General VR Catch-All

Orphu wrote:

Yeah, sadly, I'd given up on Oculus a while back due to their privacy and data collection policies, and this only pushes me away further.

They collect a ton of info on you via the headset. Even if you have a fake FB account, you should be concerned.

https://www.oculus.com/legal/privacy...

Westworld Spoiler

Spoiler:

Are you suggesting they are going to learn our every move and create replicas to replace us? :)

Maybe I’ve just given up but it seems like I interact with so many digital platforms that collect my data I just assume a lot of it is already being stored. I guess for the enjoyment that I get from my Quest and the data Facebook already has on me, I’m willing to put up with more FB intrusion.

Do folks who are avoiding Oculus use Facebook or do you avoid all of their platforms? I guess since they already have all of my FB account info, not sure the additional info they’d be getting from Oculus bothers me too much. If you are avoiding Facebook altogether then totally makes sense.

Docjoe wrote:

Do folks who are avoiding Oculus use Facebook or do you avoid all of their platforms? I guess since they already have all of my FB account info, not sure the additional info they’d be getting from Oculus bothers me too much. If you are avoiding Facebook altogether then totally makes sense.

Binned my FB account 2-3 years ago and have never looked back. GWJ is the only social media I use, and my life is all the better for it.

Yeah then that totally makes sense. I only occasionally use FB but it is the main way that some of my family communicates and I occasionally get some important reach outs via Messenger. But agree, the less I use it the better my mental health. I do use other social platforms though especially LinkedIn.

My wife on the other hand lives on Facebook as do her friends.

Jonman wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

Do folks who are avoiding Oculus use Facebook or do you avoid all of their platforms? I guess since they already have all of my FB account info, not sure the additional info they’d be getting from Oculus bothers me too much. If you are avoiding Facebook altogether then totally makes sense.

Binned my FB account 2-3 years ago and have never looked back. GWJ is the only social media I use, and my life is all the better for it.

I did the same, though for me it was more like 6 years ago. I finally bailed on Twitter at the beginning of this year. Both have been great for my mental health.

As far as privacy and data collection is concerned, though, I do carry a phone everywhere with me and I'm pretty sure that's tracking my every movement so it's hard for me to get too up-in-arms over whatever facebook is doing with the Oculus hardware, even if I won't personally buy one.

staygold wrote:

I'm unabashedly in love with my Valve Index.

My game of the year for 2020 is the Outer Wilds.

Marry the two and you've got the Greatest of All Time.

Stumbled across NomaiVR which is a VR implementation of Outer Wilds and it is as mind blowing, disorienting, beautiful, and all around game changing as you'd think. Only got a chance to put 30 minutes in and there's a fair bit of jank and even as someone with iron VR legs, still feeling a bit funky after but WOW. I can't wait to play through my favourite game of the year (and probably my number 2 all time) again in my favourite new platform.

This is the first I've heard of the Outer Wilds VR mod... That would be a special first play through in VR. What a game! I can't think of anything else with that knowledge-based game play loop. So good.

In a similar vein, I'm sure GWJers have been in the loop on the Mother VR mod for Alien: Isolation. I just fired it up this week and good god is that a singular experience! And maybe not in a good way. It's too immersive and feels too real. When I first played AI, I didn't realize it was developed with VR in mind. Playing it now, it has convinced me more than anything I've tried so far that VR has a future beyond novelty escape room type experiences. I can't recommend it enough (maybe not though? I think I've given myself an ucler hiding from the Alien).

Having just purchased an Oculus like a month ago, this news with FB is disheartening. I suppose it will position me to consider an alternative down the line when their ransomware gets too cumbersome.

(Edit: realized I heard about Alien Isolation in VR from this very thread, thanks to ToxicWaltz for the recommend!).

kazar wrote:
Orphu wrote:

Yeah, sadly, I'd given up on Oculus a while back due to their privacy and data collection policies, and this only pushes me away further.

They collect a ton of info on you via the headset. Even if you have a fake FB account, you should be concerned.

https://www.oculus.com/legal/privacy...

Westworld Spoiler

Spoiler:

Are you suggesting they are going to learn our every move and create replicas to replace us? :)

That's why I wear a separate headset over my Quest and spoof my location via Google Earth.

I played a bit if Pro Putt on the Quest and that game is really great. I also sideloaded Ancient Dungeon (appears to also be on PC) and that's a really cool rogue-like.

Anyone got a different VR golf recommendation that'll play in SteamVR (Vive), cos Pro Putt is Quest-exclusive by the look of things?

I played a bit of The Golf Club VR. Seemed OK? But I've had my setup in a smaller space due to COVID re-arrangement so I haven't been back to it because I am not confident in my ability to take a full swing without clobbering the wall/ceiling.

Yeah, it's kind of a long-term question for me anyway - my office and VR cave is in my basement with a low ceiling and beams. I'm moving house next year and wondering about a bigger space.

There's been some chatter in a few other threads (which seems to pop up every 8 months or so and really has been around since the DK1 days) about VR being "dead" or the "Star Citizen" of video game technology.

Call me naive but I think that's completely wrong. I came into VR an absolute skeptic. I thought it was over-hyped, the few times I had tried it in museums, or an old PSVR at work, I was thoroughly unimpressed; poor quality, screen doors, uncomfortable headsets, none of it sold me.

Now the endowment effect of spending $1,500 CDN on a Valve Index is probably a small factor in my current enjoyment, but I also have found there's a HUGE disconnect in both quality and comfort in early 2016/2017 VR games and newer ones (mid-2019 onwards). I don't know what the tech difference is, if people found new and better ways to reduce VR vertigo, or what, but I think a lot of the naysayers have just not experienced the transformative games that VR now has.

Another large factor to mass audience appeal is cost. The Quest was the best attempt so far at a "console" VR experience and I think we've seen just a hint at how massively hungry the console audience, plug-and-play types are for quality VR. My setup of a 2080ti and a Valve Index is definitely not "entry level" friendly (nearly $3k in technology right there before you add the rest of the PC) and so maybe my experience has been biased by only driving the cream of the VR crop.

My questions to this admittedly biased audience is, am I wearing rose coloured glasses or have the quality of games increased now that developers have a more robust platform and set of standards to develop for? What are your thoughts on VR now and going forward? In your opinion, how can we open VR to a wider audience?

Yeah I started one of those threads by jokingly hoping the new Xbox would support VR.

I agree that VR has become a viable commercial product and to me the Quest has been the breakthrough. I think the major obstacles have been complexity (having to set up the towers, etc) and cost. Quest has made it technically accessible to anyone since it is completely self contained and has brought the price to a point that is within reach of the non-enthusiast population.

The quality of the games has also really improved from “tech demo” to significant gaming experiences like Wrath of Asgard and Alyx. As the user base improves I think we’ll continue to see more full fledged games. But outside of typical games, there are so many amazing unique experiences like Beat Saber and Super Hot.

I think the requirement of strapping a device to your face will be off-putting to some people as well as the isolating experience and the disorientation that some people feel.

I think the way forward will frankly be the Quest, not the Index in terms of mass market appeal. Hopefully someone will give Oculus some real competition.

Interestingly some speculation that Quest 2 is about to be announced:

https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-ques...

At the risk of repeating myself in that other thread, I agree with you.

When someone says "VR is dead", what I hear is "I don't really pay attention the the VR side of the industry", because the facts are that the fundamentals are strong; Install base and attach rate are both healthy and growing. The industry is consolidating and solidifying. New games of increasing quality and complexity continue to be released and old games continue to be supported. Hardware is getting better and cheaper. Software (as you noted) has gotten radically better over the last couple of years as the basic technological problems of the medium are solved and the solutions become standard. VR-nausea is the poster boy for this - first gen software had a puke problem that has been largely solved (and I recognize that there's still improvements to be made, though perhaps only up to a limit. Your inner ear is still a thing, and the disconnect between it and what you're seeing is kind of the point of VR).

There is another interpretation to "VR is dead" and that's "VR is still not essential and entirely ignorable for the alpha gamer" (i.e. adding a silent "...to me" to the "VR is dead" claim), and that's still 100% true. Given this crowd, I suspect that's behind some of the sentiment. It continues to be an entirely optional niche - FOMO doesn't exist for it.

And that leads me to my prognostication. VR isn't going to be essential, short of sci-fi movie level advances in the tech. It's not going to replace monitors in the near-term. The "no-one wants to wear stupid glasses all the time" argument is very much true. But it also ignores the unique qualia of VR - it's not SUPPOSED to simply replace a monitor, it changes the fundamental way you visually interact with a game. So my corollary to it not being essential is that it will increasingly be a valid alternative modality.

That said, I think that longer-term, increases in visual fidelity open up more use-cases for it too. Imagine a VR headset that's a quarter of the weight and wireless, with no screen-door effect and equivalent sharpness and detail to sitting at your monitor. That becomes a valid option now for replacing the monitor for text-heavy document work.

And it is one of those things that has to be experienced to understand. I brought my Quest to work for some co-workers to try. Every one of them has now bought one and none of them were gamers.

I don't think I agree that VR was in anyway bad 3-4 years ago. I got the original Vive and had many great VR experiences that hold up even today. Arizona Sunshine, Raw Data, Superhot VR, Elite Dangerous, I Expect you to Die, Rick and Morty, and I can go on. I also don't think the hardware was that bad back then. Yes the Vive won't live up to today's hardware (and I am hoping an Index 2 comes next year which will be my upgrade path) but I was playing Elite Dangerous yesterday and it looks really good for a 4 year old VR headset.

I do agree that there are some really great modern games that have come out now that VR is no longer in it's infancy. Beat Saber and Half Life Alyx for example. But I see those games as the industry validating that VR is not a fad.

Call me naive but I think that's completely wrong. I came into VR an absolute skeptic. I thought it was over-hyped, the few times I had tried it in museums, or an old PSVR at work, I was thoroughly unimpressed; poor quality, screen doors, uncomfortable headsets, none of it sold me.

I think you just came in either a few months too early because the original HTC Vive (and from what I heard Occulus) both didn't have poor quality or screen doors (at least not to the point where it was noticeable once you were engaged). The headsets were uncomfortable at first, but even the original Vive came out with an add on to fix that.

kazar wrote:

I think you just came in either a few months too early because the original HTC Vive (and from what I heard Occulus) both didn't have poor quality or screen doors (at least not to the point where it was noticeable once you were engaged).

I disagree. Screen door is *very* pronounced on current hardware (mine is a Vive Pro), and there's a noticable drop in graphical sharpness from a decent monitor. To the extent that it's immediately noticable in brightly lit scenes (which is why games built from VR from the ground up often have darker backgrounds). I use VR for sim racing, and the drop in visual fidelity from monitor to headset is huge (but the increased presence and ability to turn your head to spot the apex during cornering more than makes up for that - my laptimes actually got noticably faster when I moved from screen to headset).

To my mind, shrinking that delta in visual quality between monitor and headset is the goal for the next gen of headset hardware.

I think you skipped over when I said

kazar wrote:

(at least not to the point where it was noticeable once you were engaged).

VR is probably still years away from being an objectively better product then a monitor. But VR isn't about being higher quality then a monitor. It is about presence and engagement. My point was once you are engaged, that stuff disappears. It is like judging a book by it's cover. Sure if you just stand there and look straight ahead it probably will look bad and not be enjoyable. But when you walk up to a door, grab the handle, open it and walk through, and then bump into a person and have a conversation where you feel like they are really standing beside you, all that goes away. And VR experiences 4 years ago nailed this in flying colors.

kazar wrote:

I think you skipped over when I said

kazar wrote:

(at least not to the point where it was noticeable once you were engaged).

VR is probably still years away from being an objectively better product then a monitor. But VR isn't about being higher quality then a monitor. It is about presence and engagement. My point was once you are engaged, that stuff disappears. It is like judging a book by it's cover. Sure if you just stand there and look straight ahead it probably will look bad and not be enjoyable. But when you walk up to a door, grab the handle, open it and walk through, and then bump into a person and have a conversation where you feel like they are really standing beside you, all that goes away. And VR experiences 4 years ago nailed this in flying colors.

I didn't miss that part, I was disagreeing with it.

I notice the screen door almost every time I put it on. I'm constantly aware of it and the resolution drop when sim racing in VR. And I'm on year 3 of VR'ing.

And I entirely recognize that I'm probably the outlier here. And don't let my complaining give you the impression I'm not super gung-ho about VR and all-in on it.

After years of skepticism about VR, I was ready to make the leap by buying a Quest as a Christmas gift for me and my wife from ourselves, purely to play Beat Saber and such. The new Facebook integrations Oculus is demanding have made me scratch those plans. I basically still only have a Facebook account to use Marketplace and because I have a couple of elderly relatives who are used to staying in touch through it; I want less Facebook in my life, not more. Meanwhile, nothing else I have seen offers the Quest's combination of ease of use (without the need for cables or tracking stations) and relative affordability.

I am intrigued by the idea of using VR for flight simulators and similar games, but I can't justify the pricetag, at least while there is still a visual fidelity tradeoff.

Guess I'll check up on VR again in another 2 years or so! Maybe by then there will actually be a practical and affordable device available which isn't controlled by an amoral entity fraying the fabric of our society.

Jonman wrote:

I didn't miss that part, I was disagreeing with it.

I notice the screen door almost every time I put it on. I'm constantly aware of it and the resolution drop when sim racing in VR. And I'm on year 3 of VR'ing.

And I entirely recognize that I'm probably the outlier here. And don't let my complaining give you the impression I'm not super gung-ho about VR and all-in on it.

I totally get that. One of my edits included a comment of eye of the beholder but I must have excluded it before posting. Some people get sick in VR. I have been using VR since the Vive came out and I am looking forward to the next gen (waiting until the next Index or equivalent since I don't want an Occulus) but I am still enjoying ever moment I spend with my Vive.

Quest 2 leaked, I wonder if it will be up for order tomorrow after Facebook Connect?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/othe...

https://youtu.be/_b8xf2DpAMk

Preorders are up, delivers on 10/13. $299 for 64 GB, $399 for 256.

I just preordered the 256, I am excite!

Docjoe wrote:

Preorders are up, delivers on 10/13. $299 for 64 GB, $399 for 256.

I just preordered the 256, I am excite!

Nice QoL improvements. Except the headband.

What an amazing price! Of course, you can afford to keep prices low when your actual product is your users.

Can anybody tell me what the fatal flaw of the HP Reverb G2 is?

Middcore wrote:

What an amazing price! Of course, you can afford to keep prices low when your actual product is your users.

Can anybody tell me what the fatal flaw of the HP Reverb G2 is?

For me it’s the cable.

Before you rush out to buy this, please take a look at the last few posts in "The Internet Was a Mistake" thread.
Please, do not give Facebook any more money.

My family is pretty Facebook entrenched already so I’m not too concerned about them getting more of my data. But I totally get others who are keeping their data away from companies and particularly FB not wanting to be part of this ecosystem.

And I’ll stop posting about the Oculus since I don’t think discussing that product is welcome on these boards, apologies.

No no no no. That isn't what I meant. The Quest 2 looks amazing! I'd be hard pressed not to buy the $299 version. It is such a huge step up. (aside from the lack of wireless PC link)

It isn't about facebook's data collection. Its their policies towards hate speech that are causing worldwide violence and death. Look at those posts. Facebook refused to take down a streaming suicide video. Ethnic genocide occurred in Ethiopia after the government had shut down the internet due to a popular public figures murder.

So does this one require a solid PC to work well or is it stand alone?