Is VR Great?

[Kenny Paton]

! Andrew had his account deleted. I had only made a mental note that he had been a bit quiet.

At his request, before anyone jumps to wrong conclusions.

 

[RCHeliguy]

At his request, before anyone jumps to wrong conclusions.

Given he hadn't been behaving any differently in recent history than he has for many years, I assumed as much. To be clear, what I mean is that I hadn't seen him do anything to put him over a line.

 

[Leynad777]

Seems that every video he does feels like a commercial. VoodooDE VR judged the audio with this strap as quite bad in comparison completely lacking bass, and he's really not an audio enthusiast. Seems to me you get better audio-quality for 10 bucks or so...

 

[RCHeliguy]

Seems that every video he does feels like a commercial. VoodooDE VR judged the audio with this strap as quite bad in comparison completely lacking bass, and he's really not an audio enthusiast. Seems to me you get better audio-quality for 10 bucks or so...

The audio strap is convenient.

The headstrap is excellent. It allows you to reduce the pressure of the headset on your face down to barely nothing. It is worth getting for that alone.

In most games the audio is fine, but it isn't as good as the Index off ear Index headphones and in no way competes with my $900 IEM's.

Steve is mostly listening to airplane engines, wind, controls clicking. He is hardly demanding on his audio. So decent volume and convenience are all it takes for him to be happy.

To be fair I have two audio straps.
1. First version they sent me which I like with the headphones intact.
2. The production version that I cut the headphone arms off of and use with my IEM's.

Obviously if I thought these speakers were the bees knees, I wouldn't have cut them off. They aren't bad, but they don't break any records for sonic excellence either.

 

[Leynad777]

The audio strap is convenient.

The headstrap is excellent. It allows you to reduce the pressure of the headset on your face down to barely nothing. It is worth getting for that alone.

In most games the audio is fine, but it isn't as good as the Index off ear Index headphones and in no way competes with my $900 IEM's.

Steve is mostly listening to airplane engines, wind, controls clicking. He is hardly demanding on his audio. So decent volume and convenience are all it takes for him to be happy.

To be fair I have two audio straps.
1. First version they sent me which I like with the headphones intact.
2. The production version that I cut the headphone arms off of and use with my IEM's.

Obviously if I thought these speakers were the bees knees, I wouldn't have cut them off. They aren't bad, but they don't break any records for sonic excellence either.

View attachment 752536

My Quest 3 headstrap is also a major improvement and I paid 20€ on Ebay. Audio is just okay and did a mod to improve the quality and loudness (free version this way). Still lacks some bass, but good punch. For the hefty price of 149€ for this audio headstrap I certainly would request a decent audio solution. My Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic headphones were both a bit cheaper with excellent sound and if people review headphones, IMO it's common sense to test it with music etc., but even plane engines are probably more immersive with some bass. Without the audio the hole thing seems relatively easy to be printed and why are there no other 3rd party accessories available if it sells so well?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Why would you expect 3rd party accessories at this point? BigscreenVR are a new headset company and have been gearing up production for the last 6 months. With the Quest 3, there was a reasonable guarantee of very solid sales and Meta have a proven production capacity so it was a given that there would be many 10's of thousands out the door quickly and hundreds of thousands to follow.

There are already many stand alone 3D printed solutions and people with Vive Deluxe audio strap adaptations for the Beyond.

There is even an eye tracking module under development among many other features for the Beyond. They gave out all the design drawings early on so DIY'ers could modify it as they wanted.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'm definitely at the point where I'm starting to feel jaded by user feedback on different headsets.

Now that the Beyonds are flowing, I'm looking at the reviews on the Beyond discord and they are completely mixed.

There are people completely blown away and loving the Beyond. This includes simmers who have owned Aero's and Crystals. Then there are people who have a complete opposite experience and just can't get on with it at all.

Some of the angst is just human nature and dealing with the swapping out headsets for one with the correct IPD, and some futzing with cushions. I've seen people get thinner, thicker cushions and very rarely get a completely new scan. That definitely is a pain point and some people are more patient dealing with that sort of thing than others.

I am starting to see more people come to the realization that different people can have a completely different experience in the exact same headset and that no one headset will work for everyone.

But then there are the others who appear to be completely ignorant of the subjective human experience and feel that based on their opinions a person should "obviously" get (insert favorite headset here). They are the ones who are getting tiring.

 

[Leynad777]

I am starting to see more people come to the realization that different people can have a completely different experience in the exact same headset and that no one headset will work for everyone.

But then there are the others who appear to be completely ignorant of the subjective human experience and feel that based on their opinions a person should "obviously" get (insert favorite headset here). They are the ones who are getting tiring.

That seems to be a special BSB-problem and here's another quite disappointed user even after he got his 3rd device. Several BSB-owners in the comments agree with him...

 

[RCHeliguy]

That seems to be a special BSB-problem

I've seen many many many people who dumped their Quest 3, Crystal, Aero, G2 quickly because they didn't like it for some reason.

I've heard a huge number of people condemn the G2.
I've seen a pile of people get completely fed up with the Crystal and send it back.
I've heard a pretty decent number of people send back the Aero.
Once again the Quest 3 has had many people who just couldn't stand it.

Every one of those headsets is loved by others and some have been daily drivers for some for years.

 

[Leynad777]

Once again the Quest 3 has had many people who just couldn't stand it.

Bullshit, I have not read even one negative comment like that and to quote a BSB-owner under the video: "I agree with you. I was soooo excited to receive my unit. Since, I think I have used it about a dozen times. I find myself using my Q3 more than anything. Less compromises. Needless to say. I very disappointed in the unit itself. The company etc seems like a great bunch."

 

[RCHeliguy]

Bullshit, I have not read even one negative comment like that and to quote a BSB-owner under the video: "I agree with you. I was soooo excited to receive my unit. Since, I think I have used it about a dozen times. I find myself using my Q3 more than anything. Less compromises. Needless to say. I very disappointed in the unit itself. The company etc seems like a great bunch."

I wouldn't have said that if I couldn't back it up.

Do you really want me plastering this thread with Quest 3 hate ?

 

[blekenbleu]

Stanford hyperbole: VR by AI-driven metasurface waveguide holography
"Our headset appears to the outside world just like an everyday pair of glasses,
but what the wearer sees through the lenses is an enriched world
overlaid with vibrant, full-color 3D computed imagery"

2021 PDF

 

[blekenbleu]

Meta/Princeton compound optics holographic alternative
"Reality Labs Research, Meta’s R&D group for XR and AI,
has spent considerable time and effort
exploring the applications of holography in XR headsets."

FWIW, all lenses are Fourier Transforming...

“Extending our work to utilize other types of emerging optics
such as metasurfaces may prove to be a promising direction for future work,
as diffraction angles can be greatly enlarged by nano-scale metasurface features
and additional properties of light such as polarization
can be modulated using meta-optics.”

 

[Leynad777]

I wouldn't have said that if I couldn't back it up.

Do you really want me plastering this thread with Quest 3 hate ?

Go ahead, but from reading enough 1-star ratings on Amazon, you won't find (m)any who dislike the visual quality, if it's not about the passthrough, obvious faulty units or headaches/discomfort coming from the default headstrap, which is still said to be more comfortable than both options of the AVP btw. The Quest 3 is IMO quite a flawless headset and also delivers decent PCVR performance with a 10 GBit link cable and 700 MBit transfer rate or over Steam Link. The latency is far less than what I see with any triple screen setup on YouTube with obvious visual lag of the graphical steering wheel.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I wasn't reading any of these on Amazon reviews, just various Discord servers.

But to be fair all the complaints very highly outnumbered by people who think they are great especially for the price. Yes, there are QC issues, dead pixels etc.. and people upgrading the head strap and battery, but you already know about that. There are a number of people who consider them like strapping a toaster to your face, but that would basically be for all non Beyond headsets. Then there are the people who hate Meta and have concerns about sharing their data.

But I didn't realize how small the number of complaints were in proportion to the love for the Q3. The complaints are there, but are basically drowned out by the positive comments and I would say more so than any other headset that is currently available.

I'll stand down on this. For the Q3, "intrinsic to the design complaints" are statistically insignificant.

 

[gamma123152]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1787902963073302988

About GTRevival. Good news, someone finally woke up to move away from the terrible Unreal Engine. That engine simply doesn't fit sim racing. It's good for many things, but not for sim racing and VR, it's a deadly combination and Ian Bell found it out the hard way.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Meta/Princeton compound optics holographic alternative
"Reality Labs Research, Meta’s R&D group for XR and AI,
has spent considerable time and effort
exploring the applications of holography in XR headsets."

At the end of this video, he suggests that Meta may replace current len technology with holographic lenses in the next 4 years. It's one guess.

 

[Spinelli]

What's the hFOV of it?

EDIT: Nevermind

H.FOV is pathetic. Like looking through a keyhole. H.FOVs like these are ok 8 years ago when VR headsets were brand-new and many in alpha or beta stages but miserable for today, or even in the past 3 years for that matter. Such wretched hFOV headsets just make VR feel pathetic, "toyish", and gimmicky...HFOVs like that are simply unacceptable. It's 2024, not 2016.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hilarious! Despite the "wretched, pathetic, toyish" experience that you claim I must be experiencing, I'm absolutely loving my Beyond and can't imagine using anything else on the market.

Making ignorant blanket statements like that are a huge disservice to the VR community.

BTW, did you mean E2EC ? Because I'm getting 100hFOV with my Beyond which is within 2 degrees of what Steve is getting with his Crystal (only 102hFOV). I'm not sure I'd consider 2 degrees a huge deal.

In some games like Rally with my motion system shaking me around, I see a much more consistent and clear view and feel much more like I am "there" in the car than I ever did with my Aero despite it having better E2EC. My overall experience with the Beyond is the best I have ever experienced since I started in VR in 2017.

Go figure!

I could just as easily say having a large heavy brick strapped to your face is unacceptable in 2024 and that there is nothing as forward thinking as the Beyond for a VR headset today.

It all depends on your priorities!

I know people with 8KX's who are looking at the Somnium VR1 that supposedly reaches up to 140 degrees hFOV for some faces. It's great that there is an option like that. We need many solutions to take care of the all of our very different priorities.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Someone recently posted a link to the video below showing that there really aren't any long DP2.1 cables available today that can handle 80Gbps.

Considering current DP1.4 cables for VR use are frequently over $100. If 80Gbps DP2.1 cables are hard to produce with needed VR headset lengths, the price for them will likely be steep. So we are not only waiting for the 5090 ( possibly $2000 and hoping it will have DP2.1 support. But then we are possibly needing a cable that could be $200-$300 to get that bandwidth to a headset. That's a cost that could definitely impact future headsets.