Is VR dead?

[Deleted member 197115]

The industry cannot rely on proprietary stations from Valve which can be unreliable partner when it comes to hardware deliveries, reason Pimax Crystal went for hybrid, inside out tracking out of the box (which based on my time with WMR works for 100% of simracing cases), and optional SteamVR addon tracking with stations for crazy room scale junkies that need millimeter precision to bang their heads against furniture in the room.
And nobody likes external tracking with stations setup hassle, it's just unnecessary evil you might be willing to deal with to get more precise tracking.
Things with inside out will only get better with time, on the other hand I do not see anyone investing into new stations based tracking development, like it or not it's becoming obsolete old tech.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Nobody? I thought the base station setup was MUCH MUCH MUCH easier than the WMR setup which I had to repeat multiple times to get right. Sorry. I'll take base stations ANY day of the week. There is a lot of wonkiness with WMR that many of you are probably used to, but that I never experienced with my Rift CV1 or Valve Index. However, the CV1 did require occasional recalibration and did have occasional hiccups even with the 3 cameras I was using. The 2 base stations have been much better.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Good timing for this.
Even Bradley says that the new Pimax inside out tracking works now compared to just a month ago which he said was completely unusable and you inside out fans will be happy to know that those of us with base stations will have to pay an additional $200 for lighthouse support.

But he still thinks the swappable lenses are still a gimmick and they said the low FOV 42ppd lens made people nauseous with their little small square view and he thought they were horrible. With the wider FOV lenses it appears there is an issue people have where things in the foreground look fine, but when ever people look in the distance everything gets blurry. The fact that the Pimax people tried to tell him that he was the only person with this problem and yet he talked with other people at the show who complained of the same issues bothers me and tells me they still have a lot to sort out.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that they may have a VERY narrow in focus area ( in terms of depth ) with their optics compared to other headsets and that people's eyes naturally drift a bit when looking at things at different distances causing this problem. That would make their new lenses a bust right out of the gate and it's possible that they pushed the delivery dates back to re-engineer the optics to have a wider in focus depth.

He gives them credit for making a lot of improvements and says their engineers have obviously been working hard to fix things, but it doesn't appear to be soup yet.

 

[metalnwood]

It's not about who is a fan of lighthouse or inside out. Today there are certainly argument/pros and cons for each.

We are talking about where it needs to go to the future. When inside out is as good as lighthouse there is no argument to have lighthouse. I don't replace some tech just because its the future when its not currently up to the job but it doesnt mean we don't see where things should ideally head.

You said your wife doesn't let you have your rig setup all the time and you move it frequently, there are plenty of people in the same boat, they cannot or do not want lighthouses all the time and have to set them up. Hard? Not necessaily. a pita moving tripods and cables for power, yes.

I am not debating what is the most accurate today and I doubt very much anyone in the industry paints a future picture of having stations planted around the room to make things work.

My telescope had a camera that guided it based on sub pixel tracking of a very, very faint star. Of course we will be able to track well from inside out in the future without setup issues and without extra stuff no one wants even if they currently put up with having to have it.

We are talking about the future, not today. I hope valve have a killer headset as I think they can be trusted and I hope that it will have inside out tracking. I have to say, I am not convinced if they will have another headset. They are looking at other hardware opportunities that are doing well and more mass market than VR.

 

[RCHeliguy]

You said your wife doesn't let you have your rig setup all the time and you move it frequently, there are plenty of people in the same boat, they cannot or do not want lighthouses all the time and have to set them up. Hard? Not necessaily. a pita moving tripods and cables for power, yes.

That's not an issue for me at all. The light houses are small and permanently mounted up high and out of the way in the corners of the room scale area. I haven't touched them since I set them up in 2019.

FWIW that involved two screw holes per base station. The power wires are small and hidden. I have a remote power switch that puts power to the computer / tactile amps and left front base station and powers the right rear base station with the press of a button.

 

[metalnwood]

That's not an issue for me at all. The light houses are small and permanently mounted up high and out of the way in the corners of the room scale area. I haven't touched them since I set them up in 2019.

FWIW that involved two screw holes per base stations. The wires are hidden and I have a remote power switch that puts power to the computer / tactile amps and left front base station and powers the right rear base station.

But it seems that everything we talk about involves you in the here and now and as its been said a few times, we are talking about the future.

There is no future where someone says their ideal vr involves things screwed to their walls. Thats just part of the implementation that people would be more than happy to drop with another performing tech that doesnt require it.

 

[RCHeliguy]

But it seems that everything we talk about involves you in the here and now and as its been said a few times, we are talking about the future.

There is no future where someone says their ideal vr involves things screwed to their walls. Thats just part of the implementation that people would be more than happy to drop with another performing tech that doesnt require it.

If they can eventually come up with something that is just as good, I'd have no reason to suggest I wanted extra hardware that offered no value.

Until that day comes, I'll support what works best for me.

And for others that consider the existing inside/out tech good enough, great for you


As for your comments about Valve in the future. It's obvious that they are continuing to develop a new VR headset just based on the stream of things they reference in the SteamVR updates. But unlike others, they won't announce something until it is polished and will be ready to ship on a date that they announce with substantial inventory on hand.

Also Index sales have continued to be very strong. For 2022 they had trouble keeping up with demand in 2nd quarter because of supply issues and they were catching up with demand in 3rd and 4th quarter. In fact given the huge number of sales from META, the fact that the Index has maintained or grown as a percentage of headset out there is saying something.

They have never had a sale or marked down the Index in over 3.5 years.

 

[RCHeliguy]

FWIW, I see people wrestling with G2 tracking issues all the time in my DCS and iRacing VR forums. These two quotes were just posted yesterday and are from people using the G2 long term, but there are many many more G2 complaints/issues that I've read over history. Numerous issues with motion and others just losing tracking in general like the two quotes below.

All I'm saying is that I'm not alone in having issues and many people comfortable with the G2 long term still have issues.

For those of you who are happy with yours, I'm very happy for you. But please don't discount my experiences as being purely because I had it in for the G2.

VR iRacing Group

"I run a G2 with iRacing. Have done for around a year now. Over the last week my view has been drifting/floating away from the set position. This means I am constantly resetting my view. " ( yes he cleaned the environment variables, and cleaned the camera lenses )

"i have similar issues sometimes with my g2. I wouldn't say all the time but more often than not now i find myself resetting view mid race."


Let me compare this with rolling my rig to the approximate center of my room area and having the view so well centered when I start up iRacing that I sometimes forget that I need to recenter my HMD to account for not perfectly returning my rig to the exact same spot.

 

[metalnwood]

FWIW, I see people wrestling with G2 tracking issues all the time in my DCS and iRacing VR forums. These two quotes were just posted yesterday and are from people using the G2 long term, but there are many many more G2 complaints/issues that I've read over history. Numerous issues with motion and others just loosing tracking in general like the two quotes below.

All I'm saying is that I'm not alone in having issues and many people comfortable with the G2 long term still have issues.

For those of you who are happy with yours, I'm very happy for you. But please don't discount my experiences as being purely because I had it in for the G2.

VR iRacing Group

"I run a G2 with iRacing. Have done for around a year now. Over the last week my view has been drifting/floating away from the set position. This means I am constantly resetting my view. " ( yes he cleaned the environment variables, and cleaned the camera lenses )

"i have similar issues sometimes with my g2. I wouldn't say all the time but more often than not now i find myself resetting view mid race."

I frequent both as well and the G2 is the most used headset from what I can see at the ED forums, my local dcs sqdn has about 20 people and half using the G2, I am not aware of any people using anything else. The biggest issue with DCS and any headset is DCS.

It can have tracking issues, I have had them - as I had blackouts with lighthouses. You dont have to search far to see when lighthouses lose tracking.

But again, no one dismisses what you have chosen. We were not talking the here and now, we were talking where things should go. If I wanted to play FPS without issue I would use something with lighthouses, no doubt but thats skirting around what we want for the future.

 

[Cooknn]

Forgetting Mixed reality, the VR-3 has 70ppd in the center for a retina display that blends seamlessly with the rest of the display creating the hardware equivalent of Fixed Fovated Rendering. Pretty slick stuff.

My 4090 w/ 13900K can barely push 35ppd, 70 must require a crypto rig.

 

[RCHeliguy]

My 4090 w/ 13900K can barely push 35ppd, 70 must require a crypto rig.

No doubt. The real world commercial applications are likely more static.

Until we have processing shared with chips in the headset, this would require GPU's a generation or two from now.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Was just reading all the people happy with and all the people having issues with the Aero. Most all comparisons were with the G2 and how easy the G2 was to setup compared to the Aero. Ugh!

Of course everyone likes how the Aero looks much better, but for some the pain involved in getting it setup well is apparently a bit too much. Soo much gnashing of teeth and complaints about spending so much and then having these issues to deal with.

Sometimes being a spectator is good.

 

[Cooknn]

Was just reading all the people happy with and all the people having issues with the Aero. Most all comparisons were with the G2 and how easy the G2 was to setup compared to the Aero. Ugh!

Of course everyone likes how the Aero looks much better, but for some the pain involved in getting it setup well is apparently a bit too much. Soo much gnashing of teeth and complaints about spending so much and then having these issues to deal with.

Sometimes being a spectator is good.

For me setup with the Aero was plug and play. Maybe easier because I had a new build to support it. The Varjo Discords are also very helpful. Just wish I could get more out of ACC. It looks pretty amazing, but I'm actually having a lot of fun with AMS2 right now. Marco did say '24 at the latest for AC2. Maybe we'll get early access later this year. Wouldn't that be something?!

[EDIT]Oh, and I came from the Reverb G2. Nothing negative to say about that device. Sad that HP is seemingly pulling out of VR.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Was just reading all the people happy with and all the people having issues with the Aero. Most all comparisons were with the G2 and how easy the G2 was to setup compared to the Aero. Ugh!

How to setup WMR for sitting/standing experience i.e. simracing.

Done.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Windows MR Steam Usage Grows After HP Reverb G2 Sales

Windows MR was the fastest growing headset type on SteamVR in December following deep discounts on HP Reverb G2.

uploadvr.com

The data for December was released on Tuesday. For the first time in years, Windows Mixed Reality is the fastest growing headset type.
We reviewed Reverb G2 when it first launched. We loved the comfort, audio, and clarity of the headset – but found the controller tracking and ergonomics lacking. It’s an ideal headset for simulators, but for room-scale gaming it doesn’t quite match up to Quest 2 or Valve Index.
The overall Steam users with VR Headsets figure stayed the same, 2.03%. PC VR headset usage growth continues to stagnate relative to the overall PC gaming market.

 

[gamma123152]

Windows MR Steam Usage Grows After HP Reverb G2 Sales

Windows MR was the fastest growing headset type on SteamVR in December following deep discounts on HP Reverb G2.

uploadvr.com

I don't use SteamVR anymore and I expect that most serious sim racers and/or flight simulator enthousiast also don't use SteamVR anymore. The performance and stability is simply lacking, especially with a headset like the G2.

Most simmers are switched to OpenXR/Opencomposite/OpenXR toolkit. So the SteamVR statistics don't count much anymore for this group. And the most serious group of PCVR users are simmers.

Sim PCVR HMD's will always be a niche since there are simply not much simmers around. But it's a niche that is prepared to pay for hardware so I expect that new niche PCVR headsets will always be developed for that reason and that it will never die.

But will there be mass adoption of VR anytime soon? I don't think so, but we also don't need that as sim racers. We don't need massive growth in VR statistics.

 

[RCHeliguy]

How to setup WMR for sitting/standing experience i.e. simracing.

Done.

That is such a problematic way to do things and BTW it didn't work well for me.

I needed to set it up at my head level or it looked like I was 7' tall in room scale games if I did this at chest level. Painfully it had no way to calibrate while wearing the headset. The Oculus calibrated while wearing it which was better.

It was never quite right always just a bit off in the G2.

With the Index it was far easier. Just set the headset on the floor in the center of tou room scale area and done and it would be the perfect height for anyone wearing the headset without recalibration.

Maybe it didn't like my 75" TV mounted to the wall in the center of my room space. Maybe it didn't like all my recessed lighting. In either case neither is something I can change.

If you don't care about room scale this isn't something you would care about. Just like you wouldn't care about the hand controllers.

You would just sit in your rig and click center HMD and call it a day.

 

[Novopaine]

I was really hoping that a Valve 2 announcement would be here by now. Eventually we will get it but who knows when Gabe will say it's ready. It's starting to feel like another Half Life 3 scenario.

As much as I don't want to give Meta my money, I'm starting to wonder if I should just pull the trigger as a short term stop-gap. The G2 seems like an ok option but I keep reading that there's a lot of hoops to jump through to make it work well.

I still have my Rift CV1, but I feel like I'm gaming at 640x480.

 

[anton_Chez]

Getting back to Pimax, I backed the 8K (at the time) in October and release was supposed to be the following January. I received my headset over 12 months later.

So. Don't hold your breath for the Crystal.

 

[RCHeliguy]