Why not to get an Oculus?

I hear it's cheap and has decent technology. Is this correct?

Facebook.

Couldn't care less about VR personally. In 10-15 when the tech is there, i might, but for now, i am not wearing 10 pound of plastic on my head.

Facebook. You need Facebook.

I mean, I despise Facebook as much as the next, but come on, just make a fake account and never use it again. That's all it takes. It's not like you have to be signed in to use the headset. I got an Oculus Rift S, made a fake account, and don't think I've signed back in once since that first sign-up. Small price to pay for a good VR headset.

I already have a Rift and Quest 2.

I could not support Facebook, a company that engages in censorship of views, monopolistic practices, and is run by a meglomanic billionaire.

I thought everyone had Facebook. Guess not. I tried the quest 2 and it was decent. A little better than my PSVR. Only thing was the FOV seemed low but that might be with all VR units.

a) Isn't it obvious?

b) VR is still in its infancy

Q2 is great, but i personally wouldn’t support the closed eco system they are trying to create! Let consoles keep their exclusive nonsense, it has no place on pc!

There are better headsets out there. Better tracking, higher resolution, higher field of view.

For example, the Oculus Quest 2 has a field of view of 89 degrees. Make a right angle, or a perfectly squared corner from a piece of paper as a guide, put that in front of your face and that's how much of your vision is actually occupied by the screen itself. It'd be like wearing swimming goggles that cut off your peripheral vision.

Humans have about 114 degrees of binocular vision between both eyes and like 190-200 degrees total when moving the eyes. There are headsets out there with 150 degree field of view or more that does a really good job at completely covering the range of human vision.

When I can get VR that has a comfortable resolution that isn't going to cause a screen door effect, has a high enough refresh rate to not make it feel like I have a concussion, and PCs can more easily drive those resolutions at those refresh rates, with inside out tracking, and 150+ degrees field of view for under $500, that's when I'll buy VR. I don't care to spend money to be an alpha tester.

I HATE Facebook with a passion and that's my answer to this thread!

First reply nailed it.

because Facebook.

I really like my Odyssey+

https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/mediaresources/Samsung_HMD_Odyssey_plus/techspecs

It I has good specs and effective inside-out tracking, affordable, and the screen door effect is almost gone because of their design

No need for FB

My main complaints are: could still be higher res, not glasses friendly (although I got lens protectors on and it's fine), and wireless or at least a 2x as long cable would be better for roomscale

Requires Facebook which sucks but I'm not missing re4 vr

Because I’m prone to simulation sickness.

It‘s why I had to sell my Rift, and until VR can solve that one, I’m out of the market.

Also facebook for me. Blech.

I am curious how many people in here AREN'T from the US? My friends don't get why I deleted mine. It seems most people on this site hate Facebook like me.

Oculus is a great VR headset, however, they tend to move on from hardware very quickly. I bought a Rift S on release day in 2019, and they've already announced Quest 2 exclusives less than two years later (Resident Evil 4), not to mention they discontinued production of the Rift S just a year after release.

The VR war, like all format wars, will be decided by pornography.

Correct answer

This is my only knock. I love the thing. It's awesome! Buuuuut, yeah that Facebook integration sucks.

they make the games too slow paced for pussies with motion sickness/dumb games down.

people with motion sickness has held vr back for people that dont, just like aim assist has held back gamers on controllers who dont need aim assist to aim they always gotta cater to the handicapped,

What a ridiculously stupid post.

Xobxzelur should have put all his thoughts in one post instead of two which is unnecessary.

Preferably, at that rate, he should keep them to himself.

i want quake 3 arena speed games, not slow paced granny crawlers wih no ability to jump like half life alyx.

Need some cheese with that whine?

he's not wrong. the walk speed in vr is annoying if u don't need the slow movement and u get to speed up the movement speed u only end up noticing how dump the Ai in the games and how slow they move. also dev need to understand no everyone is in love with roomscale. So they need to add better options for those who do wish to stand up to play videogames after getting home from work. i own a quest 2 and barely use it had the rift and gave it away to my son who doesn't use it

Motion sickness has nothing to do with being a “p****”.

That is such an incredibly infantile and silly claim to make; it’s as stupid and ignorant as saying that people who have epileptic seizures are p****** because their brains can’t jive the input they’re receiving. I’ve seen some asinine takes in my time on the boards, but I think that one takes the cake.

The only thing that post contributed of any value whatsoever was demonstrating the amount of posts he’s contributed to the boards; far too many.

I have been into vr since the beginning and following the tech closely.

motion sickness has been a problem since the beginning, this was a major hurdle and the biggest reason why it was discontinued in the end nineties. Companies thought they needed more framerate to solve it (and by that better hardware) and so the tech was put on hold.

The military however did continue it and had research papers on it, which were classified. The research was not only about vr but also about flight simulators and about astronauts, which also showed similar effects in motion sickness. You can imagine how motion sickness is a major problem when it comes to military operations so this was researched to the bottom.

I don't know exactly when these documents were declassified but they were available when vr manufacturers were confronted with the motion sickness again in the midst of last decade. People were still getting motion sick, this while they had hardware that was powerfull enough to drive enough frames.

It is quite likely valve has been reading those declassified research papers around that time. Because then they came up with roomscale games and after roomscale came also teleport. The rest is history.

What those papers said about motion sickness is quite simple, you have an organ in your inner ear that kinda works like a builders level, but like multiple working together, which can measure inertia and balance.

But your brain also relies on your vision for balance, so if your vision is giving different information than your inner ear organ about motion you can get motion sick. For example, in vr vision says moving, but inner ear organ says not moving, same with flight simulator.

Car sickness and sea sickness is just the other way around, your vision says not moving, but inner ear says moving. With astronauts the inner ear organ goes berserk since there is no gravity.

Still about 50 percent of the people is immune for this, and of the other 50 percent you have a seizable portion that can train it, but not all are able to train the discomfort away completely, they can train it enough to not get sick, but not enough to be completely comfortable.

and then you have people who cannot train it at all. So after all this also a bit about economics, people who get motion sick will not play games that make them sick.

But there is more to the story, the information your brain gets from visual cues and the inner organ gets more intertwined when you become an adult, and this is the catch with a lot of youngsters who are so called immune, some of them don't stay immune.

It wouldn't be the first post I see on reddit by a teenager who is suddenly becoming motion sick when using vr with free locomotion (and didn't had it before).

@DEVILinIRON: there is a catch with the quest 2, it uses an encoding and decoding system to drive data over a lower connection. For example 4k 90 fps at 24 bit color depth is like 18 gbps.

Hdmi 2.1 can support up to 48 gbps, the quest will already add 20 ms of latency at 500 mpbs ( 1 gbps = 1000 mpbs), because of the encoding and decoding.

It also use other tech to optimize bandwitdh, it will show the edges of the screen in lower resolution, since that is blurred by the way your vision works and the lenses anyway, and it will use lower color depth. It also uses AI to predict your movement to counter the extra latency.

It uses this same system when using usb (the usb connnection it has only support 5 gbps, and that is theoretical, practical, because of the length of the cable it's more around 1 gbps). the extra bandwith here doesn't matter since it won't speed up the codec process.

It can be completely wireless though, even if you use it with a pc, and that is the biggest strength of the headset, well that and the price

Don't forget that all these system also add extra heat and weight into the headset. If wireless is not somethign you care about (like I do) you might be better of with a cabled option, if you are willing to pay for it, because all the other headsets are considerably more expensive, but they also won't run into bottlenecks when games get more demanding.

Its HTC Vive. Not Valve Vive. And noooe.

@commander: Thanks for the answer.

@palasta: steam vr = valve

roomscale came before teleport

no problem, there is also the thing that you need a facebook account though, as pretty much everyone has said.

I don't like or use facebook either, but I still have an oculus, it's a cv1 though, and it still doesn't need a mandatory facebook account, but even in 2022 (when that will be necessary) that won't happen for me. I use an older build of the software and blocked it from the internet.

I play all my games on steam vr anyway.

Those builds can still be found online as well, so if you would buy a rift or rift s second handed , technically you would be able to use it without a facebook account.

I also read that there is like a dev option on the quest 2 , which makes that you no longer need a facebook account either. Allthough I haven't looked into this much.

There are a lot of options for vr headset, but oculus has been the best bang for the buck since always. But the quests are no rifts, and the rifts are discontinued.

Frankly, a lot depends on your budget and what you want. If you want standalone (like with no pc) there isn't really another option at the time than the quest 1 or quest 2.

IF you want wireless with a pc there is another option than the quest 2, vive has a wireless option as well, but it's very expensive, still, it is more performant as well, and works with vive pro and vive pro 2 for instance.

If you don't care for wireless, there are a lot of options, especially on the second hand market as well, but there are a lot of differences. It's hard for me to say what would be best for you, if you don't say what games you want to play, what pc you have, what your budget is, and if you're willing to buy second handed.

Still , If you want buy new, and 350$ is your budget there is no other opton than the quest 2.

IF you have a bigger budget and you don't care for wireless, the hp reverb g2 is very interesting, it has a higher quality screen than the quest 2, even than the index, and the vive pro. The vive pro 2 is then better again but also more expensive. Also keep in mind that the index controllers can be used with any vive or pimax headset.

They can even be used with other headsets like windows mr headsets or rifts for that matter with a workaround (like with adding an usb tracker)

Meh, just not my thing.

@commander: interesting read thanks, I didn’t realize motion sickness was so prevalent an issue.

I have been holding out hope that as this technology evolves out from its infancy that better tech, higher resolutions, wider FoV, higher framerates and the like will help mitigate the problem so I can try again, but the truth is, I think I’m borked regardless. I was very enthusiastic in my early days of ownership that I foolishly attempted to force acclimatization instead of slowly building up my tolerance (as I read a bit too late). Now when I even think about VR, I get fairly queasy still, years later.

But the technology is incredible. I remember using Revive to play a Rift game on my Vive, I forget the name but you were a robot in a zero-g environment on a space station and could use your hands to grab onto the walls and push yourself around. I would literally nearly fall forward out of my chair when coming to a stop in game. I originally thought I’d be cognizant enough to recognize I was in a simulation and would be able to overwhelm what my brain was telling me by sheer force of will.....yeah right. It is hard to express just how convincing it is to your brain that what it’s seeing in VR is what you’re doing. Given how eye-opening that experience was, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell, no matter the technological advancements, that I’ll ever be able to reconcile with my head what an absolute mindfuck VR is. I was expecting it to be cool, what I not expecting was it to be such a powerful experience.

Eventually I resigned myself to artistic programs (Tiltbrush, etc), but even sitting still or walking around the room in a stationary environment turned me green. I’ve always been very susceptible to motion sickness so should’ve known better, but had to try.

@MirkoS77: I think we already discussed your motion sickness to some extent.

It's quite possible that since you tried to force yourself that this has triggered an respons when you even just touch the headset, because some people just can't be trained, and its not a good idea to push through if you can't be trained.

I'm one of them to so I always stuck with teleport and I will never even try games anymore that don't support it, in the past I did play games that were more forgiving, like lone echo, that is the game you're talking about, but in the end it still makes me sick as well.

As for you, when I saw your name when I quoted you , I already thought about your situation before you replied.

The fact that you would be conditioned is certainly a valid reason. I don't know how far you took it but it might be something else as well.

I mean if the vr isn't convincing enough, it would have a similar effect, as in your eyes don't see you move, but you move.

That made me wonder if it's not a setting with ipd, or the screen door effect on the vive is too strong (it is really atrocious on teh vive), or maybe you need glasses.

Or the apps you tried don't have proper roomscale support, the floor is not even in your playspace or there is a problem with the tracking.

The fov could be a problem, but that could be easily tested, if you have it with diving goggles you should get motion sick as well. Or the pass through option on the vive should have given that away as well (but that still could be the screen door effect too, or the ipd, setting, or the fact you need glasses, or the tracking for that matter)

Anyway I'm sure there is a logical solution to your problem, if you don't get motion sick just walking around without vr, you shouldn't get motion sick in vr as well, with a proper setup that is.

Expensive. Bulky. Not many good games.

Unless you want to be an early adopter for VR technology and play lots of shit that feels like tech demos, I don't really see why you'd want an Oculus.

I find VR fucking awesome, but I'm not gonna be there until it's at least closer to the potential it has.

skyrim, fallout, borderlands, lone echo, halflife alyx aren't tech demo's.

A lot of games are very fleshed out and there's a ton of variety.

Your reasoning would have made sense somewhere around 2016-2017