Are we there yet?

ImMrChris

ImMrChris

ImMrChris

Man of Honour
Joined
12 Feb 2004
Posts
3,191
Location
Herne Bay, UK
I have to say after owning a Reverb G2 for sim racing and actually prefering my triple screens due to the blurriness outside the sweet spot i was dubious about buying another VR headset but....

Damn the Quest 3, I feel like we are finally in a place where the 14 year old me dreamed about in VR! I've been sitting here for a few days just watching replays of my old races in Assetto Corsa in OpenVR @ a resolution of about 4.5k from a 4090 with the encode rate of 500Mbps over the link cable it's actually astonishing how good it looks

which is good in a way but bad that it's peaked my interest in the highend headsets (Crystal, Aero etc) can they really be any better? and why oh why can i not be happy lol

I see Varjo have some news coming on the 27th I'm excited for VR again

do you think we are there yet? it's only going to get better right?
 
I've had a similar experience for nearly a year now with the Quest Pro which was meh as a standalone headset in terms of visuals (very good in other respects) but is simply astonishing in PCVR, despite it not being as high resolution as the Q3.

I'm sure we'll see some stonking headsets released in the near future. We've got Deckard to look forward to as well as the new Varjo.

However there is still the issue that most of the game development is going to standalone on the Meta platform where there are far more customers.

Possibly the only true saviours of PCVR are the hard working and talented modders who are converting lots of 2D games to VR, and often doing a better job than the big developers and publishers.
 
Going from an Oculus CV2 to G2 was a bigger step up than a G2 to Crystal in terms of comfort. But the Crystal image quality is fantastic. Just the drawback of not being as comfortable.
But
As said above it is getting better with each new product. Just better in different areas.
 
Another issue is the higher resolution headsets need top of the range PC hardware, which is far out of the reach of most people's budgets.

Even with eye-tracked foveated rendering you still need a hefty GPU to run high end PCVR.
 
The Crystal has put me right back to where I was when I got my Reverb Pro around 2019 with my 2080ti. The Reverb sort of ran ok with the 2080ti but didn't reach its full potential until I got my 4090 which allowed maximum settings with some super-sampling thrown in. I expect the Crystal to reach its peak once I get my RTX 7090 or something.
The Crystal, even with its weirdness, is something else when it comes down to detail. HL:Alyx anti-grav glove is a thing of marvel to look at.

(Crystal, Aero etc) can they really be any better?
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My Crystals 30 day Amazon return window ends tomorrow so I put my Reverb G2v2 back on to see if I could go back to it. I tried a quick game of Elite Dangerous and Skyrim. I spent about 10 minutes wondering how I thought this headsets resolution was ok. The Crystal is so far ahead of the Reverb, even with super-sampling , that I felt like I was going back to a PSVR1.
 
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ImMrChris said:
I have to say after owning a Reverb G2 for sim racing and actually prefering my triple screens due to the blurriness outside the sweet spot i was dubious about buying another VR headset but....

Damn the Quest 3, I feel like we are finally in a place where the 14 year old me dreamed about in VR! I've been sitting here for a few days just watching replays of my old races in Assetto Corsa in OpenVR @ a resolution of about 4.5k from a 4090 with the encode rate of 500Mbps over the link cable it's actually astonishing how good it looks

which is good in a way but bad that it's peaked my interest in the highend headsets (Crystal, Aero etc) can they really be any better? and why oh why can i not be happy lol

I see Varjo have some news coming on the 27th I'm excited for VR again

do you think we are there yet? it's only going to get better right?
Click to expand...

It's already great now but VR in 10 years is going to be pretty incredible.
 
wickfut said:
The Crystal has put me right back to where I was when I got my Reverb Pro around 2019 with my 2080ti. The Reverb sort of ran ok with the 2080ti but didn't reach its full potential until I got my 4090 which allowed maximum settings with some super-sampling thrown in.
The Crystal, even with its weirdness, is something else when it comes down to detail. HL:Alyx anti-grav glove is a thing of marvel to look at.


My Crystals 30 day Amazon return window ends tomorrow so I put my Reverb G2v2 back on to see if I could go back to it. I tried a quick game of Elite Dangerous and Skyrim. I spent about 10 minutes wondering how I thought this headsets resolution was ok. The Crystal is so far ahead of the Reverb, even with super-sampling , that I felt like I was going back to a PSVR1.
Click to expand...

I wonder how the crystal compares to the quest 3 now! anyone got both?
 
Are we there yet? I have been there since I first put on the Oculus Rift Civ1 in 2016. It's never been about the graphics for me, it's about the immersion that VR brings to games. I was hooked from the moment the T-Rex ran down the corridor towards me and roared in the Dreamdeck demo. And I was hooked again when I first started up Elite Dangerous in VR and looked at the ship in the hanger.

I have been there ever since, from the giddy adventures in a Star Ship to chilling out with good friends playing Walkabout Golf. (it's more cursing than chilling really :p )

VR has been here for ages, and it's getting better all the time. It's just people are a little slow on the uptake.
 
I reckon the q5 is going to be special. I struggle to see where the massive upgrade comes from for the q4, I don't think varifocal lenses will be in place by then, and if they are, it'll be the start of the tech. Maybe micro-oled screens? I'm thinking by the time 5 comes along though, we're looking at almost glasses size.

I was hooked the moment I tried my q2 for the first time though. Great fun, especially with the right crowd (and Mel).
 
Wonder in 3-4 generations time will they have enough power to be able to pre-process the displayed info to eliminate the need for prescription lenses.
 
Got a Q2 and a Q3, and yet last night I was wearing the CV1 and drinking sherry. Even low res VR is still amazing.
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I couldn't believe it when I tried a CV1 for the first time and I had hands in VR. Those CV1 touch controllers were incredible. So well balanced they just felt like they disappeared when you used them.

What amazes me is how good those old Oculus PC games look on modern headsets. They have a level of detail that stands up even on the clear lenses and high resolutions of newer hardware, and their VR interactions are better than many modern games.

Shame Meta has effectively abandoned that market. I still hope some of those games can get native Q3 conversions so more people can experience them.
 
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tyke_ said:
afaik @Zeeflyboy boy has. I've owned a Varjo Aero (£2k when i bought it) and a Quest 3, if I could only have 1 of them right now it'd be the Quest without a shadow of doubt.
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Due to how good the Quest 3 I’m tempted to invest in an Aero or a Crystal but due to their age I’m not sure if it’d be a real upgrade from the Quest 3 maybe I’ll wait for the next gen like the Deckard
 
ImMrChris said:
Due to how good the Quest 3 I’m tempted to invest in an Aero or a Crystal but due to their age I’m not sure if it’d be a real upgrade from the Quest 3 maybe I’ll wait for the next gen like the Deckard
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The Aero has greater clarity but it's not like a night and day difference, the Quest is 25 PPD, the Aero is 35 PPD. The Aero's fov is less (vertical especially is poor), there's no audio, you need to buy basestations and controllers, no standalone, no mixed reality, no easy way to do things like watch Netflix or movies etc, no wifi capability, etc. I can't really comment on the Crystal as I've no experience with it, it's also 35 PPD. I had a Crystal pre-order reservation but didn't go through with it. The Somnium VR1 looks great on paper.
 
VR still isn't a comfortable enough experience for long periods of time for me. I'm happy to have a play on something for 45 minutes or so but anything beyond that it's just not that enjoyable.
 
Seems like something new from Varjo being announced end of this month, could be worth waiting at this point to see what they’ve got planned if interested in investing in high end Vr
 
ImMrChris said:
I wonder how the crystal compares to the quest 3 now! anyone got both?
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Quest 3 has very slightly more FoV and better clarity across the lens with no issues regarding distortion if your eyes aren’t lined up right… also very little CA compared to the Crystal. It’s lighter and much, much smaller. Also of course has the best standalone game store by a country mile.

Crystal is huge by comparison, but significantly better quality image… not just in pure resolution but colour and contrast isn’t really comparable. If playing DCS (or I guess Pavlov) then Quad views with foveated rendering is genuinely transformative for performance and the crystal is a no-brainer if DCS is a big factor in your gaming.
 
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