Virtual Reality

[Asura]

Tiktok has just bought Pico Neo - the manufacturer who was essentially the in-China equivalent of Oculus.

[Dogg Thang]

Well at least they are being bought by someone with a better privacy record than… oh, wait.

[Neon Ignition]

Silicon lining has shipped, shouldn't be long now, good time for it too as it's been too hot to be playing VR anyway

[MartyG]

Mine arrived, it's very cheap. Can't think these cost that much, reckon they'll tear pretty quickly and take a bit of cajoling to properly sit over the face plate. They feel fine on the face, but it's clearly not of the quality of the leather replacements they were sending out in limited numbers.

You're still going to be a lot better off getting one of the AMVR complete replacement sets if the stock one bothers you.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-09-27-resident-evil-4-vr-launches-next-month-via-oculus-quest-2

Resident Evil 4VR launches next month

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-09-29-ready-at-dawns-oculus-exclusive-sci-fi-sequel-lone-echo-2-gets-new-october-release-date

Lone Echo 2 launches 12 October

[Asura]

Some new software has emerged called Oculess, which apparently allows you to unlink your Quest 2 from Facebook, making it a dumb PCVR headset:

https://uploadvr.com/oculess-unlink-facebook-quest-2/

It's not perfect (yet), as you need to sideload the software, which requires you to register as a Facebook developer and jump through a load of hoops, but it's interesting to see progress being made in this area.

[Brad]

Looks promising - https://lynx-r.com

[MartyG]

Defo one to keep an eye on, but I personally wouldn't drop 530 Euros on a Kickstarter with no guarantee it'll ever make it to market. Their goal of £255,000 seems woefully inadequate for the project as does their target of April 2022 given the current market and manufacturing constraints.

XR2 chipset is the same as the Quest 2 and Vive Focus 3, so software ports shouldn't be an issue, hopefully this one completes (and the headset reviews well).

[Asura]

Looks promising - https://lynx-r.com

My main concern with that is that it uses hand tracking as its primary control system.

Hand-tracking for inside-out tracking headsets has a lot of problems. The Quest has it, but they only use it for certain experiences.

It struggles with fast-action experiences, where you're moving quickly (it would be no good for Superhot or Beat Saber).

It also has the vantage-point problem - to use a similar example to explain, one of the reason Kinect's tracking was bad was that worked from 1-2 cameras in one point of your room (by your TV). If you stuck out your hand at the right angle, your arm/hand were between your shoulder and the camera, and the tracking would get glitchy because Kinect didn't know where your shoulder was. This is why Kinect worked much better in homebrew when people rigged up multiple units from different angles. These technologies have improved over the years but the Quest has the same issue, where it's very easy to move your hand out of range, or cross your hands (from an accessibility standpoint, they also struggle with people who don't have a thumb and four fingers on each hand).

Generally the headsets which focus on hand-tracking aren't intended for gaming use, which is fine (as VR has wide applications outside gaming) but it's much better for them to support both.

[Brad]

It supports windows mixed reality controllers as well

[Asura]

It supports windows mixed reality controllers as well

Yeah, but it doesn't come with them, does it? Unless I missed that. It really should.

[Brad]

You can buy it with controllers if you want. Or save money by not having them if you don't need them. I wouldn't need them for example. Or you can choose what controllers you want (WMR compatible only presumably).

decent spec, untethered VR that doesn't cost the earth or require Facebook sounds great to me. Hope they do well. I won't back it as I'm happy with my reverb and resolution-wise this is a downgrade but if it turns out to be good I might consider it.
[MENTION=42]MartyG[/MENTION] presumably kickstarter isn't their only source of funding. They've been going 2 years, probably just using it as a cash injection to get the first units built. Looks like this'll be the first mixed reality headset that is, actually mixed reality.

[MartyG]

Well if the Lynx headset doesn't work out, perhaps HTC's new Vive Flow VR headset will - leaked ahead of its announcement on the 15th, it looks a little bit more streamlined than other headsets. At $499 it's not far off competing with the Quest 2, but no controllers.



From reading other bits on it, it looks like it's more aimed at media consumption and isn't using the XR2 chipset, but will wait and see what the official announcement reveals.

[Asura]

Well if the Lynx headset doesn't work out, perhaps HTC's new Vive Flow VR headset will - leaked ahead of its announcement on the 15th, it looks a little bit more streamlined than other headsets. At $499 it's not far off competing with the Quest 2, but no controllers.



From reading other bits on it, it looks like it's more aimed at media consumption and isn't using the XR2 chipset, but will wait and see what the official announcement reveals.

Yeah it's weird, it looks like a follow-on from the Oculus Go or those older Vuzix HMDs, none of which were terribly successful.