2813

Anyone tried ALVR or Riftcat with the Quest? I’m gonna give it a go when I get home (though my aging PC may just laugh at me), but people are reporting that it works, that with ASW, the Quest can work really well as a streaming target for PCVR content.

2814

Wow, I would really like to invest in this, but I just can’t give up wireless anymore. The ability to play Beat Saber or Boxing without worrying about cables is more important now than the image quality. The technology is there, wish Valve would say something about wireless support in the future.

I might get the new controllers though, will continue to watch reviews on them. The Vive Wands are limited in interactions.

2815

Thanks for the link, JP! After reading that, I decided to go for it and reserve the full Index kit. I really want the new controllers and I think the new lighthouse tracking boxes will be a nice improvement for me. I have a long-ish, rectangular playspace and there are a few spots in the room where the original boxes sometimes lose track of me and flake out. So, might as well go for the new headset while I’m at it!

Too bad I gotta wait until September 30th.

2816

Thanks! This track with what Reddit says. According to them it’s the second most requested feature and Vive already has it so they need to get on it fast.

John Carmack posted a laundry list of QoL fixes today. This was not one of them. Tho dark mode for using controllers in theaters is.

2817

I got it working. It wasn’t too difficult. And then I spent 30 minutes flying around Google Earth VR in my Quest, which worked great. It’s a little bit fuzzy compared to what I saw when I did it with the Vive a couple of years ago, but is definitely working great. And the fuzziness could be down to my shitty PC. I tried Subnautica too, and that was a bit jankier–still playable and gorgeous, but quite fuzzy. I’m gonna try The Lab and Obduction next. Google Earth is fantastic–all the controller inputs are mapped correctly and it’s just clean, smooth, and easy.

2818

‘Tested’ does a half hour on the Index.

2819

Ben Kuchera has impressions too:

[T]his is an enthusiast product, with all the baggage that comes with that term. I still don’t feel like I have everything perfectly setup after a few days of play, but it’s also clear that, at its best, the Index offers a VR experience that Oculus currently can’t compete with.

The trick is that Oculus isn’t competing on technology, at least not entirely. The company is focusing on simplicity and a low price. The Index swings so heavily in the opposite direction that it almost feels silly to compare the two platforms; you’re either willing to pay for the best, and to invest the time to make the system sing, or you’re not.

2820

So, ALVR for the Quest. This basically allows you to play PCVR games wirelessly on your Quest headset. It will stream VR video over WiFi from your PC and stream position/controller data back to your PC from the headset. This allows you to play Steam VR games like Google Earth VR, The Lab, Subnautica, etc. The video quality I get isn’t what you’d see with a wired high-end set, but that’s probably because my PC struggles. Reports on Reddit are that it works well with pretty good quality video if your PC can handle it. To install, you basically:

  1. Sign up as a developer on the Oculus site.
  2. Put your Quest into developer mode using the app.
  3. Sideload the ALVR apk using the Android Debug Bridge (adb).
  4. Install the ALVR app on your PC.
  5. Install Steam VR and whichever games/apps you want to play on your PC using Steam.
  6. Start up ALVR in the Quest. Then run the ALVR app on your PC, and start up the server. Steam VR should start automatically and prompt you to set up your chaperone area, which is a little bit of a pain. I recommend turning off your Auto Shutoff setting on the Quest while doing this because you can’t wear the headset. I found it easiest to set it up in Advanced mode using just the corners of my play area.
  7. Then it should drop you into your Steam VR home screen on the Quest and you can select and play games.

I found that with less taxing content like Google Earth, it just works and works well. There is a 3D model of the Quest controllers in there, so everything maps perfectly, including touch inputs. Google Earth is probably my favorite VR app. With Subnautica, the visuals were pretty degraded (though viewable) and if I turned too quickly, I’d see blackness at the edge of the scene for a fraction of a second while the renderer struggled to keep up with my motion. But controller inputs map to the Quest controllers reasonably well without tweaking (though it took me a minute to figure out I had to select menu items by looking at them) and it’s pretty awesome to see the rendered ocean all around.

2821

The comments I keep seeing between the two, if you’re gaming for short periods of time the Oculus is fine, but for longer periods you need the Index. In my thinking however, if you’re going through the trouble to mount one of these on your head you’re going to be playing for a decent amount of time. If you’re playing a flight sim, you’re definitely going to be playing for more than an hour. So that would kind push one towards the Index?

2822

What I read is the Index is better in these ways:

  1. somewhat more comfortable to wear.
  2. much better positional audio.
  3. wider and more adjustable FoV due to some clever mechanical tricks.
  4. the knuckles controllers

But worse in these ways:

  1. no inside-out tracking; you still need tracking stations
  2. costs more than twice as much
  3. harder and more fiddly to set up and use

That feels to me like a contest between consoles and PC.

2823

That’s a great idea! If they get it working well, would be the best of both worlds. Like a hermaphrodite.

2824

For general use, I’d say that is accurate but not so much for flight sims at this point in time.

  1. The increased refresh rate is a non-starter given higher hardware demands and lower frame rates.
  2. The knuckles controllers aren’t usable for most sims.
  3. Cockpit games don’t require moving around, so inside out tracking is adequate.
  4. Oculus level ergonomics is adequate for long sessions.

This generation I’d go for Rift S or Reverb unless your IPD is outside of the “standard” range as these don’t allow adjustment.

Rift S

  • Lower refresh will help frames.
  • Simple setup with no extra stations - means more open USB ports for HOTAS and whatnot.
  • Better ASW (fill in the gaps) for when frames do tank.
  • Great comfort.
  • Great controls.
  • Lowish price.

Reverb

  • Insane resolution helps spotting bad-guys and reading dials. Hardware demands are an issue, but you could undersample and still get benefit.
  • so-so tracking adequate for flight sims.
  • Crappy controls are a non-issue.

Resolution is a huge deal for sims, so I’m personally swaying towards the Reverb.

Edit: Here’s a sim-centric review for the Reverb. The reviewer is a bit hard to take, but it does highlight that specific use case.

2825

My impression is that the inside out tracking actually works better than tracking with base stations.

2826

New, London-set PSVR exclusive game Blood & Truth is reviewing really well. I still can’t justify getting another headset, but at this point I think I might get both a Rift v3 (or Index v2) and a PSVR2 when the PS5 releases.

2827

For cockpit games specifically?

2828

No, in general, though I can’t find any direct support for that now. My impression has been that the lighthouse tracking is somewhat glitchy. Insight seems to be pretty flawless and can be moved from position to position, or even room to room with ease.

2829

Everything that I read, the reviewers seem to feel inside-out is “good enough” but not as good for room-scale tracking as the lighthouse sensor. So a trade-off between convenience/cheaper vs accuracy/fidelity. I haven’t been able to compare the two myself, though, so I’m just going off of what I’ve read. I could be wrong!

2830

The wider field of view also goes a surprisingly long way to make the experience of wearing the headset feel much less claustrophobic; it feels much more like actually seeing an existing place rather than peering at the world through a set of binoculars.

Enthusiastic comments like this about the wider field of view are enough to get me onboard. It doesn’t sound like much when they say 20 or 30 degrees wider in the specs but it’s great that the folks doing hands-on early impressions are unanimously impressed by what a difference it makes.

2831

It seems I’m not alone in my issues with the Quest controllers locking up my system:

2832

The Tested video also mentioned that the lenses seemed similar to Vive, and hadn’t much improved the god ray effect from there. But also that the lenses were maybe not final (which I doubt).