There's a VR HEADSET on my FACE! :D

[Thirith]

Does anyone here have any experience with going from Rift S to Quest 2? As in, what is clearly better (the resolution, I'd expect) but also what might feel less good (e.g. black levels, sound)?

[henke]

Super Bunnyhop spent a year with the Index and did a very good, comprehensive review, and I gotta say I agree with most of it.



I was playing a bit of The Room the other day and I found myself starring at a piece of oak furniture up close, astonished when I realized I couldn't see a single pixel. No screen door effect whatsoever! When I looked at a white paper later on I noticed slight screendooring tho, but it took some effort to see it. And yeah the tracking's very good. The headset is very comfortable and the sound's good.

But there's plenty of downsides as well. Even when coming from the basic Oculus (non-S) Rift there's clear downgrades. With the Rift I could just strap the thing on my head and the app would boot up automatically and I'd be in VR. With SteamVR I gotta press the button to start SteamVR first, and then it's really a crap-shoot whether it starts or not. Often I'll have to un-plug and re-plug some cable, or select the "Restart headset" option before I get any visual in my headset. Getting sound is an issue as well, often I'll have to switch audio source manually in Windows before I hear anything in the Index. And as for the Knuckles controllers? Grabbing things with these kinda sucks. With Rift controllers there's a clear grip-button where there's no ambiguity about whether it's pressed or not. The Knuckles have a completely smooth touch-interface for grip that reads each of your fingers, giving you IN THEORY much greater control. But a game really needs to be designed with these things in mind to take advantage of it, and at the moment pretty much only HL Alyx is. Which means that for every game that ISN'T HL Alyx, gripping things is fiddlier, less consistent, and just plain feels worse than when using an Oculus Rift controller. Overall I'm starting to feel the same way about the Knuckles as I did about the Steam Controller. Good idea in theory, but in practice you're better off with just a plain gamepad.

[Anarchic Fox]

When I tried a VR headset I couldn't get over the way everything curved in my peripheral vision. Adjusting the headset didn't help things. Is this a model-specific problem?

[Thirith]

Which one did you use? And what software did you run, Anarchic Fox?

I have some experience with Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S and the first Oculus Quest, and the only time I had that kind of curving in my peripheral vision was when I used VorpX to play games not designed for VR, and even there it depended on the settings. Otherwise, no peripheral curvature whatsoever. Though for all I know this may also have something to do with interpupillary distance, for all I know, and this cannot be adjusted freely with some headsets.

[Anarchic Fox]

I don't remember the model, annoyingly. It did allow me to adjust interpupillary distance, which didn't help at all. I tried out a few games at a friend's house, including Beat Saber.

That's too little information to be helpful, I know. I just wanted to see whether it was a common problem. Carry on.

[Thirith]

I'm definitely curious to hear what others say about this. It may be specific to certain models - or it may just be that this is something I'm not aware of nor sensitive to. As I've said: I did notice a similar kind of effect (things at the edge of my vision moving differently than they should based on my head movements) with VorpX, but not with games developed for VR.

[woah]

When I tried a VR headset I couldn't get over the way everything curved in my peripheral vision. Adjusting the headset didn't help things. Is this a model-specific problem?

Distortion is something caused by several things and that varies widely between different models and how the headset is adjusted on your head (centering, tilt, eye relief). It's also affected by the trade offs chosen by the manufacturer--if you want something that is easier to throw on and doesn't need to be fine tuned, you may tolerate worse distortion overall instead of something that can look better but needs to be fine tuned. All *current* consumer VR headsets suffer from some degree of this through something called pupil swim (which is a source of discomfort and can't be fully corrected without eyetracking) but there are significant differences between headsets. So far the best I've experienced when it comes to this is the Valve Index and the worst would be some lower end WMR headsets (but Pimax is probably the worst here--it gets even harder to avoid this when you try to achieve higher FOVs). Something like the StarVR One might be even better than the Index because it's apparently using eyetracking to correct for pupil swim.

But even assuming an equivalent configuration and adjustment, it's also affected by one's individual sensitivity. There are some people that don't notice distortion under extreme conditions (e.g. Pimax) and others that do. I'm personally on the more sensitive side and you may be as well if it had such an impact on you.

[Anarchic Fox]

Thanks for the information! After searching my memory, I think the one I tried was from Oculus. Funnily enough, it affected my regular vision too. Within the VR games, it was as if parallel lines curved away from each other; after adjusting for a couple of hours, with the headset off it looked like parallel lines curved towards each other. It sounds like I should wait until the technology develops further.

Also, it's a treat to see a "New Member" who registered a decade and a half ago.

[woah]

Thanks for the information! After searching my memory, I think the one I tried was from Oculus. Funnily enough, it affected my regular vision too. Within the VR games, it was as if parallel lines curved away from each other; after adjusting for a couple of hours, with the headset off it looked like parallel lines curved towards each other. It sounds like I should wait until the technology develops further.

Also, it's a treat to see a "New Member" who registered a decade and a half ago.

It may have been the original Oculus Rift, which was rather poor when it came to pupil swim. Going back to it from the Index actually makes me feel rather ill now. Modern HMDs also use LCD displays with much lower persistence so they are much more comfortable. You might want to consider a Quest 2 as it has decent geometry stability and it's cheap--if you don't like the Facebook login you can create a fake account, block the updates, and then just use it as a PCVR HMD. Boom, a decent HMD subsidized to $300 by Zuck.

And yep, I've been a Thief 2 fan for a long time and registered a while ago, though I'm mostly active at The Dark Mod forums. On that topic I think a well done Thief game with Half-Life Alyx's level of polish on interactivity would immediately sell any Thief fan on the technology. In terms of immersion, interactivity, melee combat and bow mechanics, pacing, and the depth with which it allows the user to engage with an environment, I think many taffers have yet to realize that this is their dream technology. Though the technology could still use major improvements in some ways, mainly varifocal, wireless and more advanced motion controller feedback (EDIT: and better black levels, OLED suffers from blacksmear which means they need to clamp "black" to a dark gray that exacerbates mura, and LCD is ... well LCD. Maybe MicroLED will do it).

[Brethren]

Just finished Dreadhalls, a (sorta) stealthy dungeon game that I actually found it to be pretty scary. You navigate a series of dungeons, looking for specific items, and avoiding monsters. I can't really explain why I liked it so much, the visuals are average at best and the game itself is really simple (You have no weapons, just a lantern). But it was effective, and it left me wanting more.

Anyone have any other good recommendations for VR dungeon crawlers? I played a little bit of A Mage's Tale on PSVR, that seemed decent. There's a demo out for Ancient Dungeons, which is a kind of Minecraft style dungeon crawler (reminds me of another game called Delver), and it seems promising. I found several others on Steam, but they were hard to tell apart, they all looked so similar and samey.

[Brethren]

So, a friend just picked up a Quest 2, and he's a Mac guy. Has anyone had any luck using the Q2 with a Mac? I don't even know if there's any compatible software, but I thought someone here might have had experience with it.

[woah]

So, a friend just picked up a Quest 2, and he's a Mac guy. Has anyone had any luck using the Q2 with a Mac? I don't even know if there's any compatible software, but I thought someone here might have had experience with it.

SteamVR dropped support for MacOS and I'm pretty sure the Oculus PCVR application doesn't work on MacOS either (and I wouldn't count on it being updated for MacOS--or really much of anything anymore for that matter). It was once rumored that Apple was working with Valve on a VR HMD but not too long after that Valve announced they were dropping support for MacOS. Probably because Apple decided to go do its own closed walled garden thing again. They're not even supporting Vulkan.

If your friend isn't on one of the new M1 chips then he can probably install Windows 10 on an intel Mac via Bootcamp and run PCVR games that way (assuming he's got a decent GPU--not familiar with GPU options on Mac hardware). But running Windows on Mac hardware seems like it won't be a thing in the near future with all of their products shifting to Apple Silicon. Even if they get the ARM version of Windows running on Apple Silicon the PCVR games/applications would still be compiled for x86 and performance cost from emulation would likely make VR games unplayable.

According to rumors https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/03...ch-in-q1-2022/ , Apple appears to be readying up to launch their own VR hardware in early 2022. However it will be decidedly prosumer (i.e. super expensive, possibly >$1000). But unless they have some ground breaking technology in there that actually makes people want to use it for something other than gaming past the novelty phase, I have no idea what kind of use cases it will have. Maybe they just want some form of presence in the market but don't feel it's ready for mass adoption yet. EDIT: More recent reports indicate that it's basically a VR headset with AR passthrough that will largely function as a dev kit for a future AR device (the display technology for the AR headset doesn't exist yet--much harder problem)

[Brethren]

Is anyone playing Walkabout Mini Golf for the Quest? This game is tons of fun, 5 full courses, and a harder night mode for each course. A great hang out, chill game with friends too. Would be cool to get a TTLG game going with some of the folks around here.

[woah]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1533390/Gorilla_Tag/

[Thirith]

For anyone who's been wondering about cableless VR on PC and/or getting an Oculus Quest 2: it is now very easy to use the Quest 2 as a wireless PC VR headset. Virtual Desktop, which sells for somewhere around US$15, can now be used natively, i.e. without Sideloading modifications, to stream VR content from your PC to your headset wirelessly. Apparently it works really well too - provided you have a router that isn't too ancient (5GHz is preferable, apparently). If you've got a first-gen Quest lying around, you can also use that, though the Quest 2 obviously has the advantages of higher resolution and refresh rate, even if those also mean you need a beefier PC.

I might try this out with my first-gen Quest at some point to see what it's like. I don't *hate* the cable, mainly since I don't have that much space for VR gaming, but it is definitely a factor that keeps reminding you that you're still hooked up to a computer.

[Thirith]

Okay, very brief update: I installed the Virtual Desktop Streamer, the software that allows your PC to stream to your Quest headset. It didn't work at first, probably because I didn't run the streaming app as an admin, but once I did, everything worked exactly as I should - and smoothly to boot. At least on the first-gen Quest I couldn't tell that I was running things via wifi, which is pretty impressive when you consider that this is still an unofficial hack of sorts. So, yeah: this is a pretty neat way of playing PCVR on a wireless device!

[henke]

Ok I tried Virtual Desktop PC streaming with my Quest 1, but it didnt run very well. Beat Saber too laggy to be playable. Ran as administrator, put my Antivirus into Gaming Mode, fiddled with codecs and streaming settings but nothing helped. I think my router is too slow. It's a Huawei B315-22, which seemingly is 2.4GHz with 150mbps download speeds and 50mbps upload. I think you need at least a 5GHz thingy for this to run well? Probably time I bought a new router anyway, I've had this one for years.

[Thirith]

My router does 5GHz, so yeah, that might be more or less obligatory for it to run well, or at least it probably helps if the hardware is more up to date.

[Brethren]

I've had mixed results with the Virtual Desktop streaming. Some games play perfectly - Lone Echo, Freediver, Invisible Hours, Transpose and The Room are some of the games I tried that worked well. Other games had issues with controls, where my thumbsticks wouldn't work, or that certain buttons weren't responding, or were just plain wonky/janky (Hellblade, Solus Project, The Wizards). Some games wouldn't work at all (Xing). I will say when it works, its awesome to be free of the cord, and I'm sure all this stuff will get better in short time with improving tech. I'm guessing within the next 2 or 3 years, tethers will become a thing of the past.

[Thirith]

Was that with a Quest 2?

[Brethren]

Yep.

[Brethren]

Saw that Doom 3 is coming to PSVR in two weeks. I'll be interested to see what's involved with an official version like this, as opposed to the mods you can get for the PC version. May pick it up if it's not too pricey.

https://uploadvr.com/doom-3-vr-edition-announced/

[Thirith]

I've now got a Quest 2 as well (ho ho ho), and my first few untethered steps with Virtual Desktop worked well, except for some minor issues with the Guardian (I wish you could just deactivate the Guardian wall while keeping the outline on the floor, as is possible with the Rift and Rift S). Saints & Sinners definitely benefits from me not having to keep in mind that there's a cable somewhere that I shouldn't step on or stumble over. Still, I'll hang on to the Rift S for those games and apps that are wonky or janky, but as a first experience I have to say I'm quite impressed. At some point I'll have to try it out in the living room, which is where the router is and where there's quite a bit more space than there is in the room where I usually play in VR.

[Brethren]

Saw a cool thing. I had just recently sideloaded the original Quake onto my Quest2 and got it running great (including using the original OST), and then this morning I read about this. The guy (or guys) who created QuakeQuest actually have the upcoming game Wrath: Ruin of Aeon running on a Quest. Pretty awesome.



At this point, it's too early to determine whether this will be released publicly or not. But with Wrath due out this summer, I personally would love to play it right out of the box in VR.

[henke]

Ok I picked up a 5GHz router (for ~60€) and now Beat Saber runs flawlessly over wireless. This would be my preferred way of doing PC VR now if the Quest wasn't so uncomfortable for longer periods. Maybe I should get a Quest 2, but, uh... I've already bought 2 VR headsets in the last year so maybe not.

I wish you could just deactivate the Guardian wall while keeping the outline on the floor, as is possible with the Rift and Rift S

Yes! You used to be able to do this with Quest as well but I guess they removed it in some recent patch?