Virtual Reality

[Lebowski]

if its £900 its doa, the market has moved as It feels like things have settled down for the meta quest, they had that perfect Christmas where everyone was stuck inside due to Covid it got a lot of traction on social with videos of people walking the plank into tvs, or Grandma freaking out and if my office was anything to go loads of people not into gaming got one to bring out on Chrsitmas day. It had that Wii hype where everyone could play. For vavle to recapture that i dont think is possible with a standalone unit, they will do steamdeck numbers if tis priced right though the pc gaming crowd worship valve and they can do no wrong though often do where hardware is concerned (steam machines, steam link, steam controller ect)

[Asura]

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.

I wouldn't expect them to drop support, but it would ideally support both.

VR can't possibly ever proliferate until we reach a solution where having fixed base-stations is, at best, optional.

[MartyG]

if its £900 its doa

It will fly off the shelves in the PCVR market, just as the original did - Index has had consistent sales up until the end of 2022 and has only recently started declining in sales at £900, and that's because people are waiting to replace it with the Deckard. Index owners want an Index 2.

[Neon Ignition]

If it's a full on premium effort then hopefully it's benchmark setting as fans will never get an Index 3 from Valve

[Lebowski]

It will fly off the shelves in the PCVR market, just as the original did - Index has had consistent sales up until the end of 2022 and has only recently started declining in sales at £900, and that's because people are waiting to replace it with the Deckard. Index owners want an Index 2.

The index is sitting around 140,000 units it sold badly to start with and made most of those sale when half life Alyx appeared, in comparison The quest 2 has sold over 10 million units. It depends which market Valve is going for a niche PC headset for a limited audience of enthusiasts or mass market hype train. Could it not be both? a base standalone packs with the headset and controllers and a more expensive set with tracking towers and a PC dock.

[MartyG]

Not sure where you got that figure from, but it's not correct.

[Asura]

Bunch of leaks today.

There are gifs floating around showing debug draw of how the Quest 3 maps play-spaces, and some tech demos. Very impressive; matches what I was hoping to see. I've worked with AR applications before but they've always been disappointing; I think this is now the minimum spec needed to really make them work, and I think there's going to be huge application to use them in multiplayer (imagine; a monster breaks down your wall and stomps into your room, and both of you can shoot at it).

Also WalMart in the US has received boxed "Quest Launch Kits" in big boxes; a deliveryperson posted pictures. The boxes are closed, that's just the label. Presumably they're standees, billboards etc.

[MartyG]

That mapping play spaces one has been about for a few days now - the AR with the depth sensing cam has definitely made a difference, I doubt it'd have changed the fate of the Quest Pro, but it's a shame that was dropped from the final product (the Quest Pro really is a nice headset to look thru the lenses on, so long as it's not the pass thru).

We should know everything tomorrow. The keynote is 6pm UK time.

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Pico 5 is rumoured to be coming in three different variations, Pico 5, Pico 5 Pro and Pico 5 Pro Max, with the Max having a resolution of 3840x3840 per-eye. I'd take the specs with a pinch of salt tho, as the Max over a year away.

https://vr-compare.com/vr shows the different specs.

[Lebowski]

Not sure where you got that figure from, but it's not correct.

According to a Chat GPT, Valve sold 149,000 units of the Valve Index VR headset in its first year, valve have been quiet on its year to year sales so i'm going off the last figures valve released, even if it did 149,000 units a year which is very very doubtful that would put it at 447,000 in its three year at market. For context valves steam deck is on target to break 3 million units in its first year. I doubt they are actively going after the PCVR market as those numbers aren't great when you factor in RND costs.

[MartyG]

Good reason not to trust ChatGPT as a source of information then. I'd try looking at the Steam Survey, which lists how many VR users there are on Steam and what percentage of those is an Index (hint, it's not 149,000).

Index is a vanity project for Valve (and profit-making) hardware device, aiming at the premium end of the market, which is where Deckard will also sit. It isn't a driver of Steam sales (as the Steamdeck is) so they don't need to sell millions of them or drop the specs (4K micro OLED per eye at 144Hz and 130° FoV, eye tracking, spacial audio, pancake lenses as rumoured), to compete with Quest 3; there will be a massive waiting list for Index 2, Valve won't be able to manufacture them fast enough, even at the expected $1000-1500 price point.

[Asura]

According to a Chat GPT,

Strongly recommend you don't fact-check using ChatGPT. It's a bad source of factual info.

[MartyG]

Interestingly, the latest beta drop earlier today for Virtual Desktop has added AV1 encoding for Quest 3 and RTX 4XXX / RX 7XXX cards, so looks like Quest 3 is going to support AV1, this is good news for wifi streaming on PC.

[Lebowski]

Good reason not to trust ChatGPT as a source of information then. I'd try looking at the Steam Survey, which lists how many VR users there are on Steam and what percentage of those is an Index (hint, it's not 149,000).

Index is a vanity project for Valve (and profit-making) hardware device, aiming at the premium end of the market, which is where Deckard will also sit. It isn't a driver of Steam sales (as the Steamdeck is) so they don't need to sell millions of them or drop the specs (4K micro OLED per eye at 144Hz and 130° FoV, eye tracking, spacial audio, pancake lenses as rumoured), to compete with Quest 3; there will be a massive waiting list for Index 2, Valve won't be able to manufacture them fast enough, even at the expected $1000-1500 price point.

so using steams figures

132 million people on steam,
0.98% of all steam users play VR, so roughly 1.3 million people playing pc vr
19% market share for Valve Index = 247,000 Valve index headsets.

[MartyG]

Your figures are still wrong.

[Lebowski]

Your figures are still wrong.

how would you work it out then i'm waiting