Rift, Vive, and Virtual Reality

[eastmen]

Hmmm...

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...headsets-the-400-oculus-rift-s-600-hp-reverb/

Looks like the HP Reverb is not an option for me. The lack of IPD adjustment combined with subpar lenses really let down this headset. While the resolution is good enough to read relatively fine text, you basically have to be within the average IPD range to have clear center vision. However, even then, you'll have to contend with less than sharp visuals outside of that sweet spot.

The Rift S, also without IPD adjustment, at least features better lenses that offer more clarity across a wider FOV. However, it's resolution is barely adequate for text.

And finally color accuracy, black level, and screen uniformity are worse for both headsets compared to the OLED panels that the original Rift had.

Well, here's to hoping Acer does better with their ConceptD OJO. I'm not going to hold my breath here. It's Acer. They offer good products for the price, but that often comes at the cost of build quality or lack of polish.

It really is a shame that Valve couldn't at least swing the higher resolution screens at the price point they are targeting. Had they done so, I'd have at least considered their upcoming headset at their announced price.

Alternatively maybe Microsoft will feel the need to offer a premium Surface VR headset? I find that doubtful, however, as the VR market is still too small and too niche to necessitate that sort of investment from them, especially when you consider their investment in R&D for HoloLens.

Regards,
SB

WMR 2 is coming I just don't know if its this year or next year. It will be their answer to psvr but will target the new console exclusively. I'm hoping for a redesign of the controllers and multiple cameras.
At this point however I think I will be purchasing an index

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This is what VR needs to avoid IMO. People having sub-par experiences will only be turned off, plus companies failing to make money from VR are going to abandon it. I suppose at the moment, it can be trusted VR purchasers are researching before-hand as it's a technical niche. Once you have an assortment of headsets in stores and people just picking one up and taking it home, it needs to work as an experience all they think VR is just blurry and awkward.

Yes, right now everyone is fighting to try to find the right balance of cost, comfort, ease of use, fidelity, performance, and features.

On the PC side, WMR was the first shot at trying to expand the appeal of VR to more cost conscious buyers, but even at 299 USD, that's still a huge ask for what is basically a peripheral with relatively limited software applications (games or others) and limited media options.

But while WMR had a more attractive price and the easiest out of the box experience (setup), it obviously had to sacrifice in other areas. And even when you get a fairly compelling set of features with relatively good execution you find sometimes strange compromises. The Samsung Odyssey+ is arguably the best 1600p headset under 1000 USD...except they decided that the hanging face assembly would be fixed in place thus limiting it to people with the correct head shapes for it to be comfortable. Was a hinged assembly that much more expensive to implement?

That said, it's nice that at least Valve are still relatively bullish on VR and attempting to push the boundaries in more than just small incremental ways. But then you have the odd decision to use 1600p panels instead of the latest 2160p panels. It could be argued that this allows it to run on lower priced GFX cards, but at it's price point and target market (content creators and businesses), is requiring at least a minimum of a GTX 1080 a deal breaker? It's such a strange compromise, IMO, for the primary market it's aimed at.

All of this just screams to me that VR is still in it's way too early infancy stages. Hopefully it isn't too early that the few consumers that are participating in the VR ecosystem
get burned out and disillusioned.

Me, I'm still waiting for the right headset to give me a replacement/complementary desktop development environment. Current and announced headsets are close enough to show the tantalizing possibilities for it, but are not quite there yet.

Regards,
SB

 

[Picao84]

This is what VR needs to avoid IMO. People having sub-par experiences will only be turned off, plus companies failing to make money from VR are going to abandon it. I suppose at the moment, it can be trusted VR purchasers are researching before-hand as it's a technical niche. Once you have an assortment of headsets in stores and people just picking one up and taking it home, it needs to work as an experience all they think VR is just blurry and awkward.

I believe that very well curated stores with somewhat strict Q&A processes in terms of FPS, Latency, etc are the medium term future of consumer VR. Plus, a good experience in VR is so dependent on the quality of the headset, it's comfort and controllers that I can't really see a platform like WMR with diverging implementation from manufacturers going anywhere. VR can and will only proliferate with a vertical Apple-like approach where the software platform and the hardware are tightly coupled. Like Sony with the PSVR and Oculus with Oculus Quest. Only when we reach a point where mainstream computer hardware is "good enough" for VR and headset design is perfected, can VR truly be an open platform.

 

[hughJ]

But then you have the odd decision to use 1600p panels instead of the latest 2160p panels. It could be argued that this allows it to run on lower priced GFX cards, but at it's price point and target market (content creators and businesses), is requiring at least a minimum of a GTX 1080 a deal breaker? It's such a strange compromise, IMO, for the primary market it's aimed at.

We don't know what factors were involved with the selection of the panels, but (as far as I'm aware) we have a total absence of examples where higher res panels have been utilized without other significant tradeoffs and/or manufacturing QA difficulties. We have Oculus, for example, didn't drive their RiftS/Go's LCD panel beyond 80Hz for undisclosed reasons (their suggestion that it was done deliberately to match the Rift's GPU specs is almost certainly BS/spin), Pimax also failed to reach their 90Hz target due to their driver hardware struggling to clock that high, and now reviews of HP's Reverb indicate visual artifacts with the display. LCDs are a very mature technology family, but VR's need for global refresh, ultra-fast response times while maintaining uniform color/contrast reproduction with viable manufacturing QA yields... that seems to be a different beast.

For whatever it's worth, Valve's VR R&D at this point probably has more experience and the most latitude for designing and building a high-end HMD, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that the decisions made were in service of the design rather than simply the price. They were firmly committed to "room scale" as the VR experience target all the way back in 2014, to the extent that it almost sounded like an ideological 'room scale VR or nothing' affirmation, and the choice to remain with lighthouse tracking this time around while releasing a new VR package that costs $200 more than the Vive did at launch suggests to me that their decisions are still coming from their engineers rather than a sales/marketing group.

Examples like: They could have chosen to attempt inside-out, but stuck with a much more costly Lighthouse system - probably because inside-out seems to carry limitations with accuracy (RoadtoVR's RiftS review states that the inside-out isn't as stable as Rift/Vive), as well as occlusion issues compared to having multiple external base stations. As resolution increases that tracking jitter becomes even more visible . As resolution increases the persistence blur also becomes more detectable, and shorter persistence duration means having to compensate with a combination of brighter backlighting and faster refresh rates to maintain the brightness levels. Finding a panel+driver subsystem that nails all of that is probably not as simple as selecting the one with the biggest PPI.

 

[Arwin]

With the reviews coming in and the release getting close (21 may here), it looks like the Quest is a really good product ...

 

[hughJ]

I remain pretty skeptical of the Quest's commercial viability as a gaming platform, in particular when viewed alongside the graveyard of 3 decades worth of failed portable consoles (basically everything not made by Nintendo.) The 'VR'-ness is novel, to be sure, but it's going to have all the same content hurdles that regular VR does, but without the PC horsepower headroom that makes porting existing AAA titles feasible, and without the weird hobbyist/experimental/freeware development scene that generates memes and youtube videos. Anything of quality that's on the Quest is going to have to be bespoke, and that means either moderate budget content supported by Facebook, or small budget indie stuff that consumers will complain about being overpriced. I'm also concerned about how well these devices are going to hold up to regular use and abuse; reduced battery capacity over time, storage limitations, wear and tear, etc.

 

[Karamazov]

I was interested in the Quest, but here it costs 50€ more for no reason, so I'll stick with my Go.

 

[Karamazov]

ah, i'm so weak, bought one.

 

[Alexko]

I remain pretty skeptical of the Quest's commercial viability as a gaming platform, in particular when viewed alongside the graveyard of 3 decades worth of failed portable consoles (basically everything not made by Nintendo.) The 'VR'-ness is novel, to be sure, but it's going to have all the same content hurdles that regular VR does, but without the PC horsepower headroom that makes porting existing AAA titles feasible, and without the weird hobbyist/experimental/freeware development scene that generates memes and youtube videos. Anything of quality that's on the Quest is going to have to be bespoke, and that means either moderate budget content supported by Facebook, or small budget indie stuff that consumers will complain about being overpriced. I'm also concerned about how well these devices are going to hold up to regular use and abuse; reduced battery capacity over time, storage limitations, wear and tear, etc.

Not really sure about the whole content thing, but as far as wear and tear goes, and if that's any indication, the Go is reasonably sturdy.

 

[Arwin]

ah, i'm so weak, bought one.

I’m very tempted even for just getting a portable Beat Saber player ... look forward to your impressions!

 

[Karamazov]

it's really great !
Of course i can only compare to PSVR and Go, never tried another headset (well the VFX1 does not count )
Graphics are obviously not on par with PSVR, but res is higher, IQ is cleaner (vs the majority of PSVR games, some like wipeout on Pro are crisp too)
screen door effect is more noticeable than PSVR though, but not annoying at all. And overall games still look reallly nice !
But, tracking works wonderfully, a great step up over PSVR, no wobbling, no shaking, it's a joy to use.
And it's totaly untethered, the guardian thing works awesomely.
Tried the creed boxing demo today, i played for only five minute the demo and it was some good exercice, i was totally inside the game, and getting sweaty at the end.
the big downside for now is the price of games, it seems a bit high for games that are pretty short overall.
i should focus on games with good replay value, like dead and buried 2, i think that will be my first purchase.

 

[Karamazov]

well that did not take long !

 

[xexuxjy]

Graphics not being on par with PSVR sounds a little worrying , as wasn't that generally seen as one of the lower end of the currently available VR systems, or was that more form a controller point of view?
Must admit , I am feeling a bit interested in these new devices..... Anyone know if there are demo stations for any of them in the UK at all?

 

[Karamazov]

Don't worry about graphics, they are Good enough, once you are inside that does not matter at all, the clean IQ and Good tracking are what matters post.

 

[Picao84]

Don't worry about graphics, they are Good enough, once you are inside that does not matter at all, the clean IQ and Good tracking are what matters post.

It's still too expensive for what it is, IMO. Bring it down to 299 and it might be more attractive for me.

 

[Karamazov]

Yes it's still a bit too expensive, but the geek inside me forced me to buy one, i had no choice !

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yes it's still a bit too expensive, but the geek inside me forced me to buy one, i had no choice !

BTW - how many hours do you generally get with the Oculus Quest on average? Gaming? Watching video?

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

BTW - how many hours do you generally get with the Oculus Quest on average? Gaming? Watching video?

Regards,
SB

I cannot tell yet, have spent less than 3 hours with it i guess for now, with a full charge before, last time i turned it off it had 38% battery left.

 

[eastmen]

Don't worry about graphics, they are Good enough, once you are inside that does not matter at all, the clean IQ and Good tracking are what matters post.

I disagree , the games look flat a lot of the time and really detracts from the experience. Its hard to go from a rift down to a quest when your playing the same game.

 

[Karamazov]

I disagree , the games look flat a lot of the time and really detracts from the experience. Its hard to go from a rift down to a quest when your playing the same game.

If you have both you can stream pc vr games to your quest and problem solved !