have some real discretionary money, and the one personal purchase I've wanted to make for a long time is a VR rig. I was hoping for input I can be pretty sure isn't tainted by capitalism/ads.
Cost-vs-value will matter a lot, but the actual cost isn't too big a concern anymore. Budget up to maybe $3-4K if it's really worth the money.
And to note, I already have a pretty gnarly personal computer that is more than capable of running VR games (Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core / RTX 3090 / 32GB DDR4) -- I just need the rig.
I have both an Index and a Quest 3. They're both great headsets. I think for most people the choice should be between these two.
The main VR thing I play is VRChat, so it's going to come up a lot in my comparison. I've used the early Oculus dev kits and owned VR ever since the Vive came out, but I never regularly played VR until getting into VRChat, and I've known multiple people get into VR specifically for VRChat, so to me it's the VR killer app, but it's a bit hard to get into and I do know some people that love VR just for some regular Beat Saber etc so I'm not going to assume it's the same for everyone.
Index:
Quest 3:
I use my Index when I want to hang out with friends for a while in VRChat, but I often grab the Quest 3 when I want to play a standalone game on it like Beat Saber or Resident Evil 4, especially if I only want to play something briefly since it's quicker to put on and set up without involving a PC or wires.
My conclusion: if you have a friend group that's really into VRChat and you expect you're not only going to get addicted to it but also get body trackers, then Index, otherwise I'd lean towards the Quest 3.
By far the biggest problem with basic 3 point tracking (headset and controllers) is directionality. You probably are familiar with this, but I'll explain for everyone else.
Imagine you are attempting to walk in a straight line, say, by pushing your controller's analog stick in the "up" direction. Exactly which direction should the game move you toward? An obvious possibility is the direction of the rotation of your headset - the direction you're "looking" at. This is fine until the moment some threat comes at you from the side, or maybe you were walking alongside an obstacle and you just cleared that obstacle, and now you want to look to the side to see what was behind it - a new path? A vista? Doesn't matter, because as soon as your head moves you will stray from the direction of your travel. Annoyed, you realize you need to stop moving until you take in the sight, or deal with the threat, and hope you're not on a timer to reach your destination and that there's nothing on the other side of the path that also requires your attention. This is very immersion-breaking (to me at least).
You can also attempt to make up for the angular offset between your changing "look" vector and your desired "walk" vector by slowly sliding the analog stick around in the opposite direction, in which case you will zigzag like a drunk at 5 am.
Also, if you're in social VR, turning your head without turning your body will turn your entire avatar. Your body will be completely off, related to your head, from where your avatar actually is.
Many developers attempt to correct this problem by providing an alternative option: Controller-based directionality. One of your controllers (often, infuriatingly, the one I don't want), or an average of the direction of both (which is hard to keep stable), are used to determine the direction of movement. This lets you look freely around while moving.
Except as soon as you need to actually interact with anything, or shoot at something, or otherwise use your hands, you also need to stop moving. This is arguably even worse than head-based directionality, because it will hinder combat sequences and other moments in the gameplay in which you want to have intuitive control over your virtual avatar.
By adding a single fourth tracking point, the "waist" or "hip" tracker (or I guess inferring the direction of this control point using camera-based analysis?), you give software the ability to tell which direction you're turned toward independently from your head and hands. This is a massive, massive improvement in immersion and control. Suddenly you can look around while walking, and punch to the side, and still keep intuitive control over your movement in VR space. I think every VR software developer should support at least this tracking point.
https://vr-compare.com/ seems to have the most info. But first and foremost measure your pupillary distance. If you have a headset that doesn't match that, you'll not have the best time.
Nifty! Thanks.
I've been really loving my index, haven't been tempted by any of the competitors yet. There's a lot of new and upcoming headsets, but a lot of the time it's stuff like steamvr incompatibility, no good audio, bad controller design, etc. I'm sure part of it is also inertia and reluctance to change.
Yeah, I suppose the price point is high enough most people aren't going to have tried multiple sets / are going to have some brand loyalty so to speak. Thanks!
Keep in mind that if you have a PC, irrespective of each brand's vanilla solutions, you can bring good quality steamvr compatibility to several non-steamvr headsets using Virtual Desktop, which is quite cheap (note: You must purchase it in the headset's own store). I still recommend researching beforehand, but steamvr compatibility is unlikely to be a problem unless one goes for obviously-a-bad-idea (at least if you want steamvr) brands like PSVR or maybe the new Apple.
I bought the ps vr2 when it was new. And while the tech is nice there's a really limited amount of games, and I kinda regret it because of that.
I’m in the same boat. Gran turismo is pretty incredible, but I haven’t used the vr headset nearly as much as I thought I would. The tethered cable is a pretty big bummer
I'm kinda hovering between the PSVR2 (technically superior) and Meta Quest 3 (more apps and no need to tether).
Can't really decide on which, don't have a proper gaming PC so the Index is out.
As much as i dislike Meta, I wouldn't buy the ps vr2 again. If you don't care about the privacy aspect/parent company, the meta quest 3 is probably a much better investment. (Definitely not saying you need to care about those things, but thats why I didnt get the quest).
I just use the Quest 2 with WiFi disabled and tethered to my PC. I don’t have a Facebook account but made a throwaway Meta account. I don’t think they have much room to infringe on my privacy when their product is used that way.
I'm quite happy with my Quest 3, which I use for some of the standalone games as well as tethered to my desktop (3060Ti passed into a Windows 11 virtual machine) via USB Quest Link for PCVR gaming (I've also used Virtual Desktop to play wireless PCVR which is also great, but the cable tightens up the visuals and experience enough to be worth it for me). Having the freedom to play anywhere without needing base stations is the killer feature that sold me on the Quests, though as soon as a viable non-Meta owned alternative comes along I'll probably drift in that direction.
I wrote this thing some number of months ago. Disclaimer: Can't guarantee my perception is 100% accurate or up to date.
I went from a CV1 to the Index, so my sample size is small but honestly on PC the input is bigger than the actual headset to me. If you can, get your hands on the controllers for the headset you're considering more than the display. Going from the CV1 to the Index was a learning curve in itself.
I have an HP Reverb G2 and it's great. It has some issues with controller blindspots (Nothing major) since the tracking is done by the headset, but the benefit is that you don't need a dedicated space with hardware like Basestations. The image quality is great (Though I don't have anything to compare it to).
The only thing I'm weary of with the headset is that it locks you into Window's Mixed Reality. I don't necessarily have issues with this piece of software, however I'm still running Windows 10 and was hoping to move to Linux for gaming after hearing all the issues with Windows 11, but WMR headsets are generally not supported.
Loved my index, but can't wait till my bigscreen beyond gets here!
Been at it since '95. Yes really. It's hard to comprehend how far we've come.
The jump that happened with the PSVR and Microsoft's Mixed Reality standard was probably the point where the technology became truly viable. From a content-consumer standpoint, everything since has been incremental.
Foveal tracking under the guise of "rendering" is the devil. It creates great experiences, but is as close to mind-reading as you can get without implants.
Interestingly, the industry still hasn't figured out a productivity UI for VR/AR, in spite of many shekels being spent on it. That'll be fun to see shake out - I'll bet money that there will still be CLI windows when we're done.
I'd like to lay my hands on one of the shiny new 4k/eye displays, but I'd be torn about whether to use the necessary GPU for a "Billy Gibson hat" or a machine-learning use case. We're at a funny crossroads.
Would you mind going into detail here? It seems like foveal tracking/rendering is a method to reduce computation strain by reducing detail in the peripheral, detected by the way of eye tracking. I'm missing the link to that being the devil, is it concerns over how folks will use your eye tracking data?
Imagine that your app vendor presents you with an ad. Where did you look? How long did you linger? Did you look at the boy or the girl first?
Gaze is something that takes a ton of conscious effort to control, and where it goes when we "let go of the reins" tells volumes about our state of mind.
What was VR like in 1995? I played the Virtual Boy at the mall, but that was the extent of my experience lol
Vertigo and nausea inducing. The head tracking at the time would lag behind actual motion by between .3 and .5 seconds. It was like being unpleasantly drunk, with the added bonus that everything was made of big chunky pixels.
I remember going over to a friend's house and trying the Kickstarter version of the original Oculus headset and thinking it was super cool. Since then I've had both versions of the PSVR. The first one was way too clunky, but they really nailed it on the second model. It looks amazing and it is as dead simple to set up as a VR system can be. Obviously the library is much more limited compared to other headsets, but it's been a great way to dip my toes into the water.
I can't give you that much detailed information on the higher-end headsets, since I've been perfectly happy with my PSVR2 and haven't looked that much in to PC-based VR...but if you are looking to spend a decent amount of money, the Tested channel on YouTube has a whole playlist of VR coverage. They look at lot of the more niche and expensive headsets (as opposed to the more mainstream stuff like the Vive and the Quest).
Any other games for the VR2 besides the obligatory Beat Saber and Horizon VR?
I'm hovering between the general usability of Quest 3 and technical prowess of PSVR2 personally, but I don't want to buy a 500€ gadget to play two games
I liked moss and moss 2 a lot. Some may say that its not true VR because its not first person. But I think the VR aspect did matter, and did improve the games.
Gran turismo is pretty incredible in vr mode. I’ve only played with a controller, but it’s so tempting to invest in a full wheel/pedal setup because of how awesome it is to drive in vr.