Well, talking about VR headsets I have to share my thoughts on Quest 2. I bought Quest 2 basically as a tool to do some exercise, but hardly hoping it would make for a substitute of my current Pimax 8k. But holy hell, this thing is good. At this point I have my Pimax 8k on sale plus all steamvr stuff. I was interested in Quest 2 after I saw that clarity is reasonably close to Reverb G2 and better than Index according to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny_OPsxHQmU&t=419s , but also that Quest 2 was substantially better in clarity compared to my current Pimax 8K and close to 8KX which supposedly has amazing clarity quite close to G2 (
https://community.openmr.ai/t/8kx-overv ... ry/32914/2 ). Here are my thoughts:
Screen:
This is such a huge leap over 8k, clarity is astounding in comparison, fov is a lot smaller but acceptable, but can actually be improved using this ( https:/www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001794942898.html ) sweet spot is okish, it's reasonably easy to find, and about 50-60% of the screen stays focused. Screen door is 99% gone, you simply can't notice except in very specific situations. This thing looks really sharp in terms of VR.
Compared to a monitor, it's something between 720p and 1080p. Its sharp enough for movie watching, and if you find a video with 8k resolution it's mindblowing how great it looks.
Comfort
Could be better, it's heavy on the front after some time, so basically a halo strap that takes some weight on the back of the head is really recommended. Other than that it's OK.
Tracking
Fantastic, way better than what I expected. It's just perfect 99% of the time, it's very hard to break the tracking, it's 1:1 nearly all of the time, and I've always used SteamVR which is the best out there, but this is almost as good, if not better since my room doesn't let me position the lighthouses and optimal positions so I tend to get some blind spots. Even better, this thing tracks almost in complete darkness. For watching movies, even on a dark room with a lamp is enough for it to keep tracking just fine. Also it's extremely easy to change between full roomscale, seated or just turning it off.
Battery
It's good for portable VR, for PC VR it uses a lot of battery and you get about two hours of use, so better have a external battery pack ready. It charges fast though.
Sound
Included open headphones are serviceable, really useful for exercise and showing VR to friends, but for immersion you'll want to use your own headphones.
PC VR
This thing and virtual desktop blows my mind. Using a Tp link re650 wifi extender with my ax1200 5ghz wifi card, I can get wireless PC VR on steam with barely any noticiable latency and 99% indistinguishable from native PC VR. It's freaking amazing how well it works. Just make sure nothing else is connected to the wifi extender but your computer and the Quest 2.
3d gaming
- 3d vision
Tested briefly, but not good. Tested Little Nightmares in HelixVision, it defaults to 1080p, so looks very low res. Trying to use higher res made it buggy, were the screen showed only on a small resized screen and couldn't fix it. Batman AK didn't boot, it just stayed there with the "launching ... " message, and that's weird because I know for a fact that this game worked on 8k and HV. The Observer worked, and it was great to have such a huge screen in 3d, but resolution was bad, changing to a higher resolution didn't help. Overall it was very shimmery or aliased. I know HV can work well since it was pretty good on the 8K, so maybe I'm doing something wrong in terms of config or Virtual Desktop doesn't like it. I'll have to try again with some heavy supersampling to see how well it improves.
- Vorpx
Tested briefly with Black Mesa, it worked and looks better than HV but performance wasn't good, at least with that specific game, haven't tested more.
Accessibility
One of the most amazing features of Oculus Quest 2. It takes 5 seconds to get in VR, another 10 seconds to boot in PC VR. Room bounds can be reconfigured in 10 seconds. And of course, no cables. Steam VR headsets are really annoying having to turn on lighthouses, sync them, boot into steamvr and then get the headset to work, at least with 8k. This is just pure instant VR.
Price
Of course this is the big highlight. You can find it used for 300 euro or less for the 64gb version here in Spain easily (for a device that's 5 months old, so you still get a year and a half of warranty in the worst case scenario) , the bang for the buck here is amazing, since basically you get high quality portable VR, amazing PC VR, fantastic private cinema with huge screen, and a great fitness tool.
Facebook stuff
Yeah its there, you need a Facebook account for this to work. I hate Facebook and their policies as much as the next guy, but this is too much of a great deal to pass.
TLDR: Fantastic HMD at a ridiculous price, it won't make for a substitute of your monitor though and not recommended for 3d gaming on my early testing, still for VR gaming, exercise and portable media it's highly recommended.
EDIT: Just tested HelixVision on 200% supersampling, which is ridiculous just to see how much it improved, and now we're talking. With supersampling it looks waaay sharper and close to gaming monitor experience, still not there but I would consider it usable as a 3d screen. Tested with the Observer, and it looks really good, I would play like that just fine if I didn't have a PG278QR monitor, and sure the 100'' screen helps with the immersion. The problem is that with that level of supersampling overall performance isn't good, and Virtual Desktop can't keep up and starts to pixelate, so it's a matter of finding a super sampling sweet spot, or directly using an Oculus Link cable, which surely is the best option so you don't need wireless if you're seated on a chair playing in 3d and it has huge bandwith, so it should be crystal clear.