Fool me, this is real good shit ! [the VR thread]

[Cloudane]

Apparently it's to do with faster refresh rates, easier to get the higher pixel densities, and some problem with "black smearing"

[Rhythm]

So is the Q2 worth picking up or not? I have a WMR setup now and I love not having to set up trackers but it's feeling a bit creaky right now and the idea of buying something that's actually, y'know, supported feels like a good move.

As someone who's used to LCD screens is the Q2 actually worth it?

[Misfit]

So is the Q2 worth picking up or not? I have a WMR setup now and I love not having to set up trackers but it's feeling a bit creaky right now and the idea of buying something that's actually, y'know, supported feels like a good move.

As someone who's used to LCD screens is the Q2 actually worth it?

If you don't care about LCD then absolutely, only other real issue is that some people can't get on with the head strap and it's worth buying the Elite strap.

Other than that it's more of the Q1, an excellent standalone wireless device when you want that and a very competent PC headset when you want that (and if you have a good router and prepared for a small amount of faff can work really well as a wireless PC headset).

[THEDARKPRIESTCYRIC]

I'm pretty sure they went with LCD this go round to bring down the price. Hell LG went to lower quality OLED's on the last two V series phones (it's why I haven't "upgraded" my V50 yet) to cut costs. We might get back to OLED's next refresh their prices should drop substantially by then. I played Rez Infinite and sure the blacks weren't anywhere close to PSVR quality but the rest of the experience is so much better and available for $300.

This week's Giant Bombcast mentioned Polybius and Rez Infinite as the marque VR experiences! When can I buy Polybius on the Quest Giles?

[gilesgoat]

I*SNIP*

This week's Giant Bombcast mentioned Polybius and Rez Infinite as the marque VR experiences! When can I buy Polybius on the Quest Giles?

Yesterday I got the point "all the Moose Life fragment shader compile and nearly all the vertex shader" (*), I HAVE to start with Moose Life because "it's simpler" to verify/check all the rest works, once Moose Life fully works ( Native, on the Quest ) THEN I can port Polybius ( which is LOT more messy ).

Probably various "adaptations" will be needed because the Quest is not a very powerful machine, we'll see.

(*) which is not "just that" it means a good 60% of all the stuff is in in fact "almost all the engine" is in it misses "the game part" ( which is "machine independent" ) but I need to get to the "famous point" of the "textured spinning cube" before I can move on with that.

[THEDARKPRIESTCYRIC]

I*SNIP*

This week's Giant Bombcast mentioned Polybius and Rez Infinite as the marque VR experiences! When can I buy Polybius on the Quest Giles?

Yesterday I got the point "all the Moose Life fragment shader compile and nearly all the vertex shader" (*), I HAVE to start with Moose Life because "it's simpler" to verify/check all the rest works, once Moose Life fully works ( Native, on the Quest ) THEN I can port Polybius ( which is LOT more messy ).

Probably various "adaptations" will be needed because the Quest is not a very powerful machine, we'll see.

(*) which is not "just that" it means a good 60% of all the stuff is in in fact "almost all the engine" is in it misses "the game part" ( which is "machine independent" ) but I need to get to the "famous point" of the "textured spinning cube" before I can move on with that.

Ah, I figured Moose Life would be first that's great I haven't got to play it yet. I was worried Polybius would take a big performance hit I will grab the PC version (already have it on PS4) but I still want to triple dip on a completely stand alone experience! BTW, how does Moose Life compare to Tempest? It looks a little easier in a good way (I've always been bad at Tempest for some reason )?

[gilesgoat]

I*SNIP*

This week's Giant Bombcast mentioned Polybius and Rez Infinite as the marque VR experiences! When can I buy Polybius on the Quest Giles?

Yesterday I got the point "all the Moose Life fragment shader compile and nearly all the vertex shader" (*), I HAVE to start with Moose Life because "it's simpler" to verify/check all the rest works, once Moose Life fully works ( Native, on the Quest ) THEN I can port Polybius ( which is LOT more messy ).

Probably various "adaptations" will be needed because the Quest is not a very powerful machine, we'll see.

(*) which is not "just that" it means a good 60% of all the stuff is in in fact "almost all the engine" is in it misses "the game part" ( which is "machine independent" ) but I need to get to the "famous point" of the "textured spinning cube" before I can move on with that.

Ah, I figured Moose Life would be first that's great I haven't got to play it yet. I was worried Polybius would take a big performance hit I will grab the PC version (already have it on PS4) but I still want to triple dip on a completely stand alone experience! BTW, how does Moose Life compare to Tempest? It looks a little easier in a good way (I've always been bad at Tempest for some reason )?

It's a totally different game, plus you have the "freeride mode" where you DO NOT score BUT you have infinite lives you can play and ride through the levels as long as you like.

It's a completely different game, about performance hit I don't know yet .. we'll find it out.

[Harlequin]

… BTW, how does Moose Life compare to Tempest? It looks a little easier in a good way (I've always been bad at Tempest for some reason )?

I am crap at Tempesty games as well. ML, however, is far more like Polybius in ease of gameplay.

[Cloudane]

So is the Q2 worth picking up or not? I have a WMR setup now and I love not having to set up trackers but it's feeling a bit creaky right now and the idea of buying something that's actually, y'know, supported feels like a good move.

As someone who's used to LCD screens is the Q2 actually worth it?

Even though I'm shouting about black levels on here, I have to be fair and say that probably 80% of people on Reddit are saying that they can't see the problem and it looks fine to them. For me, it's like "what?! are you blind or something?" but they tend to think the same of me when I say I rarely notice or care about the "screen door effect" Different things seem to affect people in different ways.

It's probably MUCH less of a problem for anyone already coming from LCD than from someone used to OLED.

If in doubt buy from Amazon. I may end up eating my words, but in all the times I've wanted to return stuff to them in the past they've been very accommodating.

[Rhythm]

Even though I'm shouting about black levels on here, I have to be fair and say that probably 80% of people on Reddit are saying that they can't see the problem and it looks fine to them. For me, it's like "what?! are you blind or something?" but they tend to think the same of me when I say I rarely notice or care about the "screen door effect" Different things seem to affect people in different ways.

It's probably MUCH less of a problem for anyone already coming from LCD than from someone used to OLED.

If in doubt buy from Amazon. I may end up eating my words, but in all the times I've wanted to return stuff to them in the past they've been very accommodating.

I genuinely don't like OLED as a screen technology so TBH I'm not that fussed. It's the smeary fresnel lenses I'm not a fan of in most VR headsets - the Index was completely unusable for me. The WMR has been lovely but like with most things, Microsoft aren't good at supporting :-/

I've ordered one, anyway. Time to fire up my old Oculus account again and see if I can get it all working. Wouldn't ever use/order from Amazon but found it for a shade over £250 on a different UK retailer so I went with them

[Cloudane]

Couple of observations today:

I went into another dark "hangout and sleep" VRchat world, via the standalone client (not tested it on Link yet), and it was absolutely fine. This one was lit up in a dim blue, and nothing looked particularly unnatural unless I was really searching for bad shadows. This is how to do a dark world correctly and still have it look good on LCD.

I then hopped into it on the CV1 on the desktop and was immediately struck by how bad it looked with the pixellation. In fact I'm noticing that more and more in general whenever I put the CV1 back on.

Swings and roundabouts, I suppose. It furthers my hypothesis that some of the worlds have been designed by people with OLED based headsets who have put too much reliance on extremely high contrast ratios into their designs. You'd see similar if you thought you'd processed a great photo on a high colour gamut display and then displayed it on a normal one without converting the colour space to sRGB first. It gives me hope that maybe as more designers end up on LCD, worlds and games will be redesigned to look good on them in turn. It's not an ideal situation, but until manufacturers are happy enough with the other aspects of OLED technology to bring it back, or until they go for microLED, it's how it has to be I guess.

[ThetaReactor]

I'm sold on the Quest 2 for the sheer convenience.

Before, if I wanted to play in a large area I had to drag the gaming PC across the house, set up the lighthouses, plug in all the cables, get the PC up, and still deal with the tethered headset and Vive wands that last maybe 6-8 hours.

Now I unplug the charging cable and put on the headset. The Oculus controllers seem to be trying to beat the old Wii U Pro controller for battery life. The headset is only good for 2-3 hours between charges, but that's a pretty easy fix if it becomes an issue. I haven't tried going wireless yet, as I'll be needing to run ethernet through the attic to put a good AP in the main living room. Which I needed to do anyway.

The black levels are still noticeable. And I'm kind of a snob about that sort of thing, as I still do lots of gaming on plasma and CRTs. When I first put the headset on and see the bright Oculus logo against a black grey background, it's disappointing. But I tend to forget about it as soon as I get into a game. Light coming through the nose gap is also nagging at times, particularly since the tracking doesn't work in darkness. If it bothers me too much I'll get a couple IR flood lights. I don't have any issue with the strap, either. Maybe it's the combo of my huge noggin and head-stubble that keeps it secure. I'll probably end up doing an aftermarket strap with battery and sound, but I'm willing to wait to see what the community comes up with.

[Cloudane]

Continuing to get happier with it. Yes the black level is still something of an issue but not a glaring one in most places - it's partly dumb luck that the first things I tried were two of my favourite VRchat worlds that appear to have been designed on OLED by OLED users for OLED users (because when they were designed, OLED was the VR tech of the day). So they've been designed around fine grained black levels that get crushed on LCD. I think of it like if you design something on a high colour gamut professional monitor and then forget to convert the colour space to sRGB before sharing it with someone who has a bog standard display. They'll see a version of the image that is washed out or looks off in some other way as the display can't show the colour values specified in the image. Other dark worlds I've tried have looked decent, as they must have been designed by someone with say an Index, so they've built up shadow detail for LCD rather than OLED. Native stuff like Beat Saber looks great, even the dark bits.

The other problem exacerbating it is Oculus Link, which at the moment is garbage IMHO on the Q2. The colours are washed out on it, which just made things look worse, it's low resolution, and I do notice the compression artifacts here and there. Virtual Desktop works amazingly well in comparison (considering ALVR and AMD RePlay were so glitchy and the £15 was a risk) and with exceptions like dark red the compression is less noticeable even than the Link. The latter is still on 150Mb/s bitrate.... on a cable measured at 3Gb/s... so using 5% of its capability. If they'd make more use of the bandwidth available it could be so much better.

Finding ways to keep it charged is "fun" but that's USB for you. A million and one standards. Far as I can fathom my motherboard's USB-C port does max 900mA (no special 'battery charge' standard or PD) but I also using a USB-C inline meter found that QC2.0 is supported for a max of about 15W (9V, 1.5-1.6A) so having a QC2.0 power brick next to the PC and plugging into that instead (and using VD for the display) seems like one way to get a long session in, or get straight to playing off a flat battery.

The fit is better when you realise that the two 'arms' for the head strap are meant to be slightly down (they move down just a touch from horizontal) rather than just straight horizontal. This stops that feeling of it wanting to fall off the front of your face.
Comfort is still less than ideal for a longer session though as it feels a lot heavier than the Rift.

General clarity though is fantastic. You really notice when you put the CV1 back on!

Leaning towards keeping it now.
I also have an official link cable reserved at Argos for £50. If you keep your eyes peeled they pop up in stock here and there. Still not decided whether to go through with that though, as it doesn't give any benefit power wise, it just means you can get more than 3m without needing an active extension, and is a bit lighter. But I game right next to the PC anyway and again, Virtual Desktop is better at the moment. It's a great deal but between that and about £20 worth of copper based solution, well, £30 gets a good game or such

[ThetaReactor]

There are hacks to improve Link quality, too. Can use the debug tool to force encoding at native res, though it appears you'll need very fast video encoding hardware (RTX GPU) to keep up.

[Rhythm]

Squee! My driver is 2 stops away so I'll have mine shortly. Thankfully they're using Yodel rather than DPD so I'll actually receive it