Is VR dead?

[Tr0nic]

Hey yall!
Just my two cents about the HP G2 ... using it a bit over 2 years now and i am still in love with it.
Height calibration works perfect for me. Doesnt matter if i start the HMD while standing or sitting in my rig, it always sets up the correct height for me.
In general it's very simple... connect it, do the setup, forget it... at least for me.

Just using it for sim racing!

VR is never dead!

 

[Deleted member 197115]

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.

If you don't use OpenVR runtime, doesn't mean you don't launch VR title through Steam. And you still need WMR for Steam.
Plus to my knowledge these stats are generated via Hardware Surveys, which do not require you actively play the title, they just see HMD connected to your PC.

 

[BrunoBæ]

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.

Im just sitting on the side fence without any VR kit at the moment.
But could maybe invest in the Crystal in 1-1.5 year.
But I wonder if this discussion about the crystal clear foreground and the more and more blurry background could not be the same - as if you by mistake use some precription reading glasses as your normal "shopping" glasses as example to use outside your house.
The result will be hyper sharp foreground and extremely blurry distant viewing.

And could this whole Pimax "gimmick" with 2x exchangable lenses be a way to integrate prescription glasses in the Crystal from day one of use.
For all us glasses users.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Im just sitting on the side fence without any VR kit at the moment.
But could maybe invest in the Crystal in 1-1.5 year.
But I wonder if this discussion about the crystal clear foreground and the more and more blurry background could not be the same - as if you by mistake use some precription reading glasses as your normal "shopping" glasses as example to use outside your house.
The result will be hyper sharp foreground and extremely blurry distant viewing.

And could this whole Pimax "gimmick" with 2x exchangable lenses be a way to integrate prescription glasses in the Crystal from day one of use.
For all us glasses users.

MR TV had the same experience with things being off and "assumed" it was a prescription model. Pimax said everything was addressed for CES and yet the same issue.

Could Pimax be so dense as to bring prescription lenses to CES???? And then accusing Bradley have having eye problems since no one else had this issue? That is shady at best.

After the complaints about this very issue I can't believe they would screw up this badly.

I hope you are right, but based on some of their on going problems, I think they may need to fix their product.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Could Pimax be so dense as to bring prescription lenses to CES???? And then accusing Bradley have having eye problems since no one else had this issue? That is shady at best.

For all other companies I would answer no.
But for Pimax yes is a reasonable possibility.
I mean taken from the whole Pimax history their way of doing business is a mix of cheating on customers and plain incompetence.

 

[RCHeliguy]

For all other companies I would answer no.
But for Pimax yes is a reasonable possibility.
I mean taken from the whole Pimax history their way of doing business is a mix of cheating on customers and plain incompetence.

Since they can't demo many features as of CES, it appears that they still have a chunk of work ahead of them.

I saw one overall positive review commenting that they aren't working on the eye tracking yet or getting software support for foveated rendering. So when then? And how will we know that it can actually work if they've never had it working?

The stand alone capability that most of use don't care about isn't done yet. Most people were not able to try out their hand controllers because the firmware wasn't ready.

All these issues with focusing that people are complaining about seems like it could be very important.

Based on what I'm hearing even from those enthusiastic about Pimax, there is no way they will make their current March delivery date.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Very excited to find out that after re-installing Oculus and updating to Meta that I can now see all my Oculus exclusive content in SteamVR

The Climb, Lone Echo, Robo Recall to name a few.

EDIT: I haven't seen these in 3.5 years now and they look FREAKING FANTASTIC in the Index! They've obviously updated them a bit since the first time I saw them in 2017, but I still love that opening scene in Robo Recall and it's a great one to put people who have never been in VR before.

The Climb is hilarious because of some people's fear of heights. I've had people ask their spouse to hold them while they look around on a virtual cliff when they are standing on a concrete floor in a basement.

There have been a couple games that are Oculus only content that I might consider buying now that I can use them in SteamVR.

 

[gamma123152]

And you still need WMR for Steam.

To my knowledge this is not true. OpenComposite+OpenXR completely bypasses everything from SteamVR, including WMR for SteamVR. So it won't show up in the SteamVR stats at all.

 

[gamma123152]

For all other companies I would answer no.
But for Pimax yes is a reasonable possibility.
I mean taken from the whole Pimax history their way of doing business is a mix of cheating on customers and plain incompetence.

You're absolutely right. But I really don't understand WHY? Why does Pimax behave the way they do to customers? They now seem to make a great product, maybe even the best in the VR industry but their service, after sales, trustability is just horrible. They lie, cheat and offer horrible after sales. Some 8kx buyers are stuck with a brick after 13 month's because they simply refuse to repair the device after the warranty period. They ruin it all themself. I cannot pre-order their product in their webshop because I simply cannot trust them and they offer a terrible warranty period and the return policy is so bad that it's almost non existent. So even while I want to buy their product at their webshop, I simply can't because I cannot trust them.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

To my knowledge this is not true. OpenComposite+OpenXR completely bypasses everything from SteamVR, including WMR for SteamVR. So it won't show up in the SteamVR stats at all.

Yeah, you are right, see diagram, still doesn't matter for stats as this is not how Steam collects info on VR users and HMD models.
BTW, looks like Pimax does not support OpenXR, is it SteamVR native like Valve.

 

[gamma123152]

Yeah, you are right, see diagram, still doesn't matter for stats as this is not how Steam collects info on VR users and HMD models.
BTW, looks like Pimax does not support OpenXR, is it SteamVR native like Valve.

"The collected data is collated and shared after each month, including a breakdown of the relative usage of each VR headset and the percentage of overall Steam players using any headset in that month."

If you look closely at the diagram then you see that there is a red mark at "SteamVR Runtime". OpenComposite simply doesn't launch SteamVR at all, it bypasses it 100%. I know this too because I run VR with OpenComposite daily and it never starts SteamVR. So how can Steam know if the game is using VR or not? If SteamVR isn't launched at all? I don't think that Valve can know if a user uses VR or not ingame if they don't launch SteamVR. Steam/Valve can only see IF someone got a HMD, but it cannot collect VR usage data if SteamVR isn't launched.

And iRacing runs for example without Steam and it runs also the best with OpenXR, it's impossible that VR usage in for example iRacing stats are collected by Steam. The same for MSFS, which also has massive VR adoption and is not only bought and run from Steam. And iRacing and MSFS are probably the biggest in the sim VR market in terms of usage(I'm quite sure about it, even while I don't play both). I'm also unsure about all the other titles that support OpenComposite, because as I said: I think that Steam will use SteamVR to see if someone is running an VR HMD. Steam alone doesn't know if it's running VR or not.

So I think that these stats don't represent the full sim VR usage at all for that reason.

Btw; Pimax has a OpenXR runtime and it fully supports OpenXR toolkit(Index is supported too):

Quickstart

OpenXR Toolkit

mbucchia.github.io

GitHub - mbucchia/Pimax-OpenXR: PimaxXR: an unofficial implementation of the OpenXR standard for Pimax headsets.

PimaxXR: an unofficial implementation of the OpenXR standard for Pimax headsets. - mbucchia/Pimax-OpenXR

github.com

All thanks to the great mbucchia. And from what I understood, it runs great on Pimax including foveated rendering.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

So how can Steam know if the game is using VR or not? If SteamVR isn't launched at all? I don't think that Valve can know if a user uses VR or not ingame if they don't launch SteamVR. Steam/Valve can only see IF so

Don't you still launch game in 'VR mode' either via Steam Library menu, `steam://launch/gameId/vr" shortcut or command line param.
And I was pretty sure that at least used headsets breakdown is collected via Hardware Survey, not actual gaming, and in the past it was players overall, not active, that is whoever has headset connected, I remember we discussed it somewhere here before.

For Pimax I was going off comments on the diagram posted, where it states that it's not supported, must be old news.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Yes, it talks about this here.

Valve’s monthly hardware and software survey covers all VR headsets that have been connected to a PC running Steam at least once in a month. The survey is collected randomly and users can decline to participate. Among other things, the statistics show the percentage of SteamVR users in the total Steam user base.

Also from the same link

Currently, there is nothing in sight that could give new momentum to the PC VR market. Big and exclusive PC VR games have not been announced, nor has new hardware. Nothing has been heard from Valve about VR since Half-Life: Alyx. There are even rumors that Valve has sidelined VR.

 

[RCHeliguy]

And here I am talking about how good Robo Recall looks which is one of a handful of AAA games that Oculus developed and it's over 5 years old now.

Eve Valkyrie was amazing back in the early days but is now put to rest. Star Wars Squadrons came online shortly before that happened and most of the EV guys have gone over to Squadrons now.

Half Life Alyx was a big deal, but was released almost 3 years ago.

Hmm....

Beat Saber is still at the top of the charts for years now with not much besides VR Chat getting more play time.

So... Yeah... Hopefully the next PSVR system will help drive more VR games that run on both PCVR and PSVR.

Pretty sad actually.

 

[demetri]

You're absolutely right. But I really don't understand WHY? Why does Pimax behave the way they do to customers? They now seem to make a great product, maybe even the best in the VR industry but their service, after sales, trustability is just horrible. They lie, cheat and offer horrible after sales. Some 8kx buyers are stuck with a brick after 13 month's because they simply refuse to repair the device after the warranty period. They ruin it all themself. I cannot pre-order their product in their webshop because I simply cannot trust them and they offer a terrible warranty period and the return policy is so bad that it's almost non existent. So even while I want to buy their product at their webshop, I simply can't because I cannot trust them.

Two words: Chinese company. I wonder if Pico (now owned by Byte Dance) is the same

 

[Deleted member 197115]

And here I am talking about how good Robo Recall looks which is one of a handful of AAA games that Oculus developed and it's over 5 years old now.

Eve Valkyrie was amazing back in the early days but is now put to rest. Star Wars Squadrons came online shortly before that happened and most of the EV guys have gone over to Squadrons now.

Half Life Alyx was a big deal, but was released almost 3 years ago.

Hmm....

Beat Saber is still at the top of the charts for years now with not much besides VR Chat getting more play time.

So... Yeah... Hopefully the next PSVR system will help drive more VR games that run on both PCVR and PSVR.

Pretty sad actually.

Codemaster announced VR support for Grid Legends, for now Quest native only (must be bankrolled by Meta), but no info if it translates to PS and PC VR.
Not sure if it made anyone excited in this thread, at least it's AAA title.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Two words: Chinese company.

Two words, LOL

 

[BrunoBæ]

Two words: Chinese company. I wonder if Pico (now owned by Byte Dance) is the same

Yeah that would also be my answer.
But if this was the only answer then it would be difficult to explain that SOME chinese companies have a somewhat reasonable after sale service and does not like Pimax directly be lying in their advertising and promisses.
So my own bid of the reason is that its some mix of chinese culture AND an internal company atmosphere caused by some Pimax CEOs who think it is so smart to cheat both on customers and possible customers.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Saw another Crystal review dropped in the last couple hours complaining about how things that were not close up looked blurry.

My understanding is that all VR headsets have a SINGLE focal plane that is a distance of about 5-6' which is a comfortable distance for most people including people who need reading glasses.

The entire display panel should be easy to focus on all the time.

I do not see how this could be prescription lense related or none of the screen would be in focus.

Short of the motorized Oculus headset that never was released using eye tracking to adjust what was in focus, this was not something that should even be possible.

I'm continuing to guess that they have a poor aspheric lens design that has a very shallow in focus area or an off center in focus area such that when people's eye's naturally focus on something in the distance, which changes the focal plane their eyes can see, it becomes blurry.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I have seen YouTube video of people using the VR-3 with DCS World apparently working pretty well. This is a bit amazing to me considering it is one of the most demanding VR games in existence.

The VR-3 does have 200fps eye tracking and it is possible that they have some foveated rendering going on, but I have nothing to confirm that and I don't know the specifics of the hardware they were using to drive it.

if this is because of the software that they use to drive it, than they have some pretty good secret sauce.