Virtual Reality

[Asura]

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING ****?!

WHY IS THAT HEADSET $1,100USD AND £1,299GBP??!!?!?

[MartyG]

A combination of a strong dollar and the US prices never includes sales tax. How long have you been on an import gaming site? That said, it still seems a bit gougey.

[huxley]

The new HTC hmd is a competitor to the Quest Pro offering. The only advantage for me would be not having to deal with Facebook (insert name change here after next data breach).

I`ve had an Index since launch, while its great its looking pretty bulky compared to some of the newer offerings. The Pico 4 has peeked my interest.
Being able to play my PC games at a similar fidelity with no wires is appealing.

[Asura]

A combination of a strong dollar and the US prices never includes sales tax. How long have you been on an import gaming site? That said, it still seems a bit gougey.

With tax (admittedly it varies across the US), converted to GBP it's almost exactly £1000.

It's a 30% mark-up no matter how you slice it.

[MartyG]

With 20% tax equivalent to VAT it's £1100.

1,100.00 US Dollars = 909.61151 British Pounds + 20% = £1091.53

With import tax (another 4.5%) it's £1140.65 - if you were then to ship it from the US insured, you're probs looking at another £30 ish via courier plus their fees (and the duty is charged on the combined value and postage).

Feel lucky you're not in Australia.

[Asura]

It's a ripoff. I'd argue your maths shows it just as well.

[MartyG]

If you say so, but I'd argue that the price difference is mostly down to the cost of doing business in the UK unfortunately. You should probably lobby your MP.

I don't think this particular headset is good value for money though, even compared to the Quest Pro, and certainly not from a consumer level - but that's not the market this headset (or the QP) is aimed at.

[Lebowski]

meta dropping support for the quest one Turning off social features and removing things like being able to join party’s ect and play online.

This is why you don’t buy headsets from facebook, Theirs no reason to not let people join party’s in games they allready own and take away features. Some devs are offering refunds on games that have had quest support dropped but that’s a pretty ****ty position to be in.

https://www.ign.com/articles/meta-is-ending-support-for-the-original-quest-vr-headset

[MartyG]

It's more pragmatism, the chipset in the Quest 1 is ancient now and woefully underpowered for the new stuff (they are based on Snapdragon 835 from 2007), it chugs.

Upside is you'll be able to pick one up cheap and use it as wireless PCVR (which actually works pretty well on both Airlink and Virtual Desktop) until the headset starts becoming uncomfortable.

[Asura]

meta dropping support for the quest one Turning off social features and removing things like being able to join party’s ect and play online.

I don't think it stops online play; it stops the use of Horizon Home, i.e. the specific 3D party system within the front-end. In practice, very few people actually use this (most games have their own multiplayer system and I assume those will still work?).

It is a bit quick, though. I know things have moved on really quickly and the Q1's hardware is a problem, but it's only four years old. The Oculus Quest is, in certain terms, a console. I mean it's a proprietary, stand-alone device which runs videogames bought from the platform holder; the fact that it's a VR headset doesn't change the fact that in many respects the Quest is no different to the DS, or the PSVita, and even the Vita was supported for ~8 years, even if the games dried up fair bit much earlier than that.

[Dogg Thang]

RIP Vita.

[Lebowski]

It's more pragmatism, the chipset in the Quest 1 is ancient now and woefully underpowered for the new stuff (they are based on Snapdragon 835 from 2007), it chugs.

Upside is you'll be able to pick one up cheap and use it as wireless PCVR (which actually works pretty well on both Airlink and Virtual Desktop) until the headset starts becoming uncomfortable.

So a headset that launched in May 2019 was using an already ancient chipset from 2007 Wow!!!

meta giving us a clear indication on how long they expect these headsets to last, 3ish years which puts the quest 2 on course for it to be obsolete by 2024, which tracks as the quest 3 is on route this year. If only meta had focused on these headsets and not on wasting billions on some metaverse pipe dream, its like they tried to run before they could walk. I certainly wouldn't buy a meta quest 2 this year if its so near being discontinued.

[Asura]

meta giving us a clear indication on how long they expect these headsets to last, 3ish years which puts the quest 2 on course for it to be obsolete by 2024, which tracks as the quest 3 is on route this year. If only meta had focused on these headsets and not on wasting billions on some metaverse pipe dream. its like they tried to run before they could walk.

I personally think the Quest 2 will be supported for longer, but we'll have to wait and see.

The Q1 had many poor design decisions; it's practically a prototype in some ways. That doesn't free Meta of blame for this, as they sold it as a product. You'd think given this situation they'd at least offer a rebate for people who return their Q1's with an intent to upgrade to Q2/3.

[Lebowski]

I personally think the Quest 2 will be supported for longer, but we'll have to wait and see.

The Q1 had many poor design decisions; it's practically a prototype in some ways. That doesn't free Meta of blame for this, as they sold it as a product. You'd think given this situation they'd at least offer a rebate for people who return their Q1's with an intent to upgrade to Q2/3.

The cuts they have had to do internally most coming from the metaverse and VR development throws up questions about if they still see VR as a big focus for meta, The quest two felt like the must have Wii style crimbo hype in 2021, i even had people in my office talking about it but it feels like a device that's peeked. Them upping the price of it, rather than reducing it seemed to kill off a lot of its momentum too.

[Brad]

Covid played a large part in its momentum (Quest 2). Meta's Horizon Worlds lost 100,000 of its 300,000 users between February and October last year. The old people who use Facebook are not the same group of people who try out VR. Meta can create the hardware all they want but they will not be the ones creating the dominant metaverse. VRChat is destroying them. And without their metaverse to steal your data what's the point in them selling headsets at a loss? Also, Quest 2 is already underpowered; even basic environments like VRChat seem to be rendered at half resolution compared to a PCVR headset. It's a bit wild west out there at the moment.