VR - Is it really going to be a success? Or, thanks Time for starting a discussion!

I had to RMA my Quest after it stopped turning on. Oculus support was very responsive and sent out a new unit pretty quickly.

I’m pissed. Was really looking forward to hearing how you like your sims in VR vs. normal. Sorry Brian.

You are transmitting the wifi across the house for the quest 2?

If so, an extender has a high chance of significantly increasing latency, which would be terrible for VR purposes. You might be better off getting a powerline internet kit where the end node can transmit wifi.

I have this set which works really well for me carrying NBN100 internet down a concrete floor and extending fast wifi signal around the house:

I’ll be a bit pedantic here and suggest that Powerline (which I use too) will probably not improve latency. Powerline is really just WiFi with copper instead of air as the transmission medium.

Copper cables will carry signal through walls and concrete floors much better than air. Of course it depends on the house and specific setup, but it’s just my experience that I had significantly higher ping and lower download speeds on a Wifi Extender that powerline completely fixed.

I don’t have a Quest 2 (yet), just basing this on internet performance, is it a completely different equation when the router is transmitting data from your PC instead of the outside world?

Do you mean you can plug the wifi extender to an ethernet port in the wall which connects to your router? If so, that will definitely be the best option.

When I hear wifi extender I think of those devices that take wifi from a router and then sends out its own wifi signal. That might be a wifi repeater, I am not up on the jargon.

I have a powerline but it doesn’t give out a good, constant signal, at all. I guess it depends on the electrical installation.

I recommend using a different SSID on the extender so you know which network you’re on. Most devices will automatically switch to the best network signal. I had an issue with my extender network with the same SSID where devices would somehow get stuck on the lowest signal source.

I took a class during my Master’s degree from one of the developers of the Powerline standard. It really borrows heavily from WiFi for its basic protocols–it’s OFDM, with many of the same data protection and packing features as WiFi–but with some modifications to both alleviate noise issues specific to power lines and take advantage of the presumably less crowded channel. I’m still not sure, though, how well it deals with phase jumping.

The power delivered by the utility comes in 3 phases (in most countries) delivered on 3 separate power lines, because it’s easy to generate with rotating machines like electrical turbine generators, and easy to transmit for technical reasons. Each phase contains rated line voltage relative to a central “neutral” point. In the United States, usually only two phases are actually brought to each house, with phases divided up to balance load between them. And then at your electrical panel, the two phases are divided up between the electrical loads in your home. Usually it’s every other breaker, but sometimes installers will put one phase on one side of the panel and the other phase on the other side. The phases are not actually electrically connected to each other. So you could definitely have the outlets in your living room on one phase and the outlets in your bedroom on another, electrically isolated from each other. In order to bridge the gap between those two, the Powerline uses the few circuits in your breaker box that utilize both phases. (Usually for big loads like an electrical dryer or central A/C unit.) It actually transmits across the phases through the air at those points, and that might cause some extra signal degradation and/or latency.

Looks super cool, narrator’s voice is too course though. Doesn’t blend well.

I thought the same, the protagonist voice felt… amateur?

Yes, absolutely.

I am - creatively…
Mellified

image

Yeah, this is gonna go great…

For you Beat Saber dudes plugging away at the Hard levels some recommendations:

  • Baeleric Pumping in volume 1 and Unlimited Power in volume 2 are actually difficult and interesting Hard tracks. Those will teach you advanced rhythms and techniques you’ll need for Expert. Some of my favorite Expert tracks are terrible on Hard, for instance Rum and Bass is dead boring and easy on Hard–I full combo’d it first try with fast/disappearing arrows on–but is one of the absolute best Expert and Expert+ tracks.
  • Crab Rave is a really good song to practice for patterns. Nearly every swing of either blade alternates ups and downs, so good practice for integrating different rhythms of your two hands.
  • Pop/Stars is how I moved from Hard to Expert. It’s varied, fun, and cool to dance to.

If you’re looking to buy add-on packs, I have them all. Here’s my ranking:

  1. MonsterCat - Some of the best songs in the game. A must have.
  2. Rocket League - Really energetic songs with some of the best flow out there.
  3. Timbaland - Complex, interesting, cool
  4. Panic at the Disco - mostly just for Greatest Showman, which is a blast to play)
  5. Imagine Dragons - these songs are long and repetitive, but have some of the most difficult and interesting patterns in the game
  6. Linkin Park - fun to rage to
  7. BTS - this is actually pretty fun, but all kind of sounds samey
  8. Green Day - bleh. Fun because I know the songs, but the songs are boring to play.

@schurem what’s the status on your RMA?

I have these lens holders, plus the prescription lenses from Zenni Optical. Saved me about $200 over what the other places would charge. I do have a pretty strong prescription though.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/723470150/oculus-prescription-lens-adapter-quest-2

Hi Matt, new member here. A couple of you friended me on Oculus presumably because I’m a (real world) friend of krayzkrok, so I found out where you were all hiding :)

Thanks for your interesting ranking of the Beat Saber DLC. I’ve been playing since November and finished the campaign before starting to get the extra music packs. Weirdly, I have the bottom five in your list but not the top three. There’s no accounting for taste I guess!

My experience has been that the add-on packs are on average one level harder than the built-in ones. So ‘hard’ for the Linkin Park dlc is about the same as ‘expert’ on $100 bils etc. Do you find this as well?

I’ve found with Beat Saber that my sweet spot between challenge and enjoyment are the hard levels - they’re easy enough that I can usually get a full combo, but challenging enough to make me feel like a jedi. On expert I’m mostly just anxious about ‘that really difficult section’ that’s coming up in the middle, and whether I’ll have to hear that really depressing music slowdown effect when I fail.

At the moment my ego is lifted by constantly beating krayzkrok’s best scores on hard using the modifiers if necessary :D but he’s gradually catching up! If he gets these new prescription lenses he might even be able to see well enough to move to Expert :D

Anyway, Beat Saber is the only action game I play - everything else is puzzlers and narratives (oh, and Flight Simulator 2020!) I am 50 years old after all. Having more Oculus friends might encourage me to play more multiplayer stuff though. I tried playing Beat Saber online with krayzkrok and it worked pretty well even with his terrible wifi, but we didn’t try it while in a ‘live party’ so I’m not sure if the voice coms would be a disaster while the music is playing. Anyone tried it?

That looks good.