Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

wait till next year.

 

Yes sir!

 

It is a nice headset , nicer than what I saw last year from them but there is a bunch of stuff coming out. Some of it was supposed to hit this year but it sounds like its all slipping into 2022/23. There is one headset I'm really excited for that I'm waiting on

 

I picked up a second-hand Odyssey+ mostly out of desire to have an OLED-based HMD. It's an interesting thing to compare to the Reverb that I've been using for more than a year. The contrast ratio is of course far better and is amazing for games with total darkness. I think the FOV might actually be slightly wider. IPD adjustment is nice. But unsurprisingly it doesn't have Reverb's sweet spot clarity, and it didn't take long for me to notice the OLED black smearing effect. Also the built-in headphones are annoyingly placed and unimpressive, and they unfortunately didn't include a headphone jack. I wired one in myself.

 

So after about 20 hours of Odyssey+ use, I have more thoughts!

Wow do those lenses have problems with god rays! If there is something bright at any edge of the lenses, like a UI element for example, it glows from outside in. It's like they tried to increase FOV and it just causes problems. The Reverb doesn't do this. From reading around it sounds like Vive and Rift CV1 were even worse?!

The SDE filter is certainly a mixed blessing. It reminds me of Quincunx AA. It cleans up the SDE but everything is fairly blurry as a result. This makes finding the sweet spot an interesting challenge. Reverb is so much sharper.

And there is also the Pentile matrix. I can see the color problems on the edges of some things like text. It's not really a showstopper in the grand scheme but it's obviously not ideal.

Playing a dark game with an OLED HMD is really something though.

 

This was the one thing I really couldn't stand about the Odyssey+, while the SDE is definitely reduced the vaseline blur/smear across the entire image was just too headache inducing for me. While I'd certainly like SDE to become a thing of the past, sacrificing clarity of image is not the way to do it, IMO.

Regards,
SB

 

I did some searching to see if anyone preferred the original Odyssey over the + because of that filter but I didn't come across anything. Just saw comments about how great it is to not have the SDE. Maybe SDE was especially bad with a Pentile AMOLED.

 

A while back a bought a new PC primarily for VR (and secondly I wanted to stream to the TV but damn in home streaming is garbage)...

Anyway. It's a good pc, and I got the valve index headset. Setup with 3 base stations, a dedicated room I wasn't using... So not half arsing it.

Overall it's been a really mixed bag. I feel like I've been fighting bugs and tracking issues from day one. Stream VR seems very buggy. Most of the early tracking issues ended up being primarily the ryzen USB dropout issue - but since that's fixed I still get issues. I went as far as buying a usb add in card before getting the proper firmware fix.

It's it normal that (say) flicking your wrist quickly the controller can lose tracking? It sometimes disappears, although often will go flying off into the distance before eventually returning (although it can jitter a bunch). It isn't always consistent in how bad it is, but it when it's bad it makes the likes of beat saber kinda frustrating - as every so often a saber just stops responding or gets out of sync.

I read that reflective surfaces or natural light can be an issue - but I've tried things like covering up the window, the monitor etc and it doesn't seem to help.

I've spent a lot of money/time on this, and while it's undoubtedly very impressive these issues bring it down quite a bit. I expected something more robust.

I'm also quite disappointed by the real lack of quality content on steam. I've been told the best option is using the oculus store using unofficial workarounds... But not sure I want to go down that road just yet.

 

That flicking issue, does it use AA battery? If it does, try manually pulling the coil longer a wee bit

 

Yeah it does sound like it could be losing battery contact.

Also are you using NiMH batteries? The WMR controllers work quite poorly once the batteries are around 1.2v. I bought some of the 1.5v AA Lithium rechargeables. They run constant 1.5v until dead and it solved quite a few different problems like tracking quirks, disconnects, and power-downs because the controllers felt the batteries were too discharged.

The other thing that comes to mind is the problems I had with USB 3.0 ports. It seems like many motherboards have rear USB ports that don't have the signal integrity for these long VR cables. All sorts of weirdness can happen from the HMD simply not working to sporadic tracking and audio glitching. I found that a USB 3.0 Back Panel Expansion Bracket works much better than the motherboard's rear ports. Shielded cabling I suppose. Some PCIe USB 3.0 cards are problem solvers too.

 

Reverb G2 is $399 ($200 disc) at the moment at Walmart. I'm going to see how it compares to the original. I'm most curious about the 4 camera tracking and what the 2nd gen lenses are like.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Reverb-G2-Virtual-Reality-Headset/413944813

 

Dang, even I would jump the gun at that price.
The G2 sold on prime day here for 550€, which was already a pretty good discount over the 700€ standard cost. But it doesn't come close to those 350€.

 

Descent 2 from 1996


If you install the D2X-XL source port it supports modern VR headsets like the Rift
https://www.descent2.de
Descent 2 is available from GOG

 

Which HMD you using Davros?

I keep hoping for someone to come up with a VFX-1 emulation for DOSBox. Maybe it would be too awful to be worth the effort though.

 

Rift, I havnt tried D2X-XL (Well I have but it was years ago)

 

Nice, I remember trying this in VR back in '96. I was very sick for a lot of hours.

Regards,
SB

 

Yeah that is what I'm sure will happen if I try D2X VR. There are some kinds of motion in VR that I just can't adapt to.

 

https://uploadvr.com/halo-reach-vr-mod-on-ice/

 

Looking through steam just discovered
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - VR Experience is FREE........................

 

Cool. I didn't know that existed either and will check it out. Some of these free VR games are quite the curiosities. Probably just big companies testing the waters. Think Deus Ex: The Fall.

I came across some free "games" which are obviously movie advertising. Divergent: Alliegiant VR and Blade Runner 2049 Memory Lab.