Virtual Reality

[MartyG]

Looks good, I mean, who doesn't want to be a Ninja with VR Samurai sword.

Probs won't be for me as I usually find stealth games frustrating (stupid vision cones) to the point of throwing my controller out the window, but there's always an exception to the rule.

[huxley]

Portal 2VR anybody?


If you dont want to watch all that
Download this - https://github.com/Gistix/portal2vr/releases
Extract it to the game folder.
Paste this into launch options -
-insecure -window -novid +mat_motion_blur_percent_of_screen_max 0 +mat_queue_mode 0 +mat_vsync 0 +mat_antialias 0 +mat_grain_scale_override 0 -width 1280 -height 720

Launch game and SteamVR will take over

[Neon Ignition]

https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-quest-3-launch-price-adjustment/

Quest 3 drops £20 in price ahead of launch

[Asura]

https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-quest...ce-adjustment/
Quest 3 drops £20 in price ahead of launch

Suspect that's just an exchange-rate thing, as they announced the prices quite a while back.

[Neon Ignition]

Curious to see the final reviews when its out. It'll be well into 2024 before I get near one but it's pretty certain I'll grab it as my final headset now that the high profile software has slowed and PSVR2 has belly flopped out

[MartyG]

The Varjo Aero has had a significant price cut, and there are rumours afoot that Valve's Deckard launch isn't too far away now.

The Quest 3 isn't going to be the only player in 2024.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm curious about Valve taking a second pass (hopefully bringing with it a second game), for new VR headsets the £450 ballpark is definitely the roof I'd pay now

[Asura]

Regardless, Quest 3 two-weeks-from-tomorrow!

I can hardly wait!

[Lebowski]

I'm curious about Valve taking a second pass (hopefully bringing with it a second game), for new VR headsets the £450 ballpark is definitely the roof I'd pay now

A standalone unit has to be in the ball park of the quest to make it worth picking up, it would need to offer a lot beefier spec that the quest if it did want to price itself higher. If i was a betting man id say some form of software like the excellent The Lab to show off what its new VR toy can do, and a graphically downgraded version of Half Life Alyx will launch with it. Your beat sabres and job simulators will be their too but after day one Valve will release zero exclusive software and instead work with dev's to port and support third party content on its device.

[Asura]

A standalone unit has to be in the ball park of the quest to make it worth picking up, it would need to offer a lot beefier spec that the quest if it did want to price itself higher. If i was a betting man id say some form of software like the excellent The Lab to show off what its new VR toy can do, and a graphically downgraded version of Half Life Alyx will launch with it. Your beat sabres and job simulators will be their too but after day one Valve will release zero exclusive software and instead work with dev's to port and support third party content on its device.

I think the Steam Deck has proven this can work though; insofar as Valve can create a platform, provide the right tools in the Steam framework, and give devs a fixed target to aim at in performance terms.

[Lebowski]

I think the Steam Deck has proven this can work though; insofar as Valve can create a platform, provide the right tools in the Steam framework, and give devs a fixed target to aim at in performance terms.

With the right hardware it can work, the Index being left to rot with no price reduction in three years its amazon shop expired (the top link for valve index on google, "shop valve index" takes you to a dead page on Amazon) valve have a history of abandoning things or being very hands off to the point where it feels like neglect.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Decard being pretty similar spec-wise to a steam deck and sharing a lot of its tech, it would be good to see meta have a bit of competition in the standalone market, and id certainly rather give my money to Valve over dead eyes Zuckerberg.

[Asura]

I wouldn't be surprised to see Decard being pretty similar spec-wise to a steam deck and sharing a lot of its tech, it would be good to see meta have a bit of competition in the standalone market, and id certainly rather give my money to Valve over dead eyes Zuckerberg.

Honestly if the Deckard ended up being a Quest-like headset, I think Meta would have a big problem. Pretty sure the vast bulk of enthusiast-level VR users would immediately jump ship to such a device if they could. Honestly if Valve released a headset which was a complete clone of the contemporary Quest, I would pay 2x the price for it just for it to be a Steam-focused device and totally seperate from Meta.

[MartyG]

It's not going to be competing with Quest 3 as it's unlikely to be coming in at a price point of £500, so I'd temper expectations on that one.

We know a fair amount of the features it's likely to have based on the data mining of the SteamVR executables.

See here, here and here for the more recent breakdowns.

[Asura]

It's not going to be competing with Quest 3 as it's unlikely to be coming in at a price point of £500

I honestly don't think the higher pricepoint is the major factor. I think there are many people out there who want a stand-alone VR headset and are willing to pay higher prices for them to get out of Meta's ecosystem and onto Steam's, but such a product simply doesn't exist.

If you're someone who really likes VR at present, you're in a slightly weird place. Even if you want to do dedicated PCVR, the choice for a headset is not obvious from those that exist, and regardless of what you pick, it's going to be wired, and I think many VR enthusiasts are loathe to go back to wires after trying the stand-alone sets.

Like I honestly want Valve to release a £900 headset with the broad capabilities of the Quest 3. Stand-alone gaming, inside-out-tracking, pancake lenses, depth sensor. But ideally a DisplayPort & Power connection for when you want to do stuff like SimRacing or Flight Sims on PC, where you might choose to have a wire because there's no movement. I think a lot of VR fans would buy this, regardless of the higher price. Total integration with SteamVR; no abstraction layers.

[MartyG]

I don't think Valve wants to abandon its base station tracking entirely (and nor do I want it to) - the base station controller tracking is still massively superior to inside-out tracking and it's still superior to the Quest Pro controllers, and if you're selling to that existing audience, you probably want to continue to support them.

The HTC VIVE XR Elite VR Headset is a wireless PCVR headset, but it has no DP connection, not sure if it's DP over USB-C compatible, but it does have USB-C connectivity. I've never used one so don't have hands-on experience with it.

The PICO 4 does a decent job wirelessly over Wifi 6, and the pancake lenses help loads - it's sharper than the Index screen, but not as good in refresh rate or FoV. No good for Beat Saber expert mode tho, the only headset I've got that can manage it is the Index.

The PICO 4 really is surprisingly good for the price, and the PICO 5 is on the way, but we'll see what Deckard brings when it's officially announced, see if that does turn out to be a hybrid device as you've described above.